Sunday, July 15, 2018

Tesla battery capacity and range

An interesting article from Inside EVs:

As the chart shows, individual data points are all over the map, but the overall trend is just what you’d expect: higher power consumption at higher speeds. At 65 mph on a flat road, the median Model S consumes about 20 kW. That’s a lot of power – the large and powerful Model S is not the most efficient of EVs – but it’s far less than any fossil vehicle would burn. ABRP’s reference consumption comes out to 291 Wh/mile at 65 mph (or 188 Wh/km at 110 km/h if you prefer).

Source: Electrek
(FYI, 30 metres/second equals 108 kph or 67 mph)


There are other interesting charts showing range compared with temperature, which you can see here.  As you'd expect, when you have to run the car's heater, range is reduced, though because these are Teslas, still OK.

What interested me, though, was the energy consumption difference between EVs and ICEVs.  188 Wh/km for an EV at 110 kph is equivalent to 0.2 litres of petrol(gasoline) per 100 km--see this handy calculator.  Compare this with average (i.e., including low speeds) petrol consumption of 5-10 litres per 100 kms for ICEVS (5 l/100km for small cars up to 10 for big ones--see this info sheet.)  A Tesla Model S is the equivalent of a Merc (7.4 l/100 km) or an Audi (9.1 l/100 km.)  That means that in terms of energy usage, EVS are about 40 times more efficient than ICEVs at converting power to kinetic motion.  I knew EVs were much more efficient, but I had no idea it was that much.

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