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by _m8fo 1029 days ago
They should do the same with gas (hybrid) cars - since to be fair there’s a hit there with temperature differences and it would be neat to see the differences.

I also noticed this data is generated from aggregated user data. I wonder how a prolonged ride can affect the range. Could long rides heat the battery enough to offset the issues in cool temps?

3 comments

ICE cars do not suffer from this class of user experience problem. Yes they burn more gas if you need to use the defogger, but this does not really impact your daily planning because it only means you fill up sooner, which you can do anywhere in one minute.
We worry far more about range in our gasoline vehicle than in our EV. Our EV starts with a full battery every morning. But our gas vehicle might have 50 or 350 miles of range depending on when it was filled up last, and the extra 10 minutes it takes to stop and fill might make us late for wherever we're going.
Filling up in 10 minutes instead of hours is worse because... it's so convenient and quick that you may forget to fill up the previous day? This is not a very good argument.

You can solve this by leaving the house ten minutes later, which you should do anyway in case something happens.

The idea with an electric car is you just plug it in every night automatically in your garage – if you're lucky enough to live in a house - every morning it's ready to go. You never have to think about it. Trip driving is different. Tesla made it easy where you can basically drive virtually anywhere in the US and they'll be a supercharger or two along the way. If you live in an apartment or a condo with no electricity then it's harder. You're also stuck with idiots saying you can't add an electric line because it'll burn the place down or something.
Great if you own a house. For most apartment dwellers home charging isn't an option. As you know, home ownership in the US is for the rich.
We thought it wasn’t an option until we tried. Just need a long cord and the right parking place. I would agree most don’t have it though, for now.
I thought the selling point of Tesla was the super fast charging? How long would it take to charge to make up the difference in reported range? Quick Google says a supercharger is up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.

They should fix the reporting though. Ideally let the user put in observed range to calibrate.

also, heating is basically "free" with ICE cars (well, fan excluded).
It has a noticeable impact when your car is fairly efficient. I notice a roughly 10% increase in fuel consumption in the winter and I live in a mild Pacific coast climate where winter barely even happens.
Do you have electric heaters too? I have an older car, basically zero difference with long drives, but the car doesnt heat at all until the engine gets warm.

There is a slightly higher fuel consumption in city driving, because it takes longer for the engine to heat up, and the idle rotations are usually higher when the engine is still below optimal temperature.

It is nowhere near this large of a difference.
> I wonder how a prolonged ride can affect the range.

It can make a huge difference. I noticed articles this year talking about how bad EV range is in very hot weather (>95F).

At first, I thought this was implausible. Then I looked at the data on some days where I had a lot of short trips interspersed with lots of cabin overheat protection and preconditioning. If I extrapolated from that, I'd have horrible range! I never noticed, because range never matters on days like that.

On a road trip in the same conditions, range has been pretty good.