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Originally Posted by ynguldyn
I actually meant to talk about range in cold weather but forgot. It's an interesting subject. The battery does get used up rather quickly when it's cold. But figuring out the exact numbers is rather complicated. There are three factors: the battery becomes less efficient, you can't use as much regen until it warms up, and the interior air and seat heaters are pretty power hungry. The first one is the simplest one, and I'm just going to throw a ballpark number in here: expect 10% range loss for this reason. Regen is more complicated because it has a large effect on overall efficiency on city streets or in heavy traffic (I would estimate up to 30% efficiency loss if you use no regen at all) but is irrelevant on the highway, and it gradually improves as you're driving and warming up the battery. Finally, interior heating doesn't depend on miles driven - it's a function of the time you spend in the car. I believe it can use up to 2 kWh. Put it all together, and it's clear why no one tells you how much loss to expect in the cold: it's a huge YMMV. In my case, I would see the miles remaining counter dropping at double the actual mileage at the quick dash to the school and back on a very cold morning but at only 1.3x during the longer mostly highway commute with minimal traffic. And as the extreme case, I would lose range at the rate of 6-8 miles per hour with zero actual miles driven if I had to sit in the car waiting for someone.
In your case, if you need 175 miles in any weather, you would need the long range version that you would charge to 90% (280-290 miles indicated) to never worry about it. Shorter range models would make the trip too but they would require doing full charge every day which is not recommended, and you would be coming home with 10-20 miles left and stressing out about it every time.
Because of my height I'm never comfortable in the rear of anything smaller than a mid-size SUV but my girls never complain. I think the main problem there is the height of the seat cushion - it's fine for shorter legs but if you're tall your thighs have no contact with the seat and you get tired quickly.
No, I didn't say that. My use case is opening up the TuneIn screen, scrolling through dozens of icons, picking something from that list then reading through episode names to find the one I want. You can't safely do this while actively engaged in driving in any car. At the same time, the capabilities and precision of the system have radically improved over the last several months. Basically, if your impressions of it are from last fall, they're already obsolete. Talking specifically about uneven markings and bad weather, I believe it was about 2-3 months ago when the car improved its processing of this specific scenario.
This is something your brain needs to re-learn, so quick test drives don't help here. After about a week or two, I learned to do quick glances to the upper left corner where the speed is shown, and everything else is simply outside my peripheral vision when I'm looking straight ahead. So as far as concentrating on driving, once you've adapted, the absence of any indicators in front of you is an improvement. I still want to have a HUD that would show me my speed, but it's just me and my stupid desire to avoid speeding tickets.
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Thanks for the reply. Being trained in science and engineering, I think it is reasonable to expect that energy use at various temperature ranges and weather conditions can be predicted at a confidence level equal to EPA testing of ICE MPG figures. I think what is at play is just marketing, plain and simple. A 250-mile range in EPA testing that drops 25% (a figure I've seen Tesla and other EV drivers state) can be disheartening to potential buyers. It think EV range should be provided for summer/winter of some sort. Right now, most EV buyers are well educated and technically minded and probably understand the relationship between battery energy storage and temperature and consumption rate for heating requirements. But most products are marketed for the lowest common denominator (read as "dumbass") so a broader market share may bring the EPA to make changes to the EV Maroney information window label.
I will be interested to see how Audi handles its HMI for EVs. Audi has some great features in its current interior formats, the newest one being able to tell the driver the best speed to make the next traffic light under green, or the time remaining red. I remain convinced that the Tesla Tablet is as much production cost issue and commensurate marketing hype as it is conceived to be the ultimate automotive HMI.
I'll ask about the improvement of the Autopilot since November. Having seen the background video processing capability the Model 3 has to track traffic targets, it is quite impressive to say the least, but not any better than a well trained human IMO.