Does the 70mph have an effect? In ICE, there is an MPH window where the engine is most efficient. Driving outside of that window will lower the miles per gallon and the total miles per tank. Is there a similar sweet spot for EVs?
The "most efficient" speed is pretty shockingly low, like 25mph to 45mph low depending on if you have "overhead" loads like AC/heat/lights/etc... (for a Tesla Model 3 at least)
And the 70mph does have a MASSIVE difference. Anecdotally, going from 65mph to 75mph in my Tesla absolutely destroys my range (last time I checked, the extra 10mph there would reduce my range by about 60 miles).
But that can be misleading in the real world. If you care about "time efficiency" as in "what speed should I drive to complete a long distance trip in the least amount of time", the most efficient speed for Teslas is something like 90mph! That's because the Tesla superchargers are so fast that they make up for the loss in efficiency from going much faster.
This is a good video on someone that actually did the testing to figure that out:
Interesting bit of "for science" this guy did. I've never looked into buying a Tesla. Just out of my price range. When you buy a Tesla, does it come with a charger for the home, or do you have to buy it separately? 190kph is absolutely insane, even on open highway.
It comes with a home charger, and it's charge speed differs quite a lot depending on where you live and what kind of power source you can give it. In the US it comes by default with an attachment for our normal wall plugs, but at 120v and 12A the charge rate is pretty slow, about 6 miles per hour. With a higher power wall plug you can get it to about 30 miles per hour of charging with just a $15 adapter.
If you buy a separate standalone charger, you can get that to around 45mph of charge speed, but I tell everyone considering it to wait a bit before getting it because the vast majority of people won't need the extra charging speed.
EDIT: I was VERY wrong about the charge rate of the default plug.
3 miles per hour of charging. so for the stock 250miles per full charge would take 3.5 days to get a full charge? why do we not hear more about this in the discussion?
Whoops, I was WAY off, it's 6 miles per hour with a "standard" wall plug. You can see charging speeds for the different models and power at [1].
But even still most owners get a higher power plug installed as in the US our standard plugs are pretty low power and limited. We need higher power outlets for all kinds of things like water heaters, dryers, ovens, and EVs.
Also keep in mind that it's extremely rare to need a "full charge", you only need to charge what you used from the last time you drove, so unless you routinely drive 100+ miles a day, the standard outlet will probably be enough.
A "standard" wall plug (i.e. 120V, 15A, which is actually 12A continuous) charges at 5-6 miles of range per hour for a Model 3.
You don't get 11mph of charge unless you use a 240V-15A outlet. The 11mph you quoted assumes a 240V outlet.
In practice, as you state, even with 5mph of range, taking multiple days to charge isn't actually an issue since you aren't fully filling up your car from empty every day.
what's so insane there? Even my very old ICE powered conbustion car drives 180km/h nicely with 70kW. And now tell me, why Tesla the Model S needs a 700hp setup?
