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Tesla Distance Record

27K views 54 replies 9 participants last post by  RIPPERTON 
#1 ·
So whats the longest distance travelled in one day by one driver in a Telsa ?
 
#2 ·
Bjorn Nyland and his friend Morgan Torvolt did 452.8 miles over an 18 hour 40 minute period. This was in Morgan's P85D which does a little better than Bjorns P85 because the smaller motors are more efficient and when in range mode the rear motor goes into what is called Torque sleep unless needed. Bjorn made a video of this event which can be found on youtube.

More recently Corey Spencer did 550 miles on a charge by going 22 mph for over 24 hours. He still had some charge left.

Both of these were done in places with minimal elevation change.

You could probably beat these records with a 90 kWh battery equipped car.
 
#9 ·
Nope, Im not talking about how far you can go on one charge.
Im talking about how far you can drive in one day at highway speeds using superchargers. Just to show that electric vehicles can cover as much ground as gas cars.
I dont think the Tesla was intended or designed to be driven at 20mph plus I think that would make Elon roll his eyes.
No one has ever said this but the Model S is a Grand touring car, yes a "GT" in the true sense of the word.
Corey Spencer hasnt realised it yet but he has achieved world wide SuperDweeb status. boring.....
 
#11 ·
That is a very different thing. I have taken two long road trips. First was from Rapid City, SD to Salem Oregon. This is 1253 miles if you don't have to get off the highways. I did this in two long days. About 23 hours of total travel time which includes the Supercharging. If you did it head down full steam ahead in an ICE you can do it in a little over 20 hours. You can speed if you charge a little longer at each stop but when your speed gets to 85+ mph and the superchargers are far apart your overall travel time does not go down because the charge rate drops considerably when the battery gets full.

What you find is that your car is almost always ready to go before you are at the charging stops. Rest room breaks and purchase of food and beverages takes long enough that your 15-20 minutes of required supercharger time is done before you get back.

I would guess that you could find a route that would let you do 1400 miles in a 24 hour period.

My other trip was from Rapid City, SD to Ann Arbor Michigan (1156 miles). This took longer because of the traffic in the Chicago area.

Road tripping in a Model S is a pleasure. The Nav system pretty much takes care of all the charge planning.
 
#12 ·
Well we just happen to have renta Tesla here in Sydney and Ive booked the Model S 70 for Saturday. $635AUD unlimited km.
Planned trip is Sydney Melbourne Sydney inside 24h.
Its all highway and there are 5 Superchargers along the way including the Tesla dealership in Melbourne.
Im going to be bottom charging because the chargers seem to work harder and only put in enough charge to get to the next SC.
Sydney, Goulburn, Gundagai, Wodonga, Euroa, Melbourne and return = about 1830km. Could be charging for about 3.5h and use nearly 200kWh.
The trip will be documented on the EVEEH facebook page and here if I can find WiFi near the Superchargers.
heres the rental site.
https://www.eveeh.com.au/
and FaceBook
https://www.facebook.com/eveehcars/
 
#13 ·
Keep in mind that cold temps, non dry road surface, and wind will affect range. If you speed that too will adversely affect range. The car will tell you to slow down to a certain speed if it doesn't think you will make it. The planner wants you to have 10% when you arrive. It starts to nag when you get to 6% estimated. I would give it an additional 10% charge at least for the first couple of hops until you get a feel for how good a job it is doing.

One last tip is to avoid supercharging first thing in the morning when it is cold. It takes a lot longer. Charge the night before so it is ready in the morning when you want to take off.
arge
Have fun!
 
#16 ·
Jeez !...i can think of better ways of blowing $600+ In 24 hrs :D
I hope you dont get stuck with a defunct Supercharger half way down the Hume ! The Dog on the Tuckerbox is pretty cold at 3am :eek:
I hope you have 2-3 drivers, that road is like driving down a runway in the dark...booring !
My last Sydney-Melbourne dash in a fossilburner was 9 hours...with a trailer full of stuff...and that was to St Kilder ( south of the city)
On a very loosly connected theme ( cars, distance, records , etc)...
.....Is $300 a record for a tank top up ?:eek:
( WA/Outback fuel prices are somewhat...errr? Expensive !)
 
#21 · (Edited)
How many charge sessions ?..8, 9, ??
How long on charge in total ?
I hope they didnt charge you extra for that 25th hour !
Was 27.5 hours to be exact.
10 charge sessions averaging 45min each, totalling 453 minutes (7h33min)
And YES they actually want to charge me for 2 whole days ! but Im settling for $1000. I originally payed $635 but they delivered the car the previous evening and didnt stipulate that I couldnt start driving untill 5am which is when they normally would have delivered the car.

All in all it was an awesome experience in extreme Grand Touring / Endurance driving and I drove the f%#@&ng wheels off that car like a BOSS yO :D
 
#19 · (Edited)
Due to time restrictions the EVEEH team couldnt get the Tesla fully charged up in time for the delivery. They would usually deliver the car as early as 5am but this time had to deliver it 10.30pm the previous evening....with 170km range in the pack so I tried to charge it with the 240v 10A wall outlet. Didnt get enough charge into it to actually make it to Goulburn plus in the cold weather, you actually need about 35km extra range to get where you are going. I didnt know this when I started my trip and realised I wasnt going to make it so half way to Goulburn I pulled over at a Service Station ! yes where those outdated gas guzzling ICE vehicles go and plugged into another 240v wall outlet....in the toilet block and trickled a few km into it. I made it to Goulburn with about 6km to spare.
2am Zero km

Charging at home

Charging at the Service Station

Charging at Goulburn

Charging at Gundagai

Tire pressure warning. Pressures actually dropped because of the extreme cold temps 1 degree C

Charging at Wodonga

Charging at Euroa. This is a tricky one, notice theres 2 charge points with only 1 power source. The first car in gets current priority. When I arrived here there was another Tesla in the left bay so when I went to start charging I only got up to about 85A until the other guy came out of the restaurant and unplugged his car then 30 seconds later my car went up to 360A. Apparently all SuperCharger stations are like this. Goulburn for example has 8 chargers but only 4 power supplies.

Charging at Melbourne Dealership

Reaching the 24 hour mark half way between Goulburn and Sydney
 
#20 ·
Heres a cheat for that annoying hands on wheel warning sign that comes up on the dash when using AutoPilot. You prop your leg up under the wheel just hard enough to still let the wheel turn but the warmth from your leg will make the car think you have your hands on the wheel. This way you have your hands free.

5.20am the next day with 1848km on the clock.
 
#22 ·
On the return leg from Wodonga to Gundagai I started with 290km range, drove 196km and it showed 29km range left.
Now 290km minus 196km is 94km so there was an error factor of 65km.
It was 2 degrees Celcius in Gundagai.
I averaged 215 Wh/km accross the whole trip which is pretty good for a 2.4 tonne luxury sedan.
BUT half the time the heater wouldnt work and no amount of frigging with the dials would get it to spit out a bit of warm air. I froze !
 
#23 · (Edited)
Although Im not totally sold on AutoPilot I am now an off throttle regen convert. (sorry Metro)
The way Tesla has the OTR setup it works well and is very usable.
Its good to be able to use 1 foot to control both regen and throttle because it cuts down reaction time.
Only problem is at normal traffic and even highway speed it pretty much limited to 50kW and when you go to the brake pedal for more brakes theres no increase of regen even if you just touch the brake pedal lightly.
The brakes themselves are excellent. There is a very short solid pedal stroke and they are very powerful as you would expect with those massive discs.
 
#24 · (Edited)
So roughly speaking you were doing 2 hour (200km) driving stints between recharges ?
...Which is about all you would normally want to do in any car on a long trip like that.
And its a lot better than the first time Tesla demo roadster drove from Melb to Sydney...taking 4 days to do the trip due to the lack of charge points !
BUT.. I would not call that "GrandTouring" performance, from a $150k car, where you might expect to blat on at max speed only stopping for fuel/toilet/refreshments.
No heater ??... Is that a Tesla firmware energy saving ..get you to the next charge point...function ?.....or some problem with that particular vehicle ?
If the latter, i would want a refund !
....and if its a Tesla intentional design,...then again that is not GT Luxury style !
 
#25 ·
I just recalculated the 24h distance with the "lost time" removed.
I lost a total of 181 minutes in the first leg due to low charge and the 2 Melbourne legs due to traffic by going the city streets instead of the highway.
In all the "good" legs I averaged 1.8km per minute so that equates to 325km.
1667km plus 325km = 1992km !
Dammit I want to go do it again now :eek:
 
#26 ·
This is a screenshot from the owners GPS app during my Sydney Melbourne drive. I suppose you could rig up a video cam in front of your pc to time lapse shots over the whole 24 hours and have a GPS movie or real time it over a web cam.
The entire trip was logged by Tesla but that data wouldnt be released because it could only be read by an IT analyst.
 
#27 ·
Ripp, im struggling to make this add up...:confused:
You said you were charging for 453 min in total.
That would leave you 987 mins of actual drive time for a 24 hr period
At 1.8 km per min avarage that only gives a max possible of 1,777 km ?
...or 1,810 if you managed to keep up the 110km/hr average !
.. I hope you were not being naughty with the cruise control ?:D
 
#28 · (Edited)
The 453 minutes included the final 90 minute charge session at StLeonards which was outside the 24h period so it would be 363 minutes (6 hours)over 24 hours. So I was driving for 18 hours to make the 1667km which is an average of 92kmh (1.53km/minute) which is pretty crap. I sometimes set the cruise control to 120kmh but mostly had it at 115kmh.
I had the cruise control set to 115kmh just south of Wodonga and the road side speed checker said 113kmh so 120kmh would be around 118kmh in a 110kmh zone which would rarely attract any attention from the Highway Patrol.
The type of pace Im ideally looking for is about 1.85km/minute or 111km/h which would get me 2000km in 18 hours of driving (charging excluded)
 
#31 · (Edited)
I might as well start complaining about this car which BTW is amazingly well sorted for a virtually new product from a startup automotive manufacturer.
I bet Ford and Holden wish they could make cars this reliable and fault free.
Firstly the most important issue is the cruise control.
The CC uses too much throttle / power resuming its preset speed after being held up by a slower car, ie its too lead footed and inefficient. It should be limited to 50kW but I have seen it sometimes use up to 125kW. Also cant rmbr seeing a Power / Economy setting.

Next is Climate Control
There is a switch called A/C (on / off) This is actually for the Climate Control which incorporates the heater.
Traditional automotive language which we are all used to defines A/C as cooling only. So the problem here is if its freezing cold outside you are trying to save energy and you go looking through the settings pages and see A/C ON you think shit, better switch that off to save energy but then suddenly the heater doesnt work any more ???
So the A/C switch should be renamed Climate Control. This gives the average motorist a better idea that this switch also has something to do with the heater. When designing a vehicle you should make it possible for a person to get in and drive it without needing special training.

Third is the dome / map light. This is a micro complaint and just an annoyance. When switching the map light off there is a delay. Your hand is almost back on the steering wheel before the light actually goes out.
This distracts you from driving for a second as you think why didnt the light go out when I switched it off ??? then it goes out just as you start thinking about lifting your hand up there again to switch it off again. Its an engineered delay and should not exist.

There Im all finished whining for now but rest assured Ill think of some more stuff soon or during my next record attempt.
 
#33 · (Edited)
I might as well start complaining about this car which BTW is amazingly well sorted for a virtually new product from a startup automotive manufacturer.
These cars are so good that it makes the flaws really stand out. I have quite a list of things that should not be wrong.

Firstly the most important issue is the cruise control.

The CC uses too much throttle / power resuming its preset speed after being held up by a slower car, ie its too lead footed and inefficient. It should be limited to 50kW but I have seen it sometimes use up to 125kW. Also cant rmbr seeing a Power / Economy setting.
I agree. My other complaint about cruise is that it is twitchy. It is trying far to hard to hold a given speed. You can feel it constantly trying to match the set speed. You can see it hunting on the kW display.

Next is Climate Control
There is a switch called A/C (on / off) This is actually for the Climate Control which incorporates the heater.
Traditional automotive language which we are all used to defines A/C as cooling only. So the problem here is if its freezing cold outside you are trying to save energy and you go looking through the settings pages and see A/C ON you think shit, better switch that off to save energy but then suddenly the heater doesnt work any more ???
So the A/C switch should be renamed Climate Control. This gives the average motorist a better idea that this switch also has something to do with the heater. When designing a vehicle you should make it possible for a person to get in and drive it without needing special training.
This one I never had a problem with. If you want to turn off the the cooling you hit the AUTO setting tab just above the Climate Control on/off control and a pop up will appear allowing you to control individual aspects of the climate control system. You can turn off just the cooling which of course dries the air to prevent the windows from fogging. When it is really cold (below freezing) and you have range mode selected it will get cold. Tesla seems afraid of running the fan fast enough. When really cold I force it to recirculate the air and turn up the fan speed. If the windows start to fog then I switch to fresh air for a minute. Range mode limits the heater output and I think it almost completely disables the battery pack heating loop. I didn't go on any long trips when it was that cold, 140 miles each way was longest. So all I did was supercharge a little extra and not use range mode. Then I manually set the fan speed up more than what the auto settings do. This seems to keep it comfortable even at 80 mph (129 kph) which is legal here on the interstate highway in many of the western states.

Third is the dome / map light. This is a micro complaint and just an annoyance. When switching the map light off there is a delay. Your hand is almost back on the steering wheel before the light actually goes out.
This distracts you from driving for a second as you think why didnt the light go out when I switched it off ??? then it goes out just as you start thinking about lifting your hand up there again to switch it off again. Its an engineered delay and should not exist.
Weird one and I noticed this but I don't think I have used the map light often enough for it to bother me. My dome/map light complaint is that the LED's chosen are too blue (cool white). I have been told they switched to a warm white LED on the later cars.

Top of my list is poor lights in the Frunk and Trunk areas. There are after market fixes for this which consist of exact replacement modules which are 8 times brighter. I bought these and it made a huge difference.

The rear seat backs are not flush with the hatch back area when folded down.

Although I don't use them I have heard complaints about no lights on the vanity mirrors. Don't even the cheapest economy boxes have lighted vanity mirrors?

The front seat carpets are held in place with four velcro spots. The rear seat carpet is not and it moves around and tends to bunch up in the center.

Lack of usable cup holders. This is somewhat alleviated with the addition of the center console.

You can't completely turn off creep mode. Off is not off, just reduced to almost negligible power levels.

In my rear wheel drive Tesla I would like to be able to turn off regen completely for icy condition driving. The low setting is just ok under these conditions. Perhaps with all wheel drive the low setting would be good enough. But they are in California in an area where snow and even freezing conditions are almost unheard of. If the conditions are that bad I probably should drive a different vehicle.

I have lots of complaints about the NAV system. Amazing that they have not fixed any of these since the issues are so glaring.

I have the ultimate sound system option in my car and while it sounds pretty good it is lacking in features. I am hoping for lots of fixes here.

I have nothing but disdain for the speed of the Web browser.

The dash display on my car is not polarized correctly. The main screen works well with polarized sun glasses but the dash is at a 45 degree rotation. If I tip my head right 45 degrees the display goes black. If I tip my head left 45 degrees then it brightens considerably. Wonder if this got corrected at some point?

I want to stress that this is the best car I have been in much less owned. I recommend that everyone get one.
 
#35 ·
Out of curiosity i was checking out lease options on a 85D.
In local Ozzie dollars it lists at $158 base price (before taxs) and the lease would be approx $3k per month for 3 years.....Yes,..Spendy !!:eek:
.. But the interesting part was that the residual ( bubble ?) payment after the lease ends, was put at $57k !
Now $57 k for a 3 yr old 85D, might well interest me ;)
...so, anyone out there have one on a lease that coming up for replacement ?
Or, if i wait, in 3 years i guess i could probably get a new Mod 3 for that $57k ?
 
#37 ·
Lol
they said phooey to glorious intercity Super Touring and went rabbiting up and down a 50km stretch of AutoBahn at 130kmh between a roadside hotel and a clover leaf intersection where they did a U turn.
One driver slept in the hotel while the other drove and it seems they had 3rd party passengers go along.
So the stints were about 95km with 15 minute charge sessions.

If the dome light delay is intentional, I would assume it is supposed to be a 'safety precaution' so you can put your hand back on the steering wheel while you can still see it.
LOL oh no its dark, wheres the steering wheel...shit shit shit :eek:
 
#38 ·
So the reason the SuperCharger current slows down at higher state of charge is because the battery voltage is almost the same as the charger voltage ?
So what would happen if the charger stopped at about 60% SOC and switch to a higher voltage like 600v then could it continue at 360A right up to 100% full ?
 
#41 ·
No, it slows down because it the car tells it to slow down. The charger is perfectly capable of doing 300 amps at full pack voltage. I suspect it slows because the cooling loop on the battery is at full tilt and the pack temperature would continue to rise if the charge current was not tapered. On my D revision 85 kWh pack the CV point is reached at about 90% of indicated SOC. It is reduced to Chademo (48kW) levels at about 72% SOC. It has been reported that the 90 kWh battery accepts charge at a higher rate. But this could also be due to an improvement in the pack cooling in the car as well as a different cell.

Summary: It runs at full charge speed of 120kW only when the battery SOC is below 20% and the battery temp is within a certain range. Probably to ensure the battery does not degrade due to charging outside of recommended temperature range. It is also possible that some of the taper is due to the temperature limitations on the supercharger stack itself.
 
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