EPA Confirms Tesla's Model 3 Has a Range of 310 Miles (theverge.com)

Tesla's Model 3 has a confirmed range of 310 miles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "That figure applies to the long-range version of the Model 3, and echoes the vehicle specs released by Tesla back in July," reports The Verge. "It also makes the Model 3 one of the most efficient passenger electric vehicles on the market." From the report: The EPA's range is used as the advertised figure for electric vehicles that are sold in the US. The 310-mile range is an estimate of the number of miles the vehicle should be able to travel in combined city and highway driving from a full charge. That's 131 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe) for city driving, 120 MPGe on the highway, and 126 MPGe combined. You'll have to pay more to get that extended range, though. Tesla said it would be selling a standard version of the Model 3, with just 220 miles of range, for $35,000. The long-range version will start at $44,000, the automaker says. Production on the standard version isn't expected to begin until 2018.

Comments

Personally I don't care

[fluffernutter]

I don't care what the range is, until there are charging stations everywhere and a full charge happens in 10 minutes I would have range anxiety. You're totally going to say I'm being irrational, and I know I am, but it is what it is. I am just as bad with my phone,if it goes past 50% I have to plug it in.

Re:Personally I don't care

[NEDHead]

Trailer hitch & towable generator should solve the problem

Re:Personally I don't care

[Rei]

I don't care what the range is, until there are charging stations everywhere

They are (and rapidly expanding). And that's just superchargers - including slower ones (but still including high power DC), look here.

and a full charge happens in 10 minutes

In your everyday life (aka, the vast majority of your time), instead of 5 minutes to detour to a gas station, a full charge takes 10 seconds: 5 to plug in, 5 to unplug. In the comfort of your garage.

On long trips, it charges during meal and bathroom / stretch breaks, about 75 miles range per 10 minutes charging at below 50% SoC. Take, for example, a 700 mile trip. At 70mph that's 10 hours (not counting breaks), so two meal breaks - say, a 20 minute lunch and a 30 minute dinner. 45 minutes charging. That adds about 375 miles, meaning 685 miles. Just one or two 10 minute stretch breaks (on your 10 hour trip) and that's your entire charging.

The only thing it doesn't work for is "sprint" trips, where you're basically trying to avoid all stops, eating in the car, minimizing all bathroom and rest breaks. And if you're the sort of person who does that... don't. Seriously, stop it; that's dangerous, not just to you, but to other drivers.

I would have range anxiety

A belief only held by people who've never owned an EV. Because 1) supercharging rates aren't slow; 2) you can extend range significantly just by slowing down, at any point in time (unlike ICE vehicles, EVs increase in range down to around 20-25mph), and 3) in the absolute worst case (which almost never happens), you can ask to charge virtually anywhere. Farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Ranger station deep in a national park? You name it. And the answer in practice is almost always yes.

Re:Personally I don't care

[interkin3tic]

"I'm being irrational but I don't care" +1 insightful

If it's that type of party, I irrationally think wolves are creeping up behind me every time I walk to my car in the dark.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Rei]

I would have range anxiety

unlike ICE vehicles, EVs increase in range down to around 20-25mph

Are you really trying to use this as a selling point?

Things weird about your reply.

1) You act like we're talking about normal driving, not emergencies.
2) You act like it's a bad thing to have an ability to greatly (2-3x) increase your range, something you don't have with ICE vehicles.
3) You act like you only have two options ("highway speeds" and "20mph"), rather than a continuous range curve between those points.
4) You ignore the entire rest of what you're replying to.

And your claims that charging stations are everywhere is very dubious in comparison to what most people are use to as "charging stations."
  Please play to the reality

I gave you a bloody map, what more do you want? And why are you putting "charging stations" in quotes? Superchargers are real. There are 7619 supercharger stalls operational today (aka, not counting those under construction). The average spacing along US interstates is about 70 miles (a bit more in more densely populated areas, a bit less in less densely populated ones), evenly spaced. Doubling by the end of next year. And that's just Tesla's network.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Rei]

They're about an hour apart, and constantly becoming denser.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Kjella]

I am just as bad with my phone,if it goes past 50% I have to plug it in.

Well, a smartphone can end up spending quite a bit of battery even if you're not interacting with it. Particularly if you're doing something like GPS tracking, updates, cloud sync or whatever in the background or even just a faulty app causing 100% CPU load. An EV shouldn't really lose any significant amount of power on its own except for long time storage, as I understand it there's a roughly 1%/day vampire drain but for a commute or weekend trip it should be completely negligible and if it's plugged in there's no issue. But yeah I too want to have the range that I have a plan A and a plan B if the next charger is out of order or full or the road is closed and I have to take a big detour or something. I don't think I'd ever go under 20% unless something has already gone wrong or it's the last leg home.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Rei]

This is not true. Tesla has been trying for ages to get other manufacturers to use their network; they *want* higher utilization (for paying customers, of course); their goal is 30% utilization at Superchargers. It's Nissan that you have to complain to, not Tesla.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Amouth]

Not exactly true, they have been trying to get others to "License" their charging standard. Tesla built a standard and the rest of the industry built a standard (and Tesla refused to participate).

Now to top that Tesla sells an adapter so that Their cars can use the Industry standard for quick charge, but refuse to sell the licence for their standard to be used in an adapter that allows others to use their chargers.

So in simple terms, their "trying" has been wanting to get a kick back for every car built, Not actually removing barriers for within the industry.

Again as a consumer and end user, i'd buy an adapter and pay to use their chargers if i could, but i can't because the option doesn't exist. Also i'd love to buy their car, but i can't because they do not have anything within my affordability range.

Re:Personally I don't care

[Dog-Cow]

That would only be irrational if it wasn’t true. /cue creepy music and wolves howling in the distance.

Re: Personally I don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

A range extender can be a much smaller simpler engine. Think something like a lawnmower engine.

If it breaks, switching it out is pretty simple.

Re:Personally I don't care

[BostonPilot]

So, I'm a little curious about your commute, because really there are a LOT of chargers around Boston. As you go out west of Worcester they're much more spread out.

In any case, a 70 mile commute is right in the sweet spot for many of the BEVs.

As for home charging, hell yeah you should install a 220v charger! I just had my electrician put a dryer outlet in the garage and then I hung a charging station on the wall next to it. I get home, I plug in. It takes maybe 10 seconds. When I'm ready to leave again, I disconnect; another 10 seconds.

As others state, with an EV you don't wait until the charge level is getting down... just plug in each time you get home. It's simple, it's quick, and you always have a "full tank". It's much nicer than having to stop at a gas station once or twice a week...

My old commute was 60 miles (Acton to Burlington). Took about 50% charge to do the round trip, and when I would get home and plug in it would be topped off within 90 minutes... So, you go home and plug in, make a meal or do something around the house, and voila the car is back at 100% charge if you want to go run some more errands. It's really nice to have the "gas tank" full each morning when you leave the house. Until people have an EV and experience it, they tend to think that you'll follow a similar procedure like an ICE: filling only when the tank is getting low. That's just not the way to do it if you have a garage (or parking space next to the house - I park my car outside the garage and just have a long enough cord that I can plug in without being in the garage - my old BEV I did park in the garage).

Re:Personally I don't care

[skullandbones99]

Do not forget that an electric drivetrain is more efficient than an ICE drivetrain:

ICE drivetrain is 30% efficient per unit of energy source
Electric drivetrain is 90% efficient per unit of energy source

This means batteries need to have 30/90 = 1/3rd the energy density of gasoline for the electric vehicle to have the same energy usage at the wheels as the ICE vehicle.

Also:
1. An electric vehicle can be more aerodynamic than an ICE vehicle so an electric vehicle suffers less drag and therefore there is an efficiency gain over the ICE vehicle.
2. Electric vehicle can have regenerative braking systems which converts the kinetic energy back into stored electrical energy which makes an electric vehicle more efficient than an ICE vehicle on roads with varying gradients.

Therefore, the battery energy density is a major factor in the range of the vehicle but it is not the only factor.

Re:Personally I don't care

[torkus]

That's ... a very long way to say 'compare MPG with MPGe'

The tesla, at 130MPGe, is over 3x more energy efficient than even your 40 MPG hybrid. Done and done.

Re:Personally I don't care

[torkus]

A portable generator is not as efficient as a modern, fully integrated, ICE/electric motor combo. No way, no how. Not going to happen unless you literally throw 10's of thousands of dollars at your solution just to say you did.

Oh, and you want to TOW it? Might as well factor in the rolling resistance and (lack of) aerodynamics of that trailer plus generator. Really, it's a stupid idea for 99.999% of people. Either buy an ICE vehicle if you're doing 100's of miles away from civilization at a clip or get an tesla and you really won't have mileage problems...really.

Impressive

[110010001000]

But like everyone I need to drive 311 miles per day. I'll wait for the Model 4.

Re:Impressive

[arth1]

The distance between my two work locations is 305 miles.
It should cover that then, but it won't. T\he problem is that the EPA mileage takes into account neither sweltering summer heat nor winter temperatures way below freezing. Especially at really low temperatures, the range of electric cars is severely reduced, as in sometimes only getting half the range.

And then it does not take two minutes to fill it, with stations at pretty much every crossroads. Even if you should be lucky enough to find a "rapid" charging station, it's a long wait, and then you don't even get the same range afterwards, because that range is based on slow charging.

Proponents like to point out that most people don't drive that far most of the time. But I don't want a car that I can only use for 80% of the time, and have to go rent a proper car whenever going far.

Sure electric cars is the future, but hybrids is what makes sense for any foreseeable future. Limping along on gas when the batteries are down is far better than being stuck.

Re:Impressive

[110010001000]

There is always "that guy" who needs to drive 300 miles in a day regularly. 305 miles is at least a five hour drive. Do you do that 20% of the time? If so, you need to find a new job because you are wasting your life away in a car.

Re:Impressive

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, everyone knows if a new technology can't support your lifestyle, the solution is to redesign your lifestyle so that doesn't matter rather than sticking with the old technology. Got to keep upgrading and chucking the old technology in a landfill, even if the 'upgrade' is worse! Think of the environment!

Re:Impressive

[Rei]

Leaf charging is 1/3rd the speed of Tesla charging. Leafs really don't work for road tripping. Road tripping in a Tesla means stopping for a meal, then leaving with a couple hundred miles more charge. Road tripping in a Leaf.... not so much.

Re:Impressive

[Kjella]

It's not going to be a good fit for you, but there's no need to exaggerate. Plowing your way through heavy snow/slush it could potentially get as bad as half, but ordinary cold winter conditions is more like a quarter. Superchargers don't appear by chasing leprechauns, either there is one between your work locations or there's not. Half an hour at a supercharger should give you ~170 miles and (310+170)*0.75 = 360 miles should make it just fine. And in the winter how fast are you going, 50 mph average? It's a thirty minute break on a six hour trip. Like you're going to rent a car for that, bullshit. If that's the car you have, you drive it and yeah it takes a little longer. If you do it often like you do, get an ICE. But you make it sound like a 300 mile range is a Nissan Leaf.

Re:Impressive

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

No body is forcing you to buy an electric car. Go ahead and buy whatever is suitable for you, whatever you like.

Just give the same respect to other people. There will be people who might find electric cars adequate.

At this point it is not the range, it is the price. The additional price of electric car does not justify the savings in fuel costs. So most people are not finding it compelling to try the new technology.

When the breakthrough comes and when there is cost savings, people will switch.

When electric cars reach 50% market share, let us see how many people who value range are willing to pay more for the range.

Re:Impressive

[Octorian]

There is always "that guy" who needs to drive 300 miles in a day regularly. 305 miles is at least a five hour drive. Do you do that 20% of the time? If so, you need to find a new job because you are wasting your life away in a car.

And for some reason, "that guy" *always* shows up in comment threads on articles like this one. He also often needs the cargo capacity of a pickup truck, and sometimes is driving to some shack in the deep woods with no electricity. Oh, and also assumes his use case is typical, or at least a complete blocker to anyone adopting EVs.

Re:Impressive

[kqs]

Or to put it another way, 99.999% of people may have this problem. It's adding an unnecessary risk that's the issue. One you simply don't have, even with the cheapest gasoline or hybrid vehicle.

Of course, with a gasoline vehicle, you might have the fuel pump or alternator or radiator go. None of which are a problem in electric vehicles.

I owned a Toyota Corolla for 17 years before it died (mostly of body rust). It probably broke down about 10 times, which is about 0.16% unreliable on a daily basis, or 99.84% reliable. That is rather worse than the 99.999% number given above.

This argument reminds me of the time a Tesla ran over a large piece of metal, warned the driver that it was going to shut down (giving them time to pull to the side of the road), and a few minutes later caught on fire. Gasoline cars catch on fire A LOT (usually with less warning); they're full of gasoline, get extremely hot, and generate sparks. But some people got the idea that electric cars were major fire hazards. People always focus on unlikely problems while not considering the common problems.

Re:Impressive

[edtice1559]

I have no idea how "that guy" comments so much as it seems he spends his whole life in the car. Hopefully he's not posting while driving.

Re:Impressive

[110010001000]

If you need to drive five hour trips regularly, and you aren't a delivery driver, your lifestyle sucks.

Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[SuperKendall]

The newer range is really great, about as much as most cars.

But the thing you'd want to larger range for is really road trips, which per day would usually be composed of at least two 300 mile segments. So you have to figure out at least two charging points per day of trip, as well as overnight.

Now they have done a great job of bringing superchargers online where a lot of trips I could probably plot a path that included enough superchargers. Evening is still an issue though, lots of places it is hard to find somewhere to plug in. But with that kind of range, maybe it would be enough just to find one in the city I was staying in and charge up before I went to the hotel.

I think it's close enough it would work for most road trips, except for some remote areas.

Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[AvitarX]

I'm liking the plug in hybrid idea a lot more than pure electric personally.

The Prius gets 25, and would probably cover half of my miles (no road trips, and leave me about 15 short on a weekend as I'm often not home). The Chevy volt (at 50) would cover essentially all of my none long distance driving, even a pretty chore busy weekend.

Wither way, there'd be no range anxiety, with half or less the trips to the gas station, and lower cost to maintain (less oil changes, less breaks, I assume an engine running at optimum power band to charge is a happier engine too).

I imagine for the vast majority of people a 50 mile range in a plug in is superior to a 500 range in an all electric, with a huge percentage of the benefits.

The only way I'd see the all electric being better would be if it cost less being simpler, but it seems we're not quite there yet with batteries.

Re:Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[Rei]

You might have an interest in checking out Björn Nyland on Youtube. He works as a courier in Norway, driving Teslas a crazy number of kilometers every year.

Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[SuperKendall]

I think there are a few ways in which all electric is superior, the main one being performance over pretty much any hybrid I have seen... that's not important to everyone, but it is to a lot of people. That's primarily a Tesla feature though, not generalized to all electric cars.

The aspect I do like is simplicity, with no gasoline engine at all there is less to go wrong.

I still think in the end that hydrogen fuel-cell electrics will win out but Tesla's making a great case for fully battery powered vehicles.

I'm hoping to hold out several more years before I get a new vehicle so I'm interested to see how this all plays out.

Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[AvitarX]

Plug in fuel cell, or pure fuel cell?

Because I don't think there's a great way to make hydrogen (correct me if I'm wrong). Sure, it can be made from hydrocarbons cleaner and more efficiently than a small engine can power (and likely charge) a car, but essentially a hydrogen tank is a quick to charge battery, or it uses fossil fuels, I don't think it'll really take off. Much better (IMO) to have 90+% power grid electric driving, the rest fossil fuel.

I wonder what Tesla could do performance wise if they made a plug-in hybrid, and where the price would fall. My understanding is the batteries are in the realm of 5 figures ($190/kwh, 100kwh battery), if knocking 80% of the battery cut half the price, that leaves some wiggle room for a small engine to charge it, and 60 miles from an overnight charge. The engine and gas may weigh less too.

There's no reason a plugin hybrid can't perform awesome, Toyota just went the route of massive mileage (600 miles on a small tank), and Chevy the route of average (150hp, 270ftlbs torque, comfortable driving around, but 7.5 0-60).

Re:Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[guacamole]

The newer range is really great, about as much as most cars.

Absolutely not. Your information is seriously out of date.

I'll give you two examples of pretty mainstream cars. First, is the 2016 three row Honda Pilot "gas guzzler". I am getting anywhere between 23 and 27mpg cruising on interstates, and it has 20 gallon gas tank, so the range is +400 miles. The second one is the 2017 Honda Accord. It has 17 gallon tank, and I am observing 33mpg in mixed driving, resulting again +500 mile range.

Re:Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[Paul Carver]

On the other hand, the Honda Element gets just short of 290 miles running the tank dry. Safer to fill up at around 270. I wish I could plug it in when it's parked in my garage because I spend far more time at home than on the road, but unfortunately it wants gasoline and I dont have a gasoline outlet in my garage, just an electrical outlet.

I'd love to get a Tesla, but I think I've got at least another ten years before the Element wears out. I did take it on a road trip in 2006, but that was my last road trip and I don't have any more planned so I'm not at all concerned about Tesla range.

Re: Getting pretty decent for road trips.

[SuperKendall]

Because I don't think there's a great way to make hydrogen (correct me if I'm wrong)

There's not quite yet but there area lot of very promising cheaper ways to produce hydrogen coming to fruition over the next ten years.

It has a lot of benefits, in that you can fuel up as fast as cars, and easily convert gas stations to store hydrogen. Any place with a lot of water can be a potential production source.

Perhaps what will happen is cars will trend all electric, but charging stations will be altered to work off huge fuel cells so they are not such a huge draw off the electric grid.

That's a big factor I don't see considered, what really has to change if 80+% of all cars are electric (as I expect they will be in 10-20 years). No matter what there is a huge infrastructure challenge ahead and I feel like hydrogen as fuel can be worked out before extra electrical grid capacity along with the many, many more charging stations that would be required for much wider use of electric cars.

Re:MPGe

[Rei]

What, you don't think of electricity in gallons? ;)

Re:Coal Per Charge?

[Rei]

The myth that just won't die.

Dubious Build Quality

[DatbeDank]

I'll wait a few more years. I know a few folks who love love love their Teslas, but they keep having to bring them in for service once a month for various problems (albeit minor in the grand scheme of things). You'd think for a car this expensive, the kinks would be all worked out.

Reminds me of Delorean's issues when they started out.

Re:Dubious Build Quality

[Rei]

What you're seeing is a combination of selection bias and the high media / public interest in Tesla. Consumer Reports rates the Model S as "above average" in terms of reliability (they expect Model 3 to be "average"). Model X, however, is still "below average", so that's legit.

It's also worth noting that Tesla consumer satisfaction ratings always top the industry, at around 90%.

Re:Dubious Build Quality

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Been driving a Model S since 2015, racked up 100km in about 2.5 yrs.

What! 100 kilometer? just 60 miles or so in 2.5 years? No wonder it did not need any service!

Re:Coal Per Charge?

[heypete]

So how much actual coal is that per mile?

Probably takes 2000 pounds of coal to make the electricity to charge it up once?

Especially the coal electricity California imports from Utah.

The math's pretty easy: according to http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/ctele.htm, it takes about one pound of coal to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity. The long range battery has a capacity of 75kWh, so that'd be about 75 pounds of coal. Assuming a gas vehicle gets 50mpg, the gasoline needed to travel 310 miles weighs 39 pounds, a far cry from your 2000 pounds claim. Either way, a centrally-located power plant would be able to more readily control its emissions than a smaller, mobile gasoline engine.

Depending on your power mix, that's a worst-case scenario. In California, which you mention, PG&E generates ~70% of its power from renewable and greenhouse gas-free sources, like nuclear, hydro, and unspecified "renewable" sources. 17% is from natural gas, which is very much cleaner than gasoline or coal, and "unspecified" other sources. Sounds much less polluting than gasoline.

EVs have the advantage that the source of the power feeding the grid can be changed without requiring all users to switch to something else: switching all gasoline cars to something that's compatible with their engines and fuel systems but is less polluting and damaging to the environment would be quite difficult. Replacing aging coal power plants with cleaner-burning natural gas plants dramatically reduces emissions while still pushing the same electrons through wires. Adding nuclear, wind, solar, etc. can further improve the cleanliness of electricity supply without any change from consumers.

Re:Not worth it

[Rei]

Which "isn't that great"? Lithium is an element. Nothing happens to it over time. It's intercalated into the anodes and cathodes. This is the main place where degradation occurs in modern li-ion batteries. The reference to graphene (not graphite) batteries is an anode tech (normal anodes are graphite).

Regardless, typical degradation on Tesla packs is 4% in the first year, then under 1% in each subsequent year.