# Real world economy



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

I know this has been covered in many places here and there, but it is worth bringing this to light once again as I may be wrong and I would like to share my opinion. It is only my opinion so please be constructive in your replies and try not to shoot me down. I welcome things to try that I have yet to try but remember.... I love my model 3. Cars always take me a while to love and I miss my last car, but the model 3 is growing on me and it will be a long relationship. I would not swap it for any other car at the moment. So I decided to highlight the positives in bold...

I used to have a Smart electric drive car, drove it for 4.5years (65k miles) and would average 3.6miles per kW. I could get 4miles per kW if I tried a bit harder. So that's 250Whpm. When I first got my Tesla (UK early delivery in the summer), I was very pleased and surprised that a car that is heavier managed to get 250Whpm quite easily, in fact, I often got 160Whpm. I put this down to the aerodynamics of the car, *it is pretty amazing*. I have now covered over 7,000 miles and whilst in the winter, as with the Smart, it is harder to get to the 250Whpm, my average over the 7,000 miles is currently 260Whpm. This is slowly creeping up and will very slowly creep down again after spring I'm sure. Again, *incredibly good*. Now, my Smart had a 90m range...yeah right! Same with all things, if I tried hard, I could get that, it was a 16.5kWh battery. So 16.5 x 4=66. I would have to get 5.45miles per kWh to meet that, or 183Whpm. And there was the odd occasion where I had to drive a fair distance when I'd actually achieve that. The Tesla is seriously not achievable with a 236mile range, but that's not what my point is about.
When I got the Tesla, it advertised 250m range, I took that as maybe 200. But it's worse than that, much worse I'm afraid. Of course driving styles, weather etc make all the difference, however, when I parked my Smart car it did not use any. I flew on business quite often and would park at the airport (once it was very cold and thick snow), when I got back 3 or 4 days later, it had exactly the same range left to go. When you park the Tesla, it consumes electric one way or another. Yes you can turn off things, I've done all that, but it really does seem to eat electric when you use it over a weekend. eg;

I charge up at work, it's a perk. And on Friday I charge to 95% if I have a few things to do.
Drove home Frid via shopping; -42m
Sat shopping; -25m 
(Charged up at Tesco shop; +4m)
Mon drove to work; 33m
Total; 96m.

Why did I have 20% left when I got to work? The average was good, I drove careful, did not access the car at all this weekend on the app. No sentry, no standby summon etc...
I changed the display to %, because the miles left is too difficult to actually work out what I really have. I tend to say (2x%)-10, so 20% will be (2x20)-10=30. That's 30miles left, a total of 96+30=126. I tend to think it will do 160miles on a 95% charge, not 126.

So I guess my point is, economy is not just what it can do on a run, (*which is bloody good*), it's how it uses energy parked up. The smart was far more efficient at handling this, I could also access via an app and I used to always use a sentry mode camera and often pre-heat the car. It was always disappointing to see 60miles range on the dash when I started a journey, but that's what I expected and got used to it and more importantly, relied on it. Over a weekend, I have no idea what the Tesla will give me and often plug it in at home to top up in case. Not a major issue as I have solar panels so I take advantage of topping up when it's light. But it's the constant leakage it seems a bit much. I feel like I have a much larger bucket but with a random sized hole in it, when I pick it up the next day it's lost some, no idea how much, just some. It's like British weather, open the curtains and see what today is. Open the Tesla.... random battery left.


I've read a lot of posts about people leaving their car and only losing 2% overnight, I'd be happy if it was always that for me even though it's 3 or 4 miles or a kWh or so floating out somewhere. That's like boiling a kettle 4 or 5 times for nothing, or 72pence in the bin for nothing at all. That's a small loaf of bread, a first class stamp, or I could drive my 4.5Tonne motorhome 3.8miles. Normally, I find my Tesla chucks out a dozen loaves of bread over night. Or it goes on a little joy ride on it's own somewhere.
Be nice if it had an 'off' button. Or has it? maybe at the weekend I should be shutting it down? I might try that to see what it does.
Maybe I have an issue with my car, I know people talk of an app you can track what the car is doing, maybe I'll look into that if I can be bothered. but I bet I'm not alone, If people look into this themselves? Try it....go home and don't plug into the house and see what you get.
It does sometimes display a snowflake, this is showing a different number so you are prepared, *this is a great feature* and does ensure you don't get caught out on the road.
A google search tells me the model 3 has a 54kWh battery....hmmm, I don't really think so, more like 40kWh.

I'm confident if I did a long trip, maybe to visit my Son (about 200miles each way), I would get 200miles in the car and that is *bloody good*. I'd factor a coffee stop on the way and a top up, *but I feel confident it will do it*. I'm currently planning a trip to the Belgium grand prix next year with my Son and will also *feel good about making that*, however, when it's parked up whilst we drink, get merry and watch noisy cars....the secret electron stealing monster may rear it's ugly head once again, so I will be sure to know where the nearest charge point is for when we leave.

But to close I'll add what my Smart did not have;

*5seats
4doors
two boots (trunks in US)
keeps accelerating well after 40mph
lovely sat nav
TV
games when you're bored somewhere
Autodrive
FSD stuff
autopark
cruise control
auto lights
auto wipers
auto handbrake
summon-ish
netflix
fart mode
memory seats
cool looking
glass roof
2 foglights
LED lights
etc
etc 
I could go on for a long time.*

*I love my Tesla *
Current cars
Tesla model 3 SR+...gorgeous. Named Eagle, because when I got her, I said 'the eagle has landed'.
BMW K1200GT, you want acceleration, try a bike. Still have it and service myself, it's a lovely thing and makes me smile.
Singer gazelle, classic car to remind me how nice modern cars are. over 200k miles on LPG
Mercedes Motorhome A class. 2.5litre 5 cylinder diesel beast to holiday with my wife and dogs.
Previous cars
Smart ED. Miss the plucky little thing, drove like a go-kart and was cheap.
106 Peugeot naturally aspirated diesel (100 mpg) 1.5litres of plop. ran it on my own bio-diesel. 
306 Peugeot family car, again ran it on my own bio
many more I've forgotten.


----------



## potatoee (Aug 26, 2018)

You might want to get a more detailed view of where your energy is really going. I started using TeslaFi a few months ago and I have all of the info I need as to impact of 1) driving habits 2) sleep mode vs. idle mode 3) leaving Sentry on 4) temperature 5) current estimate of battery capacity, etc.

You can use it for a certain period for a trial and pay by month or year.

I view getting as much as I can out of my LR Model 3 Dual as "a game" and it's nice to see how every little thing impacts overall efficiency.

Regarding your fears about being shot down on this forum, I hope those fears are not well founded. IMO, we should be critical about our vehicles and how they perform. That's the only way we can improve the status quo and learn from our fellow drivers.

Some data:

Battery Degradation Report for my car (including an outlier data point that I don't think is real):










Efficiency report over temperature. Variability due to me and my inconsistent driving habits:


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

styleruk said:


> I put this down to the aerodynamics of the car


Teslas do have good aerodynamics, but I think the majority of the difference at lower speeds is due to Tesla having a much more efficient drivetrain than everybody else. A Smart TwoFour EV weighs about 2400 lbs. A Model 3 weighs 3600-4000 lbs. It's somewhat sad that these smaller EVs with less range can't match Tesla's efficiency even in the EPA's city driving tests.


> when I parked my Smart car it did not use any. I flew on business quite often and would park at the airport (once it was very cold and thick snow), when I got back 3 or 4 days later, it had exactly the same range left to go.


Same thing with the Nissan Leaf. Nissan made damn sure that the car didn't use any appreciable amount of energy when parked. This made remote access incredibly painful (such as telling the car to start charging and precondition when I was on my way back from a trip), because it could take several long minutes to respond to a request. But it was nice not having to deal with any significant battery drain when parked for long periods.



> So I guess my point is, economy is not just what it can do on a run, (*which is bloody good*), it's how it uses energy parked up.
> ...
> I've read a lot of posts about people leaving their car and only losing 2% overnight...


If there's nothing keeping the car awake, then battery loss should be about 1% per day. Be sure to check this list for things that could be keeping your car awake, and disable/change them. Sometimes there's just a bug in the software that will keep the car from going to sleep. I wish there was a way to instruct the car to "enter sleep mode and stay there" for these sorts of occasions.


> Be nice if it had an 'off' button. Or has it? maybe at the weekend I should be shutting it down?


There is a menu option (under security IIRC) to shut down the car. I think if you do this, you may need your key card to actually turn it back on and get back in. It's probably worth playing with this option some to see if it would help. Definitely try it out before you want to rely on it.

Good luck!


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

potatoee said:


> You might want to get a more detailed view of where your energy is really going. I started using TeslaFi a few months ago and I have all of the info I need as to impact of 1) driving habits 2) sleep mode vs. idle mode 3) leaving Sentry on 4) temperature 5) current estimate of battery capacity, etc.
> 
> You can use it for a certain period for a trial and pay by month or year.
> 
> ...


Yes, I've heard of this and to be fair....I can't be bothered to use an app like this yet, maybe in time I will have a go. I've done years of EV driving and have played 'the game' as you say. It is interesting, but still bemusing where it all goes when the car is seemingly doing nowt. (northern British term for Sweet Fanny Adams). I'm assuming more updates will improve things in time too.
This forum is usually constructive in the feedback, I was trying to paint a more positive view, as I feel the car wins on many fronts, this is just a strange thing I notice and we get caught up in the whole '250Whpm' thing when we should be looking at the full picture. When I see people charging at 250kw my heart jumps...gee that's a whole load of energy going in there. When I plug my car into my solar and charge at 1.25kw...it charges at 0mph! LOL, but that's a lot of energy too. Every tried to generate that on an exercise bike? We must remember complete efficiency.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

garsh said:


> Teslas do have good aerodynamics, but I think the majority of the difference at lower speeds is due to Tesla having a much more efficient drivetrain than everybody else. A Smart TwoFour EV weighs about 2400 lbs. A Model 3 weighs 3600-4000 lbs. It's somewhat sad that these smaller EVs with less range can't match Tesla's efficiency even in the EPA's city driving tests.


Indeed, however, the Smart is shaped for city driving. Horrible aerodynamics, the Tesla is one of the lowest drag cars about, think it was recently beaten by the new BMW 3 series, but don't let me off-topic the issue, you are right, the powertrain makes a massive difference. My whole point is about the efficiency of the car completely, historically, our cars did not burn gas when we parked up. Although, my classic drips oil and I did fit an ebaspacher (night heater), to pre-heat the old girl, so really, my 1960s car did use energy when parked up!


----------



## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

@styleruk, I sympathize with your frustration over the car's energy usage while the car is just sitting. It is something I didn't expect before I got a Tesla. It is something that many of us have fretted over. While some energy usage does happen, the scenario you laid out of it using double the number of miles actually driven over a single week-end is way out of whack. I am understanding that you drove 96 miles but that it used about 188 miles [(.95-.20)*250] of range. I do not know exactly how cold your weather is where you are at or how much you have the heater on in the car, but for my winter driving, I would have expected approximately this loss:
96 miles / 80% efficiency = 120 miles
1% of 250 miles * 3 days = 8 miles (1% as @garsh noted; spec loss per the owner's manual)
for a total of 128 rated miles. So there is roughly another 60 miles, or 24% of the battery, that is the out of whack part.

There really is no way to re-construct the past on this (since you are not using a 3rd party app such as Teslafi, which along with @potatoee, I whole-heartedly endorse). But if this is an ongoing problem, I would suggest that you at least do that trial run of Teslafi, so that you can see when/how the drain is happening. An example of what we've been able to see with Teslafi is when we unintentionally had cabin conditioning on, and didn't know it. Or Sentry mode, and didn't realize it.

I would also note that a cold-soaked battery, i.e., the snowflake, makes the battery appear to have less than it actually does. Some of the alarm I felt over the passive losses my first winter was actually just this. The amount of range (either in distance or %) that is displayed is that which is available, and does not include the part that is temporarily unavailable due to the cold. I've seen as much as 5% "gone" due to this. It's one of the first things I thought of as I read your post, but doesn't come close to explaining the large difference you are reporting.

I would not suggest to use the OFF button on the car. When we took delivery, we were specifically cautioned not to be using that. No idea what it would do, but I don't think it is necessary to resolve your apparent high losses.

Finally, here is from a post I made last month, in regards to my model 3 sitting unused for almost 4 weeks:


Bigriver said:


> It's loss averaged just about 1 mile/day, which is about 250 Wh/day. Would note that this is less than Bjorn's 337 Wh/day, but his calc is high partially because it also included some part of the battery that was snowflaked (only temporarily unavailable).


----------



## Long Ranger (Jun 1, 2018)

styleruk said:


> I charge up at work, it's a perk. And on Friday I charge to 95% if I have a few things to do.
> Drove home Frid via shopping; -42m
> Sat shopping; -25m
> (Charged up at Tesco shop; +4m)
> ...


You mention shopping. How many separate stops over the weekend? In the winter you definitely take a hit from the heater each time you bring the car back up to temp after a stop, yet you've traveled 0 miles.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

Long Ranger said:


> You mention shopping. How many separate stops over the weekend? In the winter you definitely take a hit from the heater each time you bring the car back up to temp after a stop, yet you've traveled 0 miles.


Indeed, that I understand. Friday was one stop, Sat was one stop, apart from when I plugged in outside Tesco where I gained.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

Bigriver said:


> I do not know exactly how cold your weather is where you are at or how much you have the heater on in the car,


It was around 7°c overnight here in UK, although it was nearer 2°c last night. I have my heater set to around 19°c, that actually is a benefit with the Tesla vs Smart. I used to use the heated seat more in the Smart as it saves the heater and uses much less battery but with the Tesla because I have a bigger battery, I use the heater more....go figure.

Last weekend was a particular bad one with battery usage, just seems I never get near what I expect. I was used to the Smart telling me exactly what I had, so it was much more reliable to use. If I had 40m left on the Smart, then I would think, that'll be OK to get to work (33m) tomorrow, I won't plug it in. But with the Tesla, if it said I had 100m spare, I'd think....better plug it in because god only knows what I'll have left in the morning. So that is what gives me the lack of confidence.
It would be better or an option, if the car took the last 1000 miles and averaged that, then displayed that percentage or miles left. Then at least I'd trust it a bit more. I know the power meter does this to a degree, but I don't want to open that all the time.
As for usage, yes, I should try the app. I think I'll start taking notes first. One thing I did notice last night, when I went to bed, I have an android phone, and when I swiped down it said tesla was connected. I've asked before about this as I thought maybe as I sleep within BT range of the car (no I don't have the car in bed with me), it might be waking all night. I think I saw someone mention that you should lock with the app rather than just walk away and that stops this a bit. So I have a few things to try if I want to.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

This is what my phone shows, currently at work about 20metres from car, I'm indoors and the phone shows connected.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

So, I took some records last weekend... typical I missed one bit of data but at the end of the weekend I had done 101 starting with 95% battery and ending with 15% battery. I used sentry mode once for 5hours, I made sure BT was off on my phone when I got home to ensure it was not waking the car all night. This is what I mean by 'real world economy'. My car achieved 253wh per mile and used 80% battery. So either it's got a 31kWh battery, which makes sense, as my smart car had 17.5kWh battery and that would only do 60miles. Or eating miles when it wants. 
Friday night seemed ok, it used only 1%. Naturally I missed a recording there for sat night but you can see the mileage I have done and somewhere something is wrong.
The strangest thing happened this morning. Last night I left the car with just under 50% charge, this morning it showed 38% and a snowflake (because it's cold, around 5°c), just got to work 33miles later with 2% left! Today it feels like my smart was far more efficient in the real world than the telsa. My original opinion was that the Tesla achieving 250Wh per mile was amazing because I would struggle to get that on my smart but alas...it is not true at all.
I will keep monitoring and will consider paying for an app that links to my car (do not really want to do that for security reasons).

I'v concluded that the % sign for the battery is bollocks. I used to display the miles left, but that is further from the truth. (I know other cars never show the full truth but at least you can gauge it. ) The only way to ensure I have enough miles is to keep my car plugged into my house and set it to 50%...otherwise, I might not have the range to get to work the next morning. It's ok doing the daily commute as I charge it to 65% at work and it takes me home and back again, but at the weekend...god only knows where it goes.


----------



## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

I sympathize with your basic frustration: the car used 200 miles of rated range when you only traveled 100 miles. I don't have any magic answers but do have a few thoughts.



styleruk said:


> My car achieved 253wh per mile and used 80% battery.


In my real world experience (with LR AWD) the car has to display in the 230's Wh/mile to go 1 actual mile for 1 rated mile. For SR+ with RWD, I think the Wh/mile needs to be even a bit lower. But regardless, your 253 Wh/mile is quite good for the winter. From that I would have expected your 100 miles of driving to take maybe 120 miles (50%) of the rated range. But the Wh/mile only includes any of the energy when the car is being driven. So it would seem that the biggest part of your issue is from it sitting.



styleruk said:


> The strangest thing happened this morning. Last night I left the car with just under 50% charge, this morning it showed 38% and a snowflake (because it's cold, around 5°c),


I think this is a big piece of the puzzle. The snowflake means that the battery is cold and some of it is temporarily unavailable. The display shows the available part. I've only ever seen up to 5% "gone" (and I know this from raw data I see via Teslafi)... but on a percentage basis, it might be bigger for SR+ AND I know that it is a bigger effect when the battery is at a lower charge. I don't know the physics of why, but I know that from personal observation.

I would still suggest a trial run with Teslafi. It will clearly show if your car is awake or asleep, and how much energy is used in each sitting and driving period. It will be able to show if something such as sentry mode is inadvertently on.

Oh, one other thought - you said you had turned off blue tooth to make sure your phone is not inadvertently keeping it awake. Also need to make sure and not be accessing the car via the app with LTE or wifi


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

I signed up to TeslaFi in the end. Thought I'd try the free trial thing. First night, got this...









Holy cow! 17miles lost just parked up? 3.73kWh lost, that's phenomenal amounts of power. What was my car doing last night... lighting heathrow runway? This is my point, we talk about economy, but this car is so far away from my old EV when it comes to overall economy it's not funny. 
Yes, sure, I can intervene maybe and try to find the root cause or take it in a dealer and waste a day etc. But most people won't bother with that, they'll just plug it in at night and carry on regardless. That makes this car less economical than my old peugeot 106 that did 75 miles to the gallon.
Surely this sort of information is automatically fed back to Tesla and they realise their cars are bleeding energy.

That said, 5.73 miles was used to condition the car as it was nippy, so it's not all bad. I will experiment with turning off blue tooth ect and see what I find. The big question is, why should I have to. As I say, most won't bother checking this and will just plug into their house and use up many kWhs of energy with very little care. I'm an engineer and also care a bit more, so I won't let this happen.


----------



## wrjohnston91283 (Aug 25, 2018)

Based on your Teslafi screenshot your car did not "sleep". Instead it "idled". Something is preventing it from sleeping and the range loss while idle is far more than the 1% per day number Tesla states (since they expect the car to sleep after 20 minutes of no use).

screenshot I've added shows my cars current status, showing its sleeping. Range loss is shown as zero but only because the car is asleep. Once i do something to wake it up (such as use the Tesla app, open a door) is will show me the actual range loss.

Why you car isn't sleeping I'm not sure and hopefully others who have had this issue can chime in.


----------



## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

On the teslafi page - go to settings, then the sleep modes page. Read through the whole thing, use the recommended settings (they may not be set that way by default). Your car will sleep again, no power loos/drain.


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

wrjohnston91283 said:


> Based on your Teslafi screenshot your car did not "sleep". Instead it "idled". Something is preventing it from sleeping and the range loss while idle is far more than the 1% per day number Tesla states (since they expect the car to sleep after 20 minutes of no use).
> 
> screenshot I've added shows my cars current status, showing its sleeping. Range loss is shown as zero but only because the car is asleep. Once i do something to wake it up (such as use the Tesla app, open a door) is will show me the actual range loss.
> 
> ...


I see. this is last nights...


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

sduck said:


> On the teslafi page - go to settings, then the sleep modes page. Read through the whole thing, use the recommended settings (they may not be set that way by default). Your car will sleep again, no power loos/drain.


Just gone into those settings and tried that. I'll let you know.
Thank you for your assistance.


----------



## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

styleruk said:


> Just gone into those settings and tried that. I'll let you know.
> Thank you for your assistance.


Since you were seeing losses prior to Teslafi, I doubt the Teslafi settings are the issue. but for comparison, here's what I have mine set to, and what mine looks like for the day so far (had to wake it to get the losses for the time since asleep)


----------



## styleruk (Dec 3, 2018)

Wouldn't it be nice to have these settings in the Tesla app instead of paying someone else to do it?


----------

