Mileage Change

the guess o meter on the dash is not a good indicator of miles available.

you either need to read the battery charge with an obd, or traverse a set route in similar weather and driving conditions.
no doubt all batteries lose some capacity, especially in the first few years.

new tires will often produce a hit until they are broken in.

of course, weather and hvac usage may have someting to do with it.

the guess o meter is only telling you that based on the amount of battery charge, looking at your past miles/kw performance, an estimate of future performance is 27.

 

How many miles have you driven the car since new? My 2017 just has 30K miles and I have noticed no difference in mileage now that the warmer weather has started. I am getting 29.9 miles with the air conditioner (heat pump) on compared to 25 or 26 in May.

 

Don't worry about day-to-day changes. Mine 2021 with less than 10k miles changes EV miles from 37 miles on a good day to 25 miles on a bad day in the same week. Seasonally, the variability is 100% from max in the summer at 37 miles to the min in the winter at 16 miles.

Here is the daily ACTUAL EV range (not off from GOM) data from my 2021 PP from the last year July 1st to today. The data was extrapolated from miles driven on the day I drove 100% EV mode without using any gasoline and recorded %SOC used for that distance on that day. For example, if I started a day with 100% SOC and finished the day with 20% SOC and I drove 24miles all on EV mode (999.9mpg on the daily record), I had an EV range of 24/(0.8)=30miles. For accuracy, I did not include days I used the engine (HV mode) to drive or charged multiple times in a single day.

As you can see, the actual EV range varied a lot day to day. Sometimes the difference is more than 15 miles within the same week. But you can clearly see the "trend" that it peaks in summer and dipped in the winter.

 

Yes, marginally... but if the new tires are underinflated then that would significantly reduce fuel economy.

When I had new all seasons put on, they had the pressure down to like 36 psi. I had to keep pressing the accelerator on a flat level road. And I had to twist my wheels pretty hard to make turns. Adding 10 psi remedied those issues.

 

Old tires are smaller diameter giving falsely inflated mpg

 

Also, I hear on the news that there's a heat wave in the Northeast. It's likely that you're working the air conditioner harder. And the new tires almost always have a temporary effect.

And then there's just the aging of the hybrid battery. At almost 67k miles, I've been noticing a slight reduction in range of maybe 3 miles on average. It's hard to measure since conditions change so much as shown by @Salamander_King's graph.

 

What @bisco said, coupled with new tires?

 

It's enough of an impact that the EPA has rules on the amount of tire wear for the emission tests. Otherwise the manufacturers would be equipping the cars with bald ones. The limit is equal to about 4000 miles of wear. If you have less than that, it is likely harder for you to reach EPA ratings to some degree.

Higher pressures will definitely help with rolling resistance.

 

yes, our a/c went out sunday afternoon at 97f

 

Yeah, it got hot where we live too. Had to get out the window A/Cs from the garage. I hate to use the window A/C because once put it on, we can't open the window. We may need A/C during the day for a few hours, but by the evening, it usually gets cooler by just opening the window and getting fresh air in.

BTW, the official definition of "heat wave" by the National Weather Service is "a period of abnormally hot weather generally lasting more than two days." For our region, this "abnormally hot" means a daily high temperature higher than 90F for 3 days in a row. There were some southern areas in my state that got hotter than 90F, but in our area, the hottest day was 87F. Still, for me anything above 80F is unbearable. Our historical average high in July is ~75F, we already had 18 days above average high temperature this month. The forecast for the remaining of July including today will be all above average, making this month one of the "hottest" months on record.

My wife achieved the lowest summer EV range on the record, 20.4 miles from a full charge on our 2021 PP a few days ago on one of the hottest days. Yep, she drove 5.7 miles on 28% of SOC. The EV efficiency was 3.8 miles/kWh with an A/C Load Ratio of 47% on the Daily log.

 

i have a couple 5,000 btu window a/c's at the ready, and installed them that afternoon. i was surprised that they did a pretty decent job of bring down the house temp from around 80 at 2:00 to 73 at 10:00.

the central a/c lasted 14 years without a hitch, and then it was just a bad pressure switch on the compressor, so i can't complain (but i do anyway)
i don't like the window units either, but now that they are in, they are staying in through august just in case.
another reason to investigate mini splits i guess.

 

It's predicted to hit 95F here, this aft...

We don't have AC in the house, but do have thermal windows (apart from a couple of older skylights), and some good shade trees on south and west sides.

 

i read that it moved northwest, sorry!

i hope you don't get our humidity

 

We never had central AC not in our current house and not in the previous house in MA. Window ACs do a fine job cooling down the entire house for those few hot days we need them. I have two 8,000 BTU units and one 6,000 BTU unit. One of the 8,000 BTU is the newer LG unit I purchased a few years ago during the summer heat wave. The other two are old (more than 15 years?) Sharp models... Strangely, the older Sharp 8,000 BTU unit cools much quicker and lower than the newer LG 8,000 BTU unit. The 8,000 BTU is the largest I feel comfortable enough to move and install by myself. Still, it is heavy and bulky. Not easy to install and take out. I am leaving them installed for the rest of summer just in case.

Yeah, mini-split for all those rooms would be a very nice upgrade. We have a contractor installing one this year, but not until late fall. I am installing it more for the heat pump usage but would have been great if it was already installed so we can use it for the cooling.

 

Aftermarket tires of the same make/model/size may not be exactly the same as original equipment tires spec'ed by the car maker.

New tires with their deeper tread will get lower gas mileage...the deep tread squirms, the deep tread weights more, and the outside diameter as noted above.

 

Different refrigerant? The real Freon is supposedly really effective.

 

I thought the newer LG unit is of poor quality and it may have a leak. But come to think of it, even when it was brand new, it was weaker than the old Sharp AC. I don't know when they changed the regulation for use of refrigerant, but it may be old enough to be using now bunned refrigerant.

 

how many rooms are you doing with the mini? any idea what it might cost me to have one installed in our 325 sq ft bedroom with 10 foot ceilings?
if we get sticker shock, i may try one of these new window units that hangs down over the sill and is like a mini-mini split

 

I am definitely doing one unit to heat (and cool) the main open dining/kitchen family room area about 700 sq ft. That unit with rated 16,000 BTU cooling either extreme cold temp heat pump capable of heating down to -15F (Fujitsu, 13.4 HSPF) or down to -13F (Mitsubishi, 12.5 HSPF) was estimated to be $5K total. But after some more thought, I am considering doing an additional multi-zone unit to heat (and cool) three separate rooms on the opposite end of the house. But they have not come back to give me an additional estimate for the multi-zone unit.