Wind speed vs Cybertruck (with single digit temperatures)

greenporsche said:

Nice post. I travelled from Northern MN through ND on my way home back to CA the day after xmas winter of 2023 in a MX when they closed I-94 due to ice. Spent 12hrs parked in a Dickinson, ND truck stop with camp mode trying to get some sleep. Only used about 20mi of range.. Having grown up driving in MN I was comfortable driving in the treacherous conditions, but when I realized I was the only vehicle left on the freeway, I opted to pull off. Myth buster experience.

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Kl777yl said:

We just returned from a 1600 mile winter trip along I-90 in Minnesota & South Dakota. FSD 13.1 AWD Cybertruck. Temperature single digits Fahrenheit.

Westbound, we started out in a blizzard a couple hours before sunrise. NO problems with traction or headlight issues. When the snow stopped, the wind picked up, a perfect headwind of 40-50 mph with higher gusts. I-90 speed limit is 80 mph in SD. With FSD (chill) at 70 mph, we were using 1000-1100+ Wh/mile. It was too rough going much faster. There was a lot of wind noise, like one would expect driving at 120 mph! That equated to about 1% battery range/mile. We stopped at every Supercharger. The Cybertruck was pretty good at estimating what the arriving charge would be at the next Supercharger, sometimes we'd see a percent or two lower than what was estimated after charging upon arrival.

The next day, the temperature was the same, but NO wind. 70 mph saw 480-520 Wh/mile. Going 80 mph was a "breeze" after the previous day.

Coming home today, we had some headwind, but nothing like last week. Maybe we saw 10-15% more Wh/mile.....and the ride was quiet.

You can see from the chart above that wind pressure is not linear with wind speed, but almost logarithmic, actually it is the square of velocity.

Lessons:
1) A trip will take longer with strong headwinds and use a lot more energy. www.windyty.com has pretty good forecasting. Plan ahead for slower road speed and more time charging.
2) The Cybertruck is pretty good estimating destination charge even with severe winds.
3) The wind noise goes up exponentially with speed (who knew?), but with equivalent 110-120 mph "effective speed," it IS noisy.
4) AT tires gave no problems on snow packed roads.
5) We never saw the headlight problems others have reported.
6) The batteries were almost always preconditioning in the cold weather, which reduced the range some.
7) What an AMAZING pleasant vehicle to drive, errrr, letting FSD drive us! Just have to plan on "working" a little harder with extreme headwinds.

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LiveFreeOrDieBob said:

I was in upstate NY right after Christmas and the temp got into the low single digits for a couple days. I was expecting the range to drop a lot, but what really struck me was that the battery drained a ton overnight. I don't know if it was the holiday update or what, but it doesn't seem like it goes to sleep as often (or at all) anymore, and it lost a ton of range overnight. Plugging the mobile charger into a 15amp plug was barely enough to keep the batteries from dropping - I think it added 1% over 10 hours overnight and that was only once the temps went up into the teens. I was kind of shocked that 12amps through the mobile charger not only wasn't enough to add range, but was barely enough to keep it from dropping!

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LiveFreeOrDieBob said:

I was in upstate NY right after Christmas and the temp got into the low single digits for a couple days. I was expecting the range to drop a lot, but what really struck me was that the battery drained a ton overnight. I don't know if it was the holiday update or what, but it doesn't seem like it goes to sleep as often (or at all) anymore, and it lost a ton of range overnight. Plugging the mobile charger into a 15amp plug was barely enough to keep the batteries from dropping - I think it added 1% over 10 hours overnight and that was only once the temps went up into the teens. I was kind of shocked that 12amps through the mobile charger not only wasn't enough to add range, but was barely enough to keep it from dropping!

Click to expand...

LiveFreeOrDieBob said:

I was in upstate NY right after Christmas and the temp got into the low single digits for a couple days. I was expecting the range to drop a lot, but what really struck me was that the battery drained a ton overnight. I don't know if it was the holiday update or what, but it doesn't seem like it goes to sleep as often (or at all) anymore, and it lost a ton of range overnight. Plugging the mobile charger into a 15amp plug was barely enough to keep the batteries from dropping - I think it added 1% over 10 hours overnight and that was only once the temps went up into the teens. I was kind of shocked that 12amps through the mobile charger not only wasn't enough to add range, but was barely enough to keep it from dropping!

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greenporsche said:

And Sentry Mode was off?

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Derektsla said:

I am pretty sure the overnight battery drop is from the truck keeping the batteries warm. I have been parking outside for the past month instead of inside my garage and the battery drops a lot more at night when outside in the cold. You may see a snowflake with some blue on the battery gauge to indicate that the truck is using power to keep the batteries warm

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LiveFreeOrDieBob said:

I was in upstate NY right after Christmas and the temp got into the low single digits for a couple days. I was expecting the range to drop a lot, but what really struck me was that the battery drained a ton overnight. I don't know if it was the holiday update or what, but it doesn't seem like it goes to sleep as often (or at all) anymore, and it lost a ton of range overnight. Plugging the mobile charger into a 15amp plug was barely enough to keep the batteries from dropping - I think it added 1% over 10 hours overnight and that was only once the temps went up into the teens. I was kind of shocked that 12amps through the mobile charger not only wasn't enough to add range, but was barely enough to keep it from dropping!

Click to expand...