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The quest for the ultimate efficiency.

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I have been trying to see what I can do to improve efficiency with my 2022 Model 3 Performance. I changed from the 20” Uberheavy wheels to 18” wheels with Michelin PS4S tires and that helped efficiency significantly. It was an almost 6% improvement in efficiency over stock @ 60 mph average speed.

However, I really wanted to recover the range I had lost from degradation. My Teslogic app is showing 12.3% degradation when reading the Canbus data.

Therefore, I switched to 235/45/18 Hankook iON EVO AS tires and that gave me almost 10% more gain in efficiency over the stock 20” wheels and tires in my controlled testing. However, that was with brand spanking new tires and full tread depth.

I have been able to break the tires in now and finally on my daily commute this morning I hit basically the best efficiency I think I will ever get.

Temperatures have warmed up and the battery was at the ideal 72.5 degrees F when I started. Temperatures outside have warmed up quickly so my tire pressures were a little high at 34 psi cold and 36 psi warm. There was no wind at all.

I achieved 130 wh/mi in a Model 3 Performance for 12 miles in 13 minutes. I always record my GPS average speed and it was 54.2 mph because of construction on the highway.

This is definitely the most efficient I have ever been and probably ever will achieve. The efficiency has definitely improved as these tires have worn down slightly. I will try to do my controlled testing with it again to see if I can beat the 202 wh/mi I originally got with the new tires @ 60 mph average GPS speed in my controlled testing.

We have much slower speed limits on highways in my area so that really allows the efficiency improvements of different tires to shine. The lower the speeds the bigger the rolling resistance impact is. At higher speeds rolling resistance still matters some but not nearly as much as drag coefficient does then.

I know these aren’t realistic numbers for most people that have much higher speed limits but it is interesting to see that I have pretty much negated the effects of degradation just by swapping the wheels and tires out.

I can easily average 220 wh/mi or less each month now. That should allow me well over 300 miles of range in a Model 3 Performance even with the degradation.

Ironically, I still drag race often with these All Season tires and my times are less than .1 seconds slower than they were with the lighter Michelin PS4S tires.

I even won $1,000 for winning my category at the last event so that paid for the tires.😉

We officially got 0.0 inches of snow this year so I can’t comment on their winter handling but they were great even in the chilly rains that we got. Much better than the summer only tires would have been.

If anyone can get better efficiency than this with a Model 3 Performance then definitely let us know what you did to achieve that.

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