Electric Vehicles

Definitely false.

Well there will be less variance when the tank is low.

If there are 16 gallons in the tank and it bumps up the MPG assumption from 22 mpg to 25 mpg that gives you an extra 48 miles.

If it makes the same assumption modification with 1 gallon in the tank that only gets you an extra 3 miles. It moves in 10 mile increments so that likely won’t even change the displayed “miles to empty” at all.

And your recent average MPGs are easily changing that much when you’re going back & forth from city to highway driving.

Now how many miles (or gallons) go into its MPG calc… no idea.

I passed a Cybertruck today. I hope it has inner beauty :roll_eyes:

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So, you agree it would be a bad idea to use recent data, like, say, driving from Denver to Vail. I mean, can’t keep going up forever.
I’m not sure why your rental did that, added miles-to-empty based on prior driving habits (other renter’s) and then on very recent driving habits (yours). You do agree that at least one of those estimates was incorrect? You would then agree that however that estimate was determined, assuming the same inputs were used barring a one-off quirk, is an incorrect way to do so?

Huh? No, why do you think that?

I have no idea what the actual algorithm is. Maybe it’s based on the last 250 miles driven.

I pick up the car and the last 250 miles required 10 gallons of gas, or 25 MPGs (assume the miles before I picked up are evenly distributed for simplicity). Car has 18 gallons of gas in it when I pick it up, so it says I have 450 miles to empty.

I drive to Columbus and use 2.5 gallons of gas, or 40 MPGs for the trip. At this point the last 250 miles driven used 8.5 gallons of gas… roughly 29.4 MPGs over 250 miles. And there are 15.5 gallons left in the tank, so 455.9 miles to empty.

I don’t know exactly what the algorithm is, but something like what I described is certainly plausible.

25 city / 40 highway seems quite plausible, particularly if a lead foot is doing the city driving and a feather foot is doing the highway driving.

My minivan can be pretty extreme on the miles to empty when we take it to see the in-laws that live in the big city. We usually fill up about 130 miles out before we hit the city gas prices, and this is usually enough to get back to this point on the way home. I’ll get 26 mpg on the highway, and maybe half that in the stop and go of the city.

Miles to empty will usually stay level for about an hour after we leave to head back. 120 (~8x15 gallons) down to 75 (~3x25 gallons) while I drive the 130 miles is a pretty typical result.

I did it! :trophy: got all the way through a grocery store parking lot in just EV mode, so it registered a momentary “MPG” of 999 :upside_down_face:

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:party:

Did you drive at OJ Simpson-slowing-down-to-listen-to-the-end-of-the-NBA-game speed?

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They should have a car for actuaries that just tells you the exact amount of gas in the tank to the nearest tenth and leave the estimation to the professionals TYVM.

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Sorry to take this on a digression. The time till your battery expires is like a ruin problem so actuaries could model it if the process of battery depletion was easy to model. This is very interesting stuff to do if it wasn’t that this is basically applied mathematics and doesn’t require actuaries.

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More “don’t project Tricycle Old Guy®️ into R^2” speed

What was it last year?

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:joy:

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No, this wasn’t me, although it’s something I might have done.

Interesting changes to brakes. I especially like the “lifetime no maintenance” and “no brake dust” approach.
Mercedes in-drive brakes

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Looks like I’m going to have to arrange to have level 2 charging installed in my garage. It’s about 30 degrees and I’m certainly not getting the 4.8 mi/hr that I once was. Too early to tell how fast, it says it needs 24+hrs to add 56 miles. I’ll know more tomorrow. .

You could put a heater in your garage. That help?

Do you have a quote for how much it will cost?

In an hour and a half at a temperature of 29F (although it’s probably 40F in the garage) I’ve gained 11 miles in 2.33 hours (from 196 to 207), so 4.7 mi/hr which is similar to what I have been getting when it was warm. But it still says it will take 24+ hours to get to 80% which is about 255 which is another 48 miles, which is a rate of less than 2 mi/hr.

But at some point in the winter it will inevitably cool to -10F and someday -20F (and the garage will probably be about 10F) and I don’t want my car to spend 100% of its energy warming the batteries nonstop and not adding any charge.

I’m guessing it would cost a couple thousand at least having looked online, since it’s a bit of a trip from my circuit breaker in the basement to the garage. Not sure I want to heat my whole garage, it’s not like I have a workshop or any reason to spend time there.

At the point where it hit 209 miles I determined the following:
Since 255 miles is 80% charge I assume 100% charge is 255/0.80=319.
According to the app,
Getting to 70% charge (223 miles, 14 more) will take 08h20m (1.68 mi/hr)
Getting to 77% charge (246 miles, 37 more) will take 22h00m (1.68 mi/hr)

I think my app is lying to me. Why would it assume I gain 1.68 mi/hr when I’ve been collecting 4.7 mi/hr recently, and in warmer conditions?

Maybe I don’t need Level 2 charging but if these results are going to be materially different when it gets colder, I’ll spend the $.

ETA I came down when it was at 212 miles (43 more) and all of the sudden the remaining time was 8h35m.(5.0 mi/hr)!