Thanks to Tesla push for electric vehicles, they¡¯re steadily being engineered to be more viable for long distance trips.
In fact, it¡¯s become a bit of a hobby for enthusiasts to push how far they can take an electric car on a single charge. But sometimes, things don¡¯t go as planned.
This past weekend, two men from Denver embarked on a journey to break the record distance travelled on a single charge in the Tesla Model 3. They succeeded brilliantly, but it was the aftermath of the adventure that put a slight damper on things.
¡°Hypermilling¡±, as it¡¯s called, is the practice of getting as much mileage as possible out of an electric car by stressing the engine as little as possible. For a Model 3, the average estimated mileage is about 354 km to 498 km, with the record being? 901 km. Sean Mitchell and Erik Strait set out to break this, hoping to hit about 965 km.? For this, they chose a closed loop near the Denver Airport, with an elevation change of only 10 feet, driving between 32 kph to 48 kph.
After a grueling 32 hours, all of which was livestreamed on YouTube, they managed to hit a whopping 975 km before the model 3 died. The two then hooked up the car to a Supercharger, and celebrated before getting some rest. Unfortunately, they realised that, after 24 hours of non-stop charging, the Tesla still didn¡¯t have any juice. Eventually, it had to be towed to a service center.
So far Mitchell says Tesla is investigating the incident, but there¡¯s still no good reason for why the battery should be unable to hold a charge even after running completely empty. We¡¯ll update when we know more.