Tesla Launch of Pick-Up

Groover wrote:

Reisender wrote:
Can’t speak for trucks or semis or anything that tows but for us the big thing that affects our range is speed. If we hang out around the speed limit or maybe keep it in the right lane with the trucks our range is always more than advertised. If we go faster by even 10 to 15 percent it drops pretty quick. Hills? Not so much. Regen is pretty effective. Towing with a semi may be different, no idea, not an engineer.

I agree, you pretty much only lose energy to air drag and brakes. There is some rolling resistance losses but that generally is much less than the brakes take out. Of course, the heavier the vehicle the more you have to use the brakes when going downhill or stopping. With regen you only lose about 1/10th as much. Loss due to air drag on per mile basis goes up with the square of your air speed. So increasing your airspeed from 60 to 70 increases power consumption per mile by 36%. Going from 60 to 80 increases power per mile due to air drag 78%. Drafting someone to reduce your airspeed can give you a similar gain to slowing down. Yes, I am an engineer. I thought that I could help you with the math but you have good practical knowledge already. The principles are the same for all vehicles, just the ratios of how power is used for the house load, rolling resistance and air resistance may change.

Wow. That’s pretty cool seeing the real numbers. Now I know I’m not losing my mind. The other thing that sucks up power is really cold days where the temperature is below the heat pump threshold. Our garage is heated so on cold days we put the car in the garage overnight. I prefer it cool in the car when I’m wearing a jacket so I tend to use the seat warmers more than the heat pump. Once the car is warm it’s pretty easy keeping it that way and I notice the heater draw drops down to around 300 to 500 wwtts. No big deal. We don’t travel far in winter.

Thanks for the numbers. Kinda cool.