HUGE tip to improve range mileage on Teslas

How to get 15-20% more range/mileage aside from the obvious tips of driving slower and using Aero covers.

I’ll give you my one major “trick”!

OBVIOUS range tips:

Just getting these common sense ones out of the way. Driving habits are among the easiest.

• Drive slower – EV’s have a sweet spot of max-efficiency around 20-45mph. This is very different from ICE’s which seem to have a sweet spot around 60mph.
• Accelerate slower – same goes for any car really. Accelerating quickly uses a lot of fuel/energy.
• Use smaller wheels – 18″ gets more mileage than 19″. 19″ gets more mileage than 20″. Smaller wheels not only get more mileage but make less noise and also more comfortable. Only advantage of big wheels is more traction and speed but only useful when you go fast or racing around turns.
• Use the aero covers – they increase your car’s aerodynamics and add range!
• Carry less weight – duh. A lighter car requires less force to move.

It also helps to check out those mileage graphs showing results of using different wheel sizes and with/without the Aero covers. Generally, it’s 3-5 mileage gain between each improvement. The best would be going with the 18″ stock wheels WITH the Aero covers on.

MY PERSONAL RANGE TIP:

Get aftermarket wheels! 🙂

Why? Because aftermarket wheels are so much lighter and this will increase your range so much more than you think!

The physics of rotational weight is this:

• Every 1LB of wheel weight equals 10LBs of “rotational weight”. Can even be more.
• So if you get aftermarket wheels that way less 5LBS less than your stock wheels, that’s 5LBS x 4 wheels = 20 LBS, multiplied by 10…equals 200LBS less weight of your car. Total car weight around 3800lbs would mean you reduced your weight by 5%. Your car will probably accelerate 7-8% faster and get 5% more mileage (about 15 miles farther).
• You can read up more about it: WHAT IS UNSPRUNG WEIGHT?

In my case, I had the 20″ sport wheels that come with the performance model which weighed 29LBS each. I switched them out for aftermarket 18″ wheels that only weighed 17LBS.

• 12LBS per wheel x 4 wheels = 48 LBS of rotational weight
• 48 LBS of rotational weight = 480 LBS of sprung weight
• 480 LBS of sprung weight = 12.6% of the car’s overall weight.

End result?

My car was even more powerful and felt like wayyyyyy better mileage. It’s enough for you to wonder if you’re seeing things correctly. It’s probably as much as a 15-20% difference. Really shocking, I know. You don’t even want to believe it.

Before I switched out the wheels, my car was always using 15% more mileage than the estimate by the screen navigation. With the new wheels, my car was right on the estimate!

The funniest part of all this was that I was never trying to improve range. I wanted to downsize from my 20″ inch wheels to 18″ wheels to improve the road noise (although getting extra mileage made the effort all the more worthwhile). But the problem was that my performance brakes no longer fit the stock 18″ wheels.

I actually got sad. Then I found the TSportline aftermarket wheels and was about to buy them but then thought to myself…this company looks like copycat/generic…maybe I should buy wheels from a wheel company. And from there, I learned all the science and cool designs out there.

I opted for a set of 18″ Titan-7 T-S5 wheels that fit perfectly on my Model 3 and never looked back. Right away, I was blown away. The car wasn’t only more quiet but more powerful and way more range. I am so happy and it is by far one of the best bang-for-the-buck improvements you can make on your car. I spent $2k on the wheels and they are so worth it!!!

Want even more aggressive tuning?

Replace your brake rotors – you can save up to 40lbs of weight with aftermarket rotors like these or these.