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from the 490-must-be-enough-for-anyone dept.
With the latest long range Tesla rated at 402 miles, newcomer Lucid Air demos one of their cars going 450 miles in real-world driving. An additional 40 miles were driven after the Motor Trend witness called it a day.
2021 Lucid Air First Ride Review: 450 Miles on One Charge!:
Lucid engineering is located close to Tesla in the Bay Area and the article claims they employ 1200 people at this point--not a small effort. A clipping from the end of the story:
Back on the road and heading north, we pass a milestone: 402 miles, or the highest rated range for which a Tesla model is certified. At this point, the Air's battery reads 16 percent remaining, and the range prediction has now dipped to 478 miles. An hour and a half later, we roll into Lucid HQ for a coffee, a stretch, and a shake of our foggy heads, then crawl back in and head out again. We cut west across the Dumbarton Bridge to lap up and down the 101 as it arteries along San Francisco Bay's east side, increasingly reddening on the traffic map. The day is starting its reverse transition to twilight, and we're experiencing range anxiety of the opposite type: Instead of worrying about running out of juice, we're getting anxious that we'll never stop driving.
At 6:20 p.m., 450 miles and almost 12 hours after we started, we pull back up to HQ. A stubborn 7 percent of energy is displayed on the screen, predicting a range of 484 miles—that's now probably very close to reality for this trip—and we sit silently for several seconds before I concede the battery has beaten us. That's enough; we're calling it a day. I slowly climb out of the car and straighten up. Later that evening, a fresh Lucid driver took out the car again, finally ending the experiment at 490 miles. Not the FEV laboratory's 517, but 95 percent of it, every mile demonstrated in the hills and heat of the real world.
Also noted in the article is that Lucid have developed their system in-house, not using available parts from suppliers. They make their own 900V battery pack which allows motors to be smaller, and charging (with the right charger) to be faster.
Getting closer, but still not enough range for this AC--I'm headed out for a 730 mile road trip tomorrow, it took about 12 hours when I did the same trip last month (didn't want to fly for viral reasons). I stopped to pee a few times and twice for gas, never pushed the ~400 mile range of the gas tank of my Impreza. Yes, it's a bit noisy, that's what ear plugs are for!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PhilSalkie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @01:33PM (13 children)
Since mid-2017, I've logged over 60K road miles on the Tesla Model S. Lots of work driving, long road trips up and down the east coast of the US, and inland as far as Detroit and Indiana - dozens of 500-600 mile trips. (Obviously, COVID-19 has changed the amount of driving I've done since Februrary.)
My general working range (to 90% battery) is a bit over 250 miles. For normal driving, I find that the ability to charge in the driveway is a huge timesaver - the car's full every morning, I get a text at 10PM if I've forgotten to plug it in, and I almost never think about where or when I'm going to charge the car during my work driving day, because there's a huge network of high-speed chargers (SuperChargers) which the car knows about and will route me to if it thinks I won't have enough power to get where I'm going. (It usually assumes I'll be able to charge at my destination, that's not always true, so once in a great while I'll charge more than it suggests so I have room at the far end to get to another SuperCharger.) On the rare occasions I've had to drive a gasoline car, I forget to look at the fuel gauge - cars are supposed to be full when you wake up.
For road trips - I've made a couple small changes to my driving habits, and those changes dovetail so well with SuperCharging that I don't notice the charge times (The car charges at over 500 miles/hour when the battery is low, and that slows as the battery fills to the brim. Charging is much like filling a glass - you can pour very fast at first, but the more liquid is already in the glass, the more likely you are to spill. In charging, spillage is heat, and your battery system can only handle so much heat, so it charges slower as it fills.) What I do is:
Figure it will take more time than the car's trip estimate - it's going off current road conditions and only adding the exact time it calculates you'll need to charge at the SuperChargers. Add time to walk to a service building, grab a coffee, hit the bathroom, eat lunch. My Tesla trip from Philly to Detroit is about 90 minutes longer than I would maybe have done in a gasoline car.
Eat meals in restaurants instead of over the steering wheel while I'm driving. It's a nice car, don't want to get cheese sauce all over the upholstery - plus, if I sit down and eat lunch or dinner, the car has more than enough time to charge near 100% - and 250+ miles of driving is enough range (around four hours' driving) that I'll be the one looking to stop before the car is.
Choose hotels based on whether or not they have EV charging. Rather than be a slave to some loyalty program, I look on the car's display (or the PlugShare app) to see what hotels near my destination have chargers. Again, I'll wind up sleeping someplace, might as well have the car charged up while I'm sleeping. Same goes for shopping - if there's a SuperCharger in the parking lot of a grocery store on a road trip, that's where I'll buy groceries.
Often I'll override the car's decisions on where to charge to select chargers with more varied food options, or pick a charger that's farther away than the car is comfortable suggesting - if I bring the pack down to 30 miles or so, I get the benefit of faster charging at the bottom of the pack, so I'll add that first 100 miles much more quickly.
So, using those little changes to my behavior, I've made road trips without having the charging be any sort of big deal. The fact that the car knows what chargers are out there and how many stations are currently in use or offline is tremendous - I don't have the concern that I'll drive somewhere only to find that I've got 10% range left and the charger's broken. SuperCharger stations have at least four stalls, and some have upwards of 20, so even if a connector is damaged, it's not the only one to pick from - and if you find a non-working unit, you call it in and they'll fix it - sometimes not as soon as you'd like, but they fix it.
End result is - some vendor says they have a new vehicle that's got x++ range, I couldn't care less. For daily use, 250 miles is enough for my driving patterns, and having a car that uses a battery pack voltage that's not compatible with the existing non-Tesla DC bulk charging networks (ionity, Electrify America, Blink, etc.) means that either that vendor has to build their own fast-charging network, or their drivers will be stuck without any fast-charge options. Head to http://supercharge.info [supercharge.info] to see the map of what Tesla has in place and what they're adding - that is a _huge_ effort for any other vendor to try to match - it's taken years, and while in many places permitting is easier now, it is still a multi-billion dollar effort. The other systems have a fraction of what Tesla's got, and may never be at parity, because Tesla's network is a moving target.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 12 2020, @02:55PM (4 children)
That is useful and interesting information. Most of us have little idea what's available, or how to use it.
Real life experience, vs advertised range, which may or may not mean anything. I long ago said that a range over 200 miles is something that I could probably work with, and that a range of 300 would definitely be workable. You're splitting the difference there at 250. And, again, those are real miles driven on real roads, as opposed to some special track at a test facility.
I think that I could adapt to driving your car. Of course more range would always be a good thing.
Only two things stopping me from seriously considering buying an electric then.
A: I don't want Tesla (or anyone else) tracking my vehicle continuously. They don't own the data, I don't want them accessing it.
B: Price. It's been thirty years since I bought an almost-new car, forty years since I've paid for a new car. I generally pay between $2000 and $3000 for a well-used vehicle, that has obviously been well maintained. If I only get 1 year of service from such a car, I've done well. The vehicle I'm driving now is over three years. No financing, no interest, no high dollar insurance, nothing. Paid $2500 cash, and drive, drive, drive.
I don't anticipate that any electric vehicles will be in that price range soon. :^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2020, @06:35PM (1 child)
The scrap value of the batteries in a Tesla is probably a few thousand by itself, so I doubt the used electric market will be great.
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:32PM
There's a thriving used Tesla market - you can look at https://ev-cpo.com/hunter/ [ev-cpo.com] for Tesla Certified Pre-Owned, or https://onlyusedtesla.com/ [onlyusedtesla.com] for private sales.
They're not dirt cheap, because as you posited, the value of the battery _and_ the drive train components is significant. There's also a big market in taking the guts of a Tesla and sticking them in other vehicles, such as Johnny Cash's Rolls-Royce. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33555665/johnny-cash-rolls-royce-tesla-conversion/ [caranddriver.com]
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:28PM (1 child)
The data tracking is as always, a double-edged sword. An external website called TeslaFi logs every drive, lets me get my mileage for work driving, and exports as .csv so I have an IRS primary source.
Tesla vehicles have the highest theft recovery rates because of the tracking, and the data access allows remote vehicle control (remote unlock saved my butt after I lost my keys at the beach once.)
Data being sent back to the mothership also continuously improves the automated driving software, which is absolutely amazing.
Prices will only drop over time as battery capability runs up the curve which CPU performance ran up 20 years ago. We've experienced about a 10X improvement in rechargeable energy density (NiCd, anyone?) and there's lots of room to improve in both density and price. Fuel cost is much less than petroleum, there's no oil to change, no engine air filter to change, no tune-up parts, so maintenance costs are much less - you're basically paying up front for the lack of fuel expense, consumables, and routine maintenance. (In my particular case, I've bought used Model S vehicles from Tesla, so got their warranty. The vehicles are old enough that power from SuperChargers is free - buying a newer vehicle where that cost isn't factored into the price makes it cheaper.) It'll be a while before any reasonable used EV is in the sub $5000 range, just because they don't wear out and die as fast as Internal Combustion cars do, so they have greater residual value. (Used Nissan Leafs have low prices because they beat the snot out of their battery packs.)
For me, the Autopilot capabilities are the thing that makes the vehicle worth the price. I literally engage it at the on-ramp in Philly and be driven to the off-ramp in DC, touching nothing other than a light hand on the steering so the car knows I'm awake. I can drive to a customer 300 miles away and be ready to work when I arrive - the trip is no-longer tiring.
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Wednesday August 12 2020, @10:35PM
BTW, the amazingly useful site which logs your Tesla travels is http://www.teslafi.com [teslafi.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:59AM (7 children)
Agreed, thanks for the info dump.
> dozens of 500-600 mile trips.
With an aging relative and adult children rotating in-and-out of the assistant role, I now have a ~740 mile trip (each way) that I'm going to be doing round-trip. I'll probably drive one day, stay for 2 days for a "handoff" and then return on the 4th day. This is going to be about once a month. We used to fly, no one wants to expose themselves to airports and aircraft cabins these days.
I just completed my second solo one-way today, 12 hours total including one gas stop and several ~5 minute pee/stretch breaks for me. No meal stops, I'm happy snacking in the car.
This is an average of ~62 mph on USA freeways that were posted between 55 and 70 mph (north central region). Guessing there was about a half hour of stop-and-go to get through metro areas and some construction slow-downs. When the left lane was moving, I was above 80 mph to bring the average up, with occasional "platoons" moving at 95 mph for short periods.
How long would this take in your Tesla? Rough guesses based on your experience are welcome.
Addtional Q's:
How does battery life go with higher speeds (higher power)--any rough data on this?
Have you done any of these longer trips in the winter, does below-freezing temp change anything?
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:07PM (6 children)
Rough data? This is the age of data, my friend - I have hard numbers. :-)
I picked a similar drive, Philly to Detroit, late spring weather:
Overnight charge at home to 100%
657 miles driven
10 Hours 48 Minutes driving time, highway segment average speeds 59, 68, 66, 67, 65 MPH, last hour was tooling around local destination roads doing errands.
2 Hours 48 Minutes Supercharge time in 3 stops
Charge stop 1 - 21 minutes from 30% to 69% (That's a "Splash and Dash" - plug in, head into the convenience store, bathroom/coffee/snacks, back on the road.)
Charge stop 2 - 56 minutes from 12% to 88% (Sit-down dinner)
(Stayed in a hotel, but no charging there - traveling with pets, so had to pick a spot that was accommodating to them rather than to the car.)
Charge stop 3 - 90 minutes from 16% to 96% (Sit-down breakfast)
Ended the day with 53% charge.
So, I'm gonna say your 740 mile trip would be another 90 minutes' driving for a total of 12 Hours 20 Minutes, which would bring you to your destination pretty low on charge, so add another 15 minutes charge someplace to allow for tooling around at the destination, for a total of 3 hours, 3 minutes charging.
So, twelve and a half hours' driving (with an hour of that being off-highway), 3 hours stopping for charging and food - looks like the drive time's about the same but you're adding 3 hours to the trip for charging, while saving some money on fuel and vehicle maintenance expenses (no oil changes, etc.).
Personally, I wouldn't want do to the drive without Autopilot - for me, twelve straight hours of active driving is just exhausting, whereas with Autopilot and charge breaks I could jump in the car at 5AM, and be in Detroit for dinner still able to keep my eyes open. It's still a driving experience, no doubt, but it's more of a supervisory role - you're looking around more, seeing the positions of the other vehicles around you, looking for things that may be outside the car's visual range or odd situations like weird merges or construction entrances. (Personally, I've never been one who enjoys driving a car - it's always felt like dog-work. Autopilot takes most of the dog-work out of driving, and the integrated navigation system takes away a lot of the frustration of mislabeled roads and phone navigation being weird when someone calls and does anyone remember maps?)
On balance, I'd say for a road trip the gasoline car will inevitably be faster, but the Tesla experience is more like having flown than having driven (but without having to deal with airports.)
Battery range definitely drops with higher road speeds and with cold weather. Here's a chart of my actual driving efficiency plotted against in the Model S P100D:
Here's the P85D (A more efficient vehicle overall, but with lower range and less capable Autopilot hardware)
Charts courtesy of the excellent TeslaFi vehicle tracking website.
So, yes, colder temperatures can really whack your range - gonna have more supercharger stops on a long drive, probably want to add an hour to your long drive in the winter.
Some of that loss is from the inefficiencies of cabin heating, it's only 100% efficient. ("What?", I hear you cry! "How can you do better than 100%?" The Model Y uses the A/C system as a heat pump to move heat from outside to inside, giving you 3 units of heat energy inside the cabin for every 1 unit of electricity spent moving it, so much less loss of winter driving range.)
Some of that loss is from the battery not moving electrons around as well when it's cold, and some is from the battery management system heating the cells to combat that problem. You can fight that somewhat if you have the car pre-warm itself using power from the wall charger before your trips in cold weather (if you have a regular work schedule, you can tell the car to just be ready when your drive starts, and it'll figure it out for you.) In the vehicles without heat pumps, you can use the seat warmers and keep the cabin at a lower temperature to save some range.
When the navigation system in the car is plotting your trip, it does pay attention to elevation change, roadway speeds, and temperature to pick charging stops and the times required. I've found that to be pretty accurate except that I usually spend a little more time in a given "Splash and Dash" stop than it estimates - it doesn't add any time for driving around in parking lots, backing into the spot, and suchlike.
If you're interested in seeing what a trip might be like in an EV, you can set up a free account on PlugShare https://www.plugshare.com [plugshare.com] and explore their trip planner. With that system, you can plot a trip, see what charging is available sorted by type of connector plug (Tesla Supercharger, Tesla Wall Charger, CCS, ChAdeMO, NEMA, etc.) and/or by charging network (Blink, Electrify America, etc.) That planner's not as smart (can show you elevation along the route, but doesn't factor it into your range) but it's more flexible, allowing you to plot trips with multiple waypoints and charge stops, see your range circle from any waypoint or charge stop on the trip, and save trips for future review.
For a specific Tesla-only trip planner (that lets you select which type of Tesla vehicle to plan with) try this: https://www.tesla.com/trips [tesla.com] This planner is more like what's in the car, but lets you add stops, and has a "show nearby destination charging" button so you can see what's available for overnight charging at your destination.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:24PM (3 children)
>never been one who enjoys driving a car - it's always felt like dog-work
You people should start using the correct terminology:
countach is UFO
pre-oil crisis alfa and ferrari are THE CAR
RWD DOHC and carbs, no electronics is CAR
FWD is car with body mounted the wrong direction
AWD is drunk-yard car
SUV is pregnant car
smart car imply dumb owner
electronic injection, distribution and ABS are hybrids
ESP and traction control and other stuff are videogames
electric is appliance
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Friday August 14 2020, @01:41AM (2 children)
Hmm, so I've got an "appliance" that does 0-60 in 2.4 seconds and a 10.5 second 1/4 mile. I think I can live with that... :-)
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday August 15 2020, @10:57AM (1 child)
That's actually good. Less people appreciating cars means more cars left for the rest of us. Vroom vroom.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PhilSalkie on Saturday August 15 2020, @11:08PM
Enjoy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @04:36AM (1 child)
Thanks! I'm the AC with the 740 mile trip. Your data was just what I was looking for, and that's less charging time than I expected.
One personal difference is that I like driving (although freeway driving can get a little boring). Learned how to drive a stick shift at age 5 (not on public roads), so I guess it's "in my blood".
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday August 15 2020, @11:07AM
LOL reminds me a car mechanic that built a nifty go kart for his son, who was 7 or 8. It had like 0.5 hp/kg, in the 70s; if he did it now he'd lose custody.
Account abandoned.