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Turns Out “Brodering” The S Is Hard Work!

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Ok, so I’m sure I’m not the only one finding themselves compelled to test the limits of their S as of late. Yesterday I decided to try and intentionally run the car into the ground. I started with a “cold soaked” battery (sat unplugged all night while our other EV charged, temp in the 30's), plugged it in for about an hour then started driving with a 50% charge. Drove at highway speeds, jockeying with some of the faster cars, with the heat set to 71F and seat heater at max, 550 Watt stereo blasting, from Shoreline WA out to Bellevue, then down to Tacoma WA on out to Gig Harbor. I still had plenty of range to get home so I turned both seat heaters on, cranked the heat to max, put on the defroster and hot footed it back to Shoreline, round trip was about 130 miles. I arrived home with a surprising bit of range left and had to resort to driving the car in circles in our neighborhood, I kid you not. Finally the car got down to 1 mile of rated range so I pulled it into the stables and gave it a nice long drink. I almost have more sympathy for the likes of Top Gear and Broder, they apparently really had to put some effort into their stunts!

Funny business aside, it was interesting to see a third line form, a checkered yellow line that shows how the BMS progressively limits output. It's kind of like Nissan's turtle, accept it lets you down easy. Anyone take it down past zero and care to report how it progresses, does the line just gradually keep going down to zero or does it suddenly drop off at some point? I figure better understanding how the car reacts in extreme circumstances will help me feel more confident taking it out on long trips.
 
It's not that hard. I was debating on where to put my trip report for the night (as I covered a few different things), so I'll put it here for now and I'm sure them mods will tear their hair out trying to figure out where it belongs...

Random trip report, 2013/02/16

As part of "generally getting into the EV thing", I've been wanting to check out some of the charging locations. So I printed out the PDF here:
http://www.westcoastgreenhighway.com/images/WA_OR_EVMap.pdf
and marked all the page 2 Washington locations that are orange (exist!) on page 1. I think did some internet map querying to identify the distance to each charger from Redmond, and marked the distance and compass direction from Redmond.

Tonite I decided to go north to visit Burlington and then Bellingham. I started with 219 mi Rated at ~7:15 pm. On my way out, I sighted another Model S and we both ended up trekking on I-5 for a bit, but he had the HOV advantage so it was challenging to keep up -- though I did. ;)
AnotherModelS_StartOfTrip.jpg



Burlington

You can't tell from my horrible picture, but the white part of the sign says something like "EV charging here".
Burlington1.jpg

Burlington2.jpg

Burlington3.jpg


Burlington had 2 Chargepoint (fee) and 2 AeroVironment (free). All 4 chargers were ready and unoccupied. I don't have the AV keyfob yet and didn't call them until after I started charging on the Chargepoint (so I "wasted" like $2, "oh noes").

I arrived ~8:30 pm with 137 mi. Rated. Stayed til 8:47pm, using the 30A/202V Chargepoint and left with 140 mi. Rated.


On my way to Bellingham, I had an interesting encounter with someone that was incapable of comprehending or unwilling to comply with posted signs that clearly indicated that the left lane was for passing only. He was camped out at 62mph in a 70mph. When I finally had enough room to pop out, I pushed it to 95mph. Claustrophobia solved. I figured I'd be alone for a bit, but alas no. The guy behind me was apparently curious WTF vehicle just did that. He caught up to me as I was dropping to 74mph cruise control and I could see his passenger wide-eyed and my impression was that she was trying to answer the driver's query, "What car is that?" He hovered next to me for a bit and then advanced past me at about 76mph.


Anyway, on to Bellingham. I didn't take any pictures, and no charge available since a Volt was settled in for the night on the single AV charger.

I arrived at 9:15pm with 108 mi. Rated. I spent about 15 minutes exploring Recargo for any charging locations with food nearby. (Burlington had a Shari's but it was a long walk so I passed at the time.) I left at 9:30pm with 106 mi. Rated.


Nothing appealed so I just headed home (I-5S, I-405S) with my home on the Nav so I could measure Rated against distance to go. I started out 9 miles ahead, with cruise control on. As it gradually lowered to 4 miles ahead, I disabled cruise control and worked my way back up to 6 miles ahead. As the speed limit toggles between 60 and 70, it became clear that I'd be "the annoying slow guy" if I was going to make it home. So I decided to head to Bellevue for the Tesla Roadster charger.

I arrived at the mall with 5 mi. Rated. The charger with the S adapter was occupied, by what I later recognized as the test drive vehicle for the store. Since I didn't recognize it immediately as such, I rolled around to the Chargepoint station. Started up the 30A charge and headed upstairs for a (very) late dinner, casually eating for about 40 minutes, and came back to enough charge to get home but not enough to have fun making that trip -- 17 mi.

As I pondered my options a bit (wait longer, head out, something else?), I had a good look at the Roadsters in the Tesla parking area (pwetty!) and then noticed the dealer plates. I was surprised I could see the amount of charge on the vehicle -- I expected the displays to be dark. Seeing a range over 200 mi., I decided to try unplugging and was succcesful. Moments later I whipped my car around and connected up. Ah, the joys of 70A. Now, how to spend the time...

1. Charger working
2. Seat heater on 1
3. Climate control at toasty (73)
4. Set phone alarm for 30 minutes
5. Create driver profile "Nap"
6. Move steering wheel forward
7. Move seat back and as flat as it'll go
8. Engage nap
9. Alarm goes off
10. Reset alarm for another 20 minutes
11. Start to fade
12. Hear voices, clearly talking about the Tesla gathering (2 roasters, 2 Ss)

~40 mi Rated. Enough to get home comfortably and enjoyably.

At this point I decide to wake up and have some Tesla time. The voices were a nice couple taking in the view of the Model S. I tried my best not to startle them as I rolled down the passenger window and began a conversation that lasted...well...I'm not sure how long. Someone will do the math. I left with 65 mi. Rated.

All in all an enjoyable adventure.
 
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reading through your post, a few things came to me, one is that driving 95 mph even for a short time will eat up range quick, second, trying to charge "on the go" at an L2/30A rate is understandably relatively unproductive, the third thing and something I'm just beginning to get the distinction of is the difference between charging to "max range" vs driving with the climate control in "Range Mode", two very different things. I'm sure it's been gone over here quite a bit but this is something that I hope all the folks testing out the S get when it comes to trying to get the most out of one's drive. it appears that "Range Mode" substantially reduces the extent to which climate control takes a bite out of the range (perhaps limiting the car just to the heat pump?) and with a bit of prewarming of the car while on shore power, has little effect on comfort. Getting the hand of the Leaf's climate control took some serious study, so over two years I found some work around to limiting CC use and keeping the car from fogging up for freezing. Within a day or two of getting the S I tried a few things to deal with the fogging and quickly realized that leaving the climate control in "Range mode" and setting the temp to sync passenger and driver while keeping the mode set to defog, with power defrost off, all combined to keep the windows clear, the cabin warm and have little effect on range. Just passing that on, it is clear to me, if you want to max the range even in the S, it helps to set everything to a low simmer while still maintaining comfort and convenience. If used liberally, the climate control of the Leaf can eat half the cars range, it's quite stunning.

It's not that hard. ...
2. Seat heater on 1
3. Climate control at toasty (73)
...
All in all an enjoyable adventure.

did you have the climate control set to "range mode"?

- - - Updated - - -

To answer OP's question about 0 miles remaining (old firmware though). I drove about 1 mile, maybe less, at that range...

thanks! does the new firmware leave more "invisible range" or is zero still pretty much zero?
 
do you or anybody know if someone has done a definitive analysis of just how much less energy having the HVAC set to Range Mode makes? I don't know if the ease with which I'm extending the range is any one thing or all of the above, or luck or what. Maybe learning how to drive the Leaf and get 85 highway miles out of a 24 kW battery, with elevation gain, is subconsciously effecting how I drive the S, it would be nice to know... also, we have not seen super cold temps here this winter.

For that trip, nope.