How Efficient is a Tesla Model 3 in Winter? (UK Road Trip)

hello everyone it's spawnpoint and welcome back to another video and today i'm going to be taking you on a short 380 mile road trip in my tesla model 3. so back in the summer i actually shared a thousand mile road trip where i covered how much it would cost how long it took and how efficient it was to use my model 3 and a few of you actually asked how that trip would compare to winter driving where we know that the outside temperature does have a negative impact on the battery performance so that's what i'm going to do today i'm going to show you how i prepped planned and completed the trip whether i use the heat in how efficient it was how often i needed to charge and how much it cost me both in money and time now this will be a real world test now with the tier system and lockdowns here in the uk i haven't been able to complete a like for like 1000 mile road trip but i did manage to do 380 mile trip in one day so just like last time there's four of us completing this trip you've got myself my wife and my two children and we've also got a boot full of christmas presents as well as a purpose for this trip was actually to deliver presents to our family further down the country so the first thing i needed to do was plug the car in the night before and i changed the maximum charge state to 100 now it was already set to about 200 miles or 70 so charging for a few hours would be enough overnight now as i'm on the five pence evening rate i've actually set my car to only charge between midnight and 4 am regardless of what time i actually plug it in i also knew that i'll be leaving the next day at 8 00 am so i actually set the departure time to allow the car to pre-heat for about 30 minutes before i needed it so the next morning the car was ready for 8 am i just need to pack the car and unplug it from the charger so i had about 291 miles of range now that's a lot lower than i saw in the summer when i was getting over 300 and a lot lower than what is predicted for the long range model 3. so that's already about 30 to 40 miles less the first thing i needed to do was reset the trip and actually renamed it so i knew that i could use it for this trip and i could use it for the whole of winter as well and i can obviously look back on that in the future so it's currently five degrees celsius or 41 degrees fahrenheit outside and that gives you a rough idea really of what the temperature is that we'll be driving in today the first destination on this trip will be hot wood supercharger and that's just south of birmingham so it's about 140 miles from here and actually predicts i'll get there with about 36 battery remaining that's about 108 miles roughly so plenty of range and obviously i don't need to stop before i get to that first part of the journey heaters off and heated seats on now this won't last long as the windows in the car seem to steam up so often that you have to have the heaters on most of the time anyway so it's now 8 30 a.m and we're on the road now the first part of the journey is about 25 miles or so of country roads which means that it won't be quite as efficient as it will be later on but it will definitely average out so i mentioned heating and under strict testing conditions you might have the heating off completely and just rely on the heated seats to save some energy but i can tell you that at no point have i restricted myself with the heat in if it's cold or the windows start to steam up i'll have the heating on also my children are in car seats so that means that they don't benefit from the heated seats in the back now it wouldn't really be fair to stick them in hats and coats just to save a few minutes at a charger or would it okay so first check we are two miles in the battery is currently 97 with an arrival battery of 34 so that's dropped about 2 already now throughout the drive i'll be averaging about 70 miles an hour using autopilot most of the time and i'll have the heated seats on and the heating set to about 23 degrees so the temperature outside for most of the trip averages about 5 degrees celsius okay so we're about 50 miles in and here's a quick look at how we're doing for efficiency and predictions okay so we've averaged about 350 watt hours per mile that's about 100 worse than in the summer batteries at 72 or 211 miles and then we've now got a predicted arrival battery of 29 so that's down quite a lot on the original 36 so that means we'll arrive with about 87 miles instead of the original 108 and if you saw my summer road trip well the predictions were the opposite way so i was arriving with five to ten percent more range than originally predicted so i'm using autopilot for most of the trip and while using autopilot it's not fsd the car will follow the road it'll steer break and accelerate it'll stay in the lane that you're in it won't try and overtake anything at all but when you need to pass another car or you wish to pull out an overtake you either need to disengage autopilot or indicate and then steer into the other lane and then once you're ready re-engage it and you're back on autopilot again obviously keeping your hand on the steering wheel at all times now by documenting this short trip today it might come across as being quite stressful or just requires way too much effort but in reality it's really straightforward so so far i've unplugged the car from the charger i've set the sat nav up and i've set off that's it and then every 50 miles or so just for my own curiosity i check the efficiency to see how well it's doing and i used to do that in my petrol cars anyway and being in the car is a lot of fun too she's got an awesome sound system you've got autopilot it's comfy and it feels like a nice place to be okay so we're now 100 miles in it's showing 330 watt hours per mile so a slight improvement on efficiency batteries at 49 or 143 miles and a rival battery is showing 30 or about 90 miles and the heating is off and it's only six degrees outside so as we approach the first stop on our trip the battery starts to pre-condition for the supercharger now this is actually a really important point to make so if you know you're going to be using a supercharger ensure that you select it from the map first don't just turn up and try and plug it in because the battery does need a little bit of time to prepare so yep 10 miles out and it's starting to precondition already now it's also showing us a 33 battery with a 28 battery on arrival so that's a good 8 or 24 miles difference to first planned now that might not seem a lot but should we have needed to go a little bit further we probably would have needed to have stopped here regardless just to charge it now the reason we chose this destination hot wood supercharger is it's only five miles from family that we wanted to see it also meant that we could meet them adhere into social distancing of course we could also charge the car while we stood outside so it was kind of a win-win but definitely not something that we would usually do so we pulled up with 28 battery covering 141 miles with an average of 340 watts per mile so taking that efficiency figure so far that would give me a 100 range of about 220 miles under the current conditions so i plugged it in left it charging for about 35 minutes as we had a chat with family now this is only the first part of this journey today and after this we will be leaving hot wood and we'll be heading down to gloucester that'll be to meet more family that are traveling up from bristol so in total i charged for 35 minutes i added 48 kilowatt hours or about 186 miles the battery was now showing 270 miles or 90 now that would have cost me about 12 pounds for this stop but as i do get free supercharger miles it cost me absolutely nothing but mentioning the price here for transparency i'll also do a roundup of all the costs at the end of this video so we're now 160 miles in total or 20 miles into the second part of the journey it's showing 333 watt hours per mile so a slight improvement again battery is at 82 or 239 miles and the rival battery is showing 71 or 213 miles so the heating and the seats have been on for most of the trip today again no compromises at all so as we arrived at the farm shop services we are now northbound as we turn around the battery will show in 65 or about 196 miles so so far today we have covered 195 miles and the watt hours per mile average is 332. so while we waited for my family to arrive for another short chat i actually start netflix on for my children to watch and this is such an awesome thing to have in the car and i also took the time to have a quick look around the car to see how dirty it was i actually don't think it looks too bad considering the weather and the distance i've traveled today and also i've actually received the free mudflats from tesla that's just before christmas so i'll definitely be installing those later this month so once we were finished seeing family and go for a short walk we set home as the destination in the navigation so it was about 185 miles home and the car was showing 196 miles on the range but it still needed a stop at hot wood services again for about a 15 minute topper and that would then give us enough to get home arriving with 16 or about 48 miles of range again on the way back i used autopilot for a large amount of the journey it definitely made driving that a little bit easier so a quick stop at hotwood services for a quick 20 minute charge and while we waited we went to the toilet we got a quick drink and the car was ready for us when we got back so i added 29 kilowatt hours or about 115 miles and that would have cost me about seven pounds 25 but again it didn't actually cost me anything at all so the way that you get free supercharger miles is either by using a referral code when you buy a tesla and you will both get a thousand free miles or when somebody uses your referral code to buy their own tesla and again you both get a thousand free miles so at the moment i have about two hundred thousand miles to use on my account and that's since i started recommending tesla earlier last year and now even if you do have three miles to use while you're charging you will still see a figure or value appearing on screen but don't worry after a short while it will then reset to zero sometimes it takes a few hours it's not instant so the final leg of the journey starts now we've got 230 miles of range to do 130 miles of road outside temperature is about 7 degrees and we should arrive home with about 18 or 54 miles of range and here's a quick look at the graph as well now over the next 135 miles it's pretty much the same as the way down so auto pilot 70 miles an hour and the heating will be on i didn't take much notice of the graph from here as i knew that the range and the distance just wasn't an issue at all oh and one thing to note is obviously this was recorded prior to christmas and it means i'm not showing the new update or the different ui now i actually really like the new user interface i think it's really clean but i know it's had a mixed reception but i do like it apart from the gear indicator for drive and reverse i do think that needs to be a little bit more obvious maybe maybe a color change or something like that would help so finally we've arrived home after about 10 hours in the car today battery was showing 47 miles or 15 so again pretty accurate but still slightly worse than first predicted a battery warning has also appeared on screen as soon as i turned the car off so now in total we covered 383 miles today we used 124 kilowatt hours with a watt hours per mile average of 322. so over the entire day the efficiency did improve slightly now using that 322 watts hours per mile that will give me an average of about 232 miles on a full 100 charge comparing that to my summer road trip where i was getting 260 watt hours per mile over that thousand mile road trip and that was i was getting about 288 miles on a full charge so i've read that the average range loss over winter is about 25 to 35 percent and that puts me at the lower end of that figure so in summer i predict the same road trip that i've done today it wouldn't have needed that second charge and i would easily have made it home so as mentioned the total distance was 383 miles and i spent 55 minutes charging today 35 minutes of those was a planned stop anyway but how much did it cost well i charged at home first before i left and as i'm with octopus i only pay five pence during the evening so it would have cost me three pounds 75 for a 100 charge then the first charge stopped well that would have cost me 12 pounds and the second stop would have cost me seven pounds 25 so in total to cover the 383 miles today it would have cost me 23 pounds now that is including superchargers which is far more expensive than home charging but as i mentioned i don't pay for superchargers so all in all the trip today only cost me three pounds 75 pence so if you're in the uk and you wanted to swap to octopus go and be on the same tower that i'm on use my referral link in the description and we will both get 50 pounds credit to our accounts now that's enough to fully charge your car 10 to 15 times and that's basically for free and you'll also get the evening energy rate of 5 pence over 4 hours and in terms of advice for winter driving definitely pre-condition and pre-heat the car it's the best way to ensure the car is ready for your trip just remember to have the car plugged in when you do that and try not to use the heat in but instead use the heated seats i reckon if it wasn't for me using the heat in i might not have seen that three to five percent loss that i was getting on the graph but as i mentioned was two small children in the back i couldn't really rely on just the seats and plus the car was nice and warm for the entire trip also don't forget to select a supercharger from the map if you plan on using one so the car has time to pre-condition before you get to it and use autopilot where you can it would definitely help with the efficiency so overall the journey probably took me about 20 minutes longer than first planned but it only cost me three pounds 75 in total so not bad really now the only real planning and prep that i actually did in advance was plug the car in the night before and then set the departure time to about 30 seconds of my time i only spent 55 minutes charging in total which was time spent either talking or eating or popping to the toilet and on a 380 mile trip a 55-minute stop would have been expected for us with children anyway well i hope you enjoyed the trip and how winter efficiency does affect the battery well especially when compared to summer temperatures and if you want to check out my summer road trip if you've not seen it already i actually drive from york down to cornwall and back again and if you want to check that out you can see that next and you've just made it to the end of this video so thank you and if you drop a winter tesla in the comments i'll give you a thumbs up as i know you've stayed till the end well i hope you enjoyed the video please hit that like button as it helps me out and don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already you can also follow me on instagram and twitter until next time

Channel: SpawnPoiint

Views: 68,591

Rating: 4.9508195 out of 5

Keywords: Tesla road trip, tesla model 3 road trip, road trip, Tesla model 3, tesla, model 3, road trip in a tesla, tesla model 3 road trip test, tesla model 3 supercharging cost, tesla model 3 travel, traveling in a tesla, traveling in a model 3, uk tesla, uk tesla model 3, spawnpoiint, winter tesla, cold winter model 3, model 3 range test, model 3 cold efficiency, model 3 winter efficiency, tesla model 3 winter, model 3 winter, tesla winter, model 3 uk, model 3 long range uk

Id: cdnqEXBEhOA

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021