Tesla Model 3 Battery Range Decrease and Battery Drain - One Year Later

What are some factors that could cause your car to fall short of the EPA's estimated

battery

range

? Let's find out Hello, I'm a pleasure, welcome to my channel if you're new here. I document my experience as a Tesla Model 3 owner to help new ones. and future owners learn more about this car. If you find this video helpful and informative, please consider subscribing for the last two weeks. I have been participating in several discussions and debates regarding Tesla

battery

charging efficiency and maintenance because I have had this car for 13 months. and I've noticed how my expectations and behavior about how to treat my battery have changed from when I first bought this car a

year

ago until now.

I wanted to dedicate this video and next week's video to talking about my journey and my experience on the Tesla Battery in this video I want to focus specifically on

range

and battery consumption because, in a way, they go hand in hand and I want Share some of the factors I have learned that could first affect battery life and consumption. Above, let's talk about battery range and the factors that would reduce the range you would experience for the record. My Model 3 is the rare long range all wheel drive

model

and is EPA rated at 310 miles. I can tell you that 99% of the time I don't see that 310 EPA rated miles in my daily use and the number one culprit for reducing battery range and also reducing driving efficiency is speed.

You see, I like to drive a little faster and I also like to experience that instant torque from time to time, especially when I have my daughter here in the car, I don't have to go from zero to 60, but just from that stop to the The street limit of 30, 35, 40 miles per hour is enough to get her going, so while I'm enjoying the speed and instant torque they're actually eating up my battery's range. Now people would say it's joy, to achieve that efficiency you shouldn't drive over 70 miles per hour and just launch it slowly, put it in cool down mode, but my counterargument is coming.

Tesla made this car a high performance car so we can enjoy it a little live if that costs me losing battery range and I have to go charge a car much more often so I enjoy driving this car. The second culprit for reducing battery range and affecting driving efficiency is the outside temperature. I've done a couple of tests that you can check out here where I documented over the winter that this car draws a lot more power from the battery and at a higher power. hourly efficiency consumption per mile. I also read online from people in Arizona, for example, who say that extreme summer heat also reduces battery range and makes their driving experience less efficient.

The third culprit for reducing driving range and affecting your driving efficiency is In fact, turning on the air conditioning, whether heat or cooling, now having the heat on through the air conditioning would consume much more than leaving it on in the air conditioning system. cooling this summer. I also did a quick test by simply turning on the fan, leaving the air conditioning off and just turning it on. I rolled down the windows to see how much my efficiency would be affected and to my surprise, if you only turned on the fan and not the air conditioning, my driving efficiency dropped to less than 200 watt hours per mile, which is a SuperDuper efficiency just for reference To achieve that EPA 310 mile battery range, you'll need to have a driving efficiency of around 250 watt hours per mile, so if you go below 200 watt hours per mile, that's considered great if you ever find yourself in a bind where your battery is running low and you need to get to your destination.

Consider turning off the air conditioning and it will save you some battery range and also increase your driving efficiency. Next, let's talk about the factors that will contribute to

drain

ing the battery without you operating the car. which would affect your driving range, the biggest contributor to consuming your battery range and causing huge battery

drain

is the sentry mode feature. I did a test where I found that sentry mode consumes an average of about 1 mile per hour. Personally, I love this. feature and turn it on as long as my car is not parked at home or at work, but I am sacrificing battery range because it would drain my battery a lot more.

The second biggest contributor to battery consumption has been the software updates that you see when your car is connected to Wi-Fi, if you have one connected it will keep the car in an awake state while it downloads the software and while it performs the update. I have seen in the stats app when my car is downloading and installing an update it will cause some battery drain and since Tesla releases updates quite frequently this would obviously affect the battery range. The third contributor is cabin overheating protection, as initially seen a

year

ago. I was very stingy with my battery.

I didn't want to have anything on while it was NOT on. on this card because I wanted to conserve the battery level as much as I could so I didn't have to charge that, often previously I hadn't enabled this feature, but summer came and things started to heat up. I realized that my interior temperature can reach one hundred and fifty degrees or more, as I have seen, and that is not a good feeling because of all the electronics you have in the car, so this summer I decided to activate the protection against cabin overheating so that my interior cabin would not exceed one hundred and five degrees on a super hot day and obviously this means that I would have to sacrifice some battery range for this feature.

The next factor that contributes to causing battery drain and affecting battery life is simply how the battery behaves. Naturally, just like your cell phone or laptop, when your car is not plugged in, it is natural behavior for the battery to dissipate a little. In the owner's manual it states that it is normal for your car to drain on an average of one percent per day, but the truth is that many days it doesn't even drain at all, there are certain days that it somehow drains, such as Sometimes the computer system is running a background that I don't know what caused the drain, but most of the time it doesn't even drain. that 1%, however, is something to keep in mind that would affect its range and then there are less significant factors that will affect battery consumption, which would affect the range of the battery, for example dog mode when I leave Ginger on the back seat when I go for a run. go to the supermarket or go to a doctor's appointment, turn on the air conditioning, remember that the air conditioning affects your range and leaving the music on would also drain the battery, and then there is me using this car as an office making videos on this channel to you. which would cause the battery to drain because I have the air conditioning on and I would be sitting here for maybe an hour doing different tricks to produce a video, so an hour of sitting here would contribute to the battery consumption and for reference between the start.

From the video so far I lost one percent of the battery, so there you have it, of course, this is all from my personal experience, based on my driving behavior, my car usage and my geolocation, yours may be different Depending on where you live and how you drive, for example if you live in an area with extremely cold weather in the winter you will obviously see a lot more battery charge than I do, however I wanted to point out these factors that I have observed that have impacted the range. my battery, which I really struggled with not getting to that rated 310 mile range and this is why you should change the display from miles to power which is the battery percentage, this way you'll be less worried about the total miles traveled because you never match based on all these factors that I have maintained and that will affect the range of your battery.

That is my recommendation once again. If you enjoyed this video and what I have to share, don't forget to subscribe below, like it. In the comments below let me know what you think about all of these factors and if you have any questions about this car, I'll be happy to help and until next time have a blessed week.