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Gravity Cold weather driving range experience (small sample)

Just did a 140 mile road trip Saturday night and then back again Sunday (140 miles each way). It was in the mid/upper 20s and snowing much of the trips. Mainly highway around 50-55mph and averaged 2.3 mi/kWh. Having done the trip in ideal conditions before, I’d gotten 3.15 mi/kWh.

As we all know, cold kills range. It was also quite windy.
 
Also, I noticed I “lost” 5-6 miles of range overnight Saturday when it was about 18 degrees or so all night. I expect that as I believe the car needs to keep the battery at some sort of minimum temp. That’s also when I got the pretty snowflake in the app letting me know power is reduced while car warms up. Consistent with behavior from our Tesla and Rivian.

During the summer, I would go overnight without losing any range, so that’s my comparison for now.
 
Coming from Orlando today where it was about 80 yesterday to temps that dropped all the way home to the 30s, we could see the efficiency and range drop right before our eyes. First charge leaving the hotel got us the most range, but it dropped quite a bit from there. Still outlasted my bladder, but it was definitely losing a lot of range, and there was also a lot of wind too. The car is affected by cold/wind/rain a lot more than most, but from what Kyle and Tom were saying, it's bc it's super efficient under ideal conditions.
 
9point81 said:
Coming from Orlando today where it was about 80 yesterday to temps that dropped all the way home to the 30s, we could see the efficiency and range drop right before our eyes. First charge leaving the hotel got us the most range, but it dropped quite a bit from there. Still outlasted my bladder, but it was definitely losing a lot of range, and there was also a lot of wind too. The car is affected by cold/wind/rain a lot more than most, but from what Kyle and Tom were saying, it's bc it's super efficient under ideal conditions.
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I don’t think Gravity is affected any more than our X or our R1S. The R1S, in particular, has a huge drop off from cold weather. The X drops markedly too, but probably not as much as a percentage of total.

I will also say that with preconditioning of the battery and Tesla SCs, I routinely got 220kw when below 30% SoC and it goes pretty deep into the charge. Again, it’s preconditioned, so I would expect charging efficiency to be the same in cold or warm weather given battery temp is about the same. Not sure if that’s right to expect, but someone smarter than me on the forum can chime in.

My point is, it’s still a road tripping beast for us.
 
This is the coldest winter its been while owning an EV since 2020 and I'm somewhat shocked at how much the range has been affected
wheres global warming when you need it?
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
I don’t think Gravity is affected any more than our X or our R1S. The R1S, in particular, has a huge drop off from cold weather. The X drops markedly too, but probably not as much as a percentage of total.

I will also say that with preconditioning of the battery and Tesla SCs, I routinely got 220kw when below 30% SoC and it goes pretty deep into the charge. Again, it’s preconditioned, so I would expect charging efficiency to be the same in cold or warm weather given battery temp is about the same. Not sure if that’s right to expect, but someone smarter than me on the forum can chime in.

My point is, it’s still a road tripping beast for us.
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No, don't get me wrong when I say it still has range greater than our bladders, so I'm not complaining at all about the range it still has. It does however loose more range in cold than my Taycan did or my wife's EV9. I'd say over my trip, I'm down about 100 miles of range from the warm weather, where the other two EVs I mentioned lost about 60-80 usually. Gravity just has so much more range than those vehicles tho, that in the cold it still has more range than either of those EVs do.
 
Bumping this as more folks should have data now.

I hit a new low with dynamic efficiency of 2.0. It’s been about 8-25 degrees for three days and a fair amount of mountain driving with a ski rack and plenty of heat on in car! Not complaining as every factor against good efficiency is on display right now given weather.
 
We just did a 280 mile road trip in Midwest from Chicago to Michigan. On the way there it was ~48 DEG F, and we got 3.07 mi/kwh driving our normal 5-7mph over the speed limit, which was an average trip of about 70-73mph.
On the way back it was in the middle of a blizzard/snow storm, temps in the low 20s, I thought having to drive 55 or below would help but averaged 2.42 mi/kwh. I am pretty sure this was into a 20 mph headwind though. It's on the 20/21s Hankooks.
 
illopp00 said:
We just did a 280 mile road trip in Midwest from Chicago to Michigan. On the way there it was ~48 DEG F, and we got 3.07 mi/kwh driving our normal 5-7mph over the speed limit, which was an average trip of about 70-73mph.
On the way back it was in the middle of a blizzard/snow storm, temps in the low 20s, I thought having to drive 55 or below would help but averaged 2.42 mi/kwh. I am pretty sure this was into a 20 mph headwind though. It's on the 20/21s Hankooks.
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I will add we left with 82% SOC and arrived home at 3%...
 
illopp00 said:
We just did a 280 mile road trip in Midwest from Chicago to Michigan. On the way there it was ~48 DEG F, and we got 3.07 mi/kwh driving our normal 5-7mph over the speed limit, which was an average trip of about 70-73mph.
On the way back it was in the middle of a blizzard/snow storm, temps in the low 20s, I thought having to drive 55 or below would help but averaged 2.42 mi/kwh. I am pretty sure this was into a 20 mph headwind though. It's on the 20/21s Hankooks.
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Curious, did you leave the drive mode in Smooth the whole time during the heavier snows? any adjustments to the ride height?
 
eelpout said:
Curious, did you leave the drive mode in Smooth the whole time during the heavier snows? any adjustments to the ride height?
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I sort of consider the snow mode to be smooth (High Ride height), standard regen. Because of the snow we drove below 40 in high ride height, but it will lower any faster. So on the highway once the snow was cleared was back to low for aero. Got forced into the energy saving mode under 4% SOC.
 
illopp00 said:
I sort of consider the snow mode to be smooth (High Ride height), standard regen. Because of the snow we drove below 40 in high ride height, but it will lower any faster. So on the highway once the snow was cleared was back to low for aero. Got forced into the energy saving mode under 4% SOC.
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I would argue they need to let the driver have some more manual control of the ride height (and speed), suspension and traction, because in snow I would hate for it to lower too much on its own and start to plow. I'm hoping the eventual Terrain Mode will help with that.
 
eelpout said:
I would argue they need to let the driver have some more manual control of the ride height (and speed), suspension and traction, because in snow I would hate for it to lower too much on its own and start to plow. I'm hoping the eventual Terrain Mode will help with that.
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Isn’t manual ride height already there? Disable “auto” in the ride height setting.
 
Takes an effort to push it below 2.0 unless I am slow city driving, it just goes there on its own, naturally
 

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Saksak said:
Isn’t manual ride height already there? Disable “auto” in the ride height setting.
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I believe it still will adjust itself towards "Normal" depending on speed of the vehicle; which isn't unusual.
 
illopp00 said:
We just did a 280 mile road trip in Midwest from Chicago to Michigan. On the way there it was ~48 DEG F, and we got 3.07 mi/kwh driving our normal 5-7mph over the speed limit, which was an average trip of about 70-73mph.
On the way back it was in the middle of a blizzard/snow storm, temps in the low 20s, I thought having to drive 55 or below would help but averaged 2.42 mi/kwh. I am pretty sure this was into a 20 mph headwind though. It's on the 20/21s Hankooks.
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How do the Hankooks (I'm assuming they're the OEM Ion A/S's) handle the snow for you?
 
037 said:
Takes an effort to push it below 2.0 unless I am slow city driving, it just goes there on its own, naturally
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Driving normally but sub 25 temps for four days, elevation increase of 2,800’ brought me to 1.98 dynamic. Cold battery driving is tough on range.

For snow driving, most important thing I’ve found is lowering regen or turning it off. Quickest way to skid is to let off the go pedal and have regen kick in…
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
Driving normally but sub 25 temps for four days, elevation increase of 2,800’ brought me to 1.98 dynamic. Cold battery driving is tough on range.

For snow driving, most important thing I’ve found is lowering regen or turning it off. Quickest way to skid is to let off the go pedal and have regen kick in…
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Had it as low as 1.96 and no issues in snow on standard regen, it helps to pay attention to stopping and going.
 
hwy17er said:
How do the Hankooks (I'm assuming they're the OEM Ion A/S's) handle the snow for you?
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I think the Car's weight + stability and fancy traction control is doing a lot. No wheelspin or slip, but there is a little feeling of squidgy Ness on the Hankooks. They are the OEM A/S. It's pretty surefooted with any kind of smooth input driving that you master when living in the Midwest...

Certainly not as good as my CR-V (which I can turn off Traction control and stability and feel everything) which is on Falken WildPeak A/T Trail (a sort of road biased all-terrain, the tread blocks still get stiff at 25 degrees F).
 
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