On Range
The Model 3 comes in two battery capacities and several wheel and tyre combinations which all effect efficiency and range, along with the terrain you cover and your driving style. For this reason the distance you can cover for a given quantity of charge can vary quite a lot.
Car Configurations
The Model 3 is (or has been) available in four different configurations in Australia, listed here with their short colloquial names and their Australian advertised (NEDC) range:
Standard Range+ (SR+) - 460km
Long Range All Wheel Drive (LR AWD) - 620km
Long Range All Wheel Drive Performance (P3D-) - 560km
Long Range All Wheel Drive Performance with Performance Upgrades (P3D+) - 560km
The Long Range variants all share a larger 74kWh battery, the Standard Range Plus has a 50kWh battery.
The LR AWD and P3D- are largely identical hardware however the Performance is tuned for more power and allegedly has a different inverter in the Drive Unit (a.k.a motor). Despite Tesla advertising the two variants with different ranges in Australia and the same range in the US my expectation is that their real-world range will be close to identical under the same test conditions.
The definitive source on the range of Tesla cars is https://teslike.com/range/. Have a read of their source data and reasoning but here is the table that is relevant to us. I’ve highlighted the models above in yellow.
You’ll note how these figures vary dramatically from the advertised figures in Australia. You’ll find the same silly games going on in the traditional car world. Some variants get grouped together (such as P3D- and P3D+) despite the real-world range varying significantly between variants.
In all I think you can expect the “Range that should be advertised” column to be fairly representative of how far each model will get you at ~100km/h on relatively flat ground.
One other interesting snippet is the LR RWD car highlighted in light blue. Tesla doesn’t offer this car in Australia and no longer offers it in the US either but many people are upset with Tesla for not offering it in Australia. The problem is that there is only a marginal increase in range (37km) compared to the LR AWD and the fact that it requires a third variant of the battery so I can understand why Tesla phased it out and isn’t offering it here.
Car Efficiency
The next interesting thing to look at is efficiency of the car. This table takes the “Range that should be advertised” and divides that by the battery size to figure out how much energy in kilowatt hours (kWh) the car uses from the battery to travel one kilometer.
You can see that the LR AWD uses 17% more energy than the SR+ thanks to its added weight and drivetrain losses from the added motor. The P3D+ adds another 10% on that thanks to less aerodynamic wheels and stickier tyres.
If you want to live the efficient electric car dream then the SR+ is the vehicle for you!
Battery and Charging Efficiency
It is broadly understood that the path from the wall socket, though the charger, battery and into the Drive Unit is about 82% efficient. So to fully charge a Long Range battery will take (75 x 0.82 =) 91.5kWh of power through your electricity meter. The efficiency of DC charging with a Supercharger or other DC fast charger will be dependent on the efficiency of that device, but largely that’s not your problem. Almost all public stations (and all of the Supercharger network) charge you for the power delivered and the power is sourced from zero emissions sources so you don’t need to worry about the pollution, either.
“Real Outlet Efficiency” in the table above is the result of taking these losses into account in a home charging situation.
Cost
Side note: If you want to evaluate electricity providers then I’d recommend checking out https://wattever.com.au/. I put a fair bit of effort into figuring out the best plan for me with a lot of leg work and formulas in Excel - and then I found wattever and it told me the same results. It’s nice to have some confirmation but I could have saved a lot of effort. Such is life, eh?
To be clear - I love a good TCO calculation - and I might get to that in a future article - but this is only about cost per km for now.
In the table I have then taken an indicative cost of 25c/kWh to get the cost per km driven as you might see on your electricity bill. Again taking the 91.5kWh needed to fill an LR battery you can see this will be (91.5 x 0.25=) $22.86. 25c/kWh is what I pay for 100% green power from Energy Australia. If I’m diverting from my solar I’m paying much less.
Out in the Real World
The reality is that beyond a certain limit range isn’t something you think about - and for me that’s about 300 km. Enough range to go from Brisbane to the Gold Coast for the day, hit the beach, do some shopping and get home again comfortably. Even the SR+ Model 3 goes well past this. Previous affordable EVs in Australia such as the Leaf and Zoe have had ranges closer to 120km and didn’t have DC fast charging either so a big chunk of my theoretical day out would be spent with the car on charge. Not a huge problem if the charger was near the beach or the shops I was visiting - but still. Not ideal.
And at the extreme end its been proven that you can go at least 2780km in 24 hours in a Model 3 - averaging, including charging, 115.8km/h!
As I see it this closes the book on range anxiety.