10 ms·

I do most of my long trips in my Model 3 in the winter, to go skiing. I usually do ~300 miles round-trip in a day. Here's what I do: I leave my car plugged in

I do most of my long trips in my Model 3 in the winter, to go skiing. I usually do ~300 miles round-trip in a day. Here's what I do: I leave my car plugged in overnight, in the "normal" charging mode. While I get dressed, I turn on extended range mode and turn the heat on. This warms up both the car and the battery. It usually takes me about ~20 minutes to get dressed. I stop at a Supercharger to use the bathroom. If I can, I grab meals at a Supercharger. Most of the time, I don't need to "wait" while the car charges, usually because I'm in the bathroom or waiting for food prep. If I do need to wait, it's usually about 5 minutes. Thus, total stopping time is about as much as a gas car. The only limitation is that there's waaaay less Superchargers than gas stations. The only time I really had to wait a long time at a Supercharger was when I went to a ski area with a charger, and because it was early season, there were no lifts / shuttles to the parking lot with the charger. (Otherwise I'd have been able to drive home without charging.) Edits: I have a 2018 long-range. It got a total of 307 miles new, now that it's 3 years old it's total range is ~280. (This is very close to the 2022 standard range, BTW.) I get about 2/3rds of stated range in cold weather. I drive with the heat at 68, and I use the but warmer for a few minutes. I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit.

monkmartinez 5y ago
> The only limitation is that there's waaaay less Superchargers than gas stations. Hopefully this changes with time, but it is a GIANT limitation. Skiing around Arizona I have noticed all the chargers have EV's parked in them. I want to buy a used BMW i3, but the convenience factor is still a ways off for me. My Prius gets awesome mileage and I run the heater full blast in the winter and A/C full blast in the summer. I have half a mind to put a giant DIY battery in the trunk. Wire in a dead man switch of some kind and run on pure 18650's around town... gonna flirt with the idea a bit more. My DIY electric bike has probably given me a bit more confidence in the area than I need, but YOLO!
- donkeyd 5y ago
  > Hopefully this changes with time Looking at Europe, nearly every gas station is starting to get a fast charger installed (along major roads, at least). A couple of years ago there were waiting lines at super chargers during the yearly migration to the Alps, but I haven't seen any similar stories this year.
- thetinguy 5y ago
  Most i3s I’ve seen have the range extender engine equipped
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Capped at like 2 gallons of gas iirc because otherwise it wouldn’t qualify for the EV incentives
- Reason077 5y ago
  > "Hopefully this changes with time, but it is a GIANT limitation." Look at it this way: There'll never be less chargers than on the day you buy your EV. Charging networks are expanding constantly, with more sites, bigger sites, and faster chargers. So the utility and convenience of an EV is only going to improve. If you can get by with the chargers that exist today in your region, it'll be even better in the future. A Shell gas station near me in London [1] recently reopened after a renovation, and guess what? There's no gas pumps there anymore. Just ultra-rapid charging points. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/LM4h7Xz8pwWxcPkeA https://goo.gl/maps/LM4h7Xz8pwWxcPkeA
  - bo1024 5y ago
    There will never be fewer electric cars either. I think this is a significant concern as whether demand will outstrip suply. Hopefully charging stations will be lucrative enough, or hopefully good supply/demand competition kicks in -- few charging stations and high demand --> high prices to recharge --> more charging stations.
pricechild 5y ago
> While I get dressed, I turn on extended range mode and turn the heat on. What is "extended range mode" sorry? I'm aware of preconditioning, setting departure time etc.
- extrapickles 5y ago
  That is where you fill the battery to 100%, this puts extra wear on the battery so you want to minimize the amount of time at 100%.
  - mrfusion 5y ago
    So how bad is 30 minutes at max charge vs say 24 hours?
    - hnuser123456 5y ago
      https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...
- crazcarl 5y ago
  Generally you don't want to charge the battery past about 80% unless you're going to use it right away. So the "extended range" charge would be charging past that 80%.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  Lithium Ion batteries don't like being completely full or completely empty. They're happiest somewhere in the middle. Teslas allow you to set the max charge %. The interface has changed over the years but it's more or less a slider allowing you to set the max charge %. In it's latest incarnation you can do 1% increments, in the past it was less granular. When you plug the car in, an interface appears on the main display allowing you to adjust the % as well as charge rate and some other things. You can also adjust the settings from the App on your phone. Typically you'd set it to X% and forget about it until you were planning a road trip then you might crank it up to 100% either the night before or while sitting at a supercharger.
rmbyrro 5y ago
In ~3 years it lost only 8.7% of battery capacity, looks good. I wonder whether capacity loss accelerates with time or it's linear.
- monkmartinez 5y ago
  The Capacity variable when looking at the calculus of EV's sucks, quite frankly. On a depreciating asset (supply chain/covid issues notwithstanding) (vehicle)) you are buying something that degrades and depreciates the entire purpose of the asset in the first place. TCO factoring in loss of range over time is probably something you just have to ignore if you really want to buy an EV. Otherwise, most people would just buy a Prius or a Corvette.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    Offset by the fact that you get many of the good properties of a Prius and a Corvette at once, and don't pay for gasoline or oil changes. (electricity is generally an order of magnitude cheaper) As well, anyone buying an EV today, should the worst happen and they need a new battery after ~8 year warranty, the prices of batteries has been steadily dropping.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      > electricity is generally an order of magnitude cheaper Electricity is not an order of magnitude cheaper. You can figure on getting about 4 miles per kWh. Where I live, the kWh delivered is $0.20, so $0.05 per mile for energy. A gas car getting 25 miles per gallon with a gallon costing $4.00/gal (slightly more than it costs around here) costs $0.08 per mile for energy. If you could buy electricity for half of my price, you'd be $0.025 per mile, meaning a 25mpg car would need to be buying $6/gal gas in order for electricity to be an order of magnitude cheaper.
      - malfist 5y ago
        For what it's worth, energy prices in kentucky have us paying on average 9 cents per kilowatt. That gets you within striking distance of an order of magnitude. It's a significant savings either way. Gasoline is only going to get more expensive. Electricity _might_ get cheaper
synaesthesisx 5y ago
The issue is, often when you’re driving to places to ski you’re also going massively uphill. So you have the combination of cold + uphill driving which really takes a hit on the range. I can’t say I haven’t felt range anxiety in those situations….
- goodcanadian 5y ago
  Sure, but it is downhill on the way home. I always get a kick out of it when travelling motorway speed downhill and the battery is actually charging from the regenerative braking.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    > I always get a kick out of it when travelling motorway speed downhill You'd probably get some giggles out of the OG Nissan Leaf. We have a steep hill near our house and it takes 6 miles of range to get up one side, but I've gotten 10 miles back coasting down the other side. That's a rounding error for a Tesla but 10% of the charge on a Leaf.
    - goodcanadian 5y ago
      I drive a 2013 Leaf.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      But it probably takes 15 miles to get back up the other side and you only get 3 coasting down the original side. All in all for a given horizontal distance flat terrain is the most efficient
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
bognition 5y ago
> I get about 2/3rds of stated range in cold weather. I drive with the heat at 68, and I use the but warmer for a few minutes. I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit. Thats pretty good and far better than I got in my 2019 M3 in the winter. I think the differentiator here is you are using plugged in power to heat the battery rather than the battery itself. Its a clever and effective hack, but ultimately it shouldn't be a requirement.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Kind of. I wouldn't say it's a hack but more so just using energy from a charging source like your house to heat the battery versus the car using the battery charge to heat the battery. TBH it's kind of standard operating procedure for EVs and not really fundamentally different than "warming the car up". It's why Tesla for example has a scheduling feature (they really need an ad-hoc one though) where they anticipated that you'd commute, say doing a 9-5, and your car would be heated, battery heated up, etc. by the time you leave for work based on your schedule preferences. Ultimately it's not a huge deal for most of the country (weather-wise) and it'll be yet another item that will improve over time.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Sounds like a pain. I have a regular Hyundai Elantra and get significantly more than 300 miles of range on a tank, winter or not. And I live in the mountains in Canada, where there's some roads that don't have a gas station for 150 miles, never mind charging stations...
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  On a road trip there is some inconvenience yes, but for the rest of your driving life there is less gasoline station trips you have to make. Say you road trip twice a year and have to waste 45 extra minutes in an EV. But in an ICE vehicle you also have to make about 30 gas station trips a year, where with an EV you just plug in at home and never do that, and no oil changes as well. So the relative total pain depends on how often/long you road trip.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    We have two EVs and in the last 18 months they were charged away from home a grand total of 5 times. Even if they were full 45 minute charge session and not just quick top ups to get home, that's significantly less time that people spend going to the gas station each year with one vehicle.
    - trainsarebetter 5y ago
      That’s a interesting metric I never thought about it. How much time pre year spent gassing up? that’s crazy to think about.
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        Most people will say you spend less than 5 minutes at the gas station, but that's about as accurate as the "30 minutes to assemble" instructions that accompany flat pack furniture. It also doesn't take into account how you adjust your route or schedule to accommodate the frequent stops. With at home EV charging you just plug it in when you get home and unplug the next day. I "raced" a couple neighbors home one night from an outing and arrived home first. I joked with them that it was on top of "stopping for gas" and sent them a text of my car plugged in.
cptskippy 5y ago
> I have a 2018 long-range. It got a total of 307 miles new, now that it's 3 years old it's total range is ~280. I feel like the range estimate is as much about individual driving habits as it is battery condition. I noticed the max range was reporting in the low 280s up until December when I had to make eight ~100 mile trips on the highway and suddenly my range is reporting in the high 290s. Mine was built in fall of 2018 and at delivery it got around 300+ miles, a year or so later Tesla released an OTA update that boosted range to 315+. We only charge to 80% and the reported range at that charge as slid from 275 down to 235 miles over time. Today it reports a max charge of 294 miles. I drive on the less efficient side. Our driving habits since the pandemic have been almost exclusively short 10 mile trips under 50mph on very hilly terrain. We charge about once or twice a week up to 80%, usually only putting 50-100 miles back on with each charge. I've noticed the same thing with our Nissan Leaf. When it was my 50+ miles a day commuter it reported 80-100 miles range but now it's only driven short trips a couple times a month it reports 75 miles range. That being said, the reported range on that car fluctuates with your farts so idk...
suifbwish 5y ago
Sounds like EV stations are the modern day equivalent of building a railroad. Right now gas vehicles are able to traverse from EV location to location and EV range is limited to specific pathways and regions (unless you have a portable charging station of some sort). As more EV stations become available all the isolated EV regions will become connected. Regarding the heat, it’s too bad they do not have an auxiliary battery that maintains charge within resistance coils around temperature sensitive parts of the EV setup. If the aux battery goes dead it’s dead until the next charging station. It shouldn’t draw too much current to keep internal temperature around 40-50 degrees f.
- donkeyd 5y ago
  > unless you have a portable charging station of some sort Teslas come with those by default. You just plug them into a socket and you're charging. Sure, it's slow, but it works. I used it to charge overnight at my hotel during a winter sports vacation, for the trip to the slopes and back. (I even brought a power meter so I could pay for the power I used.) The trip to the area was over 1000km and took all in all about an hour more than it did with my diesel car. Like the previous person said, the only major downside was being less flexible in stopping locations due to Superchargers.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  "A portable charging station" is actually just a power cable. For basic overnight charging all you need is a 30A 240V circuit (the same kind of wiring as for induction cooktops and electric dryers) and the right plug. That won't fast-charge anything, but it'll get you about 20 miles of (temperate) weather range per hour plugged in.
dan_quixote 5y ago
> I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit. Here I was thinking you were in the Seattle area until I read the last bit.
sandworm101 5y ago
Sounds like you own a horse more than a car. If I have to plan my day around waking my horse up, feeding it breakfast, stopping so it can rest at a supercharger, arranging my bathroom breaks to suit its needs ... I would rather own a car. I'm at work right now. I have not seen green grass since early November. It's currently -12c. Predictions for next week are lows below -20c. We had a good two months below -30, with a couple weeks touching below -40 in the mornings. Last year I had to drive to work once at -47c. My tiny Honda lives outside in the elements but always starts without complaint. It gets me to work each morning without fail. (Fyi,-40c is the same temp as -40f. -12c is about +10f)
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  An EV would also get you to work each morning without fail, unless you are 200 miles from work. It doesn't even need to start up.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    My nearest airport is 200miles away, 400 for the trip. I will be making that drive next week to pickup a work college. I believe that Tesla and every other lithium-using EV only rates their cars to -30c. Below that might void a warranty, a financial risk I cannot afford. And I shudder at the concept of DRM deciding to brick my car because it is "too cold to drive". That nightmare is coming at us soon. I will then be in the market for a snow machine, which are regular on major roads in my area when the weather is really bad.
    - c0nfused 5y ago
      I think the current guidance is not below -30 for more than 24 hours because the battery coolant will freeze and then everything blows up. Based on your weather reporting. I would stick with ICE. As heat isn't free on an electric car in general. So, at the more extreme ends of the spectrum it will be hard to beat ICE
      - 5y ago
gnicholas 5y ago
> Most of the time, I don't need to "wait" while the car charges, usually because I'm in the bathroom or waiting for food prep. If I do need to wait, it's usually about 5 minutes. Thus, total stopping time is about as much as a gas car. If I'm driving 300 miles in a day, I'm probably not stopping (definitely don't need to gas up partway). If it's 300 round trip (two 150-mile legs), I'm definitely not stopping for gas or bathroom. Are there not places to charge on the slopes? I'd think this would be a useful perk for resorts to offer, and shuffle cars between. Perhaps they don't have the energy to spare?
- throwaheyy 5y ago
  For a 5 hour drive (300 miles at 60mi/h), you should be - driver fatigue is a thing.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  > Are there not places to charge on the slopes? Unfortunately, I only know of two ski areas that have them. One ski area with a charger is about a mile away from a supercharger, and that supercharger happens to be next to an awesome restaurant. The other one is the place that I mentioned where they didn't have snow at the parking lot with the charger because it was early season.

monkmartinez 5y ago

> The only limitation is that there's waaaay less Superchargers than gas stations. Hopefully this changes with time, but it is a GIANT limitation. Skiing around Arizona I have noticed all the chargers have EV's parked in them. I want to buy a used BMW i3, but the convenience factor is still a ways off for me. My Prius gets awesome mileage and I run the heater full blast in the winter and A/C full blast in the summer. I have half a mind to put a giant DIY battery in the trunk. Wire in a dead man switch of some kind and run on pure 18650's around town... gonna flirt with the idea a bit more. My DIY electric bike has probably given me a bit more confidence in the area than I need, but YOLO!

donkeyd 5y ago
> Hopefully this changes with time Looking at Europe, nearly every gas station is starting to get a fast charger installed (along major roads, at least). A couple of years ago there were waiting lines at super chargers during the yearly migration to the Alps, but I haven't seen any similar stories this year.
thetinguy 5y ago
Most i3s I’ve seen have the range extender engine equipped
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Capped at like 2 gallons of gas iirc because otherwise it wouldn’t qualify for the EV incentives
Reason077 5y ago
> "Hopefully this changes with time, but it is a GIANT limitation." Look at it this way: There'll never be less chargers than on the day you buy your EV. Charging networks are expanding constantly, with more sites, bigger sites, and faster chargers. So the utility and convenience of an EV is only going to improve. If you can get by with the chargers that exist today in your region, it'll be even better in the future. A Shell gas station near me in London [1] recently reopened after a renovation, and guess what? There's no gas pumps there anymore. Just ultra-rapid charging points. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/LM4h7Xz8pwWxcPkeA https://goo.gl/maps/LM4h7Xz8pwWxcPkeA
- bo1024 5y ago
  There will never be fewer electric cars either. I think this is a significant concern as whether demand will outstrip suply. Hopefully charging stations will be lucrative enough, or hopefully good supply/demand competition kicks in -- few charging stations and high demand --> high prices to recharge --> more charging stations.

pricechild 5y ago

> While I get dressed, I turn on extended range mode and turn the heat on. What is "extended range mode" sorry? I'm aware of preconditioning, setting departure time etc.

extrapickles 5y ago
That is where you fill the battery to 100%, this puts extra wear on the battery so you want to minimize the amount of time at 100%.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  So how bad is 30 minutes at max charge vs say 24 hours?
  - hnuser123456 5y ago
    https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...
crazcarl 5y ago
Generally you don't want to charge the battery past about 80% unless you're going to use it right away. So the "extended range" charge would be charging past that 80%.
cptskippy 5y ago
Lithium Ion batteries don't like being completely full or completely empty. They're happiest somewhere in the middle. Teslas allow you to set the max charge %. The interface has changed over the years but it's more or less a slider allowing you to set the max charge %. In it's latest incarnation you can do 1% increments, in the past it was less granular. When you plug the car in, an interface appears on the main display allowing you to adjust the % as well as charge rate and some other things. You can also adjust the settings from the App on your phone. Typically you'd set it to X% and forget about it until you were planning a road trip then you might crank it up to 100% either the night before or while sitting at a supercharger.

rmbyrro 5y ago

In ~3 years it lost only 8.7% of battery capacity, looks good. I wonder whether capacity loss accelerates with time or it's linear.

monkmartinez 5y ago
The Capacity variable when looking at the calculus of EV's sucks, quite frankly. On a depreciating asset (supply chain/covid issues notwithstanding) (vehicle)) you are buying something that degrades and depreciates the entire purpose of the asset in the first place. TCO factoring in loss of range over time is probably something you just have to ignore if you really want to buy an EV. Otherwise, most people would just buy a Prius or a Corvette.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Offset by the fact that you get many of the good properties of a Prius and a Corvette at once, and don't pay for gasoline or oil changes. (electricity is generally an order of magnitude cheaper) As well, anyone buying an EV today, should the worst happen and they need a new battery after ~8 year warranty, the prices of batteries has been steadily dropping.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > electricity is generally an order of magnitude cheaper Electricity is not an order of magnitude cheaper. You can figure on getting about 4 miles per kWh. Where I live, the kWh delivered is $0.20, so $0.05 per mile for energy. A gas car getting 25 miles per gallon with a gallon costing $4.00/gal (slightly more than it costs around here) costs $0.08 per mile for energy. If you could buy electricity for half of my price, you'd be $0.025 per mile, meaning a 25mpg car would need to be buying $6/gal gas in order for electricity to be an order of magnitude cheaper.
    - malfist 5y ago
      For what it's worth, energy prices in kentucky have us paying on average 9 cents per kilowatt. That gets you within striking distance of an order of magnitude. It's a significant savings either way. Gasoline is only going to get more expensive. Electricity _might_ get cheaper

synaesthesisx 5y ago

The issue is, often when you’re driving to places to ski you’re also going massively uphill. So you have the combination of cold + uphill driving which really takes a hit on the range. I can’t say I haven’t felt range anxiety in those situations….

goodcanadian 5y ago
Sure, but it is downhill on the way home. I always get a kick out of it when travelling motorway speed downhill and the battery is actually charging from the regenerative braking.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > I always get a kick out of it when travelling motorway speed downhill You'd probably get some giggles out of the OG Nissan Leaf. We have a steep hill near our house and it takes 6 miles of range to get up one side, but I've gotten 10 miles back coasting down the other side. That's a rounding error for a Tesla but 10% of the charge on a Leaf.
  - goodcanadian 5y ago
    I drive a 2013 Leaf.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    But it probably takes 15 miles to get back up the other side and you only get 3 coasting down the original side. All in all for a given horizontal distance flat terrain is the most efficient
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

bognition 5y ago

> I get about 2/3rds of stated range in cold weather. I drive with the heat at 68, and I use the but warmer for a few minutes. I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit. Thats pretty good and far better than I got in my 2019 M3 in the winter. I think the differentiator here is you are using plugged in power to heat the battery rather than the battery itself. Its a clever and effective hack, but ultimately it shouldn't be a requirement.

ericmay 5y ago
Kind of. I wouldn't say it's a hack but more so just using energy from a charging source like your house to heat the battery versus the car using the battery charge to heat the battery. TBH it's kind of standard operating procedure for EVs and not really fundamentally different than "warming the car up". It's why Tesla for example has a scheduling feature (they really need an ad-hoc one though) where they anticipated that you'd commute, say doing a 9-5, and your car would be heated, battery heated up, etc. by the time you leave for work based on your schedule preferences. Ultimately it's not a huge deal for most of the country (weather-wise) and it'll be yet another item that will improve over time.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Sounds like a pain. I have a regular Hyundai Elantra and get significantly more than 300 miles of range on a tank, winter or not. And I live in the mountains in Canada, where there's some roads that don't have a gas station for 150 miles, never mind charging stations...

gameswithgo 5y ago
On a road trip there is some inconvenience yes, but for the rest of your driving life there is less gasoline station trips you have to make. Say you road trip twice a year and have to waste 45 extra minutes in an EV. But in an ICE vehicle you also have to make about 30 gas station trips a year, where with an EV you just plug in at home and never do that, and no oil changes as well. So the relative total pain depends on how often/long you road trip.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  We have two EVs and in the last 18 months they were charged away from home a grand total of 5 times. Even if they were full 45 minute charge session and not just quick top ups to get home, that's significantly less time that people spend going to the gas station each year with one vehicle.
  - trainsarebetter 5y ago
    That’s a interesting metric I never thought about it. How much time pre year spent gassing up? that’s crazy to think about.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      Most people will say you spend less than 5 minutes at the gas station, but that's about as accurate as the "30 minutes to assemble" instructions that accompany flat pack furniture. It also doesn't take into account how you adjust your route or schedule to accommodate the frequent stops. With at home EV charging you just plug it in when you get home and unplug the next day. I "raced" a couple neighbors home one night from an outing and arrived home first. I joked with them that it was on top of "stopping for gas" and sent them a text of my car plugged in.

cptskippy 5y ago

> I have a 2018 long-range. It got a total of 307 miles new, now that it's 3 years old it's total range is ~280. I feel like the range estimate is as much about individual driving habits as it is battery condition. I noticed the max range was reporting in the low 280s up until December when I had to make eight ~100 mile trips on the highway and suddenly my range is reporting in the high 290s. Mine was built in fall of 2018 and at delivery it got around 300+ miles, a year or so later Tesla released an OTA update that boosted range to 315+. We only charge to 80% and the reported range at that charge as slid from 275 down to 235 miles over time. Today it reports a max charge of 294 miles. I drive on the less efficient side. Our driving habits since the pandemic have been almost exclusively short 10 mile trips under 50mph on very hilly terrain. We charge about once or twice a week up to 80%, usually only putting 50-100 miles back on with each charge. I've noticed the same thing with our Nissan Leaf. When it was my 50+ miles a day commuter it reported 80-100 miles range but now it's only driven short trips a couple times a month it reports 75 miles range. That being said, the reported range on that car fluctuates with your farts so idk...

suifbwish 5y ago

Sounds like EV stations are the modern day equivalent of building a railroad. Right now gas vehicles are able to traverse from EV location to location and EV range is limited to specific pathways and regions (unless you have a portable charging station of some sort). As more EV stations become available all the isolated EV regions will become connected. Regarding the heat, it’s too bad they do not have an auxiliary battery that maintains charge within resistance coils around temperature sensitive parts of the EV setup. If the aux battery goes dead it’s dead until the next charging station. It shouldn’t draw too much current to keep internal temperature around 40-50 degrees f.

donkeyd 5y ago
> unless you have a portable charging station of some sort Teslas come with those by default. You just plug them into a socket and you're charging. Sure, it's slow, but it works. I used it to charge overnight at my hotel during a winter sports vacation, for the trip to the slopes and back. (I even brought a power meter so I could pay for the power I used.) The trip to the area was over 1000km and took all in all about an hour more than it did with my diesel car. Like the previous person said, the only major downside was being less flexible in stopping locations due to Superchargers.
crooked-v 5y ago
"A portable charging station" is actually just a power cable. For basic overnight charging all you need is a 30A 240V circuit (the same kind of wiring as for induction cooktops and electric dryers) and the right plug. That won't fast-charge anything, but it'll get you about 20 miles of (temperate) weather range per hour plugged in.

dan_quixote 5y ago

> I try not to exceed 75MPH on 65MPH roads, or 80MPH on 70MPH roads. Where I drive, often traffic exceeds the posted speed limit. Here I was thinking you were in the Seattle area until I read the last bit.

sandworm101 5y ago

Sounds like you own a horse more than a car. If I have to plan my day around waking my horse up, feeding it breakfast, stopping so it can rest at a supercharger, arranging my bathroom breaks to suit its needs ... I would rather own a car. I'm at work right now. I have not seen green grass since early November. It's currently -12c. Predictions for next week are lows below -20c. We had a good two months below -30, with a couple weeks touching below -40 in the mornings. Last year I had to drive to work once at -47c. My tiny Honda lives outside in the elements but always starts without complaint. It gets me to work each morning without fail. (Fyi,-40c is the same temp as -40f. -12c is about +10f)

gameswithgo 5y ago
An EV would also get you to work each morning without fail, unless you are 200 miles from work. It doesn't even need to start up.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  My nearest airport is 200miles away, 400 for the trip. I will be making that drive next week to pickup a work college. I believe that Tesla and every other lithium-using EV only rates their cars to -30c. Below that might void a warranty, a financial risk I cannot afford. And I shudder at the concept of DRM deciding to brick my car because it is "too cold to drive". That nightmare is coming at us soon. I will then be in the market for a snow machine, which are regular on major roads in my area when the weather is really bad.
  - c0nfused 5y ago
    I think the current guidance is not below -30 for more than 24 hours because the battery coolant will freeze and then everything blows up. Based on your weather reporting. I would stick with ICE. As heat isn't free on an electric car in general. So, at the more extreme ends of the spectrum it will be hard to beat ICE
    - 5y ago

gnicholas 5y ago

> Most of the time, I don't need to "wait" while the car charges, usually because I'm in the bathroom or waiting for food prep. If I do need to wait, it's usually about 5 minutes. Thus, total stopping time is about as much as a gas car. If I'm driving 300 miles in a day, I'm probably not stopping (definitely don't need to gas up partway). If it's 300 round trip (two 150-mile legs), I'm definitely not stopping for gas or bathroom. Are there not places to charge on the slopes? I'd think this would be a useful perk for resorts to offer, and shuffle cars between. Perhaps they don't have the energy to spare?

throwaheyy 5y ago
For a 5 hour drive (300 miles at 60mi/h), you should be - driver fatigue is a thing.
gwbas1c 5y ago
> Are there not places to charge on the slopes? Unfortunately, I only know of two ski areas that have them. One ski area with a charger is about a mile away from a supercharger, and that supercharger happens to be next to an awesome restaurant. The other one is the place that I mentioned where they didn't have snow at the parking lot with the charger because it was early season.