I have the Michelin Pilot Sport AS4band they have been great so far. They are starting to get louder and I have to check how many miles are on them. Keep us updated on the Contis.
in other news, Tesla has offered up their connector as the North American charging standard. They make some good points.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-standard
The Tesla connector is a very good one and the most proven one on the market. One thing that doesn't get mentioned enough is that the insertion force is considerably lower than the big CCS beast.
I think that ship has sailed, though. The non-Tesla manufacturers won't want to change course now that they're finally getting rolling on production.
There are funds available through the Inflation Reduction Act for building out charge networks and Tesla is trying to get in on that action. The problem is, the funds are only available to companies whose equipment can charge more than one brand of vehicle, so explicitly not Tesla at the moment. If even one brand adopts the Tesla standard, they stand to benefit from a lot of that grant money building out their network.
They've done similar before . When California ZEV credits were tied to "fast refueling," Tesla showed a proof of concept for battery swapping that ended up netting them tens of millions of dollars in ZEV credits. They only had to show it once. They never offered it to the public, but every Model S sold netted them the same ZEV credit as if it could have a battery swap. They're very good at finding loopholes to grab any incentive cash.
In reply to Erich :
Tesla S'es used to do battery swaps- they even had a center for it in California. People jsut didn't do it, because they were worried how other people treated their batteries.
The other company using their plug is Aptera but their car isn't out yet. Frankly, until this most recent claim of 900+ Kw the CCS plug was on paper, better by all metrics. Tesla COULD have dominated the scene- but they don't, because their requirements for another manufacturer to use their plug were absurd.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I heard President Biden have a shout out at the G20 meeting to Tesla's new low cost car coming out. ( well received I heard).
I can't find any real numbers etc for them yet. Any suggestion where zi might look?
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
That center in Harris Ranch, California was the proof of concept in order to gain the ZEV credits - I can find no evidence anyone in the public was ever actually allowed to use the facility. Once the ZEV credits depended on a real-world (not just proof of concept) 15 minute charge time, Tesla quietly shut it down.
frenchyd said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
I heard President Biden have a shout out at the G20 meeting to Tesla's new low cost car coming out. ( well received I heard).
I can't find any real numbers etc for them yet. Any suggestion where zi might look?
You'll never find good information on that, there just too much noise from media outlets on both sides of the aisle and Tesla has a tendency to make, umm, stretch goal announcements that are taken as product releases. Heck, I don't even believe anything I hear about future Miatas unless it's a Mazda press release that I can find on the Mazda website. Wait until the car is actually available to buy, then you'll be able to get reliable information.
Battery swaps on light vehicles have been a ridiculous concept from the beginning, really. But's been proven to work in endurance racing :)
Hertz has a lot of Teslas at some pretty interesting rates. I took the opportunity to try a Model Y for $10/day more than a normal intermediate rate. When I picked up at Baltimore airport, there were probably 30 Teslas in the garage. After a weekend and getting used to it enough that it was odd to get back into an ICE car, I'll say they are very interesting. I still don't like the overall feel and experience - too golf cart like and I miss car sounds. But wow, the torque is intoxicating and the technology is crazy. The Hertz deal is to bring it back with at least 10% charge. I picked up with 85% and returned with 70% (we were mainly in downtown to go to a football game so not a lot of miles). I recommend looking to see if you can find a deal and give it a try for a day.
Looks like a coming software update will introduce blended braking. Regen doesn't work when there's no place to put the power, such as when your battery is full or it's really cold. This new mode will use the friction brakes to replace the lost regen braking under those conditions so you can still do one-pedal driving. This is basically how F1 cars manage their rear brakes :)
I suspect I won't notice it unless I specifically set the car up to test it, and Janel tends to use the friction brakes more than I do so she may never notice. But not noticing is kinda the point. It'll be interesting to test.
Regen braking is probably the most odd part of the experience. In a full weekend of use - highways and game traffic- I never touched the brake pedal. Kinda freaky.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
My BMW i3 has that blended braking so you get one-pedal driving no matter if regen is active or not. It's really nice to have so you don't have to adjust your driving technique depending on whether regen is available. If you really pay attention you can notice the difference, but I suspect if nobody ever told me about it I'd have no idea.
Keith Tanner said:The A/S 3+ doesn't come in my size, alas. It was recommended by someone else as well.
So, breaking news. There's another recall (on top of the one for the rear wiring harness that can fatigue and take out the rear camera). This one is for "window automatic reversal system performance that had greater than expected variations in response to pinch detection" so it can be outside the NHTSA limits. It was discovered during testing, apparently there have been no owner complaints. It covers pretty much every Model 3 and Y ever built.
What makes it interesting is that it's a software patch, so it's going to be delivered OTA. They're still going through the full NHTSA recall procedure, but by the time the letter arrives it will have been fixed. Telsa decided to issue the recall on Sept 12th and the patch started getting rolled out on Sept 13th. Official owner notification will take place on November 15th.
I suspect that two month lag time is typical for recalls - you always hear about them long before the letter arrives - but it illustrates how the system was originally designed for physical defects that needed to be resolved with a dealer visit and production of new parts, like the wiring harness problem. A software patch that can be rolled out to the entire fleet? That's a very different thing.
Got the recall notice for the anti-window pinch update. It's very clearly standard legalese for recall stuff. According to the letter the fix hasn't been deployed yet. I have not tested the anti-pinch functionality of our windows :)
New tires are definitely a win. Ride quality has improved and the drop in noise level is quite noticeable. Car feels good. I haven't been tracking efficiency yet.
I'm not sure when the next road trip will happen - I drove to Eagle and back on Monday but that was in the truck with a one-car trailer. 250 miles, $5/gallon at 13 mpg, ouch. I suspect a Lightning could have pulled that off, and there are high speed chargers at Eagle that could have recharged while I was doing my business. I did see a Tesla Y with a trailer, but it was smaller than mine!
Janel is starting to use the voice commands, mostly for streaming music. You can tell she doesn't trust it, there's always a question in her command.
Now that it's getting cold , is there a chart on how many watts the heater uses ?
and how does the heater work , seat warmers , steering wheel warmer or ??
The new energy screen does break out HVAC use, both parked and while driving. This is our fourth winter with the car, HVAC power consumption hasn't affected our use of the car yet even on long trips. I'm looking forward to seeing what the heater consumption is on a longer trip when it only has to compensate for heat loss and it can pull excess heat from the motors - short jaunts around town are the worst case for heating because the car keeps dropping down to ambient temps and has to be warmed up again, so the HVAC use versus distance traveled is extreme.
Heater is a resistive heater for the air (like a toaster, newer Model 3s have a more efficient heat pump) and seat heaters front and rear. It's more efficient to heat people than air. It's a set and forget setup that automatically runs the seat heaters, although you can override that if you want extra toasty buns. No heated wheel. We have some mesh shades clipped in on inside of the glass roof for summer to cut down on solar gain, I'm going to pop those out so we can take advantage of the sun during the cold months. Only takes a couple of minutes.
In relatively round figures across a BMW i3 and X3 and X5 PHEVs, winter appears to be a roughly 15% range/consumption hit on the commute. Nothing to base a guess on, but I bet an ICE is probably the same ballpark, at least once it gets Midwest February cold.
That would be heat, lights and snow tires as well. Would be neat to have the penalties broken out by component though!
Hey Keith,
Thanks for all the info on your Tesla experience.
Have you had any recall/repair difficulties with your car? Has it been off the road for any of these situations?
Does your car have the autonomous driving feature?
Thanks,
Rog
glueguy (Forum Supporter) said:Hertz has a lot of Teslas at some pretty interesting rates. I took the opportunity to try a Model Y for $10/day more than a normal intermediate rate. When I picked up at Baltimore airport, there were probably 30 Teslas in the garage. After a weekend and getting used to it enough that it was odd to get back into an ICE car, I'll say they are very interesting. I still don't like the overall feel and experience - too golf cart like and I miss car sounds. But wow, the torque is intoxicating and the technology is crazy. The Hertz deal is to bring it back with at least 10% charge. I picked up with 85% and returned with 70% (we were mainly in downtown to go to a football game so not a lot of miles). I recommend looking to see if you can find a deal and give it a try for a day.
That's how I feel about my 3 too. I'll always have a gas car for kicks, but the tech suite, the drug-tier torque and the fact a "Full charge" of 300 miles costs me ~$3.00 total means this is like, perfect daily driver tier.
Also, not to mess with Kieth's thread- but mine is in this funny place for me. Like I hate the nanny attitudes the tech suite gives me and I've seen faults, but in the first week of driving a jackass "Father" dressed his kid up in camo print and let him run from him, and if it wasn't for the sensors I would have ran over him backing up. It's become that like, kinda annoying thing that 10% of the time it's like oh it's good I have this.
In reply to boulder_dweeb :
There are two open recalls for the car. One will be fixed with an over-the-air update, I'm waiting to hear about the physical piece of wiring that would be needed to sort out the other. Neither is actually causing a problem at this time. The car hasn't needed any repairs, and the maintenance has been a brake flush, new tires and a new HVAC air filter. I do those myself.
My car - like all of the Teslas - has the hardware for self driving. I didn't pay for the feature, I drive my own car :)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It is precisely that Self driving feature that attracts me. Though there may be potential flaws and future improvements. As I age I may not be able to react as quickly as that drunk/stoned 20 something lighting a cigarette while wandering into my lane.
The remarkable thing about us seniors is we recognize when to stop fighting over trivialities that no longer matter.
We need mobility, to buy groceries, take appointments. Replenish supplies. Losing that, losing our licenses. Makes us dependent on others and from there it's a quick downhill trip to the grave stopping briefly at a Sr. Care center while our life savings is quickly drained. Around here it's about $5k a month or the tax payer funded ones at much less.
So yes Self driving may be an unused Chauffeur to most. But it's our last chance for independence
In reply to frenchyd :
That may be, Frenchy. But there's a fundamental and unreconcilable flaw with everything below full Level 4 autonomy. The driver is expected to leap into action on short notice in an emergency situation after long periods of inactivity, and people just aren't wired to work that way. Thus I chose not to spend thousands of dollars on it, and thus this thread does not have any discussion of what it's like to experiment or live with.
I came across this cool Chevy pickup on the road today and snapped a picture with my iPhone SE. I also tapped the button to save the dashcam footage so I'd get a picture of the front - when you do that, it saves a 10 minute clip from each camera so you don't have to do it immediately. Anyhow, the clear difference in white balance made me ask a friend who used to work at Tesla in the autopilot department why there is such a difference.
Dashcam (picture taken of the onscreen replay when I got home, I could pull the video file and grab a frame but this was easier)
Phone.
The answer is that the Tesla cameras are RCCC or possibly now RCCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_filter_array). Basically, they're optimized for low light and recognizing traffic and lights so the car can properly identify what's going on around it, not to be pretty dash cams. Now I'm going to go back and look at the quality of all four cameras and see if they're all the same.
Interesting. And that's a cool truck. Even the wheels are styled to look like they have old-school locking hubs.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to frenchyd :
That may be, Frenchy. But there's a fundamental and unreconcilable flaw with everything below full Level 4 autonomy. The driver is expected to leap into action on short notice in an emergency situation after long periods of inactivity, and people just aren't wired to work that way. Thus I chose not to spend thousands of dollars on it, and thus this thread does not have any discussion of what it's like to experiment or live with.
When I travel long distances. ( now down to 22 hours at a time). I've learned to sit back, relax and steer while my eyes remain alert for any potential developing situation.
I distract my mind from the discomfort of hours on endless hour by listening to books on tape. ( something I learned in the Navy where it was normal to be on patrol for as long as a week or two straight. With Charlie eager to shoot Missiles or guns etc. at me. The ocean right underneath me and endless radar intercepts to be sorted between friendly and missile lock on.
So into my 80's( and maybe even 90's? ). I'll drive midday midweek to get needed supplies. Using those Nanny's to provide me with safer travels than I'd otherwise be able to achieve at those ages. Plus it will save the tax payer from paying my room and board until I take that long dirt nap.
OK. Not gonna derail this thread with autonomy.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I agree, you shouldn't. Especially in the early stages like now. While it's mildly interesting it's far from developed.
Please keep letting us know about yours. For example are there any future plans to replace it? Even in the far distant future?
We don't have any plans to replace it. It's good at doing what we want it to do, and unless needs change or the car suffers a calamity it'll be with us for a long time. It's parked beside a 20 year old BMW that I've owned for a decade, for example.
I have no doubt that the tech and the offerings on the market will improve - as they do with any vehicle - but one of the reasons I bought when I did is because I felt the driveline tech had reached a reasonable plateau. There are some tweaks to battery chemistry that offer some small improvements, but I don't expect anything radical like the shift from lead-acid to lithium batteries was. So far, I feel like I made the right call. If I was shopping for an EV today, I'd have more options to choose from but none of them are game-changers.
You'll need to log in to post.
