Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

Keith Tanner said:

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

The ISS? I haven't ordered that one yet, haven't got around to building the Apollo 11 lander yet.

Oh, and sorry for the thread derail.

I don't think you can order the ISS yet. I have a kickass collection of classic Space. 

You're correct, it goes on sale tomorrow.

This reminds me I still have to build the Death Star that's in the basement. Can't remember if it's the 10143 or 10179.

Followup on the Homelink install - I just got an email from Tesla with the invoice for the work performed. It was included with the Homelink purchase so it was $0, but basically it was a digital signature of a PDF. Powered by Adobe Sign - I used to work for JetForm, and that company did digital form signing. It was then purchased by Adobe. I wonder...

Hourly rates for service are $155. And that's about the only interesting thing here.

Janel needed to go to the sewing store and we needed to drop off recycleables. But the Bathurst race is on! What to do?

For those who are wondering, the stream pauses as soon as you shift out of park. You can surf the internet when the car is in motion but you can't watch videos. Not sure how I feel about the former, but I'm 100% fine with the latter.

Hmmm, I wonder if they would train me as a tech? We would be happy to move to Grand Junction.

They are looking for a "Service Technician, Tactical Response Team" for Colorado. Sounds awesome, but it's really a floating generalist. Based on my conversations with Jack, they aren't (weren't) expecting people with EV experience but were looking for mechanics.

There's a pretty good list of jobs on the website. Nothing listed for GJ, but it would be worth starting a conversation. Jack would appreciate it :)

https://www.tesla.com/careers

I have a trip to Denver in a couple of weeks that will involve a couple of nights at a hotel. There's a hotel right near where I need to be with a 9.2 rating on Hotels.com and a pair of destination chargers. Obviously, that's the one I booked (if you build it, they will come...). It's also right near a Supercharger cluster so if the destination charger doesn't work out, there's an alternative. Let's see how this goes.

Keith Tanner said:

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.

I remembered seeing this and I'm wondering are the motors in the AWD long range version of the car the same as the AWD Performance only with a different tune?

Front motor is the same, the rear is rated a little lower. There are apparently some cars  that have the hot rear motor but none of the other Performance parts, they're called "Stealths" because they aren't really an official model but were offered up to people with a Dual Motor LR on order for a $2k surcharge. I only just found out about those. Kinda sounds like a production line or supply line screwup to me :)

Update time! Day 1 of the Denver trip. Left the house after work and stopped for dinner in Glenwood Springs a couple of hours later. The car had a Supercharge while we had Atomic Shrimp (great band name!) at our favorite restaurant. First time the car has charged away from home since October, if you're keeping score.

Then, as we got into the mountains, it started to snow. And snow. White roads, chain law, traction law (AWD or snow tires for passenger vehicles), nasty. The car is really quite stable in this stuff, it turns out. I got the back sliding a little bit turning on an on-ramp and it was easily and intuitively corrected with just a couple of degrees of oppo. The feedback from the passenger seat was immediate, however :) I tested straight line traction control on an acceleration lane and it's very effective. There were some points where the car was moving around under decel and even moving sideways at one point - black ice, I suspect. Nothing to make me too nervous, though. Never more than communication. The biggest problem was keeping the windshield clean, I need to fine-tune the aim of the squirters. The headlights remained clean, the aero must discourage buildup. The rear and side cameras, not so much.

We had enough energy to make it to our hotel with at least 50 miles to spare, but it was becoming apparent that the last stretch was the worst and we might get stopped in 6F weather. We stopped at the brand new Superchargers at Idaho Springs for 10 minutes to blast another 50 miles into the battery, just for insurance. They're on the back side of a gas station, first time I've seen that. Two X and one S also stopped in for a sip of the juice. 
 

Made it over the hill and through Denver, arriving at our hotel at 11:30 pm. The chargers are two Tesla units and one Level 2. I plugged into the Tesla unit that was not blocked by an ass in    a non-EV Hyundai. I could have plugged into the Level 2 instead, but non-Teslas can also use those so it would be rude.  There were lots of other spots available, but the Hyundai driver wanted to be by the door, I suppose.
 

So that's a win for Superchargers and destination charging so far. We'll wake up to a full car and the only extra time involved in this journey was that 10 minute stop in Idaho Springs which wasn't really necessary. Honestly, if I'd been in a gas car with a similarly empty tank and staring at a snowy mountain pass, I probably would have stopped to top up just in case. The dinner stop we would have done anyhow.

I spend quite a bit of time in hotels and have status at the major ones.  Since buying the Tesla, destination charging trumps all hotel loyalty programs for me.  It is the number one item I want in a hotel when I am traveling by car and I have free supercharging.   

No kidding, it's super-convenient. We are once again plugged in and the car is happy for the night. Tomorrow we head home and we'll start with a full battery with no effort on our part. 

Took the car to downtown Denver for dinner and had to angle park, nose in, on a busy street. Gotta tell you, that rear camera is really wide angle. Made it easy to spot oncoming traffic most of a block away as I was trying to back out. 

Here's a run through of what it's like to road trip the Model 3. Yes, some is a rerun from my last post but I'll concentrate on the human aspect.

I set the max battery charge to 100% the night before for maximum range - we usually keep it at 80%. We got in the car and I pressed the "voice command" button. "Take me to Hampton Inn Tech Center in Denver". The car plotted out a route including a 10 minute stop in Idaho Springs, and gave us expected battery levels for both the charging stop and the destination. 

After half an hour, we were hauling down the interstate and the car warned "slow to 70 mph to reach your destination". No worries, we knew the mountains would screw with the range anyhow as we climbed and then regenerated. I didn't slow down.

An hour later, we decided we would stop in Glenwood for dinner because it was 8 pm. "Take me to the Supercharger in Glenwood Springs". The nav updated the destination and 10 minutes out started to prep the battery for Supercharging. Science fiction noises commenced. Stopped, plugged in, ate dinner, got back to the car just when it was done.

Set the nav to the hotel again, proceeded. The 100% battery charge means very little regen capability - nowhere to put the power - so you have to adapt your driving style at first. Weather turned very bad, we decided on a bit of extra margin. Voice command, science fiction noises, supercharger.

We stayed in the car and chatted as the car whined and popped (heat expansion, the battery pack does occasionally make some noises). The battery display showed available range, amperage ("only" 77 or so, nowhere near the theoretical max of 250), charge speed in mph and amount of range added on this stop. We could have watched Netflix but it was more fun watching a pickup driver plowing the lot with great skill and Drive To Survive season 2 doesn't debut until next week anyhow.

Unplugged after 10 minutes and resumed the trip to the hotel. Cameras got covered with crap so the car complained about poor visibility. I adjusted the throttle response to "chill" to smooth everything out in the snow. I had already dialed down steering sensitivity to make it a better cruiser.

Got to hotel and you've read the rest. That's how difficult a road trip is with this car. 
 

Now that the snow is gone, we can see the charging station marking in the parking lot. Hmm. It's clear enough if you know it's a charging spot, but I don't know how many people would figure it out without a hint.

Keith Tanner said:

Now that the snow is gone, we can see the charging station marking in the parking lot. Hmm. It's clear enough if you know it's a charging spot, but I don't know how many people would figure it out without a hint.

Duh. "Only cars with tails". 

"Reserved for devil cars"

"Power Wheels parking only"

So, today I learned that if the car loses the ability to see out of the front camera it will decline to operate cruise control. The roads were messy and the washer system was struggling to deal with the crap being thrown up. When we were going into the sun, that was just too much and the car gave a "I can't see out the front camera" warning. If the cruise was engaged at that point, the car made an error noise and turned off the cruise.

This is a reasonable failure mode, I think. If it were a dumb cruise system, it would just hope that wouldn't drive into the back of something. But a smart system either has to fail down to dumb or it has to shut down completely, and the Tesla decided on the latter. The problem with failing down to dumb is that the driver may be expecting certain behavior on the car's behalf and if it doesn't happen, you have an accident. 

I'd forgotten how challenging it can be to maintain a consistent speed on the interstate on this thing, because 90 mph feels like 65.  Also, I wonder if the on-board radar messes with radar detectors.

I also learned - while cleaning the windshield when we stopped for more washer fluid - that the camera has its own little defroster grid. Makes sense, it's sealed off from the airflow that would defrost the main part of the windshield. But somehow that amused me.

Easy trip home. The car said we could do it without stopping if I didn't drive over 70 mph, so I drove over 70 mph and we stopped for 10 minutes in Glenwood to stretch our legs anyhow :) I have decided that Superchargers should have squeegees and buckets like gas stations do.

A few more thoughts (as noted earlier, I am using this thread to protect those around me).

- when plugged in at the hotel last week, our black Model 3 was joined by a friend - a black Model 3 Performance. It was kinda cute. They're really very similar visually, the Performance has upgraded brakes with red calipers, a lower ride height, the carbon rear ducktail, different wheels and a little red line under the "DUAL MOTOR" badge. The fact that our car was sporting the ducktail but nothing else may have puzzled the Performance owner.

- there are Teslas EVERYWHERE in Denver. Holy cow.

- we stopped in at the Tesla Store in Denver because we were literally walking past it and I was kinda interested in taking a closer look at the interior of an S after living with the 3. They had two 3s and an X in the showroom. No S. The Y should be there in a month or two. One of the 3s (a single motor) had the aero wheel hubcaps on one side and had the hubcaps removed on the other. 

- the Performance came up behind me on the interstate later. It's probably a combo of the ride height and fatter tires, but it looks pretty mean in the rear view. Our car looks more dorky than mean. Ironically, the Performance pulled into a gas station after following us off the interstate.

- the Supercharger cluster at Silverthorne has apparently fixed their busted Superchargers and towed the abandoned Model S that was blocking a charger. The cluster was at full capacity when we went by.

- there is a phone number on each Supercharger to call if you have problems. I had to call it - one of the chargers at Glenwood simply wouldn't make a connection and charge the car. No problem, there were 8 available chargers. But I called to report it and the nice lady on the phone was mostly concerned that we were able to charge. Once I reported that, no, we were good  the conversation was over. Will the charger get a service visit or a reboot or whatever? I don't know.

- after spending so much time driving the Tesla in so many different weather conditions on Wednesday-Friday, Janel took the 1966 Cadillac to visit her sister's place on Saturday :)

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Re: cruise control with camera inop

On my i3 with it's (very) primitive camera based cruise control, I can activate a secondary, speed only based cruise control when the camera based system has given up.  Had to spend some time with the owners manual to find out how to activate it though-- requires an extended press of the following distance control. 
 

Not that it sounded like cruise control was appropriate for the conditions you were in, but are you sure there isn't a fall back operating mode?

Well, the car seemed pretty definite about it :) It didn't give me any options, just "no". If the front camera is blocked, cruise doesn't appear to be available at all. I'll take a look through the manual - but like you said, the conditions weren't really cruise-friendly anyhow.

Long thread! The parts I've read have been quite informative, thanks. Our family car is a CX-5 and we would not mind into getting something at least partially electrified next, soon. The model y is interesting, I can't really wrap my head around the quoted storage space from looking at it and I hate that swoopy rear profile.  However you do get the storage space of the front, and I imagine the dynamics and speed of the low CG EV is going to destroy anything with an ICE.  39 miles of range in the RAV4 prime would allow us to do all of our daily activities here in Milwaukee in EV mode no problem, and give us a little more overall range in versatility for road trips, hiking fishing etc.  I think we will just have to check them out in person once they drop. Either way, I'm excited for smooth quiet EV acceleration in the city at least.  The naturally aspirated CX-5 is on the slow end of adequate and really feels like a slug when I've been driving my M3.

An update that's not really much of an update. But hey, it's something to read.

Not having to visit gas stations is kinda nice in these pathegenic times. Otherwise, we're mostly just driving.

One taillight has started showing some condensation. I'll probably request a warranty change on this once the unpleasantness backs off. It's cleared itself since I took this picture. This is not an unknown problem with Teslas.

I also bought some toys. We used to keep the charger plug on a shelf beside the car, but the cord is a burly one and it was unruly. This little cord wrangler for the charger cable was all of $17 but eliminates the chance of the charger plug falling off the shelf. You can print your own if you have a 3D printer, but this injection-molded unit is pretty much a no-brainer for the price. I have the bulk of the cable tied up and out of the way, there's no need for any more length than we have here.

Also, I've been thinking about doing this for some time. The car has a wood (or "wood") strip across the dashboard and everything else is black. One of the aftermarket companies found an architectural finish that's a perfect match to what Tesla is using. It applies like a big sticker. I added it to the center console. I think this lightens up the interior, makes it a bit more cohesive and adds interest and warmth to it without looking modified. In fact, I suspect that we will very quickly starting thinking of this as stock and seeing a standard one will be a shock.

The new "wood".

A wider view. Taken in the garage, sorry about the lighting.

Here's a stock one.

The wood looks a lot better. 

Any thoughts about the Model Y?  Looks decent after seeing the Doug video review.

Haven't seen one myself. It has a heat pump to help with heating, so it should be more efficient in cold weather. Otherwise, I think it's pretty close to a Model 3. I'm kinda glad they weren't available when we got our car or Janel probably would have wanted one because she finds cars too small. I like cars. Anyhow, I haven't watched any reviews of the Y because it's not really applicable to us :) I'm hoping it's a big sales hit, and I think the inevitable Mach E vs Model Y comparison test is going to be really interesting.

She did drive her Jeep again last week so she could bring home all her computer stuff from work. It would have fit in the Tesla but she still thinks that cars don't have luggage space. Anyhow, she reports that it has a huge steering wheel, the speedometer is in the wrong place, it's all floppy and it just feels squishy. She has adapted :)

She and the voice command system don't get along. She can't make it work on her phone either. She's informed me that it only works if she holds the button down, but I know that's not true. Maybe it's something about the pitch of her voice that makes it hard for the systems to pick her up.