you
hello hello everybody welcome back to another exciting episode I had another
viewer request and this one was what what I tell summer or what knowledge
when I pass off to somebody who is new to the Eevee community the first Eevee
probably specifically a Tesla and it broke it down a bit so I made a bunch of
lists to share with all of you now some of this might be pretty much common
sense some of it not something you might have thought of and even if you are
someone that's had a Eevee for a while this might might help might help you as
well so first question what can you do to increase your range and before I
continue I will say some of this might sound pretty stupid but sometimes it's
the simplest stupidest stuff is what makes the biggest difference number one
vehicle weight the more weight you have in your vehicle the more power it takes
to get it moving now vehicle weight if you have a lot of weight in your vehicle
it's not going to use as much power for freeway driving as it would for City the
problem being is or the reason being is in city you're taking a larger amount of
weight if it is more weight and you are going to be doing a lot of stopping and
going so you're going to lose a lot more power from the giddyup and regenerative
braking is nice but sometimes I mean especially in the city it might not be
able to capture all of that wasted energy back you might end up using your
friction brakes a little more so something to think about is try and
reduce the amount of weight you're going to be carrying with you this would be
low on my priority list now I have had every square inch possible of the
interior of my car or my old ms 60 filled with motorcycle parts in boxes
came like 2,000 pounds and I did see a little bit reduction in in
our increase in power usage but not a lot but it does make a difference here
is a big one that you should be checking frequently tire-pressure yes back to the
old tire pressure you know I found the pressure that Tesla recommends down in
your door jamb there are in your owners manual that's like driving on a flat
tire to me it seems very soft and squishy and I also found I have
increased energy consumption at those levels I personally keep my rear tires
at 50 psi and my front ones at 48 that's compared to approximately 45 that Tesla
recommends it gives a better better handling control - as well as increased
range in / decreased energy consumption now you might be asking well why 48 the
front and 50 in the rear the reason is especially with either air-conditioning
or super charging the exhaust vents that the heat gets exhausted from for the
radiators exhaust straight on your front tires in the wheel well it's great in
the winter for helping fo any slush and snow and ice that might get stuck under
there but in the summertime or warmer climates what happens when things heat
up they expand so if you had your tires at 50 psi in the front and they heat up
they expand you might end up with tires that were at 52 53 54 psi that's getting
a little bit too high now because at least on the Model S the cold tire
pressure should be 50 psi or lower according to the sidewall in the rear
it's minimal heating up because there is no cooling vents blasting that excess
heat onto those tires speeds yes like anything even though the
Tesla Model S is pretty much in model three and your model EXO's are the most
aerodynamic vehicles production vehicles in the world at least I believe so used
to be they still do have wind resistance and
faster you go the more wind resistance you will have slowdown in actuality for
the Model S you will get the most range at approximately 24 miles per hour at 24
miles per hour on a 90 kilowatt hour battery pack you should be able to push
550 miles of range out of your car so if you want to go further with less
charging especially if you don't have a supercharger in your out slow down
drafting this is something the autopilot and autonomous cars can do extremely
well but drafting something big like a semi truck RV or somebody pulling an
enclosed trailer of some sort will cut down on wind resistance thus giving you
better range now be very careful with drafting especially if you don't have
traffic aware cruise control or autopilot this is where our traffic
where cruise control and autopilot shine because you can set your distance away
from the vehicle in front of you turn it on and it will keep your speed pretty
much synced with whatever you're following and if they break so will your
car preferably with regen and I have seen as much as a 40% increase in range
drafting a semi-truck yes that's probably other than tire pressure and
that's probably one of the biggest things you can do on the road to help
you get more range of course controlling your heat and air conditioning usage
will help you increase your range the heats especially the heat in these cars
is resistive heating pink giant space heater up to six
kilowatt draw that's that's a lot of power and insane amount of power so if
you don't have to be you know if it's below freezing outside you don't really
need to feel like you're on a tropical paradise inside your car just set your
heat more comfortably and air-conditioning uses considerably less
power than he does for the summertime however it still can hit you up a little
bit on that range so if least in the summertime just turn your heat down or
your air-conditioning down a bit and in the wintertime if you can if you can get
away with it use your seat heaters instead of your cabin heat the seat
heaters can keep you nice and toasty because generally in the winter time you
already got a coat on so you really shouldn't be freezing too much you just
that little bit goes a long way and the seat heaters use about 50 to 75 watts
each same with the steering-wheel heater although steering-wheel heater is not
really that necessary especially in the day and age of autopilot
range mode range mode is also excellent for increasing your range as it sounds
range mode gives you more range how does range mode do that a couple
different ways if you hit well for all the vehicles it
turns down the heating power and air conditioning power of the car so it
won't you know still get you trust me I leave my range mode on year-round in the
summer my air conditioning still gets just as freezing it might take a few
minutes longer for the a/c to get to that ultra cold temp and in those summer
or in the winter time it might take about a minute longer to start warming
up the cabin but in the end we're pretty darn comfortable another thing turning
on range mode does is it reduces the temperature at which your battery pack
heater turns on it now why would you say why would I want to turn off my battery
pack turn it down well instead of it kicking
on when the battery pack is at or below freezing it doesn't kick on then until
it's about negative ten degrees Fahrenheit or colder and what are you
gonna lose you're gonna really you're gonna lose some or all of your regen
breaking if the battery pack is too cold however the battery pack heater draws an
insane amount of power so you are actually in most cases gonna lose more
power heating the battery pack up just to get regen then you would if you just
left the battery pack heater off and used your friction breaks and tell your
battery pack warms up just from normal driving and it does I I had to drive
about 20 miles this morning and I got I got some regen back after about three
minutes of driving the regen started coming back and after about 20 miles I
had my full regen back which I really didn't need it anyways because I was on
the freeway most of them another thing range mode
does very beneficial for any of them Tesla cars that have dual motors it puts
your rear motor in sleep mode powering you with just your front and
smaller front motor especially if you have a performance car no notification
so when you're just cruising along on the freeway or on a country road or just
someplace where you don't need to motors to be wasting power your rear motor goes
to sleep consuming nothing so it's basically in neutral and you are just
being propelled and maintained speed with your front motor now you're gonna
say well what happens if I need that extra power of that second motor that's
the nice thing about it with the electric motor it can reactivate so
quickly as Tesla would say it's imperceivable
how quickly it reactivates that means it happened so quick you don't even you
don't even know there's a lag time if you smashed that pedal down and you need
that extra power done you got it but that can be a great power saver
especially when do drives on the freeway ride-height for
air suspension there's a little bit of debate on this but generally the lower
you put your air suspension the better range you're gonna get because you're
taking you gettin less turbulence underneath the vehicle it's pretty
smooth already but one thing to keep in mind you're probably going to get the
overall it's best to keep it in around normal or what do they call it I don't
have air suspension I like oil I think it's a standard it's called standard
standard when I when I was playing around with some of the loaders that
I've had over the years seem to be the best and I've also seen reports that the
lowest ride height also can cause premature tire wear on the inside toe
even more than normal so standard for the best tire life and
range if you really need the range then go down to the low setting if permitted
towing it's another one drag and weight towing a trailer either with a S or an X
well when you're towing a trailer once again it's going back all the way up to
vehicle weight that we've covered at the top the weight of the trailer isn't so
much of a range changer then its drag I'll give you example I have two camping
trailers I just bought the second one and in the summer it was a great price
my tear drop camp from trailers 750 pounds my pop-up camping trailer is nine
hundred and fifty pounds the teardrop uses almost about a hundred watts per
mile which is a lot more than towing with the pup why is that because the
teardrop is higher press a little bit higher it's about even with the roof of
the car the pop-up sits about two and a half
feet lower than the teardrop letting it sit more in the slipstream
of the vehicle so basically the car they are thinking it this way
think of it like the trailer is then drafting the car whereas the teardrop
acts more like a sail trying to slow me down our parachute trying to slow the
car down as such even though it's heavier it
still uses less power so think about that if you're planning on towing a
trailer go for more aerodynamic / lighter weight of course stay within
your vehicle's towing capacity officially Model X is about five
thousand pound towing capacity and the model s officially can't tow at all
unofficially 2,000 pounds or less tire size is who this is a touchy subject for
some for your Model S your ideal tire size is going to be a 19 and I found the
good old Goodyear Eagle RSA to all seasons aren't cheap and they do a
excellent job you will see some range loss on 21 inch tires and the Model X
you have a choice between 20s and 23 so if you're worried about range and tanger
life go with the smaller size tire and price another thing is don't be afraid
to 100% charge contrary to popular belief 100% charging
your car charging your battery up to 100% will not ruin the battery year
really or at least unless you're doing it every day for years and it will not
cause problems for your battery what will cause problems is if you charge to
100% and leave it there for an extended period of time especially in high
temperatures so if you're gonna go on a road trip and you or it's gonna be a
busy day do not be afraid to charge your car to 100% as long as you're gonna use
it that day it's not gonna hurt anything in fact I do have an upcoming video I
have left to cells I have two cells from a Tesla Model S back
repack one it was left completely dead and the other one what would be
considered dead it was about three point two volts and the other one I left had a
100% state of charge for it so if I were going on a year and a half and they're
gonna let me be touching on that video soon and we're mean testing those to see
how much capacity loss in those batteries at the extreme one at the
extreme of being 100% won at the extreme of being dead benchmark oh and see how
much capacity after a year and a half they have lost I'm gonna tell you it's
gonna be very little if even measurable at all and top that off with the awesome
battery management system in these cars so don't be afraid to 100% charge if you
need it use it if you don't then don't if you don't need it doesn't just do it
regular ninety percent charge for the day
now one thing you could also do if you're still worried about that
degradation turn to charge amperage down overnight so that way the charge
completes closer to the time you will be needing the vehicle so if you're gonna
be needing it in the car at 9:00 in the morning
Tritan time your charge so it ends at maybe 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning that
way it's not sitting at 100% as long