niche

I own a Tesla. Range anxiety is real. As someone mentioned, sucks if all chargers are full. Good daily but any type of road trip is not gonna happen.

VINK

I was disappointed with Model S 85D range couple of day back driving to JFK. Range with 250 miles before start, 60 miles to JFK with heated seats/steering wheel and 80 Deg the range left after reaching JFK was 123. At 72 Deg cabin temp, my feet were freezing. Had to get to the supercharger network at the airport before heading back.

928 GT R

Range anxiety is a fallacy?

Below is a cold (-10 deg Fahrenheit) situation for all of us who live in cold climates to consider.

Leave your heated garage in the morning fully charged with 265 miles of range, drive comfortably to work. You park outside and after work drive home (80 mile round trip). Shortly after arriving at home (car plugged in in the heated garage for 20 minutes) you hop back in and take your wife/date back to the city for the Olympic Speed Skating trials and then on to dinner with some corporate sponsors. After the trials, you get into the cold car heat it up and arrive at dinner with 140 miles of range remaining and a 40 mile journey home at 10 Below Zero F. You feel just fine with 140 miles left in the batteries.

When you leave the restaurant the valet brings the car up and since he knows you, he has the heated seats, steering wheel, defroster and heater turned on for you and your lovely wife/dates comfort.

Enter the chilly car with the sudden realization that the marginal heat generated in the vehicle cabin has sucked away nearly 30 miles of range. It's OK, you've got 110 miles left for the 40 miles home.

You've covered 25 of the miles home and run into a 35 mph ground blizzard and slow to a crawl with a surprising 70 miles of range remaining. Lo and behold - the road is then temporarily blocked by a Police cruiser holding traffic while a tow truck extricates a couple of vehicles that have ditched themselves.

An alternative version of Einesteins theory of relativity starts running through your head...

"Time travels at a speed directly proportional to which side of the bathroom door you are on" and "You are on the wrong side of the bathroom door!"

You've already turned off your heated seat and the steering wheel and turned down your chilled wife/dates heated seat (hoping she will not notice). She did notice, snd since she is also smart and observant has noticed your attention to the range gauge and, slightly increased breathing rate.

You are not a BS artist and are winter prepared, so you discuss the situation and hand her the fuzzy hat, down mittens and emergency blanket from the back seat, cut the heat and only supply it to the defroster to retain visibility.

Your wife/date is obviously uncomfortable and you now only have 30 miles of range to cover the 15 miles home. You are not moving...

Tick, Tick, Tick... time crawls by as your range inexorably falls to a startling 20 miles.

Finally, the road is cleared and you are released to run the frozen 15 mile gauntlet home.

Arriving home with ZERO miles left and chilled to the bone has taught you that "Range anxiety can be way too real".


note one: This is not a historically exact situation, but it could have been had this individual not switched to his ICE vehicle for the return trip to the city.
note two: This problem will disappear as charger access and range improve. For now, a clear awareness of E Cars decreased range in cold temperatures requires planning generous margins of safety.

Note three: I still want a Mission E with infinite power in zero time!


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unclewill

A friend of mine, in his younger years, went to help his buddies with a marijuana harvest in southern Utah because he had an FJ-40 Land Bruiser. The three of them were travelling back to Salt Lake in the truck, sitting on garbage bags filled with weed, when they stopped at the end of a long line of nearly stationary traffic on I-15. He glanced at his fuel gauge and it was planted on "E." Realizing they could not make it to the next exit at this rate, he drove up the shoulder past a mile of traffic to the ramp where they encountered a very angry UHP officer standing in the roadway. My friend frantically explained their desperate fuel situation to the officer who then WAVED THEM THROUGH!!
THAT is range anxiety.

Benjamin Cherry

unclewill

Today's EVs are best used for repetitive driving tasks such as commuting, a fixed circuit or bounded area coverage. Knowing daily mileage allows selection of the appropriate EV based on range.
Using an EV for anything else is like putting a square peg in a round hole thus resulting in anxiety.

Benjamin Cherry

Agree with the first statement. Using an EV for longer trips is both possible and a glimpse of the future. It requires planning and patience. I drove from CT to Washington, DC in moderate traffic and stopped twice to charge. I'm happy to be the guinea pig right now -- for the most part it has been okay.

The biggest downside I've experienced so far is that even when stopping to charge and e.g. occupy the time with a meal, one is limited by the food options near the charging station. There have definitely been times when I've had Red Robin and McDonald's when those would not have otherwise been my choice for food.

unclewill

How bad are hills on range? I need to go 263 miles on one charge but over one mountain pass (+3000 vertical feet). Would you try that in a Tesla? There are two supercharger locations on the route just in case. This is what I'm asking the Mission E to do.

Benjamin Cherry

I wouldn't trust any Tesla to do that. The 100D, with the heater off, and all range features enabled, could probably do it (but I'd be nervous in those last 40 miles). The D models (dual motor / AWD) have better range with the same battery than their rear-drive-only counterparts. I believe Tesla is moving toward making all of their vehicles dual motor / AWD.

I find the battery performance and overall efficiency to be far better in the summer regardless of heater, road conditions etc. I'm sure a chemist could handily explain why this is the case. As others have stated, the battery technology has a way to come yet to rival the range of ICE cars. Even 20% better battery efficiency and 20% better charger efficiency (numbers I think are on the foreseeable horizon) would make a big difference.

Tesla has dreams of supercharger stations that will automatically disconnect and then issue a command to the charged vehicle to move itself into an unoccupied non-charger space. This is practically possible now (needs a supercharger mod; the car has all the tech to do it) but most areas where superchargers are located haven't been explicitly designed for this purpose -- likely the largest hurdle.

This stuff is fun to think about, especially becuase I know that we who love (LOVE) the thrill of an engine roaring in front of, underneath, or behind us will pass it on to our progeny and keep the memory of today's cars alive. Our kids and grandkids will pay THROUGH THE NOSE in both purchase price and in probable taxes, but it won't die in the next hundred years at least. At least I hope not.

daveo4porsche

unclewill

OK, that is an awesome website! Thanks for the link! Looks like I'll need 100kWh capacity to comfortably make the trip...

wogamax

But 30 miles of range, to heat the cabin? At 10F, not -10F, I’d expect a Model S would need 60 miles of range, to go 40 miles, which means heating cabin and battery. Tesla leaves it to its customers to translate all this stuff, and I agree it’s not reasonable (See “Broder”). That said, your situation? Pretty extreme.

? He said there are superchargers on the route. That’s where Mission E falls down, and this becomes no problem for the Tesla and one 10 minute stop. Ultimately, 85KWh could do it non-stop but few would sooner give up ~70mph on a couple road-trips, rather than stick with what they know.

If I look at the whole picture, I think other issues with internal combustion engines (ICE) offset the range gap we could say batteries need to overcome. Besides, Model 3 is already 40% more efficient than Model S (I don’t like “MPGe”, but it’s good for ratios = 126/89). I think the point is to weigh each side.

I’m more worried about steering wheels becoming something we’ll memorialize. Honestly, because Porsche (et. al) are dragging their feet with EVs, makers pursuing EV are taking full advantage of forcing autonomous vehicles (AV). Just look at Model 3's dash. People aren’t all buying Tesla’s for the Autopilot. But if you already prefer luxury EV, to ICE on the street, you have no choice but to enable them. It sort of feels like everyone telling you what you’ll buy, but no one putting it together.

chuck911

This is a really good practical point. In addition to practical there's also the pleasure angle. One of the first things I started doing with PCA was Tours. A PCA Tour, in my region anyway, is almost always a full day of at least 300 miles driving. One of the first things I noticed, everyone meeting in the morning, it was a tough call which was more popular- coffee or gas. Our Tours are typically 30 to 50 cars. Good luck finding charging for even a fraction of that. Good luck if like a lot of people you have to drive 50 miles just to get to the start. And even come the Promised Utopia of charging stations galore dotting the landscape, good luck to getting people to come sit and spend a couple hours watching cars charge.

I will always recall how driving north out of Whistler, BC there is a very small town with the road out of town posted "No Service Next 275 Miles". Okay, its Canada. They use these things called meters instead of miles. No service next bazillion meters just doesn't have quite the same ring as 275 miles. Sure enough, not only was there no service, there was no nothing, just trees and rivers, hardly any cars even. Ran into a similar situation one time outside of Yosemite. 275 miles is just about the full range of a Boxster, or a lot of other Porsches, depending on how they're driven. Me in my 911SC, range to 400 miles (if I'm careful) didn't do nothing but make me smile. Mission E? Mission failure.

If the automobile is by definition a means of freedom of movement then electric cars simply have way too many limitations to qualify. Which, sad to say, is among the many reasons they're being forced on us anyway.

unclewill

Reality and the dreams people in cubicles all day long have are two different things. Electric cars are for the <300 mile daily slog most people actually use cars for, the Cayenne in the garage is for road trips with the family, the GT3 for canyon blasts.
For the record, no one is "forcing" an electric car on me!! I drove a Model S and quickly realized that the ICE is obsolete - and this is from a startup company with no car building experience. Now, task the best automotive engineers in the world to make the best electric car in the world and what do you think will happen? Well, as more Porsche execs drive the Mission E prototypes they all start saying the same thing - the entire Porsche range will be electrified by 2030. It is THAT GOOD! Personally, I can't wait!! : )
Read this interview with Oliver Blume:
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/comp...025-15178.html

daveo4porsche

when I've been on fun runs - the groups are broken into about 6-8 cars each - with a 30 min spacing between groups - also there are snack stops and lunch breaks lasting 20 mni to 60 minutes - with 30 minute spacing between groups and most fast charging locations having 8-40 spots - it would seem to me the perfect stopping place for planned stops - if you want to make it work I'm sure you could, and if you don't want to make it work I'm sure you can't - it all depends on the attitude you enter the planning with - 30 minutes @ 120,000 watts provides a lot of range - and if Porsche has their 800volt systems @ 350,000 watts a 20 min stop for 8 cars would be no problem to them move on...

also fast charging locations are growing not shrinking and soon this will be a moot point. I am both amused and frustrated that so many prognostications about why EV's will fail are rooted in the assumptions that the current state of the world is static, that we won't address the known short comings and that the only possible way this can work is if we exactly mimic what we currently have with fossil fuel based distribution systems - it took 100's of years for this infrastructure to become what it is today - EV's will follow a similar path and then it will be non-issue - and having done nearly 200,000 miles in EV and road trips - it's really not even that bad today.

there is plenty of ways to conduct a fun run with an EV and I think the stops and activities wouldn't actually be all the different - the difference would be the refueling would happen during the stops…and stops would be at a fast charging site.