Shaka said:
to the OP's question, my drive round-trip to work yesterday was about 25 miles and I had ~half my bars left... so I would still say 50 miles give or take with constant heat on (68deg in my case) seems about right. Can't wait till spring time and better range!
I have good news and bad news for you. Referring again to Tony's chart, if you have 6 bars showing then your battery is more than half full. It's about half full when you drop to 5 bars. That's the good news. The bad news is that many people have an empty tank phobia, and never want to take the battery below the "Low Battery Warning". Some are even convinced that the last two charge bars are "red", and that it is evil to drop to two bars or less. If you are in either of those camps, then at 6 bars you have less than half of the energy that you are willing to use left in the battery.
Personally I have only a mild form of that phobia. I don't mind going below "LBW", and in fact have done it an average of about once a week in the 20 months I've had the car. I don't, however, like going below "VLBW" (Very Low Battery), at which point the GuessOMeter number disappears and is replaced by three dashes. So Tony's chart tells me that "half full" relative to my comfort range is when the sixth bar is "half used up". (I hasten to add that I have gone below VLBW a number of times, and don't panic when that happens, but I do believe it can shorten the battery's life.)
By the way, 6 bars is easy to spot at a glance. It is when the top of the "electron pump" picture is even with the top of the first bar that is lit up.
Ray