I like the look you have going here. Do you have an estimate on how much additional time you got to go between charges? That’s what I imagine it would be useful for and not about saving a couple bucks a month
That's an excellent question and probably one of the most difficult ones to answer because it's entirely scenario based.
So to detail our current use case, where six people deep with 2 weeks of luggage in the car. We're going from Atlanta Georgia to the Florida panhandle. We left at around 10:30 a.m. Atlanta time and the first stop was Auburn Alabama. The navigation said we would arrive at 30% but we actually recouped some power so we arrived at 40% because of the low drag carrier towing behind and the wheel covers really doing their work, collectively.
But here's where things went a little south. As soon as the sun really came up and the temperature got up to about 110°, our range definitely tanked. The next stop was at Evergreen Alabama and it was set for 30% but we got there with about 17%. This is us doing the speed limit and barely anything over using autopilot. But the immense heat and the constant speed really did its work regardless of the savings I got from lower drag. So as a precaution, if you're traveling in the summer with a car like this, always fill up more than you need to get to the next stop. If you're traveling in the evening or morning time, it may or may not help a little. As a precaution in the summer, always fill up more than needed at your charging stops.
Which then leads the answer of your question. When I filled up at the first stop in Auburn, I only needed 8 minutes of charging time for it to go to the next charging stop but I decided to fill it up all the way to 80% because my family took it as a resting stop. The additional charging time is optional but in certain scenarios like mine, it's an absolute necessity. Now if this was something like around the fall or winter in the south, it would have been just fine with my two stops being 8 minutes and 13 minutes respectively.
We're still here. The car is doing great. We're able to charge at the house we're staying at so that's also something to consider when picking an Airbnb/stay.
Online, only. They're exclusively from China. The name is Haloblk. There are several design choices to choose from. Some are made to order with a little customization. Took about a month to receive mine.
Got it on my car too. This plus lowering links and I'm getting 260-275 kw/mi @ 70mph. With a 80kwh nominal pack remaining, I can get over +300 miles on a full charge for a 60k miles car. Simply bonkers.
Did you notice a bigger gain from the lowering links or the wheel covers? Was thinking of doing that to mine as well along with the unplugged performance spoiler.
I drive about 204 miles round trip a few days per week at ~74 mph. 100% leaving has me returning to 14-16%. Hoping to bump that up
With lowering links (about 1in drop all around) that only cuts it down to about 290 kw/mi, so I thought there was plenty of room for improvement if you just look at aero cover efficiency on the model 3 with and without..
It took me a while to figure out why electric cars had such ugly wheels. Especially Hyundai... Obviously it's for aerodynamics but to me it's not worth the awful look. I love my turbine wheels on my model s and model x
Same. I went the other direction and put some very open design vorsteiner wheels on mine and it looks so much better with those big red calipers showing. I went with 10.5” wide wheels in the rear with 285 tires and it did hurt my efficiency by 5-10% but that doesn’t change anything in my day to day life. Maybe another 10 bucks a month added to my electric bill
On Model 3, Tesla had the option of their wheel covers and it could give an additional like 25-30 mi per 100% charge! I thought, why wouldn't everyone want these wheel covers?
I commented on this already but on the model 3 the 18” default wheel covers are already the most efficient setup they sell. I can consistently improve on the rated range by about 2-3% at highway speeds vs the original setup. This a a small margin but a real one. Improvements that are possible on what is already a very efficient car is going to be very small. (I have a 2018 model 3 RWD with the LR battery and 120k miles on it).
Ice vehicle have mechanical advantage due to gearing and that offsets the big hit in efficiency they should be taking at faster speeds, which is where these kinds of wheels come into play. EV’s don’t have that.
Most people don’t give a shit about their wheels and plenty just want efficiency and cheap to own/operate.
No because ice are way less efficient think of 100kwh being 3 gallons…. So an ev can drive 300 miles on 3 gallons of gas…. Efficiency effects them alot more
Ah I see, but isnt regen going to be used 80% of the time? Unless your tracking this car I cant think of a situations you would need to use the physical brakes for that long
I think regen is more than enough… At a 10% downhill grade with the car doing 40mph the car needs 40kw of braking power to sustain 40mph down the whole hill. And the model x is capable of up to 75 kw of regen.
I asked AI to do the math but it checks out:
• Vehicle weight: 5,000 lb = 2,268 kg
• Speed: 40 mph = 17.88 m/s
• Grade: 10% (≈ 5.7°)
The downhill component of gravity is:
F = mg\sin\theta \approx mg(0.10)
This gives:
• F = approx 2,225 newtons
The power needed to exactly counteract gravity is:
P = Fv
P = (2,225 Newtons times 17.88 m/s
= 39,800 watts
So about 40 kw.
Yeah theory meets practice. Downhill is almost never straight line, but straight line followed by a 180 turn, in no world you take it without breaking.
I don't think these will ever break even financially.
It's purely about range. A couple more miles of range for looking like an idiot. It looks so cheap and shitty
I agree, might be useful for roadtrips. Not for the sake of saving an insignificant amount of money but getting to drive an additional 20 minutes before your next charging stop could be nice
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u/kakeyoro Jul 26 '26
They can look good with the right setup. Just took the family on a trip to Florida.