Tesla 400 Mile Race: SR+ vs LR 

Too funny, I was at the Beaumont charger when you were there, the white M3 in the corner on gunmetal Rays ZE40s. Was having lunch at In N Out. Haha

I love the way you explain and edit this videos! 🤝

As someone that drove 4000 miles in the first month after delivery with the model 3 SR I can tell you that I had to stop a lot and wished I bought a long range. Fantastic work on this video.

I imagine the LR doesn't have to charge quite as much but overall the SR is perfectly fine doing long runs. I know, I've done numerous ones in mine.

The Tesla is absolutely a game changer. I did two trips (one to Tucson and one to Phoenix) this summer in my Bolt EV and it cut is already paltry DC charge rate of 55kW to 30-35kW (think almost 2 hours in Dateland to have enough energy to keep pace with traffic and make it to Casa Grande)... The drive from Southern California to Tucson (normally around 6 hours in a ICE took almost 12 hours).

Got a SR+ and drove from Los Angeles to Hampton Beach New Hampshire and back. Zero problems. Video on my channel. Not for views, but for proof. It was a great trip. I recommend it to anyone with a Tesla. Barely costs anything, especially outside California. Sometimes charging was $3 for almost full charge. In some states.

Thank you! I’m about to begin a 4000 mile trip in a new Model S LR, so your comparisons were very helpful, proving that traveling in an EV is truly a game! Sure glad I have a Tesla!

While watching your video I was saying to myself that you were arriving with too high SOC, so it was good to see at the end that you understood. Great video

Came for the comparison between SR+ and LR, kept watching because Zelda XD

I usually do trips from Antwerp Belgium to Perpignan France. The charging stops are exactly the same with an SR+ as LR. Only charging times of the LR are half as long..

Great video and info. It’s good to see someone actually creating informative content versus click bait videos with redundant or misleading info. Great job.

This was a great video ! Well done seems to me like the SR is good enough for most people who aren’t always pressing for time

Great video and explanation at the end on how it could have gone better for you. I often open up A Better Route Planner for long trips and do virtual comparisons to other cars on what would be faster.

Great video and awesome educational points !!

For long trips you want to stay in the bottom half for the battery, targeting 5-10% range when you stop. Also, charging until Tesla says go is way overcautious. You will get a lot of slow kWh doing that. This tends to matter for 1000+ mile trips. 12:40 took an hour longer. Good. Explaining driving lower in the battery

Thanks for the this video! You should try the same comparison on a longer trip, where like you mentioned the difference between LR and SR will be less amplified when you have to make more charging stops.

Love the fairy fountain background music!

This is so well done ! Thank you very much!

Really helpful info! Might be moving to Goodyear next year and I plan to travel to CA quite a bit.

When Bjorn does this test, the SR+ is only behind by about a half hour over a 1000km trip.

Excellent video! I would love to see if you had pushed the battery a little more, maybe the SR+ would have been more competitive, as you mention in the conclusion.

Have you tried short hops with less charging at each stop? It can reduce the time charging although the time getting to the greater number of chargers in increased. The charging slows up a lot at more than 60% charge.

One of the best videos about real life range .. thanks a ton !

Gotta say.. love your videos you deliver them very nicely and with enough detail as to not to overwhelm anyone and yet inform. Nicely done!

Thanks! It's usually faster to make more stops with the battery very low when you pull in and only charge until you have enough juice to get to the next charger plus a little safety margin. Kyle from Out of Spec Motoring has demonstrated this many times. The charging recommended by Tesla is not optimal for trip time. Skipping chargers that Tesla recommends is even worse. It's all about the charge rate which is highest when the battery low.

Definitely get the LR if you can afford it. Dual motor AWD is quicker and better handling. NOBODY ever bought the LR and latter regretted that they didn’t get the SR vs. the other way around.

super real world comparison, I like it a lot, warm regards from Hannover, Germany.

Thanks for confirming i’m not the only one that’s listened to the Tarzan soundtrack in my model 3 lol

Legend of Zelda fan? Awesome

Super cool 😎… I am now questioning if I should get the Long Range & just pull the trigger on a standard range + 🙃

Great job with the pacing of this video! It was perfect!

This cemented my choice. The SR is more than enough for me. My weekly job commute is 240 miles plus I get free L2 charging at work. I do like road-trips but they tire me out so maybe more stops is ok for me. Just rented a M3 for Saturday. It’s a long range but it had only 200 miles. Did all my driving save for the drive home and it handled it all.

Beautiful and very best the cars information content. thanks for shering.

I’m sure if this was on purpose or not, but definitely sounds like the Music is from Zelda. Specifically the Great Fairy fountains.

Nice job with the editing and analysis :)

We did 1600Km in one day in a model S last month and the stops were refreshing. Melbourne to Sydney and back.

Excellent video. Well though out with regards to which car is which. Nice. :)

Love the Zelda Background music!

We are thinking of purchasing a Tesla Model Y in 2022. I am torn between a Standard Range (which isn't currently sold, but is rumored to be coming back) and a Long Range. Your video shows that the SR is indeed practical for long road trips. For daily driving, the SR would have more than enough range for us, since we would be able to charge at home overnight, daily.

great vid

Great comparison & presentation. Because I don't travel long distance more than twice a year in Canada's Great White North 🍁, I'm more inclined to purchase the Grey SR+ in "22. Thanks for your insight with both versions.

Great video. But yes, the charging stops could have been executed better. And, why arrive at the destination with 36%? 5% should be enough, and you would have saved lots of time at the last charging stop.

2:13

Great video!!!!

Goal for me on road trips is hitting superchargers below 5%, trip is so much faster that way

Well done!

A Tesla owner who knows what a C rating is? Yes! Most think charging is voodoo science lol

I just used my 19 sr+ doing a trip from Vancouver WA to Anaheim California, we did like 8 stops every 120 miles we had to stop which was every 2 hours or a bit more. But I was speeding the whole way going 75-85MPH sometimes 90mph 😅and used the AC the whole way for the most part

Thank you.

Great Video and result for M3 SR.Fab to see California too.!

This was awesome. It shows that you can do a long road trip in either, especially when you utilize the reliability of Tesla's charging network. Either car would be fine. In the SR you just might have to make that extra stop or two. The only criticism I have with the SR vs the LR is the money you're paying for the SR, and now with their price increase, Tesla doesn't give you the premium sound system. As a IT guy into tech, music and bass I need that quality sound system.

Aero caps NO way give 10% range increase. AT GM proving grounds, they got 2-3% at best. What's crazy is that my TDi could've made the round trip of 800 miles on one tank of diesel and in about 11 hours total.

I'll be honest, everyone has range anxiety, but once you drove a Tesla for a year, you are going to be like "wtf was I scared about, I could have just saved money with the SR+" The fact that the SR+ is actually a bit more efficient is another bonus. I think generally the time saving is rather minimal. The real reason you were so far behind the LR is kinda because you stopped at 34% and charged up to 80% at the first stop, so you didn't get the high initial charging that is especially fast from 10-30%. Obviously 23% is subideal too and so is 35% :D I think if you actually started with 80% and would have only charged to reach your next stop with 5-10% you could have easily saved yourself 20-30 minutes. You mentioned most of it at the end too though. At the end of the day it is going to take a bit longer, but just think about it. How many hours would you have to work for the price difference. Most likely quiet a lot of time. I personally would rather go for the cheaper and have some time to play games, read mails, grab a snack and stretch a bit than putting in the work hours to upgrade to the LR, but then again it's not that much of a difference given you are buying a brand new vehicle for a high price anyway. The fact that the LR doesn't have a 10 month order backlog is another good reason to take it over the SR+ though :D

Interesting comparison. :-)

You can get the charge difference way down if you always keep the SR+ in the sweet spot of charging speed, it's almost identical at that point as seen with Bjorn on his 1000km challenge.

You had me at SR+ but I stayed for the range!

Fun "race". Good recap and conclusions. The long range battery gives it an advantage at the beginning and a slight advantage during recharge. But overall, and with judicious choices of safest low battery charge % to arrive at the supercharger, the difference isn't huge.

Good info thank you

Amazing content ❤

Great video. I would be interested in another comparison with both starting and ending at 80% to simulate a trip where you don't have a at-home spot to charge while on your trip. I am guessing that the numbers would be a lot closer for something like this...

I was JUST at the Granada Hills Superchargers 3 days ago! 😂 I was like "wait those chargers looks super familiar, wait I was just charging there!"

Nice test (or demonstration). Sr is better than expected. Wonder if the extra time saved is worth the extra pay. (it put a value on your time)

Great idea!

Nice

Very interesting and well done.

I use A Better Route Planer to map-out longer trips and it typically has me bounce between 10% and 60% to reduce overall time charging. Going above 60% really slows the charging rate. If the chargers are close enough to do this you can shave significant time off the charging stops.

would've loved to see wh/mi between each stop.

This is such a great idea for a video. I have an EV channel as well, where I spot cool electric vehicles in the wild before they reach mass production. -John W.

Which trip was more expensive. The standard range

nice video.

This was amazing

Yes, very well done!

92 degrees at 7:50 am... I feel bad for the dogs and dog owners of Phoenix, Az. lol

love the video, could you just put KM too alongside miles please

why arrive at 32% destination??? not good for doing faster time..

Thanks for this insightful video! It'll definitely help in trying to figure out if the standard range is worth it vs long range. I live in Phoenix as well and vacation to California, so I'm aware of the hilly roads on the way that reduce range in an EV.

Is the song playing in the background a remixed version of a Final Fantasy song? The tune sounds so familiar. I feel like it’s a video game song. Haha

Great video! One question though, how much did supercharging cost total for each car?

She makes good videos 👍

You really should try to run your battery to 5-10% and charge to 60-65% instead of 20-70% or 30-80%. On a road trip, any charging above 60% is waste of time. If you have the LFP SR+, charging rate is much better above 60-70%.

Were you guys on chill mode and did u use AutoPilot???

Nice comparison. One thing I'd like to see compared that I don't see with a quick search, is if things like spoilers and front lips spoilers actually add range, and if so, how much? Like the ones from Unplugged Performance claim to reduce the drag coefficient vs stock. But I can't seem to find any real world results.

You can’t take traffic out of the equation. Navigating to extra superchargers and being delayed by the traffic around will be part the everyone’s equation.

I make the drive from prescott to LA frequently. bypassing quartzite or erenbergh is a gamble even in a LR. I hit erenberg with 65% and still charge

What was the average speed?

SRs low range exposed the driver to factors which extended her trip length. In this case traffic outside a charging station.

Nice Comparison. For people looking at Tesla's this demonstrates that the LR is not necessarily needed. Technically Other than a bit of weight difference between the two cars They would use the Same amount of energy going from one location to another. I own a 2018 LR. 70k miles on it. Only reason I like the LR is due to the fact that there are not a lot of charging options away from the Freeways where I live and we like to cruise, through Mountains etc and the LR gives us the extra range especially in winter.

Can you tell me how much of a difference there is between the audio of the SR+ vs the LR? I understand the hardware differences, but how’s it actually sound against each other?

Well done

Saying at 1:40 that you don't have a charging disadvantage because you get the same battery % for time spent charging is somewhat misleading. Even though you may gain % as quickly each % is less miles. Thus if you wanted to charge enough for another 2 hours of driving (around 140 miles) the lr will get there much more quickly. The only worthwhile metric is range added per unit time. I see this all the time with people comparing cars that charge faster than teslas too (in terms of %). Other than that excellent video!

The SR+ battery showed higher % than earlier predicted when you stopped to charge. That means the SR+ ran slower than predicted speed in this race. For my SR+ in my long trip, as long as the predicted battery % at destination is higher than 20%, I know that I could speed up the car to follow the fast lane flow to reduce driving time.

Did a Portland to Phoenix trip in my mid range and once I got passed Medford, OR it was game time for maxing my charge. I think the highest charge % I took it to on the I-5 Corridor was 60%, average stop time was 13m. My Mid-Range Peaks at 200-220kwh on V3. I estimate that the difference between a Long Range and Mid Range would be less than 1/4, the luxury of the long range would be scenarios like Oregon where the split between Portland -> Springfield -> Grants Pass/Medford just soak the time on my mid-range. California on the other hand has so many stops and V3 stops at that it literally would of been no difference.

nice!!

I'm hoping in the near future Tesla will implement charge % arrival targets like ABRP does. That way you could maximize charging times. Or if you're more concerned about battery longevity and e-waste rather than time, you could keep the arrival % higher to keep the battery between 30% and 80%. Also would be nice to set your destination charge higher if you know there aren't any chargers around. May not be a problem on the coasts, but here in the midwest it can be a concern. I see the next update or two for the M3/Y will finally have "add a destination" to the route planning, this will be a very welcome feature as I have to use ABRP for round trip planning. Can't believe it's been this long without it TBH.

Hi I like all the explaining you do can you please do another video on Tesla y performance compared to a long range I did order mine wait time is till from January/ April I picked the 20 inch induction wheels since it looks little better compared To 19 inch let me know what do you recommend

Great video thank you. I would love to know how much kW the both cars had to charge on that trip and what the price difference was.

I never let my phone get below 30% but even if I did, I wouldn't want to do that with an EV on long trips in the middle of nowhere. I don't do that with my ICE either and there are gas stations everywhere!

Could, or can, you tell any difference in sound quality or driving quality between the SR+ and LR? I have trouble seeing the value in the price difference if I will be using it around town in north Texas all most all the time.

Is that Zelda & Chill playing in the background!?

I love the test but i personally would never charge my long range more than 80% or 85% for a road trip let alone 100 i dont think the battery does to well under these conditions compared to lfp