What BS!

Demonstrably wrong.

 

Yeah, their graph plots "real world miles" being compared as a percentage of EPA range. That's going to depend on so many things like the types of roads, driving style, and the weather. And I don't see an explanation of how they determine "real-world range", so I've got to wonder how they even measured that.

 

They claim 64% of EPA range and then within the article state "It should be noted that these vehicles don't start at 100% of their EPA rating in real-world use—more like 70% of it, representing Tesla's more generous adjustment factor in calculating its posted range numbers in the first place. " So effectively another 6% drop in 3 years.

I think most of us have seen about 6-8% drop in 3 years or 50K miles. Northerners less, southerners more due to heat being more detrimental.

(But the 70% vs EPA on day 1 is accurate, at 80mph, on all 3 Tesla's I have owned)

 

My 23 mo old 37k mile Model 3 LFP.

 

Hmm.. something is wrong.
About a year ago, I took some photos of my Tesla consumption @ 79% SOC:
- 14 august 2023

The data above suggests that my battery at the time had a capacity of : 78 219 Wh

• 121 x 511 x 100 / 79 = 78 267 Wh
• 115 x 537 x 100 / 79 = 78 171 Wh

Today, I took other pictures @ 70% SOC :

The data suggests that my battery capacity is now : 77 711 Wh

• 146 x 372 x 100 / 70 = 77 589
• 143 x 381x 100 / 70 = 77 833

So, a simple math shows that over almost a year of usage of my Tesla, I have less than 1% degradation. I am not sure how recurrent can boldly state that over 3 years a Tesla Model 3 has about 9% degradation. Or the NMC battery from LG Chem is better than the Panasonic one ? Because recurrent only accepts for now US Tesla and 100% of them have Panasonic battery as far as I know.

 

Opening sentence is clickbait: "In real-world driving range, a three-year-old Tesla Model 3 or Model Y will likely retain roughly 64% of its EPA rating" ... forgetting to add that they START OUT with a "real-world driving range" of 70%

Their sample size is pretty small compared to the total cars produced. 7000 Model 3s; 5000 Model Ys. I really don't get their plots... Whatever, it represents a change of 8% for Y and 6% for the 3? Oh, and 1500 days / 365 = 4 years? Where did 3 years come from?

[Edit: but I'll note that we all clicked and read the story so it generated ad revenue for them (sigh)]

 

The data is coming from Recurrent, which I am vaguely aware of because there are several people on TMC that use it. Recurrent connects to the participants car 1 to 3 times a day to collect data and generates monthly reports for the owner on how their battery is doing compared to others. I have only skimmed what Recurent claims they can ascertain from the few data downloads a day. I understand how they could know general battery degradation, but any pretense of knowing actual range seems suspect. The 70% of EPA as the real world range when the car is new is way off. It could be true for individual drives or for a season for some cars, but is certainly not a good typical number.

 

The 70% of EPA as the real world range when the car is new is way off.

Totally agree. Not sure where recurrent gets their numbers... maybe from those guys who drive 80-85 mph only ?
From my experience to date, I can tell for sure that the average range in my Tesla Model 3, on my driving conditions, over almost one year of driving, is 11% less than the announced EPA number of 333 miles. Not even close to 30%.

 

The 2018 Model 3 I traded in during November stopped at about 6% degredation. And that's without me doing anything particularly special - just daily charging to initially 90%, and then 80% when the recommendation changed.