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Yellow dotted line on power meter

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cinergi

Active Member
Sep 17, 2010
2,176
42
MA
Behavior when getting low on range

The lowest I've gone now is 20 miles left. The battery goes yellow around 30 and power is limited. I know others have had less. Would love to document what happens as you get to 0 ... can you keep driving all the way to 0? Past 0? Does power get limited even more as you get closer to 0? Details / pics please! Here's one to start:

photo 1 (1).JPG
 
The lowest I've gone now is 20 miles left. The battery goes yellow around 30 and power is limited. I know others have had less. Would love to document what happens as you get to 0 ... can you keep driving all the way to 0? Past 0? Does power get limited even more as you get closer to 0? Details / pics please! Here's one to start:

View attachment 11616

I got down to 5 miles with the same limits showing in your picture. It did not limit further at that range.
 
Coming back from a test road trip last night to visit B.I.L. where I got about 220 miles out of a range charge (mostly freeway driving and not too light on the pedal), the power limiting came on around 30 miles with the line at 320kW and gradually went down to the 160kW line.

Ran it down to a theoretical 2 miles in the neighborhood, and was surprised that it didn't limit power consumption further at such a low range, and had NO warnings other than the range indicator going from yellow to red at around 5 miles or less.

Was expecting some audio or more visible cue that I was about to be stranded on the side of the road. :scared:
 
More likely a high-contrast photo shot in low-light, exif data says with an iPhone... judging by the washed out colors on the headlight indicators and general image blur, I think the bars were the normal blue/green, just too bright for the phone's camera to properly capture.
 
The lowest I've gone now is 20 miles left. The battery goes yellow around 30 and power is limited.

Curious to know if the power is limited by design, or does it have something to do with the battery getting low (i.e. like a flashlight getting dim as the batteries wear out). I'm pretty sure it's the former and, if so, how much of an impact does this have on driving performance?
 
@Brianman: the 2400 Projected range number came at the end of a long, shallow descent from 9000' to 5000'.

@dflye: I don't think that's it: notice how in my photo the brightness of the speedo and power meter color bars is graduated from the zero point. There's no sign of that gradation in the first photo where the arcs in question show as bright white, right from the zero point.
 
Curious to know if the power is limited by design, or does it have something to do with the battery getting low (i.e. like a flashlight getting dim as the batteries wear out). I'm pretty sure it's the former and, if so, how much of an impact does this have on driving performance?

It looks like they do the same thing as the Roadster, limiting power by 50%. Essentially, it take the car from neck-snappingly-quick down to still-pretty-quick. You can still merge safely and pull away from stop lights reasonably, but it keeps you from sucking a huge chunk of your tiny remaining SOC budget by getting frisky, when you need to be just focused on hypermiling to that next EVSE. :wink:
 
It looks like they do the same thing as the Roadster, limiting power by 50%. Essentially, it take the car from neck-snappingly-quick down to still-pretty-quick. You can still merge safely and pull away from stop lights reasonably, but it keeps you from sucking a huge chunk of your tiny remaining SOC budget by getting frisky, when you need to be just focused on hypermiling to that next EVSE. :wink:
It's also to protect the batteries since internal resistance goes up as the SOC goes down. Rapid acceleration requires quicker discharge which when coupled w/ low SOC means more heat.
 
A - Limit consumption.
B - Limit regen.

Both triggered by weather conditions (too cold). B usually slides to around 40 kW, and then vanishes, as the car (battery) warms up.

With the temperature in the 40s (F) outside, I've been seeing B daily for a week or two now. Within 5 miles, it disappears.
I've only seen A once.

There's a "C" that shows up for speed when your SOC/range gets low. At least I think that's why. I've only seen it once, when my Projected (pre 4.0) range was < 10mi.