The future......now

[ChocolateFrog]

Steering it back to the OP. Those queues don't particularly pose a problem during the day in California, well maybe if it was really hot.

It would be an issue at Christmas in the UK with 0 degree ambient and a 2hr wait for a Supercharger. How much battery would a Tesla use if the Ambiant temp was 0 and you had the climate set to 20 degrees with the lights and radio on for 2 hours?

More than 10%?

I know it's rare but back in 2010 I was stuck in a traffic jam caused by snow for 6 hours in Reading, was in a defender IIRC and the fuel gauge didn't move perceptibly during that time, it was ITRO -5°C with no prospect of being 'rescued' that night. Nightmare scenario if you've got a wife and kids in tow.

[Evanivitch]

ChocolateFrog said:

It would be an issue at Christmas in the UK with 0 degree ambient and a 2hr wait for a Supercharger. How much battery would a Tesla use if the Ambiant temp was 0 and you had the climate set to 20 degrees with the lights and radio on for 2 hours?

More than 10%?

At max air-conditioning, max heat my Ampera uses 6kW power, that's with resistive heating. But you wouldn't need to sustain that power to use it for 2 hours, so perhaps 3-6 kWh over a 2 hour period.

Some electric cars use heat pumps, this would be more efficient by about half, but M3 isn't one of those.

[sjg]

ChocolateFrog said:

Steering it back to the OP. Those queues don't particularly pose a problem during the day in California, well maybe if it was really hot.

It would be an issue at Christmas in the UK with 0 degree ambient and a 2hr wait for a Supercharger. How much battery would a Tesla use if the Ambiant temp was 0 and you had the climate set to 20 degrees with the lights and radio on for 2 hours?

More than 10%?

I know it's rare but back in 2010 I was stuck in a traffic jam caused by snow for 6 hours in Reading, was in a defender IIRC and the fuel gauge didn't move perceptibly during that time, it was ITRO -5°C with no prospect of being 'rescued' that night. Nightmare scenario if you've got a wife and kids in tow.

<2.5kW for someone sleeping (camper mode) in a Tesla in -17C.

https://insideevs.com/news/342319/eight-hours-over...

So yes, I’d say rather less than 10% even allowing for lights etc for a couple of hours.

[ChocolateFrog]

Fair enough, you'd have to be running really low to start worrying then.

Energy usage sounds about the same as an idling engine, which I think is typically about 0.3lph, which I think is about the equivalent of 3kwH.

[granada203028]

Merry said:

Look carefully. I had a mk1 leaf 24kw. Excellent car, but the batteries aren't thermally managed and start to degrade like no one's business. Ours had lost one when we got it then lost a further two during the 18 months we had it.

Sold it for just under what we paid in the end

Mines got battery temperature management, it certainly hardly ever varies, winter it is 4 bars, summer it is 5. I guess it's living in a climate where it is 10 - 20 deg most of the year round.

[ZesPak]

Heres Johnny said:

As for supercharger capacity, again I love the blind faith that Tesla will just expand the site. How often? How big? There are already pinch points in the uk,

I think for the future, adding extra capacity to a station isn't the solution.

If we think of the problem like it was probably once there for fossil fuel, we didn't just make one station larger and larger. The problem here is that there aren't enough stations so everyone has to come to that pinch point.

A heavy duty power circuit can provide for several cars, we just need more "refuelling" points. They will be a lot cheaper to install and maintain than petrol staitons, and will require a lot less space.

The comming of infrastructures like IONITY and the like will also help greatly. Tesla's can actually use all these infrastructures, but I can imagine that a number of owners aren't informed about that and just go to the charge station their car tells them to.

Imo this is just a childs disease. It's a price you pay as an early adopter and it'll be a story for the grandkids one day when you say "I was there when we only had one supercharing station in a 300km radius".