built in exta mileage with in the battery?

[wycolo]

I babied the throttle even before the last 36 mile leg. But that leg, Kremmling on the Colorado River (6600 ft elevation) to Silverthorne (8600 ft), is upstream all the way into town. With the rolling hills it is easy to overlook the significant net climb going south.

I wonder if those who have reported being able to go well past ZERO were not in fact going down a gentle descent that somehow seemed to be level.

The way this played out for me was that I was a captive of Service Center directive; only they could read my %battery thus determine when I could best make a slooow dash the final miles to the SpC. Appears to be the intent of the new software upgrade and actually a good thing since SC stressed that a decent extra margin be achieved before venturing out on the roads. Left to my own devices were I able to continuously monitor %battery, I might have cut it dangerously close. Nonetheless it would have been neat to be able to monitor %battery from in the car.
--

 

[David99]

David,
part of the feature could be limit of 30-40kw power
kind of like limp mode

It would make a lot of sense, but I believe Tesla specifically stayed away from any feature that would be perceived as a weakness or shortcoming of the battery or car. Tesla sells performance and top comfort.

I would hope in the future Tesla has enough real world data (including elevation changes) from all roads and can predict how much energy you will need to reach your destination. It could give you a recommended speed right from the start and on every section of your trip to make sure you will arrive.

At the moment almost every modern navigation app (Waze, Google maps, TomTom) has real world data from every road at any given time of the day and can make a pretty good estimate on how long it will take. Some even use real time traffic. What's missing is the energy usage for EVs. Once there is enough data from is collected from all the Teslas on the road, this will be part of the navigation system. That's the only way to go. The current calculation based on 'rated range' is really poor and inaccurate.

 

[C.r. Moorehead]

I can tell you that I had a driver contact me from Plugshare - He showed up to my house with zero on the dash and said he had been driving 2 miles approx after zero - 2 things need to be discussed. First off - It is the WORST thing that you can do to the battery to drain it completely. Second - why would you want to chance it that close anyway? Is it people without Telsa's asking these questions? Are you the type of person to go 4500 miles before you changed your oil? My rule of thumb is "Pay now - or Pay LATER" I used to laugh at people driving high end mercedes and Range rovers - too cheap to change the oil and then the first to complain at a bill of 10k for a new replacement motor! LMAO! Ignorant idioits! Don't be dumb - charge your car - keep it 80% ish and enjoy life!

 

[wycolo]

For one thing 9000 mile oil/filter changes are routine today. Further, stuff will happen, so trying to understand the limits presented by software upgrades will benefit users.
--

 

[jerry33]

I can tell you that I had a driver contact me from Plugshare - He showed up to my house with zero on the dash and said he had been driving 2 miles approx after zero - 2 things need to be discussed. First off - It is the WORST thing that you can do to the battery to drain it completely.

The BMS will shut the car down before you drain it completely--even if you've driven a bit past zero. The trick when driving is to plan where you're going to stop and have a couple of alternates just in case--including some that are well before the destination in case "stuff happens". By planning, that doesn't mean finding a place that's 250 miles away to charge. Every 150 miles is what you should shoot for, and 220 miles is about the maximum planning distance in an 85 in good terrain and weather. Especially the first time going to a particular destination, being conservative is a virtue. Once you've gone to a destination once and know how the car will use energy, then you just have to check the weather, wind speed and direction.