Range not close to as advertised

[CD4TNF]

@invertedspear made this pretty good calculator for the Lightning's range. I use it regularly. More accurate than the GOM. Plug in your expected efficiency and the 20% range is a pretty good estimate.

https://lightningcalcs.pages.dev/?battery=131

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[RickKeen]

I'm not talking about ... driving faster. I'm making a simple point. Accelerating quickly has little impact on REAL WORLD driving efficiency.

if you accelerate quickly, even if your maximum speed is the same, you ARE driving faster on average. You spend more time at the higher speed.

 

[HOTAS]

Most everyone know that as speed doubles, drag quadruples. That’s why driving fast consumes more energy.
The same hold true for electrical current.
In a word, I²R losses. The motor windings, cables and the inverter all have some resistance (R), which is why motors and inverters, batteries need cooling systems, the resistance causes them to get warm when they pass current. The more current they pass (i.e. the more power the motor is delivering) the greater the losses, and because these losses are proportional to the square of the current ….if you double the current (so double the power) then the losses increase by a factor of four. It takes significantly more battery power to accelerate rapidly than slowly.

This has been proven so many times in EV’S and PHEV’S (full electric output). There really is no debate. Combine both quadrupled drag and quadrupled resistance to the delivery of the energy to overcome it and you got a lot of wasted energy.
Simple.
AND Regeneration can never recover energy lost as heat, and regen itself has I²R losses that create more heat. THUS WHY the regen balance argument is also invalid.

Acceleration AND Speed are THE TWO biggest range killers.
Accelerate moderately and immediately taper back as speed increases, your range will increase significantly. For some folks it will be 20% more range.

 

[HOTAS]

The Chevy Volt had a neat energy display that included kW demand Of the motor under acceleration. An efficient rule of thumb we used during acceleration was take your current speed and cut it in half, that number was then the limit for max kW demand displayed during acceleration.
All of a sudden everyone was exceeding the advertised EV only battery range of the Volt..

Limit Lightning acceleration to half way to the ’lightning bolt’ and begin to taper back As you accelerate, your range will go up.
You can have ’fun’ acceleration or you can have range, but you can’t ’have your cake and eat it too‘ in an EV.
Although, maximizing range is it’s own kind of (intellectual) fun?

 

[HOTAS]

The real irony in this debate is that the good ‘ole ‘GOM‘, that frustrates so many, is also proof that acceleration and speed kill range.

I don’t have a problem with the GOM and I can meet or exceed the Lightning’s advertised range consistently.
(Winter being a bit more challenging ).

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