Made a long trip in the P85D, only got 190miles on full charge

Fezzik · Apr 27, 2015

I did a trip from where I live in northern Chicago to Paducah, KY and back. I had to stop at Country Club Hill, IL to supercharge to 100 percent (going to Paducah) since this is my first long trip.
1.) 100 percent charge
2.) Full car: 2 adults, 6,5,3,1 year old. 1 carry on size suit case. Case of mushrooms and a case of Chinese Squash. (just carry on, on the way back)
3.) First trip was 4pm to 1am roughly, second trip was 9ish to 5ish
4.) 21" tires at 44 psi

The navigation kept on wanting me to go to Aurora, IL then to Normal, IL. I had to manually put in country club hill. I set the TACC for 70mph (speed limit). i made it there with only 1 percent left on the car (2 miles) I was sweating it a little. I have 4 kids in the car and the idea of being stranded in the middle of the night with 4 kids did not seem like a pleasant night. I supercharged at Effingham to 100 percent as well. that went well. I was averaging 370-385 Wh/mi I figured at 70 i'd get better than that. I thought maybe it was elevation. Same thing happened on the way back. I supercharged to 100 percent at effingham and i had 1 mile left pulling into Country club hill.
I know there is speculation that the cruise can actually waste more energy, but I really not behind anyone almost the whole way.

My 5 year daughter in the back got sick 3 times in the car (My kids luckily know how to toss their cookies into a gallon garbage bag and not all over the car). Not car sick. We think she has a stomach virus. She's been sick all day and night even at home.

What do you guys think. On par or should I have gotten better? range mode and sport mode was on. No heat. Ev trip planner said net elevation change of -312 feet going to paducah and positive coming back.

hiroshiy · Apr 27, 2015

Was the range mode on? If off, P85D will have those numbers. Also climate control?

Fezzik · Apr 27, 2015

Range mode was on and climate was off going down and a/c coming up.

drrex1 · Apr 27, 2015

Try testing your driving technique workout family on board. I have 19 inch wheels use 50psi now (before was 45) you may try to bump psi to 46, 47. Note effect on ride.

Try gently gaining speed down hill then feathering uphill (even 3-4mph range). TACC will use a f as ir amount of pier trying to maintain speed up hills.

My P85D with 19s does hyermile well I've done 5 and 10 mile stretches level at 52-55mph avg 160-170 wh/mi 55-62 avg 200 wh/mi.

Try slowing down 65-67 mph. You after pretty loaded. I had rear facing seats in my P85. Kids didn't like them after novelty wore off.

purplewalt · Apr 27, 2015

If better range is your goal, you might consider trying to drive at a slower rate of speed (than 70 mph).
There are multiple threads (Cottonwood and wk057) with P85D's getting close to if not better than 300 miles out of a single charge averaging 237 Wh/mi (and less).
Even just how you bring the car to speed is important to bettering driving range: slow and steady yields best results.
Various drivers have gotten this down to a near science with practice (jerry33).
Bumping your tire pressure will aid your range: try 48 psi.

Driving with 21's will yield less range than 19's.

Also, driving with cruise control ON is detrimental to achieving maximum range.

arg · Apr 28, 2015

Fezzik said:
i made it there with only 1 percent left on the car (2 miles) I was sweating it a little.

Did you use the trip range display? I find this feature (introduced in 6.1) a huge benefit in avoiding "sweating it" - much more so than the stuff introduced in 6.2 with all the publicity.

With your destination set in the nav, simply open the 'trip' tab on the energy graph and look at the lowest percentage (and graph colour) - if it's dipping into red and you aren't nearly there, you need to slow down. If the percentage shown is increasing, you can think about going faster; if it's decreasing you need to go slower. I like to slow down until I've turned it from red to yellow, then keep it like that, perhaps speeding up over the last 15-20 miles to burn that margin if I know where I'm going and the traffic looks good.

Much easier and more accurate than the mental arithmetic on miles to go and remaining range that used to be necessary...

andrewket · Apr 28, 2015

I have found achieving 200+ miles on the P85D doable, but more difficult than on a P85+ with single motor. Range mode is a must. Changing your speed from 70 to 65 actually makes a big difference. However, arriving at an SC with 2 miles is a badge of honor.

sublimaze1 · Apr 28, 2015

drrex1 said:
Try slowing down 65-67 mph. You after pretty loaded. I had rear facing seats in my P85. Kids didn't like them after novelty wore off.

+1/+1

I find that my 85 "cuts" air up to 67-69 and pushes it from 70+ ... I also found that windspeed is a big factor in long range hypermiling. So if you have a 15mph head or cross wind, driving 60mph can be 75mph and put you in that high 300's usage range.

The rear seats are a HUGE failure IMHO and I wish I had not gotten them. Too hot, space taken up, and yes ... a novelty.

svp6 · Apr 28, 2015

I did a return trip to Chicago this weekend too - alone in the car (but not a light feather). I averaged 330 Wh/mi on the way there, going slightly above speed limit (~72 mph). On the way back there was really bad weather in Illinois and first part of Wisconsin (heavy rain, some headwind), but still managed to get 370 Wh/mi going ~68 mph. From Madison back to home was the first time I saw my p85D go under 300 Wh/mi - at that level you go better than rated range. I used TACC throughout the trip. My guess is you probably had a lot of headwind, which would explain the high usage.
As a side note, can someone explain why the trip meter and energy app are so different (30 miles average was at one point 280 Wh/mi, but the trip meter was at 298 Wh/mi

arg · Apr 28, 2015

svp6 said:
As a side note, can someone explain why the trip meter and energy app are so different (30 miles average was at one point 280 Wh/mi, but the trip meter was at 298 Wh/mi

They are not normally directly comparable of course - unless you are checking precisely 30 miles into a trip. One other factor is that the 'since last charge' (if that's the trip meter you were looking at) seems to include some or all of your energy use while parked: half a mile down the road I often see 1000+ Wh/mile on account of heater use before setting off.

Cottonwood · Apr 28, 2015

190 miles at 70 mph in any 85 on 21's and loaded is a stretch.

As others have said, if you had slowed down just a little, you would have had better reserves. At your highway speeds of 70 mph, every 1 mph that you slowed down would have given you 1.5 to 2% more reserves.

I like to use the energy prediction page with the destination set. (Don't use the 5,15,30 page average) It does a good job extrapolating the last 5 miles or so to the end of the trip. If the prediction is too low for comfort, slow down a few mph, drive 5 miles and check again, repeat until you are comfortable with the predicted reserve. It only takes small corrections at the beginning of a trip to have a significant effect on the outcome.

TACC can go both ways on energy use. It often will use more than a human driver, but for steady driving on empty, flat interstates, it will usually beat the human in efficiency.

apacheguy · Apr 28, 2015

How many kWh did you pull for each leg?

Fezzik · Apr 28, 2015

My main screen I had the nav showing how much longer I had to go and the energy trip meter on. When it first started it was 9 percent then on the highway it started dropping to -1. I kept at it and it went to +1 percent. I really kept my eye on that and based my driving on that. My plan was if it started dipping below 1 i'd slow down more but it stayed there. On the way back i really just focused on that graph and made sure it stayed +. It was a little nerve racking when going up hills it would dip to 0 or -1 but hten go back to +1. Def kept me awake for the trip.

The total energy was 152.8kWh
Avg energy was 380Wh/mi
Distance was 401.9

This was for the whole trip from Paducah back to Chicago.

Owner · Apr 28, 2015

I've been x-country and did go through Paducah too....

Anyways what I do is primarily pay attention on the screen to my Wh/mile. 380 is quite high to me. I don't know if this is because you have a D. I have averaged 326 for 40K miles. I found in the midwest and east it was easy to get lower Wh/mile because of the flats.

the trip prediction is a bit dangerous

Road Trip Testing the New Trip Planner | TESLA OWNER

After I wrote that a week ago, I keep thinking of the family that got stranded in the snow 10 years ago for weeks on end....

dsm363 · Apr 28, 2015

Fezzik said:
My main screen I had the nav showing how much longer I had to go and the energy trip meter on. When it first started it was 9 percent then on the highway it started dropping to -1. I kept at it and it went to +1 percent. I really kept my eye on that and based my driving on that. My plan was if it started dipping below 1 i'd slow down more but it stayed there. On the way back i really just focused on that graph and made sure it stayed +. It was a little nerve racking when going up hills it would dip to 0 or -1 but hten go back to +1. Def kept me awake for the trip.

The total energy was 152.8kWh
Avg energy was 380Wh/mi
Distance was 401.9

This was for the whole trip from Paducah back to Chicago.

Personally, I would probably want to keep a bigger buffer than 1% as you never know what might happen. It could rain, you could hit a head wind.....etc. As said above, dropping to 65mph would have helped a lot.

Fezzik · Apr 28, 2015

I had the Wh/mi on my dash watching it as well.
I did warn the wife that we may have to make some of the trip at a slower speed but i would do it toward the later half of the trip if the bar dipped too low into the negative on the graph. I was just hoping for a little more with the torque sleep.

Nice article!

Owner · Apr 28, 2015

I typically do it in reverse -- stay near the speed limit at first (saving energy), then near the end relax and speed up. That way there is less human stress.

Thanks!

Fezzik said:
I had the Wh/mi on my dash watching it as well.
I did warn the wife that we may have to make some of the trip at a slower speed but i would do it toward the later half of the trip if the bar dipped too low into the negative on the graph. I was just hoping for a little more with the torque sleep.

Nice article!

Cottonwood · Apr 28, 2015

Fezzik said:
My main screen I had the nav showing how much longer I had to go and the energy trip meter on. When it first started it was 9 percent then on the highway it started dropping to -1. I kept at it and it went to +1 percent. I really kept my eye on that and based my driving on that. My plan was if it started dipping below 1 i'd slow down more but it stayed there. On the way back i really just focused on that graph and made sure it stayed +. It was a little nerve racking when going up hills it would dip to 0 or -1 but hten go back to +1. Def kept me awake for the trip.

The total energy was 152.8kWh
Avg energy was 380Wh/mi
Distance was 401.9

This was for the whole trip from Paducah back to Chicago.

That is the screen that I was recommending, but if you had slowed down a few mph from the start, you could have easily changed the arrival estimate to more like 10%. My minimum is to aim for a 5-10% buffer at the destination; most people consider that tight! I am willing to take an extra 10-15 minutes in drive time to have a reasonable buffer on arrival. With the wife and kids in the car, I probably would have aimed for 10-15% buffer. You cut it very close!!!

For example, my regular long drive in Colorado is Pagosa-Silverthorne and back. Salida is a little closer to Silverthorne, but a nice mid-point with a 70 Amp charger; on the other hand, it adds 5 miles and stopping time. In good weather with no expected problems ahead, I won't pass Salida unless I have a 10% or better prediction for the destination. If the weather is bad, my reserve requirements go up from there. When there are blizzards active on the passes, my personal minimum has gone as high as 25%; for severe blizzards, I would make it even higher. So far, for severe days, I have just rescheduled the drive...

brianman · Apr 28, 2015

Fezzik said:
I was just hoping for a little more with the torque sleep.

I lost track. Has torque sleep been released to customers yet?

MarcG · Apr 28, 2015

brianman said:
I lost track. Has torque sleep been released to customers yet?

Yep it's been almost 3 months now! :biggrin:

To the OP: I didn't see this anywhere in this thread, but do you remember what was the external temperature during your drives?
Cold weather definitely affects range in a very negative way as the battery needs to stay above a certain temp, so heating it consumes quite a bit of energy.

For example, I drove 136 miles in 10ºF weather back in December and it took 167 rated miles, even though I was driving 53.7 mph on average.
The only time I drove from 100% (252 RM) to 1% (2 RM) was pre-torque sleep, and I only managed to go 172.3 miles, however I averaged 72.8 mph and external temps were 54ºF average.

Since torque sleep, I drove 184.7 miles from 100% to 11% and was driving fast down I-5, averaging 77.4 mph. Temperatures of 66ºF average definitely helped.
BTW all these points of data are for very little elevation changes. Check out the data here:

P85D Uninterrupted Hwy Trip Data - Google Sheets

Made a long trip in the P85D, only got 190miles on full charge

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