Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Ah well things have advanced at Homelink since I have used one!

Since its thru the touch screen, I bet it will need to be coded/turned on in the cars system.

I think that’s a fair review of living with an EV in Northern Ontario. It’s a hard place for them as it’s a very sparsely populated area especially north of Sudbury and it’s cold. If you lived and worked in Sudbury and ran down to Toronto once in a while, it would be quite possible. But if you had a cabin north of Timmons you would need to plan. 

My family has a cottage south of Sudbury and my mom spends much of the summer there. And she couldn’t really do it with an EV. The cottage is on an island so the car has to stay parked on the mainland, in a lot with no power. The closest Level 2 station on Plugshare is far enough away that it would take 2 hours of charging just to cover the electricity used for the trip. We’d have to either find a way to get power to the parking lot - solar? - or run an extension cord to the welding shop next door. Solar might work, as car trips are infrequent and relatively short when she’s there so it could simply trickle charge when the sun was out. 

The author is right about the curiosity. People really do wonder about them. And the idea of sipping instead of empty-refuel is one I talked about on my Denver trip a while back. It’s effectively what we did, although our “sipping” was at Superchargers and we were always stopped long enough to get a full tank. We never dropped below 100 miles of projected range. 

Janel has a trip to Delta this weekend. It’s well within the capabilities of the car - it estimates she’ll have 39% left when she gets home - but she’s starting to worry just because. She also has a trip to Durango scheduled and that’s going to be a bigger challenge. Ideally she’ll find a hotel with a destination charger, but she may have to drop by a public Level 2 instead. We’ll see how she copes :)

Speaking of "public Level 2" - I had some interesting experience with Level 2 chargers and an Audi E-Tron. It seems like public L2 chargers aren't standardized regarding how much juice they can shove into the car. The first L2 charger I reached only added about 12 miles in an hour, then I found an Electrify America station that was able to go much faster... but it took 25 minutes on the phone with their support to make the station hook up to the car and start charging.

Seems Tesla's Superchargers have avoided many of these challenges given the consistent branding and (supposed) experience but the experience otherwise is pretty mixed. Hopefully her Durango trip will be easier than my little jaunt to Target in the Audi.

If you look up the stations on Plugshare, it’ll give their amperage and thus ideal charge rate. Also, charge rates will vary depending on the battery temperature (Teslas will precondition the battery if they know they’re on the way to a Supercharger so they hit the ground running) and sometimes two chargers will have to share a single power supply so neither can work at full capacity. IIRC Superchargers are paired like that. So yeah, you need to know a bit about how it works. 

There are a few options for the Durango trip. We’ll see how it goes. She’s threatening to take her old Jeep because it’s comfortable and zero risk. 

In reply to Brake_L8 :

I just learned about that too from the 8-Bit Guy on youtube- I also didn't know that RV Parks are great charging options for EVs. Wonder how much they cost to use?

Yeah, the RV park option is an interesting one. I should have remembered that our Tesla salesman mentioned taking his on long road trips (including to Durango) and camping overnight in RV parks and charging the car. IIRC the software has a "camping" setting that will run HVAC for you while you're sleeping. RV parks are very used to charging for power and they tend to be where industry is not, so it fills in the gap nicely. You're also likely to want to charge during the day when the sites might otherwise be empty. 
 

Costs vary from park to park. It would not surprise me to see a chain like KOA be the first to standardize pricing and set a standard. 

BTW, I got some texts today to arrange my mobile service appointment. So there’s that underway. 

Also, I parked the XJ in the garage today for a couple of hours. It’s been a long time since it smelled like hot oil and exhaust in there :)

Service update! Today I got an actual phone call from an actual hooman!

Jeff is the mobile service advisor for the Denver area. He confirmed my address (which is on file with Tesla, and which I entered in the service request, and which I confirmed via text yesterday, but there are some technological hurdles that even Tesla can't overcome it seems) and said (paraphrased) "Holy hell, Grand Junction!".

Basically, they do non-emergency "mountain runs" on a regular schedule, and it's going to be 2-3 weeks until he can schedule a HomeLink install. Honestly, this is part of living in Grand Junction. Getting a quartz countertop installed is about the same. If the number of Teslas in town keep increasing, maybe we'll get a resident Tesla mobile tech. But for the time being, we're serviced by Denver.

I did mention that perhaps a contact from the parts department might have been appreciated, and he mentioned that this has been a problem. He said he had received that feedback quite strongly from another customer earlier today, and that unfortunately he is not in the parts department :)

I also asked if it was a PnP install and offered to P it in myself. He initially said no, there was programming involved. Without my prompting, he checked to see if they could do that OTA. Unfortunately, no. You need to jack into the car directly to register the module. 

Interestingly, the wait for a "mountain run" to get service on the other side of the passes is about the same as the wait to have it done at the service center in Denver. I'm guessing that most of the work in Denver is being done by the mobile service crew, and that the service center is the last choice. He did say they tried to keep people out of the service center. 

So there we go. A few more weeks to wait. I now have Jeff's direct contact info which will make life a lot easier.

The XJ left a couple of drips of oil on the garage floor. I told Janel her Tesla had an oil leak.

does the Tesla have a 110v outlet plug ?

I remember watching a Japanese TV show and whatever EV they were testing had a 110v plug so they could heat water for Tea :)

No, but my diesel truck does  You know, if I wanted to attach an inverter, I'd have to do a bit of looking around to figure out how.

Keith Tanner said:

The XJ left a couple of drips of oil on the garage floor. I told Janel her Tesla had an oil leak.

How often does Janel give you a forearm shiver into the ribs when you aren't ready? 

Keith Tanner said:

The XJ left a couple of drips of oil on the garage floor. I told Janel her Tesla had an oil leak.

They still have grease in CV joints and wheel bearings, oil in gearbox and differential, liquid coolants for powertrain and battery, refrigerant in HVAC, brake fluid, dust from brake pads, lubricants for hinges, etc. 

zero pollution vehicles:me::nine-one-one:Public Enemy

nothing personal, Keith.  I know you know all that stuff.  but most people do not follow the advice of Chuck D, and they do, in fact, believe the hype.

My Land Rover leaks oil from something like 9 distinct locations, and that's counting the engine as "one" 

But oil leaks from wheel bearings are a lot less common than oil leaks from an ICE, which is full of high pressure oil and avenues for it to escape to the outside world. Front crank seal, rear crank seal, oil filter housing, oil pan gasket, valve cover gasket(s) - and then we have the cooling system. It's fair to say that the EV has fewer potential leaks if only because the primary source of leaks is no longer there present. These fluids also last longer than engine oil does because their environment is much less harsh. I'll have a look at the owner's manual to see what the first fluid change interval is other than brake fluid. I know coolant is considered lifetime.

So yeah, EVs can leak. But I think it's fair to expect a significant drop in the amount of leakage.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I know the differental fluid is 250K miles and has it's own filter on the S and X.

Minor update and a chuckle.

Weather has turned cold (-ish, I am from a different climate meself) and slippery. Janel reports no problems and has, on at least one occasion, stepped out of the car to find that things were slipperier than she expected. She's not exploring the limits of the friction circle with her shiny black car, but so far it's been taking care of her. She's done a few trips to the next town over too. Her biggest complaint is that it's the first time she's had a car as her primary vehicle. She grew up in a truck family, and her Grand Cherokee was her "little car".

Actually, her biggest complaint is that the car locks when you walk away, even at home. The car lives in an enclosed garage, but if she wants to grab something it won't let her in without her phone or a keycard. This is not unique to Teslas - the ND will do it if configured that way - but she has provided feedback to me that it is not to her liking.

According to the local EV Facebook page, we have enough Tesla owners in town to get a chapter of the official Tesla club. I shall not be partaking.

I have also found the most dangerous screen on my phone. On the Tesla app, there's a link for "updates". That takes you to this screen. One slip of the finger and you have accidentally purchased $2000 worth of acceleration - especially if you have FaceID.

One more thing - Janel did mention that it would make more sense for me to be driving the Tesla every day, since I have a much longer commute. But it was more of an acknowledgement than an offer :) She confirmed that this will not be happening. So I drove to work today in a 30 year old convertible.

It's Homelink day! I got a call a few days back from Jack that he'd be in the area, so we arranged to meet at my house today. It was interesting.

He's based out of Monument, CO. He does a big loop that runs down I-70 through Vail and Aspen to GJ then over towards  Gunnison. The exact route depends on the service, but that's a long drive. He also covers Telluride and Durango. If you want to go check out a map - that's the western half of the state of Colorado.

He drives a big company supplied F250 diesel on very knobby tires. Apparently all the "urban" techs have Teslas, but when you're doing a 900 mile loop on the clock even Tesla goes ICE. The other techs make fun of him.

I asked how many owners it would take in the area before we got a local tech, and he says they've been looking for 4 years and nobody wants to move here :) They're all kids and this isn't as cool a place to live as Boulder. Jack is older, has something like 30 years in at Ford, worked for BMW and has worked all over the place servicing Teslas. They are hungry for staff. Interesting guy, we had a good talk. He used to own a Midget.

I asked about parts availability. He thinks it's no longer a problem - there were challenges in the early days for body shops, but he says that's been sorted out and it's not really a problem anymore. He carries around a bunch of Homelink modules in his truck, so next time maybe I'll just call his cell phone :) The three month delay for this installation was for two reasons: the Denver parts depot never contacted me when the parts arrived, and there is limited availability of non-urgent service call appointments in my little town.

He liked my rear spoiler :)

Anyhow, the installation. He requested a software update that was delivered before he arrived. He put the front of the car up on Race Ramps (we agree that they are wonderful and that they're ridiculously expensive for foam covered in Rhinoliner) and proceeded to tear it apart. The Homelink module lives behind the bumper, just below the badge. So out came the frunk, the cowl and the front fascia was partially removed. It's a good thing Janel wasn't there to see this.

Being a couple of car guys, we talked about what was inside there and the fact that there are constantly changes. Our car, for example, has the spaceship backup noise but also still has the bag hooks in the frunk - those have been deleted. The parts fiches for these things must be fun. That lower aluminum bar is really interesting, it's almost aerofoil shaped. 

Here's what the front fun stuff looks like.

That reservoir in the middle is called the Superbottle and it's the cooling system for the drivetrain. Those are two pumps near the bottom, and they can pull 35A each. The HVAC stuff is piled around it. Looking around, nothing looked to be abnormal in the construction, so I think this thing was screwed together okay.

About that Superbottle, it has a Superbottle mascot. I'd heard about this.

Once the unit was in, it was a matter of installing that firmware update and reassembling. Apparently the firmware for the X can take 90 minutes, the 3 is only about 25. Being a big computer with a new peripheral, it took a bit of fiddling to get the car to acknowledge the new hardware. Apparently this is something all the techs are trying to figure out. Jack tried unplugging a logic board in the back to force a reboot, but really the only solution is to unplug the 12v battery, let it sit for 5 minutes and plug it back in.

Now the car knows when it's home, opens the door for you (at a distance you choose), closes it when you leave and will even tuck its mirrors in when you arrive. Cute. Let's see how Janel likes it.

Does the Tesla app, or the car itself keep track of how many kwh it draws from a plug over time? 

I usually keep a log of how much gas I put on my cars, I know I have problems, and it would be nice to be able to do the same with an electric car. 

Something like this:

Interesting question, I keep a log like that for most of my gas cars.

There's nothing that you get to with a couple of clicks or taps. If you're interested in your charging at home, you can put a meter on the plug the charger is attached to without too much trouble. 

Of course, the car is logging everything. There are a few apps that will pull that data out for you, such as TeslaFi. If you're a DIY kinda guy, some of the Tesla API has been decoded and made public.

Forgot to mention - the tech left behind some coloring books for the kiddies.  Even crayons. Obviously, it's all full of Teslas and the pictures are not as cool as the cover art, but I have to give them credit for including the Roadster. No future products that I can see, no Model Y or Cybertruck or Roadster 2. But there is at least one Powerwall and what looks like a massive battery bank for a utility.

Jack did seem to suspect that not all of these books end up in the hands of kids.

My neighbours probably think I'm nuts, I've been driving up and down the driveway and opening and closing the garage door. Let's walk through the sequence.

Get in the car in the garage, the little Homelink button is lit up and waiting for a loving caress. When I back out, the door closes shortly after I clear the garage. The Homelink makes a little beep noise (configurable) to tell me it's done a thing, and it counts down before it does it.

Coming home, the little house icon turns green when the GPS realizes I'm close. It then starts to count down to a Garage Door Opening Event in terms of distance - I can set how far away the door triggers. But our garage is embedded in the earth and has thick concrete walls, so I had to set the opening distance to about 20' otherwise it won't get the signal from the car. This means I have to pull up to the door and wait. Oh, the humanity. I have to close the door myself once I'm parked.

There certainly are potential problems. Homelink is just the car pushing the garage door button for you, it has no idea of the current state of the door. So if it's already open when you get home, the car will try to close it. Or if you want the door to stay open once you leave for whatever reason, you need to override the car's decision to close it. If the door doesn't open when requested, there's no feedback to try again. That's why there's an override and a countdown and why you can push the little house icon at any time.

Of course, you can turn all this off if you want it to work just like a normal garage door opener but where's the fun in that? 

I'm pretty sure that all falls firmly in the category of first world problems.

Cellphones used to be a "first world problem". Now, they've revolutionized communication in third world countries and have even provided a stable payment mechanism in places where the banks are rocky. A lot of countries skipped the landline step because it's really hard and expensive. Don't discount the R&D being done by the first world.

Keith Tanner said: Jack did seem to suspect that not all of these books end up in the hands of kids.

We're all still kids at heart, it's just that the price of toys has gone up a lot.

I seriously thought about asking for another copy for myself. If all the art inside was as cool as the cover picture, I would have. Janel saw the books and thought about keeping one for herself.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to build a Lego spaceship...