charge & drive
Tesla Model 3 Performance (2024)
- Horsepower: 510 HP
- Cost: $47,490 if you qualify for Federal Tax Credit (May 2025)
- Acceleration (0-60 mph): 2.9s
- Top Speed: 163mph
- Weight: 4,250 lbs
- Battery: ~80 kWh
- Charging: Up to 250 kW DC fast-charging
- Range: EPA 296 miles or 3.9 miles/kWh
🔋 Battery Percentage
🚘 Odometer
Data Sources
- Tesla Fleet API is a data and command service exposing Tesla vehicles and energy devices to customers.
- Tesla Fleet Telemetry allows your server to listen to data streams from specified vehicles, eliminating the need to routinely poll an Tesla’s API endpoint. This is critical to prevent unnecessary vehicle wakes and battery drain while recieving live data points.
- Tesla Insurance Safety Score (Beta) provides a report of a safety score along with the number of miles driven with FSD.
Fuel Economy
Tesla’s EPA of $3.9 \ \frac{\text{miles}}{\text{kWh}}$ is very different than my reality. If you take a look at the odometer chart above, I’ve plotted “lifetime energy” in kWh with it. On the first data point, my odometer read $22,653 \text{ miles}$ and my lifetime energy spent was $8635.91 \text{ kWh}$. $ 3.9 \frac{\text{miles}}{\text{kWh}} \times 8635.91 \text{ kWh} \approx 33,680 \text{ miles}$, which is much greater than the $22,653 \text{ miles}$ I actually drove. This brings down my actual EPA is closer to $~2.6 \ \frac{\text{miles}}{\text{kWh}}$. So where is the remaining energy going?
- Driving (In)efficiencies
- First Law of Thermodynamics: Tesla boasts their extremely efficient regenerative braking system. Despite this, it cannot capture all the kinetic energy generated by the vehicle. Some is lost. This is the case for stop-and-go traffic and hilly terrain (which are abundant in California).
- Aggressive Driving: Driving sports mode is fun, but frequent acceleration reduces efficiency.
- Highway Driving: At higher speeds, aerodynamic drag becomes a larger factor in energy efficiency.
- Non-driving Energy Consumption
- Heating/Cooling: Tesla’s glass roof creates a greenhouse effect in the cabin (I’ve seen temperatures above 120 degrees F in Southern California). Cooling the cabin down can use several kWh of energy. Heating the cabin likely uses way more energy.
- Sentry Mode: Continuous camera monitoring uses ~0.25-0.5 kWh/hour. This can add more than >500 kWh/year (but cheaper than any uninsured damages).
- Preconditioning: Preheating the cabin or battery before charge sessions can use ~1-5 kWh a session.
- System Inefficiencies
- Charging Losses: AC charging incurs ~8-15% losses due to heat, conditioning, and charger inefficiencies. DC fast charigng has ~5-10% losses, but higher peak power may increase battery heating = degradation.
- Battery Degradation: LFP batteries typically see ~2% battery degradation a year.
- Regenerative Braking: In cold weather or with a nearly full battery, regen braking is less effective.