the only Tesla's that had no buffer, were the roadsters, at which time Tesla quickly learned they had to have a buffer because people would brick them by letting the charge go to zero - then just leaving it there. Auto manufacturers have to make their cars idiot-proof because knuckleheads will be knuckleheads. The roadster's had to be reprogrammed to stop the inevitable ️ .
We did a "little" 400+ mile drive today. It was cold, starting out at 35.7° and peaking at 55°. With the cold temperature, wind, and speed considered, I remain very very impressed. I had a constant 12 mph quartering tail wind for 1/2 and a 12 mph quartering headwind for the second half down and back trip to Dallas. The heat pump was on all the way @ 69° on auto and I used Autopilot (cruise control only, no FSD) for about 80% of the trip. Cabin was preconditioned (plugged in) before leaving home. Speed limit was 75mph which I stuck to and had ONE burst up to 86 mph due to an a-hole 18 wheeler. Miles driven, 408.65 for 5h 59m @ 72.29% efficiency using 110.03 kWh @ 269 Wh/Mile. Started out @ 99% battery, drove to Grapevine, TX area and returned all the way back to Denton without charging (240 miles). Arrived @ Denton supercharger with preconditioned, 13% battery. Charged 35 minutes, drove all the way home arriving with 20%. I love this car. Had several instances of people stopping to look at it to see what it was, and a couple taking pics.
I agree. The range at speed with wind and cold temps keeps amazing me. The trip average speed was 68 mph. Very comfortable ride.
2017, visited a 5 or 7 Block City 780 miles away - Richmond Utah .... miles from nowhere. A group of kids on bicycles saw us as we were driving down the residential streets looking for street & address and they started pedaling as fast as they could to see our model X up close. It was almost embarrassing. .
I was in Denton, TX when this was happening. I've had similar experiences when parked at the Supercharger in OKC and others. You'll see people drive by slow just to look.
I now have 1,482.96 miles on the Model 3 LR AWD. I thought you might find the efficiency chart data at different outdoor temperature ranges of interest. The data is only from drives over 10 miles. I expect this to change quite a bit as the weather gets warmer and I drive more at warmer temps. This ranges from Dec 17, 2020 to Jan 28, 2021. Some of the drives use heat, some don't, etc. It's just raw data to date. Each temperature range column may have one or may drives summarized in it. The warmer temps were mostly at highway speeds up to 75 mph.
What is efficiency? What does 100% efficiency mean? Note: if it is some kind of thermodynamic efficiency then a Nobel prize is in order for getting >100% Mike
Without getting too deep into the weeds, this refers to actual power used versus what the vehicle is rated to use for the same distance. Take that cold 23° drive yesterday. I drove 14.43 miles but only used 13.81 miles of power. That's 104.5 % efficient. Batteries don't like cold, so that makes it even more impressive. It's very similar to me driving my 2010 Prius over 800 miles on one tank of gas or driving my Prime over 35 miles on battery only like many have done here. Unless your profile is wrong, you drive a Prius and a Model 3. I'd think you'd have a clue about such things.
I think you are just defining efficiency as compared to the miles rating the car gives. But, especially in the Prius, that number that you are scoring against changes based on your driving. And your individual drives could vary. Besides different speeds and temps, you could be going uphill, downhill etc. In my PIP I once did almost 100 miles with no gas and starting with less than a mile of battery charge. Mike
I am not sure if this is how he did it, but I did something similar with an electric car. Starting at the top of a mountain pass with half battery. Trip down uses no brakes, and simply charges the batteries with regen on the way down. At the bottom of the mountain, I have a full battery. By the time I am back to half battery, a net use of zero, I have gone a hundred or so miles.
But the sentence said 100 miles with no gas a half battery starting and in a pip. Your battery was bigger. I'm just curious.
Mikefocke, driving on "nothing" is not unusual in areas where you are leaving a higher elevation. Roads are quite often built in a series of up/down grades interspersed with fairly level spots for a short way. I had a hybrid with a 1.3kWh battery pack that would leave Lake Tahoe with a full tank of gas and still show a full tank 100 miles later when I got to the lowlands. That was after climbing 500 feet and then down to sea level. What enabled that feat was the way that the battery pack would be used for the occasional slight upgrade and then recharge again in virtually no time. When you are not accelerating it takes little power to maintain speed even at 55 - 65 MPH. Dan
Tioga pass road, starting near the Yosemite entrance station to (almost) Groveland. It is actually a bit tricky to do it without using gas because there are lots of extended uphill sections even though it is mostly down. If I'd gotten 2-3 miles further before the ICE turned on I probably could have gone another 15 miles. Mike
Update as promised. Here's the side by side. Mine is the Red and my wife's is the Blue. Living in Oklahoma City, our closest delivery center was Kansas City, MO. I was apparently one of the last to be able to use the "free" Tesla home delivery on "my" 2021 Red LR AWD back on Dec 17, 2020. So when my wife ordered "her" 2021 Blue LR AWD we laughed at the $750 deliver fee and took a rental car to pick it up yesterday (2-25-21). Both are 2021 Model 3 LR AWD (no FSD). It's a bit cloudy so the shine is not as good. Both are 18" Aeros, covers removed with cap kits. Mine has the original Aero delete covers kit and hers has the new style center once piece cover kit. Hers has the newer headlights and the heated steering wheel. Mine has a FormulaOne LLumar Stratos 30% tint. No tint on hers. Other than that they're identical. The delivery center had just finished charging the the car to 100%. So even though it was 40° with 10mph winds, we only needed one charge at Wichita, KS to make the 350 mile, 5 hour trip back home to OKC. I used Autopilot with autosteer all the way (no FSD). Very nice relaxing trip home. Loving the car. Best I've owned since the 1970's. Each car was prefect on delivery. No issues what so ever then or now.
Given where you live, don't you worry about heat with the dark colors? Thanks for continuing with your stories of your experiences. Buying another is a high complement.
No, not at all. It's all relative to where you live and have lived. For example, I used to think 20° was cold. After the February 2021 Polar Vortex came through and we set an all time historic negative 14° F below zero, +20° felt pretty nice. I'm not kidding. So it's all relative. An occasional 107° summer high is hot but really once it's above 95° it's pretty much the same. Resistance is futile and we adapt and overcome. So don't stick your tongue to a frozen metal pole and don't put your hand on a dark or really any color car hood when it's hot.
At what location was that a new all-time low? A list of Oklahoma all-time lows that I'm seeing now, show figures in the -31F to -23F range across 11 locations, all set in 2011. The previous statewide all-time low was -27F, from 1905 and 1930.
