Tesla appears to be working to add a new factor that will affect its estimated range of cars, according to information from the @greentheonly twitter account of Tesla fans, owners, and well-known “green” hackers in the Tesla community.
This has actually been mentioned several times in the past, although there are new details hidden in Tesla’s latest software update.
The @greentheonly twitter account provided a thread sharing what he discovered as Tesla made its regular over-the-air software changes. The information it finds comes into play along the way, so its analysis gives us some sort of clue as to what’s new in Tesla’s software changes.
Most recently, @greentheonly made a tweet regarding the Tesla 2022.20.7 software update:
wow 2022.20.7 seems to go into insane details to improve range predictions.
Even tire pressure is taken into account (amongst many-many other extra variables just added). Also takes into account energy loss to phone charging and 12V accessories, air density, battery heat/cool,…— green (@greentheonly) July 26, 2022
From his tweets, he seemed excited to know Tesla was linked to that detail in an attempt to improve its estimated range. Including reasonable tire pressure affects the estimated range.
Green says there are several small variables that can affect the estimated range, such as battery heating and cooling, air density, energy for car accessories, phone charging and more.
It’s no secret, range is one of the things that manufacturers highlight in selling their electric vehicles.
From a user perspective, accurate range estimates will help EV owners on longer trips between cities. More accurate range estimates help drivers know when to charge their EVs.
For daily use, an accurate range estimate might not be much of a problem, as usage is only a few dozen kilometers before the EV is re-charged at home.
Several others replied to @greentheonly’s tweet, and provided a bit more information.
The only variables that matters for range:
– car speed
– wind vector
– elevation change
– AC/heating
– tire pressureWheel size matters, but that is not a variable for a given trip.
Everything else is noise.
— InnovationDude (@DudeInnovation) July 27, 2022
Several other Twitter users said that temperature is a variable that also affects the estimated range.
Temperature is the most important factor! Ask anyone who lives in a cold climate. It’s completely different situation if ambient temp is -30 or +30C.
Heating the cabin, heating the battery eat a lot of energy.
— Tuomo Mäkitalo (@TMakitalo) July 27, 2022
my 2019 m3 lr often enough has bad range estimates. estimates arrival with 38% when ABRP tells me 26%, which ends up being the correct value. A few months back it was off by 25% on the arrival estimate while traversing a small mountain range.. other times it is spot on…
— Sokar (@Sokar117) July 26, 2022
