Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Here is some Tesla Model 3 tips and secrets for this winter, whatever you want to call 'em that I got from some of my friends who live in some of the most extreme cold climates in the United States. 

Electric cars, like regular cars, like many things, behave differently in extremely cold environments. 

So right now with the polar vortex upon us in the United States. 

I though it made sense to kinda talk about some of the secret things or some of the tips that you can really take advantage of in terms of getting the most out of your Tesla Model 3 in these situations. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets

the first thing in the Tesla Model 3 winter secrets is that your car will not be able to charge nearly as fast when it's extremely cold. The Tesla battery in the Model 3 doesn't have a separate heater. 

So the Model S and X, the battery actually has its own separate system to heat it and kind of keep it at an ideal temperature. 

So the Model 3 is a bit different, it doesn't have one of those. the battery will actually get really cold and at that point it won't be able to charge or discharge nearly as fast as it normally does.

The next thing about Tesla Model 3 winter secrets, is that you'll notice that the windows roll up all the way when you're in extremely cold environments. 

and that is because in the Tesla vehicles if they do go up all the way they will freeze and then dislodge from the door when you try to open it. So don't be alarmed when you see that. That is intentional. 

The third thing is that the actual Tesla charge port will continually engage and disengage because these little tiny prongs in there will get frozen again and you won't be able to charge, which would be a really bad scenario in a cold environment like this. 

It's also really interesting to look at the data. Fortunately, through Tesla's, we've logged the watt hours per mile of all the trips that people take. 

And because I'm an advisor to the company, I can look at this Tesla data and help shed some light and tell that story. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Tesla Model 3 Winter Tips

If you are driving Tesla Model 3, you're goin' on a road trip, you're wrapping it up. Before head in for night make sure you charge as much as you need to for the next day because otherwise, when you wake up it's gonna take a lot longer to charge than it normally would. 

So hit the Tesla super charger or whatever before you go to the hotel and call it a night. 

Remember, when you're driving your Tesla Model 3 in the winter you're gonna need to pay a little bit more attention and kinda prepare just a little bit more than you typically would in the warmer months. 

But if you follow these tips, you charge up full every night, especially if you're driving and you're stopping to sleep, you want to charge before you do so, otherwise in the morning it'll take much longer 'cause the speed at which it can charge is much slower. 

As well, you can't do the pre-warming if the Tesla battery is under 20% charged. So you definitely want to have that so you can warm it before you even have to go out there. 

And be patient, because we are still at the very, very beginning of the EV revolution, of our transportation system switching from internal combustion engines to electric motors. 

So everything you're doing right now are just lessons that you can pass down to future generations about how to handle the Model 3 things. 

Hopefully we'll look back on this fondly years to come as kind of, you know, the novelty of having Tesla deals, with this back them because we'll have solved it just so dramatically kind of over-the-top by then. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

How Winter Affects Your Tesla Range

So combined how winter affects your Model 3 range, we have over 2.4 million trips that have been logged by over 9,000 vehicles using Tesla's. 

One of the interesting stats that we get when we look at this Tesla data is the watt hours per mile. 

That is the actual amount of energy it takes to move the car exactly one mile. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

So when looking at this overall, the Model 3 comes in at just over 333 watt hours per mile. The Model S at 383 and the Model X at 454. 

But that's overall, that's not telling us much about winter driving versus summer Tesla driving. So what we need to do is take a look at this stat over time. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

We started tracking this back in 2016 and as I mentioned, we have over 2.4 million trips logged. We did notice a significant dip once Tesla started delivering the Model 3 in greater quantities around July of 2018 which also coincides with warmer weather. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

If we look at our overall trend we see a fairly flat line showing how the watt hours per mile changes throughout the year. 

But there is a distinct decline starting in June and lasting through around October. This of course makes sense when we overlay the median temperature during this time for these Tesla trips. 

And that kinda matches our perception, right? As the temperatures kind of normalize and get more agreeable the Model 3 doesn't have to use as much energy to move forward. 

So that all kinda makes sense so far. But what we want to do is dig in just a little bit deeper and try to figure out exactly how much the temperature affects the Tesla energy needed to go forward. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

How Winter Weather Effects Tesla Energy

The Tesla Energy and How Winter Weather Effects, That's what this chart here is trying to show us how the temperature effects your electric car. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

Each bar represents a five degree temperature bucket, if you will. 

So we basically logged every trip that happened within that bucket and then looked at the median watt hours per mile. 

So that's how much energy it took to move the Tesla vehicle one mile when the temperature was in that range. And if you compare the best to the worst you can see that it's a pretty dramatic difference. 

Where right around minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit when and you driving the model 3, you're looking at over 620 watt hours per mile whereas in the 60 degree Fahrenheit range we're at just above 362 watt hours per mile. That is a 72% difference from the worst to the best. 

So when you divide those two, what you find is that as the temperature drops one degree you need .6 % more Tesla energy to travel that same distance, that one mile that we're measuring here. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

The Tesla Model 3 Temperature Effects

If we focus specifically on the Tesla Model 3 temperature effects, we can see that this is even more dramatic. 

In this scenario we have an average 4% increase in watt hours needed to go one mile per five degrees, per bucket that we're measuring here. 

Tesla Model 3 Winter Secrets and Tips

That means if you divide those two, for every one degree that the temperature drops you need .8% more energy if you driving the Model 3 to travel that same distance. 

And I'm guessing that's partly due to the missing battery warmer, meaning you're gonna spin up a ton of electric energy for your Tesla tesla vehicle, just getting things ready to travel. 

Or potentially just because the Model 3 is still new that there's still software updates happening and eventually this will actually become better than the other two models. 

But right now, that's what we're seeing, an almost one-to-one degree to percent electric energy change as kind of an inverse correlation there. 

So the temperature can obviously have a big impact on your Tesla car's ability to travel a certain distance. That's no big shock there. And actually, it doesn't even matter whether or not your car is electric or gas. 

In fact, the U.S. Department of electric Energy, reports that fuel economy tests show a regular gas car miles per gallon, can drop as much as 22% on even very short trips in these winter climates. 

I'll see you guys back here in the next Tesla Model 3 advice.