Winter Driving Experiences

[Cottonwood]

Is that the first time the Salida high-speed J1772's been used in anger? Congratulations, and thanks for your contributions!

It was the first use, no anger, and the Frankenstill is so much better than a Frankenplug. :wink:

In all seriousness, give Salida a try. Woods "Barrel Rested Gin" is truly something special. If you enjoy such things, buy some. Even if you don't drink, PT would love for you to stop by, grab a charge, and say hello. Even when the tasting room is closed, he is usually there monitoring the stills.

Also, see the video in the ski car thread, Model S as a ski car? - Page 2, of my MS going up my driveway in Pagosa. The steepest sections are 15%.

 

[Robert.Boston]

A key to lower Wh/mile -- finish your charging just before you leave. You want the battery to be fully warm when you start, and charging is really the only way to do this.

 

[wycolo]

'Three sheets to the wind' was meant in a strict nautical sense as in 'all sails raised'. Wycolo regrets any implication of insobriety behind the wheel. :redface:
--

 

[Forty Creek]

The temperature was 8.6 F or -13 C on my commute this morning. Battery and cabin well pre-heated. Fortunately we still don't have much snow to deal with but fogging of the interior windows was an issue. Finally got the front side windows clear, to discover that the rear sides were still quite clouded up. This was rather unnerving when looking back to change lanes on the highway. The HVAC system behaves in a strange way... with defrost, mid vents and floor vents all on, practically no air moves through the mid vents (which I had aimed at the side windows). Played with the fan speed too, but to no avail. I started tapping up the temperature up from my usual 19C to about 21C with ONLY the mid vents turned on and things eventually cleared. Still love this car and have faith that tweaks to the HVAC will come along.

 

[Aussie]

So I took my P85 for a spin through the Sierra Nevada last weekend to see how the car with 21" summer tires would respond to snow. It was a scary experience. Down hill on snow, the car was almost uncontrolable with regen breaks on.
Basically the power of the regen breaks will cause the car to slide, which then triggers ABS & Co. to kick in trying to stabalize the car so you have different systems fighting each other. Despite being from the land Down Under I am an experienced driver on snow and I never had anything like that. Turning the regen to low helped significantly to control the car, I wish there would be a snow/ice setting for the anti lock breaks.
Other than that, easily over 600W/mi heading into the mountain with a pre-warmed battery from home.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Driving proper summer tires (like the 21" are) in snow is close to suicide The car has no grip and indeed regen acts like breaking with engine effectively pulling the tail with no real traction. This is bound to be messy an dangerous. Could have told you that far before you went with them I've driven my Evo X with slicks on snow due to no choice (on my way to tire shop) and had to drive 30km/h even with four wheel drive etc as it was crazy slippery and that was just 18", but summer slicks. And this fall we had the first frost when I had to do two 200km trips in two days and I still had summer tires on (there was still time until swapping) and the car was very slippery even with minor ice on some locations. Don't do that again...

 

[montgom626]

Despite being from the land Down Under I am an experienced driver on snow

Sounds like you weren't as experienced as you imagined.

 

[jerry33]

So I took my P85 for a spin through the Sierra Nevada last weekend to see how the car with 21" summer tires would respond to snow. It was a scary experience. Down hill on snow, the car was almost uncontrolable with regen breaks on.
Basically the power of the regen breaks will cause the car to slide, which then triggers ABS & Co. to kick in trying to stabalize the car so you have different systems fighting each other. Despite being from the land Down Under I am an experienced driver on snow and I never had anything like that. Turning the regen to low helped significantly to control the car, I wish there would be a snow/ice setting for the anti lock breaks.
Other than that, easily over 600W/mi heading into the mountain with a pre-warmed battery from home.

The problem here was the tires, not the vehicle control systems. Even the best systems can't beat physics. Summer performance tires and snow are just plain dangerous regardless of prior experience.

 

[Doug_G]

Saturday evening I came up the same hill in my video (posted earlier in the thread) and snow had drifted in the roundabout 18 inches deep. I was unable to get through, as I would sled up on it and lose traction. I ended up having to back down and come in another way.

So my conclusion is the Model S does great with winter tires as long as the snow isn't to deep.

Few cars can drive through snow that is higher than their undercarriage. Once you lift the wheels off the ground you're not going anywhere!

- - - Updated - - -

A key to lower Wh/mile -- finish your charging just before you leave. You want the battery to be fully warm when you start, and charging is really the only way to do this.

If it's extremely cold even that won't give you a toasty pack, especially doing a 100% charge because it ramps down at the end. I've even had the, "Battery is cold, plug me in" nag immediately upon stopping after driving on the highway for two hours. Mind you that was at -20C.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Today it was +5C and I charged for 1.5h before starting off finishing around 86% SoC when I unplugged and I still had regen limiter around 45kW. I'm charging at 3x12A so not terribly fast, but am now contemplating if I should set it to 3x6A and 2x the charging time or if keeping it 3x12A and the 1-2h charging time is the best way to go. The regen limit disappeared 5km into driving, but had it been -10C outside I doubt the car would have given up on it so fast. I also wrote to ownership about the make car ready by XX:XX suggestion so that the car itself would know when to start charging and warming the battery to get me a nice and warm car at say 8:30AM when I need to go. They thanked me and told me they had forwarded my suggestions to engineering, we'll see what comes of it

 

[neroden]

If it's extremely cold even that won't give you a toasty pack, especially doing a 100% charge because it ramps down at the end. I've even had the, "Battery is cold, plug me in" nag immediately upon stopping after driving on the highway for two hours. Mind you that was at -20C.

Ugh. Tesla Motors really needs to relocate their engineering department to a cold, nasty climate. Maybe Detroit. I'm realizing it's not a coincidence that the successful carmakers of the past century were in the Detroit area -- "California thinking" has screwed Tesla up repeatedly.

 

[JohnQ]

Ugh. Tesla Motors really needs to relocate their engineering department to a cold, nasty climate. Maybe Detroit. I'm realizing it's not a coincidence that the successful carmakers of the past century were in the Detroit area -- "California thinking" has screwed Tesla up repeatedly.

And the Detroit guys go to Bemidji to get "real" cold.

 

[gpetti]

So I took my P85 for a spin through the Sierra Nevada last weekend to see how the car with 21" summer tires would respond to snow. It was a scary experience. Down hill on snow, the car was almost uncontrolable with regen breaks on.
Basically the power of the regen breaks will cause the car to slide, which then triggers ABS & Co. to kick in trying to stabalize the car so you have different systems fighting each other. Despite being from the land Down Under I am an experienced driver on snow and I never had anything like that. Turning the regen to low helped significantly to control the car, I wish there would be a snow/ice setting for the anti lock breaks.
Other than that, easily over 600W/mi heading into the mountain with a pre-warmed battery from home.

Possibly this is nonsense but this idea occurred to me after reading this:
My impression (still not having driven in snow with the S) is that when set correctly, regen breaking will be similar to downshifting in a standard - which is good as long as it isn't like dropping into first from fourth and popping the clutch That being true, it seems that if the regen breaking had more levels than just standard and low - maybe 4 or five settings that could be bumped up or down, and one could assign this to a steering wheel control then it would have the effect of downshifting, gradually adding more resistance as required.

 

[Cottonwood]

Possibly this is nonsense but this idea occurred to me after reading this:
My impression (still not having driven in snow with the S) is that when set correctly, regen breaking will be similar to downshifting in a standard - which is good as long as it isn't like dropping into first from fourth and popping the clutch That being true, it seems that if the regen breaking had more levels than just standard and low - maybe 4 or five settings that could be bumped up or down, and one could assign this to a steering wheel control then it would have the effect of downshifting, gradually adding more resistance as required.

I go down my 15%, snow and ice covered, driveway with full regen on all the time, and have no problems whatsoever. I do have Hakka 7's on though. After taking my Roadster up Trail Ridge Road and hitting snow and ice as well as "for grins" doing an ice driving class on the frozen surface of Georgetown Lake in the Roadster with its summer, performance tires, I will never take summer performance tires into winter conditions again! Its just silly and dangerous! My Roadster lives in Boulder and has a nice set of Pirelli Winter Tires... :wink:

 

[Denarius]

Possibly this is nonsense but this idea occurred to me after reading this:
My impression (still not having driven in snow with the S) is that when set correctly, regen breaking will be similar to downshifting in a standard - which is good as long as it isn't like dropping into first from fourth and popping the clutch That being true, it seems that if the regen breaking had more levels than just standard and low - maybe 4 or five settings that could be bumped up or down, and one could assign this to a steering wheel control then it would have the effect of downshifting, gradually adding more resistance as required.

You can modulate the level of regen with the accelerator. If I'm going down a steep hill and completely let go of the accelerator I will slow down dramatically, if I ease off on the throttle the level of regen increases slowly.

Even on ice I haven't had issues with the regen causing me to slide, but I'm using appropriate tires for the conditions.

 

[Pollux]

Some posters have been jumping on @Aussie but I think may have overlooked this opening, key sentence:

So I took my P85 for a spin through the Sierra Nevada last weekend to see how the car with 21" summer tires would respond to snow.

He was experimenting. I am glad to have the report of his experiences. (But hope no one else was on the road at the time.)

When I think of knobs and dials I can play with when I'm dealing with different winter driving scenarios -- whether it's getting out of a rut, maximizing safety or just doing donuts -- I think of (a) turning traction control on/off and (b) turning regen to standard or low. Are there others that people would point to?

BTW, I've already swapped my 21" Michelin PS2s for 19" Nokian Hakka R2s. Boy, do I miss those PS2s already -- on dry pavement in warm conditions.

Thanks,
Alan

 

[Denarius]

Some posters have been jumping on @Aussie but I think may have overlooked this opening, key sentence:



He was experimenting. I am glad to have the report of his experiences. (But hope no one else was on the road at the time.)

When I think of knobs and dials I can play with when I'm dealing with different winter driving scenarios -- whether it's getting out of a rut, maximizing safety or just doing donuts -- I think of (a) turning traction control on/off and (b) turning regen to standard or low. Are there others that people would point to?

BTW, I've already swapped my 21" Michelin PS2s for 19" Nokian Hakka R2s. Boy, do I miss those PS2s already -- on dry pavement in warm conditions.

Thanks,
Alan

Last thing to potentially tweak would be suspension height.

I'm right with you, even at 40 miles an hour my winter tires slip if I floor it. I've taken a few people for a ride since swapping my tires, and they still are amazed at the acceleration, but I can barely run at half throttle before I lose traction.

 

[neroden]

You can modulate the level of regen with the accelerator. If I'm going down a steep hill and completely let go of the accelerator I will slow down dramatically, if I ease off on the throttle the level of regen increases slowly.

Even on ice I haven't had issues with the regen causing me to slide, but I'm using appropriate tires for the conditions.

I have been sliding on ice lately, but never due to the regen, only when I'm trying to turn corners. I haven't had any serious problems, but I guess you really just can't get traction on ice without chains or studs. Driving *very carefully* lately, there's a lot of ice patches at the street corners.

 

[SamGarber]

Blizzak... Done! Bring on the snow and ice

 

[gpetti]

When I think of knobs and dials I can play with when I'm dealing with different winter driving scenarios -- whether it's getting out of a rut, maximizing safety or just doing donuts -- I think of (a) turning traction control on/off and (b) turning regen to standard or low. Are there others that people would point to?

This suggests another idea: Similar to being able to save Drive Profiles which presumably don't include things like regen mode, steering, suspension height etc. Maybe the car could support customizable driving modes. This would allow a set of appropriate software controlled options to be saved under a named "mode". The user can then have a variety of different modes according to weather, road type, fun level or whatever. Possibly there aren't enough options to make this useful yet but conceivably you could include all manner of options including roof opening or whatever. I see this as different than Driving profiles as that is more about adjusting the cockpit to the driver as opposed to adjusting the car to the environment.