There’s something almost poetic about deliberately subjecting a perfectly capable Tesla Model 3 to the automotive equivalent of waterboarding, just to see what happens. YouTuber FrozenTesla decided that pre-conditioning, that magical feature allowing electric vehicle owners to warm their cars without burning a drop of fuel, was for people who actually enjoy efficiency. Instead, he parked his 2024 Long Range AWD Model 3 outside overnight at a balmy -36°C, unplugged, with 48% battery charge, just to watch the world freeze.
Ten hours later, the battery had dropped a modest 3%. Impressive, sure, but the real experiment was about to begin. At 10 a.m., with the high-voltage battery sitting at a crisp -20°C and ambient temperatures hovering around -32°C, he climbed aboard. Everything worked. Well, almost everything. There was an annoying rattle from behind the wireless phone charger, like the car itself was shivering in protest. That noise vanished once things warmed up.
He set off for a Supercharger 34 kilometers away, deliberately avoiding selecting it as his destination so the car wouldn’t pre-condition the battery. Because why make things easy? The efficiency numbers were catastrophic: 64.2 kWh per 100 miles, or roughly 2.5 kilometers per kWh. With the Model 3’s usable 76 kWh battery capacity, real-world range would’ve barely scraped 200 kilometers. Most of that energy went into heating the cabin and battery, much like a gas engine burns extra fuel warming up on cold mornings.
Despite the 30-minute drive raising battery temperature from -20°C to 37°C, it wasn’t enough for rapid charging. The Supercharger session was brutally slow, an estimated 55 minutes to go from 25% to 75%. The battery was too cold to accept significant power, spending the first 10-15 minutes just warming up. Even afterward, charging never exceeded 100 kW.
The return trip? Vastly different. With a warmed cabin and battery, efficiency doubled to 33.28 kWh per 100 miles, 5 kilometers per kWh. The moral? Keep some charge overnight for pre-conditioning. Or enjoy playing automotive roulette with range anxiety.
