Comment Re:Flawed logic (Score 1) 434
The 40% impact doesn't apply here. It's not a simple fact that the cold reduces range by 40%. In the cold, energy is used to warm the cold battery and to heat the cabin. Warming the battery is only necessary for the first 10 or 15 miles. After that, the act of discharging maintains the temperature. Heating the cabin will consume up to 15miles/hour of range, regardless of your driving speed. So, in city driving averaging 40mph, that's a reduction in range of about 40%. For a mid-range model 3, that's over 4 hours of driving. It's not unreasonable to expect someone to be willing to stop for 30-40 minutes after 4 hours of driving to each and recharge. But for the context of the discussion, at highway speeds, 15mph for heat only reduces range by 20%. So, you'll have to stop after a little more than 3 hours. But this is worst case, for the mid-range model. Spend for the larger battery, turn the heat down a bit (seat warmers use about 10% of the energy necessary for the cabin heater) and you can get that up to 4 hours.