Someone Else's Problem: The wait was long enough: leviathan's Tesla Model 3 Performance

That makes me curious, would turning off one of the axles save some energy or would it be a wash because the "disconnected" motor would create "drag" on the wheels?


It would probably be a wash.
 
With a normal 4WD{modern}, the hubs disconnect from the front axle, which saves all that frictional loss from the driveline. That is not possible with a Tesla, so you still have the driveline loss there, you just aren't driving the motor that drives that axle.

With an old school 4WD, you have to disconnect those front hubs, and if you don't, it sucks the go go juice. In my experience, it was only marginally better than being in 4WD.
 
Yeah I know all that, in theory you could implement that in an EV by having some sort of a clutch to disconnect the actual drivetrain. Though not sure if added complexity would be worth the possible savings.

EDIT: Your experience with 4WD vehicles might also be down to aero vs driveline drag since they tend to be rather boxy.
 
It is just as un-aerodynamic whether in 4WD or 2WD. If those front hubs were left locked, it ate fuel.
 
Yeah but you said it wasn't much of a difference or did I misunderstand what you meant.
 
2WD with hubs unlocked was the best. Leave the hubs locked and it was basically the same as being in 4WD. My Blazer got about 16 MPG in 2WD, in 4WD that dropped to about 13ish{pavement, or dirt road situation}. In 2WD with the hubs locked it would get 13.25ish... maybe 13.5. Who keeps track off road? lol
 
That makes me curious, would turning off one of the axles save some energy or would it be a wash because the "disconnected" motor would create "drag" on the wheels?
That's what mine actually does at high speeds - front motor is an async machine that is switched off unless used for acceleration or regen braking, for cruising only rear motor is used as it's more efficient by design. Front motor assembly is still always there as added weight, and the front driveshafts and diff (and the unpowered rotor of the motor) still spin, which costs a tiny but ultimately non-zero amount of energy.
 
Consumption on the roadtrip was between 160-170 Wh/km on average, got up to 180 with the highway blast to Ringmeet and the activities there. Lifetime average of the car is 191. It seems I have something of a heavy foot and drive highway rather a lot, which in a BEV increases average consumption noticeably. RWD Model 3s seem to be much more efficient, too - I've seen people quote numbers in the 140-150s for highway driving in the SR+.

Thats awesome consumption/range for a car that size.
My Golf usually is around 130/150 Wh/km but I mainly do either gridlocked highways or B roads where you rarely go over 70 kph.
As soon as I hit a highway at highway speed (120, because 130 kills my range) I'm around 180 Wh/km.
Mine does 156 kph topspeed but I havent driven that long enough to determine the range at that speed. I'm told 100 kms max (which is less than half what it is with normal speeds)
 
Oh, top speed. I finally got to verify that the car was unlocked after spoiler installation yesterday. It was limited to 234 km/h before, now it happily climbed to 262 on an empty Autobahn straight:

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Note the rated range drop to shit immediately as I start accelerating properly at ~22:46:20 :)

Also a thing I found interesting, you can absolutely see in the graphs that the motors lose/limit power at high RPMs - it didn't go above ~330kW on that highway blast, and steadily decreased as the car picked up speed (~22:46:40-22:47:00), before actually dropping a notch to maintain 262, despite me keeping the foot hard down all the way. Peak power at 393kW was delivered later in the drive, when I accelerated from a 90° right turn onto a local road.
 
I don't usually like graphs but damn, those are nice graphs. I heard that the price of the Model 3 in this country increased by a few thousand this week, don't know if that's demand or something else but they seem to be selling well.
 
You like graphs? Have another one then :)

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This is from a recharge at another Ionity station. My free 6 months of Supercharging have run out, so now charging at Ionity is actually my best option for long-range driving - it's both cheaper (8€ per charge vs. 0.33€/kWh = ~20€ for 10-90%) and faster (190 kW peak vs. 140 kW) than Tesla's own Superchargers for the time being. Ionity are also expanding at a fairly rapid pace along my usual trip routes, so I can freely choose between multiple Supercharger and Ionity locations (as well as some others) whenever I need to get somewhere far-ish. Also they look kinda neat:

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You know, for a second there I thought the Defender in the background was also at a charging station. ?

Nice graph that, very clean. Those chargers look great too.
 
How soon will it be before “I’m sorry I’m late but my car took forever to charge” becomes a clichéd excuse?
 
How soon will it be before “I’m sorry I’m late but my car took forever to charge” becomes a clichéd excuse?
So far, that hasn’t ever happened to me. What did happen was the opposite: „Sorry, I’ll be right back - need to go unplug the car, it’s already full and will accumulate blocking charges while we finish eating unless I move it“.
 
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How soon will it be before “I’m sorry I’m late but my car took forever to charge” becomes a clichéd excuse?
I've been asked this too since I went electric and the answer is never. I have a very slow home charger but even then, a couple of hours is plenty to get it half full, and I do need atleast 5-6 hrs of sleep anyway which is plenty. You just need to remember to plug it in every day. It really is a non issue

Long roadtrips do require a bit more planning but even then a 10-20 minute top up at a fast charger does the trick.
 
How soon will it be before “I’m sorry I’m late but my car took forever to charge” becomes a clichéd excuse?

I assume this will be the same people that run out of fuel.

So far, that hasn’t ever happened to me. What did happen was the opposite: „Sorry, I’ll be right back - need to go unplug the car, it’s already full and will accumulate blocking charges while we finish eating unless I move it“.

This kind of thing is why I don't think electric cars are quite there yet. Either have enough spaces or allow a grace period because nobody is going to stand in the corner of a parking lot for their lunch. Shopping centers, ok fine. I don't think putting chargers in the places they do is a good longterm solution. I think it will become a problem like Waze did for some towns with traffic building up in places people live instead of the main roads that are there for the purpose of getting through, likewise you'll eventually get a bunch of people charging their cars in weird places. I mean, how nice would it be to have people refueling their ICE cars in a park or just around the corner from where you live/eat/work? It just seems bone-headed with how they're being installed.
 
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