Which to buy: Highland SR or LR?

[Dennix]

Goodmorning,

I am thinking about to buy a electric car, Tesla Model 3 Highland. It will be my first electric car. I need some advice which one to buy, SR or LR.

Some information:
I live in the Netherlands with a lot of charge locations.
Daily I drive 160 km.
It is not possible for me to charge at home. I am afraid the charge point near my house will be occupied often.
The SR has my preference.

What do you think?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Tam]

Goodmorning,

I am thinking about to buy a electric car, Tesla Model 3 Highland. It will be my first electric car. I need some advice which one to buy, SR or LR.

Some information:
I live in the Netherlands with a lot of charge locations.
Daily I drive 160 km.
It is not possible for me to charge at home. I am afraid the charge point near my house will be occupied often.
The SR has my preference.

What do you think?

Thank you in advance.

Range is King. It's more so in your case when you can't charge at home.

People can get by with less range like a Nissan Leaf but I haven't heard anyone complains of buying too much range.

 

[BSparx]

Not having home charging definitely requires some thought. You are right to think clearly about this before buying.

For a daily driver either the SR or LR will require charging every two to three days based on your 160km days. You will need to work this into your routine with either car.

Use the Tesla website or the ABRP website to checkout chargers along your usual routes. You will want to be familiar with all the conveniently located chargers, not just the one closest to home. I suggest actually visiting these charge locations to see what the experience might be like. Note the availability of open chargers at times convenient for you to stop in. Are chargers in places you might stop for a coffee or run an errand? My experience is that a supercharging session is rarely more than 15 minutes.

In summary I expect you can work out a charging routine with either the LR or SR that fits nicely into your weekly routine.

 

[jjrandorin]

It is not possible for me to charge at home. I am afraid the charge point near my house will be occupied often.

I may be in the minority, but its my firm belief that if you are not able to charge at home, Or, have RELIABLE charging at work, then you should not get a full battery electric vehicle (BEV) car.

you mention you cant charge at home, if you cant charge at work reliably, then Its my opinion that you shouldnt buy any bev, tesla or otherwise. Buy a hybrid, or a something like that.

People buy BEVs without home or work charging, but I think its a mistake.

 

[terranx]

It is not possible for me to charge at home. I am afraid the charge point near my house will be occupied often.

In this situation I would not buy an EV personally, though I admit the US might be different from the Netherlands in this regard.

 

[Tronguy]

Um. No home charging?

In the US, Superchargers typically cost 3x the cost of home electricity. So, in my area, it’s $.18/kW-hr at home and around $.42/kW-hr at nearby SCs.

Cost of gasoline around here is currently in the range of $3.30/gal. Do the math and a decent hybrid is at or better than the Tesla on commuting costs. Maybe not overall, given no oil changes nor tuneups, but, still.

Things that would make the Tesla a better deal:

• SCs around here often use time of day pricing. If you can put the Tesla App on your phone, you may be able to see this. But there are SCs near me who, at odd hours, like near midnight, charge $.15/kW-hr. Don’t know if that’s true in Europe. And I know that gasoline tends to be a lot more expensive in Europe, so SCs may still be a better deal for you.
• If you have L2 charging that’s accessible near work. My old workplace had eight or so of these reserved for employees out in one of the parking lots. Costs per kW-hr were a bit subsidized and comparable to home charging.

 

[Bouba]

The Long Range is also four wheel drive which is nice for winter driving....obviously the Short Range will be cheaper but if that isn’t a concern I would get the faster LR....and if you enjoy the acceleration then you can add Boost to it and then you have one very fast car.
I live on the Mediterranean coast and I see SR cars here in summer driven from Holland (and further north)....so a SR can take you anywhere and costs less to buy.....but I do like my M3LR

 

[mpgxsvcd]

I may be in the minority, but its my firm belief that if you are not able to charge at home, Or, have RELIABLE charging at work, then you should not get a full battery electric vehicle (BEV) car.

you mention you cant charge at home, if you cant charge at work reliably, then Its my opinion that you shouldnt buy any bev, tesla or otherwise. Buy a hybrid, or a something like that.

People buy BEVs without home or work charging, but I think its a mistake.

I just want to second what jjrandorin said. If you can't daily charge at home or work and you drive a lot of miles then don't buy a full BEV. It can work for some people but it doesn't work for far more people. When it doesn't work for them it ends up really bad.

 

[Sunshine Speed]

If you had charging at home : you could get the Standard Range. If you DON'T have charging at home, then get the Long Range. Mainly because the charging speed is much faster. Also you get higher total range, WAY faster acceleration, better performance in snow, higher resale value. But the real reason to get the Long Range (for people without home charging) is the faster charging speed at superchargers.

 

[JCtx]

Also a much nicer stereo, and AWD on the LR... although maybe things are changing with that new model.

 

[David Dudas]

i'm curious why nobody is concerned about the degradation, or the LFP vs. NMC topic?

I'm in the same situation now. i have to drive 350km (217mi) once a week. (wfm ftw ) Landlord does now allow a wallbox in the garage, but there are plenty of chargers around me.

The LFP 60 KWh battery should be much more robust, so you can charge it to 100% and leave it there overnight without "bad feeling", while the LR 77 KWh NMC will degrade much faster if you charge it full and leave it there overnight (as you would probably charge the day before at shopping or gym or whatever).
If you keep the LR car at 80% as recommended, you are at 61 kWh. Question is, the 8-9 KM range difference (+AWD) worth ~10k more and if in 2-3 years the NMC battery degrades to 8-10% (69KWh) while the LFP to 2-3% (58 kWh) then the range difference would be anyway around 50-60 km.

Maybe an LFP battery is better for people who cannot plug in at home? (Not to mention it's safer in a crash).

PS:
Cool video showing the chemistry difference between LFP and NMC:

 

[jjrandorin]

i'm curious why nobody is concerned about the degradation, or the LFP vs. NMC topic?

Perhaps because there are literally thousands of posts here on TMC on the topic of Degradation, or LFP batteries? Thats not an exaggeration, either. Here are just 2 of the probably 100s of threads here (again no exaggeration) on the topic of "degradation" / "LFP"

Range Loss Over Time, What Can Be Expected, Efficiency, How to Maintain Battery Health

1) I discharged often to sub 0% . But I never charged immediately after to 100%. I charged often to 100% , but usually on trips . But, when I dropped it to 0% (or when I charged to 100%) I never noticed a direct influence on NFP. (at least not in the next immediate period). Nor the temp is a...

teslamotorsclub.com

(6000+ posts)

Model 3 SR+ LFP Battery Range, Degradation, etc Discussion

What's the consensus on how long theses batteries will last time wise? Still reading through these 66 pages! They'll last a long time. Range will definitely go down some.

teslamotorsclub.com

(1300+ posts)

 

[jjrandorin]

Maybe an LFP battery is better for people who cannot plug in at home?

Doesnt change at all the fact that anyone in this situation is going to be charging a lot more than they probably expect to be charging.

(Not to mention it's safer in a crash)

People like to drag this out, and technically its true, but people have been driving around on tanks full of gasoline for decades and no one really cared. A battery fire is harder to put out, but its not more likely to go Poof than anything else. if you were ok driving a gas car around, this point should be a non factor (but people like to drag it out as if its some sort of huge talking point).

 

[emiliorescigno]

If you can’t charge at home: LR.

 

[tgrobbo]

I live in New Zealand and I cannot charge at home, I park on the street. I have lived in the Netherlands as I am half Dutch, I imagine there are plenty of public chargers there too as the Dutch are such a progressive nation. It is absolutely not at all a problem not being able to charge at home, I have dozens of chargers around my house and workplace and many of them are either completely free to use, or are cheaper than home electricity rates. I have an LFP RWD MY and it is handy being able to charge to 100% whenever I like and leave the car sitting on the street overnight at a high state of charge and not be overly worried about degradation. A long range charged to 80% won’t give you much more/any more range anyway. In NZ we have mild winters and our RWD MY has all the top spec kit standard, but if spec and AWD was a priority, that might tip the scales a little for your situation.

 

[TespaceX]

SR peak charge rate is noticeably slower than the LR peak rate. Not sure about the overall curve, though.

 

[Sti-g]

The LFP 60 KWh battery should be much more robust, so you can charge it to 100% and leave it there overnight without "bad feeling", while the LR 77 KWh NMC will degrade much faster if you charge it full and leave it there overnight (as you would probably charge the day before at shopping or gym or whatever).
If you keep the LR car at 80% as recommended, you are at 61 kWh.

If the difference in battery size between SR and LR is this small, and the fact that 80% of LR =~ 100% of SR, then it seems like it is getting more difficult to justify price premium of LR.

As per visualcapitalist.com, battery cost per kWh is:
NCA: $120/kWh
NCM: $113/kWh
LFP: $98.5/kWh

The extra capacity in LR costs 17kWh * $120/kWh =~ $2k

I know I’m comparing two different battery types but it seems like LR is a bad deal given the car costs $7k more (+ sales tax, +higher use tax & insurance). Of course that is if you don’t care about AWD & better stereo.

 

[Elec Man]

Goodmorning,

I am thinking about to buy a electric car, Tesla Model 3 Highland. It will be my first electric car. I need some advice which one to buy, SR or LR.

Some information:
I live in the Netherlands with a lot of charge locations.
Daily I drive 160 km.
It is not possible for me to charge at home. I am afraid the charge point near my house will be occupied often.
The SR has my preference.

What do you think?

Thank you in advance.

Are you able to rent an EV in the Netherlands? I would try this before buying. That way you can go through your daily routine and see if it’ll work for you. If you’re still not convinced you could always try leasing for a couple of years. It’s like long-term renting, because you can’t buyout a Tesla lease. Range really varies in different types of weather, so it’s worth testing it out in different seasons.