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Tesla update: Charging/range on long trips, cold weather and average energy use
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dpilot83
Posted 1/12/2024 10:08 (#10569576)
Subject: Tesla update: Charging/range on long trips, cold weather and average energy use



We took a 2,300 mile trip in the Tesla Model Y Long Range for our anniversary. Crossed the Rockies on I-70. Stayed the night in Grand Junction, CO area. Then went through Moab and South from there through Blanding, UT, and stayed the night in Bluff, UT.

Next day we travelled to Page, AZ. Saw some sites and then drove down to Flagstaff, visited the observatory and called it a night. Next morning we went up to the Grand Canyon and drove a little bit of Hermit Road on the South rim and saw a few of the overlooks. Then came back and hopped on a helicopter and flew over the canyon. Then went back to Flagstaff and stayed the night again.

Next day we headed East and visited the crater of the meteor before continuing on. Ended up staying in Trinidad, CO that night after going through Albuquerque, NM. The last day we made it back to my map dot by early afternoon.

Overall it was around 5.2 total days of traveling and slightly over 2,300 miles driven. Averaged close to 450 miles a day and stopped to see a lot of sights along the way.

There are a lot of topics to cover and I thought this post would be ridiculously long if I covered them all so I just decided to cover the stuff in the subject line for this time.

As far as temperatures are concerned, lots of people seem to believe you can’t keep an EV warm in cold temps. I am sure there is likely a temperature at which that might be true but I have not yet experienced it. Temp in Flagstaff the first morning we left was 6° F according to the internal car temp through the app when we woke up in the hotel. The app on your phone shows you all of the climate control info including the internal temp of the car. External temp may have been colder, not sure. I’m guessing our average temp while driving was somewhere between 35 and 45 degrees. I’m guessing closer to 35 but I don’t want to exaggerate either.

Anyway, on that 6° morning we just started the climate control from the app about 10 min before we planned on being in the car and it was around 65° in there by the time we got to it and was warm enough we had to turn the heater down a few min later.

I will say there was another time on the trip where we were traveling from Las Vegas, NM (not to be confused with Las Vegas, NV) to Trinidad, CO. External temp went from maybe 25° F to 4 or 6° F in a short distance and our range decreased significantly and I was afraid we would not make it to Trinidad. I slowed down from 72 mph to 50 mph and our range went back up to where we would make it. Then temp increased again and range went way up so I went back to 72 mph and we still ended up in Trinidad with 13% battery. But it was a clear indicator that very cold external temp makes a big difference on range.

The other time we had where we were concerned on range was between Blanding, UT and Page Arizona. The route we took was 170 miles. We had 100% battery when we left Buff because the B&B we stayed at had a couple of free chargers. We had been averaging ~350 Wh/mile which should have given us a theoretical range of 230 miles with 100% charge but there were large altitude variations on the route and we were a little worried we would have to stop somewhere along the way at a slow charger we knew of via the PlugShare app. So we went 50 mph for close to 2 hours. By that time we realized we had PLENTY of battery to make it so we went 7 mph over the speed limit the remainder of the time and still ended up in Page with 25% remaining.

Like I said, our average energy use throughout the trip ended up being 346 Wh/mile according to the trip computer that we used to watch the average of the entire trip. It said we used a total of 799 kWh of electricity for the trip. I was quite intentional about not being easier on it than I am on an ICE. I always set the cruise at 7 mph over the speed limit and I did that on this trip too except for the two places where I was worried about making it to the next charging station. I would say half the miles or maybe even 2/3 of the miles were at 82 mph and most of the rest of the trip was at 72 mph. There were LOTS of elevation changes on the trip obviously as we crossed the continental divide twice.

I used the third party Tessie app to log the trip and I took the data from that and put it in a spreadsheet to see how much time we spent charging on the trip. It was a lot of time charging. We stopped to charge 21 times plus we had one place where we charged overnight (really should have sought out hotels and B&B’s that allowed this as it often does not increase cost at the hotel and it does save charging time but we weren’t that smart yet).

The average amount of time we spent at a Super Chargers was around 33 min so the total amount of time we spent charging at Super Chargers was around 12.5 hours. I added 2.5 hours to that for the time we spent dinking around with extra driving to or from a Super Charger. I’m not sure if that is too much or too little time, it’s just a guess of 7 extra minutes per stop. So that brings the total up to 14 hours.

That seems like an incredible amount of time. But as we experienced it, it did not seem like a lot. I would say more often than not we were wishing we would get to the Super Charger quicker so we could stretch our legs and find a bathroom. I bet 75% of the time if we didn’t have to stop for gas because we were in an ICE with longer range, we would have stopped anyway.

I will say that because we were also charging at those times, the stops were generally 10 to 15 min longer than we would have needed to stop on our own.

So here’s the summary:

It’s not a good vehicle if you want to travel a long distance as fast as possible. Once you get up to the 70 or 80% range on your charge the rate of charge drops far enough that you really don’t want to sit around and wait if you don’t have to. So in colder weather and higher speeds, and while avoiding running it down to the wire your realistic range is around 150 miles and we actually ended up stopping more often than that simply due to charger spacing on the trip.

Even if you charge to 100% overnight it’s still not a good vehicle for you if you frequently need to travel more than about 200 miles a day. 180 per day if you want to feel super comfortable at the end on range.

But, we were traveling at an inefficient speed in cold weather both of which reduce range. And we weren’t trying to push the miles per day. We both said if we were to take another long trip with just the two of is, we would take the Tesla. It is a really fun car to drive and for a fun trip where we weren’t pushed too much for time, the frequency of stops seemed about right to us.

In another post on another day I might provide a briefer update on performance on messy roads, mountain driving, vehicle technology and so on. Short version is, it’s amazing. Really hope battery tech keeps getting better at the rate it has been. If that happens, I think my wife and I personally won’t have much for ICE vehicles 10 or 15 years from now. Well-designed EVs are simply better performing vehicles in every metric other than range and recharge time. If you remove the range problem and even slightly improve the charge time, there will be no desire for me to want any ICE vehicles.
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