How Much Range Do You Lose With Air Conditioning In An Electric Car?

hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews video you know I was talking to one of my friends the other day and they were like it's getting pretty hot out here and well you drive an electric car so how much range do you lose with the air conditioning and I was like well actually like I don't have a real answer for you I mean I could say anecdotally well it doesn't really matter because very rarely are you charging a hundred percent and you know going up to 100 and stretching it all the way to zero and you know honestly everyone charges up with enough buffer on a road trip to make it charge it a charger but that's not really a good answer I really want to know actually how much range do you lose with your air conditioning so I've set up the most extreme test I could think of I've brought my blacked out Tesla Model S plaid and we are going to be going on two Loops you guys know we're in Wellington Colorado we're going to go up to Cheyenne and back it's just under 60 miles I'm gonna drive one of those Loops in extreme heat 90 96 degrees right now just over 35 Celsius without any air conditioning the whole climate system off and then we're going to do another loop with the AC on full blast AC seats on everything under full load now of course both of those are not scenarios that you'll drive in the real world but it's great to know sort of the worst case scenario of air conditioning draw and of course we'll look at the efficiency numbers and you'll have the results at the end of the video so let's get into actually finding out how much air conditioning loses range oh guys I'm sick and tired of seeing all of your curved wheels on your Teslas out there guess what mag back reached out and said Kyle we have a solution and it's sick so I just installed the new magpac Rim case this one for the 20 inch Uber turbine Wheels there's 10 sections here looking at it head on it just looks like a normal 20 inch turbine but come up here a little bit closer and you'll notice that I've actually snapped in this whole protective layer around the edge it also protects the inner bit here super easy to install you put a little layer of ppf down first these literally snap on they're locked in they're tight to get on but once they're in their lock which is great and yeah thanks to magpac for sponsoring this video and guys you really need this because I hate seeing all those curb wheels so I'm really interested in this test because my overall impression is both with heat and air conditioning well they use such little amount of power that it never impacts my day-to-day driving and very rarely do I even think about it on a road trip there have been a handful of scenarios where I've needed to cut air conditioning or cut climate control to make it to a charger at zero percent let's just say if I'm doing a test or you know really stretching the range on a road trip but I don't actually have a quantifiable number as to how much that saves so let me walk you through how I've devised this sort of worst case testing procedure I'm charging up here on these chargepoint Express plus units you guys know we always do our range and charging tests no not charging tests but range tests out of here and come and go and chargepoint have upgraded their CPE 250s to these Express pluses the other day both of these units were down we posted about it on rate your charge they're now back online which is great so everything seems to be working although we still have some cable management issues these are brand new Chargers I don't even know if they're like totally finished with the install yet but it looks like there's actually room for maybe two more cabinets so we could have a total of eight stalls here that could be really nice but right now I've never noticed the station's super busy so what I'm doing is I'm DC fast charging my Tesla Model S plaid up to 50 state of charge where I've set a charging limit what I'll do is the first loop on no air conditioning so what I'm going to do is try and cool down the cabin now as much as possible because ultimately while we're driving the test I want no extra load on the car so let's go Max cold we're getting 150 kilowatts from the charger roughly 146. we're at 48 so we're almost ready to go I'm going to Max this thing out I've got my Ryobi fan that I'm going to use for airflow and this is going to be brutal it's literally 96 degrees Fahrenheit out here baking sunshine and we're going to be driving with no climate control in this car for almost an hour and then the next run what I'm going to do is come back DC fast charge it again to 50 the reason I'm DC charging them both times is occasionally the car will run thermal management after it kicks off DC charging to cool the battery pack back down and I want to eliminate as many variables as possible so if it runs cooling both times for the high voltage systems then at least you know we're doing it this way so we get the same amount of cooling effect so trying to cycle it as best as I can to keep it as normal as possible the actual car itself doesn't really matter in this case as long as all variables are the same but it is a 2022 Tesla Model S plaid I have uh 295 35 20 inch front and rear uh Martian wheels and tires well Michelin 4S's I have big breaks from Mountain Pass performance but all of that's going to be same all the you know basically weather conditions driving conditions will be the same for both tests it's purely the only change that I'm trying to eliminate this down to is climate control off and climate control on full cool so we should be pretty much good to go here any minute it's still charging we're at 49 percent as soon as it kicks off we're going to be sweating the first leg oh it's going to be brutal so I've gotten some snacks inside thankfully some Waters and uh I don't know I should have brought some ice as well and then we'll jump in the car do the loop and look at the efficiency numbers let's hit the room you join me now in the model S with the air conditioning blasting we are unplugged from the charger and now is the time to turn everything off let's go full send on this Ryobi fan the wind is crazy let's go to some reasonable number shut climbing control off so everything is shut off this fan is a ripper this thing is I'm a huge Ryobi fan for home stuff you don't need like a Milwaukee crazy nice thing this is great let's go to trips here will reset well we'll call this sweat [Laughter] let's reset sweat we have almost 12 000 miles on the car we're reset the car thinks it's 99 degrees out wipers why off let's just do another reset just to make sure boom and into drive off we go then in the model S on the loop no air conditioning windows up oh boy this is gonna suck so bad let's hope this hour goes by quick got all the waters I need and I got the Ryobi blowing already very warm air on me that did not take long air conditioned seats are off we have no load on this car at all so see how this thing does we'll try and maximize or I should say I'll try and imitate the exact same driving to the highway on both runs because this is going to be a fairly close differentiation I would guess I don't know we'll see we are now merging onto the highway as usual we'll hit uh roughly 70 miles an hour at the end of the highway and rather than running 70 for this test I'm going to run 80 miles an hour or I'm sorry I should hit uh we should hit our speed at the end of the on-ramp so let's get it up to 80 miles an hour at the end of the on-ramp it's no problem for this plaid 60 70 a little bit more 80 miles an hour there we go locked in on autopilot off we go then and uh because this car does have FSD I turned off FSD beta but I'm just running autopilot with Lane changes at the moment this uh setting right here Auto steer without FSD beta yeah we'll just kind of cruise along at 80 and get this Loop over with as soon as possible again 97 degrees just about 36 Celsius right now hot as all and we are just taking our exit here halfway and it's actually not as hot in the car as you would think up here towards Cheyenne we're down to 90 degrees Fahrenheit the Ryobi fan working great perfect position and um yeah actually not as bad as you would think so let's loop around head back got to sit at 80 miles an hour constant no issues at all as expected we'll make our Loop and then we'll do the same thing with the AC on full blast really uh looking forward to seeing the results here I really don't know what to expect Model S has a fairly efficient cool link system this is a new heat pump car of course with the latest and greatest Tesla Tech which they're always known for being efficient but it still could be a big impact for all I know let's find out we'll squeeze past this truck here thank you very much and on we go back to Wellington we are probably 75 of the way through the test and it's officially hot in here I am sweating it sucks I don't know why we're doing this but it's not fun also everyone wants to go exactly 80 so we're sort of just riding in this guy's blind spot but we do it for the testing procedures oh well uh Yep this can't be over soon enough look at this already sweating oh it's brutal we are coming up to the end of the test kicking it off of adaptive cruise control baby just a tad early because of this FedEx truck but close enough and wow what a test let's get back to the charger we'll run it all all the way back to the charger and then I'm cranking this AC up let's head on over there and here we are pulling back in let's log the efficiency pretty much right now so if I take a look and we go to trips 336 watt hour per mile okay again 80 miles an hour on big sticky wheels and tires really not bad so let's uh plug it back in charge it back to 50 and this time crank the AC I've just kicked it on gonna kick cooled seats on I'm sweating Low Max fan we'll go back to that same charger we're using doesn't really make a difference the sun's pretty much directly overhead it's middle of the day right now you can see it's right up there brutal dang this AC cool us down all right let's get this thing charging we'll set our charge limit make sure it's still set at 50 it is and I won't be needing this anymore thanks Ryobi appreciate it uh well this is weird we just charged on this exact charger just a few minutes ago and it's gone red and it's unable to charge it's just stuck on waiting for Ev wow well I guess we'll have to switch uh Stars I'll plug in this cable over here that one just died what crazy okay I really have no idea what I'm doing wrong here because I charge on these all the time I've plugged in the Tesla says charging equipment not ready see equipment instructions to start charging the charger says waiting for Ev the only thing I can think is maybe an account issue at this point I don't know I'll unplug and tap with a different payment authentication method and see if that works okay now our third attempt I tapped with a credit card it said authorized all is good I'm plugged in and it still says waiting for Ev if I come over here to the car it says charging equipment not ready what the heck and we are now good back and juicing up so we'll charge it back to 50 percent and we'll be ready to rock and roll so we are almost charged up and ready to go actually the guy driving the lyric is the Area Regional dealer trainer so he was like I was trying to get here at zero percent and ride the charging curve I'm like hell yeah and so he and I both agree that dealers need a lot of education for this to work uh this is a rear-wheel drive lyric but he's been enjoying it he just took it from Billings to Casper down to here really rural driving but he seems to know what he's doing and some suggestions were like yeah we got to dial in the trip planner and a few other things so Lyric's still early days still weird charging curve according to him and I as well were like why is that thing charge so weird but that's okay we're not focused on that but I thought you guys would find the lyric interesting we're almost good to go with the AC box we are now completed at 50 state of charge this dude in the lightning just rolled up once he's done plugging in I'll get out and unplug um just wanted to tell you what I'm doing here I have climate control off I guess ACC Don but it's not really doing anything and it's really hot in here I've hot soaked it while I was talking to the lyric guy because again I'm trying to to paint a worst case picture so once we unplug and reset the trip computer I'm going to have it pull down the cabin temperature at Max and then maintain Max AC the whole way so this is truly worst case so let's unplug and Go Lightning dude just got plugged in and I'll be able to open my door here a momentary well you always meet just the coolest people at charging stations just in this one stop we met with an area trainer from Cadillac and then this guy is responsible for a lot of electrical generation in our area and he's responsible for their electric Fleet so we had a great time talking about F-150 Lightning and ravian and future Silverado and maybe we'll do some videos about electric vehicles and Rural applications so now we're at 50 state of charge hot as balls let's go Max cooling we're going to go low and we're going to go well low I guess we can't even adjust fan speed yes we can we're gonna go 10 on fan low we're gonna spread the air out I'm gonna go cold seats on everything and now let's trips let reset sweat and we'll put it to freezing basically let's go because it's counting everything and it's ripping cooling as hard as it possibly can there's no more extra cooling load I could put on unless oh yeah rear fan of course let's go for it rear fan on Max everything on full AC all right let's not sweat I am sweating it's hot as heck out here let's go run that same Loop and see what happens we are merging on the highway let's get to 80 by the end of the on-ramp and boom already feeling much more comfortable in here we have the cooled seats on the left and right side we got the manual set to low on full fan I got it face and feet all is feeling great nice and cool couldn't ask for anything better than this might get too cold but I think I prefer that than two more we are approaching our exit and I would move over for this truck but there's a car in our blind spot they have a super long on-ramp so um cold as heck in here AC's working great we still got it of course maxed out full send uh maybe we'll even give it a harder task by not recirculating the air we'll pull in the hot air from the outside you can just hear it switch and uh I'll kick off 80 miles an hour right where we did about the last time so pulling over here we'll make the loop and head back but great conditions every things going as expected I kicked us off 70 miles an hour or 80 miles an hour just before the sign last time so I'll do about the same here so now it's having to process all that hot air I should have thought about that but either way it's still really cold in here so all is good let's uh we are now getting very close to the end point and guess what we are pulling up right behind another truck like we did last time where we had to come off 80 miles an hour slightly quicker these could not be more identical tests this is great I'm so excited to see all the results don't look yet because we're not done we have to wait till we get back to the station and uh AC is ripping it's nice and cool in here I just directed the air away from my face and it's actually fairly comfortable when it was on my face it was like I'm gonna turn into an ice cube so good thing the air conditioning the model S is strong so let's head over to the charger and I'll let you know the final result here we are pulling in now I'm gonna stop right at the exact point we did last time boom 391 hour per mile so I'll get back in just top up a little bit while we're doing that let's crunch the numbers and then I'll share what I think the results will be for your typical electric cart time to back in and plug in and this time we plugged in and we are charging right away only at 34 kilowatts but hopefully it'll ramp up which it is right there so good news spinning up the power modules I don't know why in the middle we had some issues but these chargepoint Express pluses have been relatively okay for me well I'm going away on a trip so we'll only charge it back up to 50 again so there you guys go a really interesting test this was great so let's just say worst case condition this was hot day again we ran no AC to maximum air conditioning and we even did the hot cabin you know basically cool down to uh you know a reasonable temperature as a factor in that trip uh it was only 14 different so that is uh the worst possible case my guess is you know if you're going from a 60 degree day to a 90 degree day and you're worried oh is the heat gonna affect my range that could be another great test and that's probably going to be a couple percent different would be my guess really not much so what that means is it's 14 is significant uh and it's right about I guess where I was thinking it would be but there we go we have some numbers to back it up the worst possible case is 14 now that's just for this Tesla Model S A whole bunch of different EV models use different air conditioning systems have different size cabins to cool however I would say that's probably reasonable for pretty much every Tesla since all Teslas now use very similar heat pump to this car if not the exact same part number for model 3 S X and Y so you know again if someone asks you hey do you get you lose half your range in the summer the answer is no it's certainly going to impact it a little bit running your AC maxed out but also I can't think of a time when I'm running with climate control off ever so there's another test to be done here which is what is it under a comfortable setting on a normal day versus a really hot day but now we have some numbers to back up the worst case scenario about 14 range hit when you use uh you know Tesla system from a normal run to maximum cold and I have to say that's uh very reasonable so would be interest thing to do a similar thing in the winter as well I hope you guys enjoyed this video and it's really not a big impact at all of course air conditioning pulls down efficiency of a combustion car probably proportionally would be my guess or somewhere in that region either way we're talking about not nearly enough of an impact to change the way that you use or drive your car there's other impacts that matter more for example thermal limitations of battery packs getting hot when DC charging in hot conditions or driving on track and things like that using the air conditioning to cool the cabin shouldn't really be something you have to worry about thanks for watching we'll see you in another one soon bye-bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 115,773

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: lxQNydenWP0

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023