Real Data on A Tesla in New Jersey

Mr. J has provided me with real data on a Tesla Model S that he owns and drives in New Jersey.  Mr. J reports it has been in the 20 degrees F most days and his car sits in the parking lot for approximately 10 hours at his office while he works.  He has limited power and no battery regeneration on his short trip home after the Model S has sat in the cold air outside.   His commute is only 5 minutes but the car would need 20 minutes to gain full power and the ability to regen from braking as the batteries are simply too cold.   Mr. J says for the last 30 miles in this cold weather and his short commute he has averaged 514 watt hours of battery power per mile.   For all of his 1,005.3 miles since he bought this car this winter he has averaged 441 watt hours per mile from his batteries.   Mr. J has a simple wall plug at home and the car only gets a trickle charge of about 30 miles of range on 10 hours of charge.  Mr. J knows that he also has vampire losses while his car sits in the parking lot during the day as well as his unheated garage overnight.  Mr. J thinks his actual energy use from his plug is 3 times the watt hours of the computer stated watt hours of the batteries and about 1.5 kwh per mile.  Mr. J knows he is not green this winter and hopes that as the weather becomes warmer his Model S will green up.

It has been a year since John Broder of the New York Times took his ill-fated trip in the Model S that caused Mr. Broder to lose his job at the Times.   I did a google search on what Mr. Broder has published at the Times lately and his work there ceased in July 2013.  I guess Elon managed to get the Times to make Mr. Broder silent.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_m_broder/

Mr. Broder actually had a point about the poor performance of the Model S in the winter in the Northeast.   Mr. J certainly has experienced a very cold winter this year and this is probably the most severe test of his Tesla and things will improve as the arctic blast dissipates.  

Dr. P in Orange County California is doing fine in his Tesla with his 100 mile daily roundtrip commute to his medical practice.  Dr. P is planning on adding PV cells to his roof on his home and will generate power for use in his Model S.   The real question for Dr. P who took his Tesla and his wife on a 700 mile road trip last weekend is will his batteries last and how many miles will he get on the batteries Elon has guaranteed?  Dr. P told us all he used Elon’s free electricity superchargers for all of his miles on his long road trip last weekend.

Dr. reports he has traveled 24,000 miles and has averaged 343 watt hours per mile since he bought his car.  His 700 mile road trip using Elon's free electrons averaged 320 watt hours per mile in glorious Southern California weather.

I can only say that between Mr. J. and Dr. P we have the two extremes of how a Model S is being used.  I will report further updates.