Range issues

[Dr Bob]

Let me throw in a couple of other data points.


I picked up my newly aquired MY2022 Taycan Turbo in September from P South Lakes and drove it down to Rugby (165 miles) in 23°C weather in Range mode and it calculated out at 300 mile range for the full battery. Since then its gone colder and on a trip back up to south lakes and a trip down from Jockland to Rugby (345 miles) this week, it has been consistently around 240 mile range (the guessometer has been showing 240 for the last two months). Not clogging it ….around the 70mph ish +. The trip up to Jockland stopped at P south lakes as they hadnt done the service they said they'd do before I bought it, so I dropped it off and continued the journey in a CT demonstrator (2,000 miles on the clock). It only gave me 190 mile range compared to the 240 I had done up to then (in the morning – so it was colder!).


Clearly their demonstrator had much less range than mine. Not a clue why but that difference was real (Two long drives on the same day in the different cars).


Although new to the Taycan, I have had 3 ½ years experience on a Tesla M3 which used to give me 300 mile range in the summer on long trips at 70mph, 350-400miles if I kept to 50mph but crashed to 200-220 on long trips in the depth of a UK winter. I'm hoping my winter range is no worse than 190 miles with this new car which is then just about do-able.


One other observation though is just how fast this Taycan charges. I dont remember seeing the Tesla charge much over 100kW at the various superchargers. Now I can choose any charger, we stopped for the first time at Ionity Carlisle (at 51% charge) – and got 220kW and was still going at 120kW with 85% charge in. Way way faster than the Tesla. Stopped again at Sandbach south on the 350kW Gridserve chargers and again got 200+kW. Instead of 30 min+ stops with the Tesla, we now only need 2* 10-20 min stops which we would be doing anyway for biological reasons......as long as these 350kW chargers dont get too full. The range difference therefore between the Tesla and the Tycan is almost insignificant given the faster Taycan charging providing there are bays available to charge.

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[W1NGE]

Let me throw in a couple of other data points.


I picked up my newly aquired MY2022 Taycan Turbo in September from P South Lakes and drove it down to Rugby (165 miles) in 23°C weather in Range mode and it calculated out at 300 mile range for the full battery. Since then its gone colder and on a trip back up to south lakes and a trip down from Jockland to Rugby (345 miles) this week, it has been consistently around 240 mile range (the guessometer has been showing 240 for the last two months). Not clogging it ….around the 70mph ish +. The trip up to Jockland stopped at P south lakes as they hadnt done the service they said they'd do before I bought it, so I dropped it off and continued the journey in a CT demonstrator (2,000 miles on the clock). It only gave me 190 mile range compared to the 240 I had done up to then (in the morning – so it was colder!).


Clearly their demonstrator had much less range than mine. Not a clue why but that difference was real (Two long drives on the same day in the different cars).


Although new to the Taycan, I have had 3 ½ years experience on a Tesla M3 which used to give me 300 mile range in the summer on long trips at 70mph, 350-400miles if I kept to 50mph but crashed to 200-220 on long trips in the depth of a UK winter. I'm hoping my winter range is no worse than 190 miles with this new car which is then just about do-able.


One other observation though is just how fast this Taycan charges. I dont remember seeing the Tesla charge much over 100kW at the various superchargers. Now I can choose any charger, we stopped for the first time at Ionity Carlisle (at 51% charge) – and got 220kW and was still going at 120kW with 85% charge in. Way way faster than the Tesla. Stopped again at Sandbach south on the 350kW Gridserve chargers and again got 200+kW. Instead of 30 min+ stops with the Tesla, we now only need 2* 10-20 min stops which we would be doing anyway for biological reasons......as long as these 350kW chargers dont get too full. The range difference therefore between the Tesla and the Tycan is almost insignificant given the faster Taycan charging providing there are bays available to charge.

Wheel type can make a notable difference to range with RS Spyders being in the higher consumption range. Basically any open wheel design can lead to less range. The range indicator knows which wheel and tyre combo is in place and will automatically calculate the range at start up.

Low mileage cars take a while to get the range up as the battery management system (BMS) does its job

 

[andb]

Although new to the Taycan, I have had 3 ½ years experience on a Tesla M3 which used to give me 300 mile range in the summer on long trips at 70mph, 350-400miles if I kept to 50mph but crashed to 200-220 on long trips in the depth of a UK winter. I'm hoping my winter range is no worse than 190 miles with this new car which is then just about do-able.

Are you sure you actually drove 400 miles with the Tesla M3 on a charge? A friend never gets more than 300 with his LR, no AC. Now when its cold its around 200 miles.

This morning at 2 degrees celsius my Taycan showed 328 km at 100% charge.

 

[Archimedes]

Now my guess-o-meter says 227 miles, right after a 196 mile actual range experience. Too funny. Particularly given the BEST actual range that I have EVER achieved is 225, in range mode on a long trip. I’m going to start referring to it as the make-shit-up-meter.

 

[Dr Bob]

Are you sure you actually drove 400 miles with the Tesla M3 on a charge? A friend never gets more than 300 with his LR, no AC.

No, of course not. You would have to do the trip at 50mph so very boring. Long trips (360miles) at 70mph gave 300 mile range in 20°C ish temps. Dropping speed to 50mph on country roads in Scotland in those temps gave much better performance. I always looked how far I got in miles per 10% of charge - so on the motorway trips it would be 30 miles per 10% but on the 50mph trips I regularly got 40 miles - hence the 400mile total, but all very temperature dependent.

One issue with the Tesla is that you get less range from 100% SoC down to 90% compared to when SoC is lower ( which seemed to be that regenerative breaking was disabled at 95-100% - presumably not to overcharge the battery). I never drove long distance below 20% SoC so maybe the mileage in that range would also be lower - so that could affect the 400miles.

Interesting that the Taycan seems to regenerative break at 100% so the mileage 90-100% is similar to 80-90% etc.

Range in the Tesla was also affected significantly if you told it you were going to a supercharger - and it warmed the battery up. I reckon I was loosing 10% of the capacity on the battery pre-heat - so if that is right, you would loose 10% of range by pre-heating. On long runs with temps over 10°C, I always turned the pre-heat off with the penalty of 5 mins longer charging but saving paying Tesla for an extra 7kWh. I always used pre-heat at lower temps. Its interesting that heating the battery in the Taycan doesnt seem to have a great effect on range. I cant understand why not. On the recent trip down from Jockland to Rugby (6 hrs drive), in the first 90 mins, the battery heated from 5°C to 32°C (as per normal) and I was seeing 24 miles per 10% drop in SoC (very typical). I then had 30 mins when the battery was heating to 41°C for the charger at Carlisle - which I ignored. On starting again after charging, the rest of the 4 hours were spent with the battery cooling from 41°C to 30°C ish and with the car well warmed up but still saw 24 miles for every 10%. It would be interesting to hear how others see the power needed to heat the batteries. Not a clue how the Taycan manages heat - is there heat recovery from the motors that is used to heat the batteries? Seems far better than the Tesla.

 

[Dr Bob]

Now my guess-o-meter says 227 miles, right after a 196 mile actual range experience. Too funny. Particularly given the BEST actual range that I have EVER achieved is 225, in range mode on a long trip. I’m going to start referring to it as the make-shit-up-meter.

I would agree with you. My MSUP meter usually under reads once you get away from 100% SoC. If you monitor the miles you do for every 10% SoC used, ie 24 miles if the true range is 240miles (assuming the miles are consistent across the range of 0-100% - which is likely not to be true) then on a trip of over 30 miles, you can get a good estimate of range which doesnt normally match up with the MSUP meter.
I tend to watch the % SoC left at end of trip more than the MSUP meter as that is usually pretty accurate.

 

[Scandinavian]

One other observation though is just how fast this Taycan charges. I dont remember seeing the Tesla charge much over 100kW at the various superchargers. Now I can choose any charger, we stopped for the first time at Ionity Carlisle (at 51% charge) – and got 220kW and was still going at 120kW with 85% charge in. Way way faster than the Tesla.

I think that depends on the Tesla model you have, and the Tesla charger. If you have a model 3 at a V3 charger, and have let the battery prepare properly, you will get 250 kW at peak. It drops quite fast, but still charges nearly as fast as the Taycan.
At least mine does do.

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