Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

I disagree that only Tesla and Apple can generate strong brand loyalty. I'm not sure I could get my father in law out of his Dodge pickup, for example. Maybe your imaginary quote should be "I bought a Chevy Cruze, but had too many issues so I bought another one that had the problems sorted out because I loved the car anyway".

But yes, they are both at the extreme end of the scale in terms of both brand loyalty and the, umm, enthusiasm shown by their detractors. The question to ask is - why is that? 

Apple has had a heck of an effect on our lives. They didn't invent the MP3 player or the online music store, but it was their implementation that made them a huge success. Same with the smartphone. Same with the tablet. Heck, we can go back further and look at the fundamentals of the GUI that we use every day in our desktop computers. I'll bet Tesla would be perfectly satisfied to have that sort of legacy.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I don't single Apple and Tesla out as the only companies capable of generating strong brand loyalty, but they are very similar and in my mind, irrational. Of course, I had a "Dell pod" rather than an ipod. Why? It was better and cheaper. I've never owned an Apple product that I paid for. GE paid for me to have a few iphones over the years, and I was consistently unimpressed. Perhaps I'm naturally more hesitant than necessary to that silicon valley style of brand loyalty. Perhaps I'm a risk adverse pansy when it comes time to transport my family. Not sure.

Whatever it is, the bottom line for me is that everything I see from outward signs paints a picture of the inside of a company that I want to stay away from.

Mad_Ratel said:

Fair point on his view count. My memmory says that it was a discussion of a book that was released recently about Tesla and their practices.

Discussion involved the fact that Gm will test their screens to work in Dubai for years, i.e. automotive level products only used. The screens in the tesla's are normally available screens not specificially designed for the same work. 

Talk to Louis Rossman (youtube) about how much money he's made repairing Apple devices that the Genius bar fails at repairing.  Rich Rebuilds just started Electrified Garage to offer repairs to Tesla owners that Tesla has told are E36 M3 out of luck.  His channel also details the trials and tribulations he has had to repair his car (and others). Tesla prioritizes parts to production, not to maintaining cars already sold... 

 

i.e. Tesla's systems were bricking. Why? because they used a normal household SD card to store data, once it hit the limit on write/reads it'd stop and kill essential functions... To get to this sd card involves taking the dash apart.. 

Yes, that's the book that was written by the journalist that used to write the Tesla Deathwatch series for clicks. Trying to get a straight story on the company is almost impossible, which is one reason why I'm documenting what it's actually like to live with this thing instead of just repeating what I've read/heard/interpolated from the experiences of others.

The bricking screens are a problem, that's something that affected the early cars. The reports I've read are that it's soldered-in flash memory (not a "normal household SD card") and that the firmware size has grown considerably, limiting its ability to manage the inevitable wear that comes with flash memory. The cars were also logging with great enthusiasm. Will it affect the current ones, or have changes been made either in the type of flash memory being used, the number of rewrites to that flash memory or has the logging been scaled back? The last could be addressed with an OTA update. That's the real question, have they learned from their mistakes?

Heck, the 1990 Miata came with a crankshaft that had a fragile nose on it. The fix involved taking the engine apart. Mazda changed it in 1991. Does this mean that we should not buy Miatas?

Of course there's money to be made repairing things that the manufacturer has deemed unrepairable because it was not financially logical. The engine in the Targa Miata is an LS3 crate that was sent to the scrapyard with 50 miles on it. Why? Because it had a squeaking noise. GM decided it was easier to simply swap the thing out for a new engine than spend the time trying to diagnose and repair the engine. From their viewpoint, they weren't wrong. The theory was that it might be a damaged cam bearing from the cam swap found in this particular crate. I found the problem, fixed it in minutes - it would have been an engine-out job had the engine not already been pulled - and have been enjoying the engine for years. Was that the wrong decision on GM's part? No, but if you spin it the right way you can make it sound absolutely ridiculous.

tuna55 said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Whatever it is, the bottom line for me is that everything I see from outward signs paints a picture of the inside of a company that I want to stay away from.

You can come to that conclusion for any automaker. Let's talk about GM ignition switches or Pinto gas tanks, for example. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I've read up on both of those and have a different viewpoint on each from the popular opinion, but your point is a good one. 

Interesting discussion all around.  I am hard put to have any interest in any electrified vehicle unless it's for utility.

I.e. the R1T interests me because we tow a boat nearly every weekend in the summer and I have 3 kids. We drive 1.5 hours to get to the boat for the weekend. 

So a truck that has great utility and no gas? great!. 

my run around? is a 2002 Boxster S that's slowly eating itself to death. Why? because my truck is not paid off yet. And I hate spending money... 

An electrified vehicle that encourages people constantly to disengage from driving scares the pants off of me.

I always think of Rush's "Red Barchetta" and where they sing about the motor law. . . 

Keith,

I am hearing that the latest firmware update includes a hold mode which allows regen to bring the car to a complete stop.  I suspect that they are engaging the friction brake to accomplish this.  Alas, it looks like this feature is currently only available on the Model 3. I wonder if it is a hardware limitation, or that Tesla wants to roll it out on the largest population of users first.  Do you have hold mode?

Mad_Ratel said:

i.e. Tesla's systems were bricking. Why? because they used a normal household SD card to store data, once it hit the limit on write/reads it'd stop and kill essential functions... To get to this sd card involves taking the dash apart..  *it has been a while since I saw this story so details are fuzzy*

That's known as the MCU failure. Tesla is logging so much data, and so quickly that they're maxing out their chip in the MCU. It's probably not even useful data for the most part. I'm no software expert, but from what I've read, those who are Experienced software people all pretty much agree that they shouldn't even be writing the data to that chip, and the chip is also way undersized for what they're doing. It's both a design/process issue and a hardware selection issue.

Tesla says it's less of a problem now, but haven't clarified if that's due to simply reducing the amount or rate of data logging via an OTA update, a hardware change to a better chip, or all new architecture design to permanently resolve the issue. Hopefully Keith won't have to deal with it

Mad_Ratel said:

An electrified vehicle that encourages people constantly to disengage from driving scares the pants off of me.

I always think of Rush's "Red Barchetta" and where they sing about the motor law. . . 

I don't know if I can change your mind, but...

It just can't happen with America's legal system, in my opinion. It's one thing to offer driver 'aids' to act as faster eyes and feet with sudden changes, but replacing the driver on a state-to-state level? Think of federal bills like the ACA where states actively hobbled them for years simply because someone in power didn't like them- Nebraska only just started getting money from the ACA by voter initiative, and their senators still complain about that (not to be political, just as an example).

There will always be pushback- it's a part of democracy, after all. Only if autonomous driving is literally and objectively better than a human will anything like that be possible, and even then people will fight and claim it's not.

Per Mattm's question - our car did an update on Thursday night. I haven't driven it yet, but Janel drove when we went out to a concert last night and there were noticeable differences even from the passenger's seat.

Basically, there are now three options to how the car acts at a stop. There used to be "creep" (aka automatic transmission mode, where the car would start to move when you released the brake) or "hold" (car holds the brakes for you until you touch the accelerator). There's now a third mode called "roll", which seems to be in the middle. Meanwhile, hold will bring the car to a full stop.

According to the release notes, it's done completely with regenerative braking. I don't quite get all the subtleties here, I didn't think it was possible but it's happening. The notes say that it will maximize range and minimize brake wear. Basically, proper one-pedal driving is now possible as with Tuna's Bolt. The 3's motors are different than those in the S, so maybe it is a hardware limitation.

The regen in general has been turned up. The amount of decel available at higher speeds is noticeably stronger. I noticed that from the passenger's seat and Janel confirmed. She also said the car was "more zippy", so I'm guessing a throttle remap. The notes also state a 5% power increase.

So interesting stuff there. I'm looking forward to trying it. There were also a couple of smaller interface updates, such as the driving display now shows traffic cones that are nearby, the nav system now automatically shows you your commute when you get in (useful if you want traffic updates maybe, not so much here) and it has a HVAC scheduling capability so your car will automatically pre-heat or pre-cool the interior for you. It's possible there may be tweaks to things like the adaptive cruise but I'll have to get behind the wheel to find out.

Janel and I were talking about the car last night and realized that we have not specifically charged it since October 6th. I mean actually driven to a public charger in order to fill up. It's been plugged in every night, but that's such a minor thing to do that you don't really take note.

Had a chance to drive the “hold” mode last night. True one pedal driving, and if it’s using the friction brakes it’s undetectable. It does seem to grab them when the car is stopped to, well, hold it in place. I like it. The only thing that’s odd is that the car doesn’t seem to roll at a walking pace - if you give it a little bump of the throttle to get it moving and then cut the pedal, it will stop. Made me rework how I back out of the garage.

The recalibrated accelerator mapping is very aggressive. It takes some finesse to be smooth at parking lot speeds. I may end up preferring the “chill” setting, as I know how to push the pedal all the way to the floor if I want full power :)

I did hustle the car through a roundabout - the car beside me was unpredictable enough that I decided to preemptively leave the scene of the accident. The 3 instantly dropped about 1500 lbs and just whipped through the roundabout and the exit. I really need to find a way to get this thing on a track :)

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Keith,

Thanks for the feedback on the new mode available on the Model 3. I am wondering if this is a release that is being pushed to model 3s first or whether this is a feature that will only be supported on the newer hardware of the 3 and Y etc.  in any case, score one for true one pedal driving!  As a customer it is great to see new features being rolled out that makes existing cars better.  

Update!

First, some toys. The back of the car is a little bland, so I decided to add a little crispness. There are a bunch of rear lip spoilers available for these things (because I'm not the only one who feels this way, apparantly), but the best looking of them all is the factory unit that's used on the Performance. Turns out you can buy these new on eBay - I'm not sure if they fell off the back of the warehouse or what, but they're definitely nicer than the generics.

According to analysis done by Unplugged Performance, this little spoiler drops drag by 2.3% and increases rear downforce by 34.7%. Well, yay! Theirs scores even better, of course, but it's considerably more expensive and I prefer the looks of this one.

Some very careful alignment and cleaning and voila. Now with 100% more perkiness!

You can see one of my other toys for the car - a SpaceX badge. I am an unabashed fanboy of what they're doing, and as I noted a while back the Model 3 motors are actually used in Starship. So yes, a SpaceX badge for my personal spaceship.

The (very dirty) M5 has a little lip spoiler on the trunk as well. Really, what I've done to the Tesla is the equivalent of putting an M5 front bumper on a 540i, but hey. It's a good looking bumper. I mean spoiler. 

It actually does make quite a difference to how the car looks, the rear end is very sharp. I dig.

I also ran into a small problem. When trying to access the front tow point, the cover snapped in half. Turns out this is really, really common. It's meant to be easy - just push in one corner and it sort of flips out. I think it's actually glued in place to prevent unsightly dangliness. Anyhow, I was able to find a previously enjoyed cover on eBay that was already the right color. New ones are unpainted. I tried gluing my original one back together but got superglue on the front side and, well, it looked messy. Now that I have a good one on the car, I may reinforce my broken one with some mesh and fix the paint for next time. Nobody has a good option for these things - the one on the BMW doesn't quite sit flush and the ones on the ND Miata need to be pried out.

That little anchor on the back of the broken one is for the negative cable used when jumping the 12v onboard battery. It's just tied there so you can fish it out. That was obviously an afterthought.

I also picked up some stainless steel plates that protect the inner lip of the trunk opening from scuffing and scratching. I did the same thing for my parents' VW Sportwagen at their request - it's easy to bang up this area. For $35, it was an easy upgrade. No pictures.

We'll probably also pick up a little organizer for the center console. It's a deep cavern of a place which is great if you want to store a dozen umbrellas or something, but not so good for a wallet and sunglasses. Loads of cheap options on the aftermarket, or maybe I'll break in our shiny new 3D printer at work.

Otherwise, we've just been living with the car. The pre-warming feature is really nice in the current cold weather - Janel very much likes getting into a car that's warm and has toasty seats. Some interesting reading available there - some other EVs use heat pumps for heat but Tesla uses resistive heaters. It also uses the waste heat from the motors to heat the batteries, which seems logical. We still haven't had to charge it anywhere but home since October. We're up to 2600 miles by this point, which means the Tesla is getting a lot more use than any other single car in the fleet. It has rapidly turned into Just Another Car for us, which is the best thing you can say about it really.

In regards to your update on the one pedal driving, I think that update may have affected the Model S as well.  I've test driven one twice now, before and after the update, and I noticed on the second test drive that the one pedal driving behavior seemed a lot stronger.  The only time I touched the brake pedal was when I needed to stop more quickly, in just casual driving lifting off the throttle was usually enough to come to a full stop.  Anyways, keep the thread up.  My wife and I are both hoping for one for our next car.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Who knew there was already quite the aftermarket for Tesla!

So I'm seeing various stories of charging stations being overcrowded over holiday weekend(s).  Any personal experience?  Actual issue or internet drama?  If it IS currently an issue as the charger network is still being built out, it seems like it could be an issue easily fixed with software - I imagine Tesla knows, somewhere in their data systems, that there are 12 chargers at this location, 12 cars actively charging and 24 cars idle with 20% battery, so no new cars should be routed there for charging for a while.

It's good drama for blogs, that's for sure. It's pretty tiresome, but nothing gets clicks like writing about the sanctimonious Tesla owners having to wait in line for electrons. Obviously, holiday traffic like Thanksgiving where everyone travels at the same time is when you're going to see problems. Same thing happens with the bus system in Ontario when every university student tries to go home on the same day for Thanksgiving.

One thing that's missing in those reports is that you don't have to charge to 100% every time. If you show up with 20% charge, you may only need 15 minutes of charge time to get where you're going and your nav system will tell you that. The charging rate slows down as you near 100%, so if you're looking for a full tank instead of 80% you'll see quite a bit more time quoted.

I've come across one situation where there was a lineup, but that's because only 5 out of the 8 chargers were up and running (two broken, one blocked by an abandoned car). When you set a destination for a Supercharger, it does give you availability. It doesn't say how many cars are waiting if there are 0 chargers available, but it will tell you there are 5 out of 8 occupied. When that is a problem is when there are only 5 actually available, so you show up thinking that it's only half full and you find a lineup of cars. What Tesla needs is a way to report a problem charger, that is currently missing. Then the availability data can be updated and they can actually do something to fix it.

It's going to be a potential point of pain for a while. Tesla is working hard to build out the network - if we go to Denver, there are two clusters of Superchargers there and two on the way. There are five more under construction and slated for opening "in 2019", although I have my doubts about that timeframe. But they're also putting cars on the road as fast as possible, and the network is struggling to keep up when heavily stressed. I think Electrify America is also going to have a problem if the Mach-E is a success, as that's a smaller network and Ford is very good at building a lot of cars in a hurry.

It's really only a problem on road trips. When we're at home, the car is plugged in every night. We haven't visited a public charger since early October. I had the garage door break so we couldn't get in the garage so we went five days without plugging in. No problem, even in this energy high usage cold weather. If it had become a problem, I could have grabbed my welder extension cord and charged outside or we could have stopped by the local Supercharger cluster at the mall for 20 minutes.

We are racking up miles on this car faster than anything else we own. 2900 miles in just over 2 months.

Keith - thank you for documenting your experience with this car.  I appreciate the car guy perspective.  I'm seriously considering a full electric something to replace my bride's aging S60.  The lack of a local dealer makes me a little uncomfortable about a Tesla but they're still on the radar.

I silently read this thread everyday. I'm glad Keith is very open about his ownership. I know 20+ Tesla owners S/X/3's and to be honest their feedback consist of, "I love it get one". One day I'll own a model X because it's my fav Tesla. 

Hopefully this thread stays like this and less people derailing with their dislikes of Tesla etc and Keith justifying or clarifying things. 

Thank you, Keith. 

In Canada Petro Canada is building a network of fast chargers along the Trans Canada. The network is under construction so you can charge in Swift Current (Speedy Creek) and Moose Jaw Sask. ( gratuitous placement of Saskatchewan place names) but still waiting in other centres.

One partial solution for Ford would be install chargers at Ford dealers and Fords charge free others pay.

I think Nissan used the "chargers at dealers" technique for the Leaf. Ford is using Electrify America, aka VW. When VW gets their mass of cars to market, that network is going to get hit hard. It's a race of the charging networks vs the automakers. The charging standards have to settle down as well, Mach-E and Model 3 can't share fast chargers at all and that's not a tenable situation long-term.

I don't know how much of a problem the lack of a local dealer is. There are service centers in most big areas, but they're invisible unlike a traditional dealership (check Tesla.com to see where they are). There's mobile service for areas like my own. Thankfully, I haven't needed that yet so I don't know how well it works, but that's the solution offered.

Since I'm on the subject - I have ordered the Homelink upgrade for the car. It used to be standard, but was decontented. Weirdly, my mom's Sportwagen didn't come with it either. With the Tesla, you can order the module and have it installed. It's a bit weird if you're in a mobile service area, as you have to tell them to deliver the part to a service center (ie, Denver) and then book a mobile service appointment. I'll bet installation takes about 5 minutes because it's just plugging in a module, but that's how the process works.

I placed the order about a month ago. One of the stories around Tesla is their inability to provide spare parts. I don't know if accessories count, but this is my test. Sure would make a good Christmas present for Janel. I wasn't going to tell this story until it had a conclusion, but there you have it.

We had an OTA update today. There's a change to the cruise control behavior - when you're traveling significantly faster than the lane next to you, the car will slow down and it'll show on the display that the traffic in the lane over is slow and that's why it made this decision. This seems like a reasonable behavior. You can override it by using the accelerator.

The other interesting one is a change in the automatic wipers. Like all automatic wipers, they've always been a little annoying, either wiping too enthusiastically or just not wiping often enough. Automatic wiper tech is pretty standard and pretty clever, using infrared light to measure how the light reflects. They're almost analog. But since Teslas are equipped with cameras out the wazoo, Tesla decided to use their cameras. And now they've switched to a neural net  to run the wipers. 

Automatic wipers have been improved to be more likely to activate when it is slightly raining and respond to changes in rain intensity for more environments. The automatic wipers are now employing the first production deep neural network trained with over 1 million images for the detection of water droplets on a windshield and additional weather cues. If automatic wipers is not performing to your preference, any manual adjustment to wiper speed will be captured to further train and improve the network in future software updates.

That's...interesting. I'm a big fan of reusing existing information already on the network, such as tire pressure calculations done from ABS wheel speed sensors. It would seem that automatic wipers were a solved problem. But if you can make them work without a dedicated sensor and fine-tune their behavior with feedback from hundreds of thousands of cars, why not? It'll be interesting to see how they work. 

Also, max Supercharging rate has been bumped from 150 kW to 170 kW. The lines at the charging stations just got shorter :) I'm guessing battery degradation on these cars is looking good enough that Tesla has decided they can afford a little more damage without bumping them out of warranty. It'll only matter if you're using a Supercharger, of course.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Just got the Mini back from having a coil replaced (with 330 miles and 11 days left on the warranty!) and my wife and I both wondered whether the auto wipers had been learning and then been reset, as they seemed further off.

The Mini's wipers were clearly never doing anything like Tesla, but we didn't wonder whether there was an incremented sensitivity fudge factor based on manual wipes while on auto...

Keith Tanner said:

We had an OTA update today. There's a change to the cruise control behavior - when you're traveling significantly faster than the lane next to you, the car will slow down and it'll show on the display that the traffic in the lane over is slow and that's why it made this decision. This seems like a reasonable behavior. You can override it by using the accelerator.

The other interesting one is a change in the automatic wipers. Like all automatic wipers, they've always been a little annoying, either wiping too enthusiastically or just not wiping often enough. Automatic wiper tech is pretty standard and pretty clever, using infrared light to measure how the light reflects. They're almost analog. But since Teslas are equipped with cameras out the wazoo, Tesla decided to use their cameras. And now they've switched to a neural net  to run the wipers. 

Automatic wipers have been improved to be more likely to activate when it is slightly raining and respond to changes in rain intensity for more environments. The automatic wipers are now employing the first production deep neural network trained with over 1 million images for the detection of water droplets on a windshield and additional weather cues. If automatic wipers is not performing to your preference, any manual adjustment to wiper speed will be captured to further train and improve the network in future software updates.

That's...interesting. I'm a big fan of reusing existing information already on the network, such as tire pressure calculations done from ABS wheel speed sensors. It would seem that automatic wipers were a solved problem. But if you can make them work without a dedicated sensor and fine-tune their behavior with feedback from hundreds of thousands of cars, why not? It'll be interesting to see how they work. 

Also, max Supercharging rate has been bumped from 150 kW to 170 kW. The lines at the charging stations just got shorter :) I'm guessing battery degradation on these cars is looking good enough that Tesla has decided they can afford a little more damage without bumping them out of warranty. It'll only matter if you're using a Supercharger, of course.

I really want to buy the better half one of these, but it would just take too much from theoretical budget to have another track rat and tow pig. 

Keith;

As you have mentioned it has been since October that you last had to charge your Tesla on the go.  That is awesome and with you being in a cold, and wintery climate indicates that battery life isn't a concern.  Last night my dad and I were talking about things and I brought up your ownership of the Tesla, no worries, no names were dropped in the duration of our conversation, LOL.  Anyway the one thing neither my dad nor I have yet to see is the cost of ownership on an Electric Vehicle.  If I have missed this during your ownership journey I do apologize for asking, however, maybe you could shed some Light on this.  Over the 4 months you have owned this car, how much has your electric bill increased at your residence?  I do understand that different States/Provinces may have different rates for electricity, but any Insight into this would be much appreciated.