I am kind of excited to see the future updates since I am leaning strongly to a Model 3 as being the first 'NEW' new car I purchase.
Thanks for the updates Keith!
I am kind of excited to see the future updates since I am leaning strongly to a Model 3 as being the first 'NEW' new car I purchase.
Thanks for the updates Keith!
Hey I have a question that may get a bit complicated.
When I use the fuel economy-o-meter in the Pacifica it always always always starts high and tapers off to reasonable after a few miles.
I had not reset the Bolts kilowatt hour per mile o-meter in some time. When I did, it was higher than the average was. I got 4.5 on the way to work this morning despite the cold, as compared to my normal 4.1.
Does yours bounce around a bit as well?
Keith Tanner said:T
The reason I went on that ramble is because while the current Model 3 is very similar to the one I bought other than a bunch of incremental details, the Bolt is now sporting a bigger battery for 2020. I think it got some interior design or interface tweaks too. Enough that a normal person would be able to tell a difference. So if Tuna picked up a new Bolt now, it would be different than if he'd bought a 2019.
Huh, while looking for some info I found out that maybe there's a new steering wheel and center console coming for the 3 along with double pane windows. This will be interesting to see. I suspect the console will be mostly arrangement of the storage compartment between the seats, not something that a non-owner would notice.
This is part of the Tesla general attitude of "The legacy automakers are idiots" in that they don't care to adhere to model year. Honestly it doesn't matter so long as the customer is aware. Some will be, some will not. This, as you rightly point out, is going to get exponentially more complicated with used cars. Based on the Rich Rebuilds stuff, I doubt Tesla wants to give used car buyers any real buying power. His experience, and others who have bought higher level trims only to have them magically turn into lower level trims, will really make things weird for the used car buyer. I am near certain this isn't due to cautiousness on the part of Tesla.
tuna55 said:Hey I have a question that may get a bit complicated.
When I use the fuel economy-o-meter in the Pacifica it always always always starts high and tapers off to reasonable after a few miles.
I had not reset the Bolts kilowatt hour per mile o-meter in some time. When I did, it was higher than the average was. I got 4.5 on the way to work this morning despite the cold, as compared to my normal 4.1.
Does yours bounce around a bit as well?
We never pay any attention, honestly. We just use the car and consumption is what it is.
I know that my Dodge truck uses a rolling average of no more than a couple of hundred miles. When I reset it, it shows outlier info based on what I'm doing at the time which is understandable. The Tesla readout lets me choose to view consumption charts with a couple of windows but I don't think it offers a window of more than 30 miles or so and it includes a graph showing consumption vs time. There's a "glide path" display in there somewhere that's available when you have a programmed destination that I need to check out someday, but that's more a report on how you're managing energy versus the predictions.
But just a straight average consumption over a long period? If it's there, I haven't seen it or gone looking.
tuna55 said:Keith Tanner said:T
The reason I went on that ramble is because while the current Model 3 is very similar to the one I bought other than a bunch of incremental details, the Bolt is now sporting a bigger battery for 2020. I think it got some interior design or interface tweaks too. Enough that a normal person would be able to tell a difference. So if Tuna picked up a new Bolt now, it would be different than if he'd bought a 2019.
Huh, while looking for some info I found out that maybe there's a new steering wheel and center console coming for the 3 along with double pane windows. This will be interesting to see. I suspect the console will be mostly arrangement of the storage compartment between the seats, not something that a non-owner would notice.
This is part of the Tesla general attitude of "The legacy automakers are idiots" in that they don't care to adhere to model year. Honestly it doesn't matter so long as the customer is aware. Some will be, some will not. This, as you rightly point out, is going to get exponentially more complicated with used cars. Based on the Rich Rebuilds stuff, I doubt Tesla wants to give used car buyers any real buying power. His experience, and others who have bought higher level trims only to have them magically turn into lower level trims, will really make things weird for the used car buyer. I am near certain this isn't due to cautiousness on the part of Tesla.
Of course, we had this same complexity of features in old American cars where the number of options was almost endless. I seem to recall that the number of option permutations for the 57 Chevy was higher than the number of atoms in the universe. Don't know if that's a legit stat, but the fact that it's even plausible does make the point.
Model years are a very artificial construct, intended primarily to generate excitement over changes that may be pointless and give the impression of progress. "Oooo, the grill now has horizontal instead of vertical bars and the red velour is an option in the GT-SE L!" They may also have some background in production line manufacturing from when the lines were less flexible than they are now and an annual shutdown was required.
If you don't have a technical constraint because you have a modern flexible production line and a feature is ready, why wait until some arbitrary time to release it? Or, if you've looked at the logs and discovered that only 5% of cars are using the Homelink unit, why keep paying to install it until that arbitrary time? Flip side, why rush something to market just to make that deadline? That rush to hit a deadline is the reason SEMA cars are so often crap, honestly.
Especially if you're not relying on generating momentary buzz to sell vehicles. I have mentioned before that it's surprising they rolled out the power, range and charging speed upgrades as a free OTA update when they could have used them to sell a few more "new and improved!!" cars. But they didn't, they gave them to all existing customers that had hardware that would support it. Maybe it's not a coincidence that brand loyalty is extremely high.
Saying this is an attitude of legacy automakers are idiots is a bit of projection. Tesla had the chance for a clean sheet redesign. Maybe they looked at the annual step changes and could not come up with a good reason for them and a bunch of reasons why it was a pain. They certainly looked at the dealer model and threw most of it away, which they could because they didn't have the baggage of an existing network. Saturn tried to change the dealer system but couldn't. SpaceX took that same look at rocket development and it's certainly working in that arena. Some of the experiments are working. Some are real challenges - the dealer thing continues to be a hassle. Some of them (like battery swaps) haven't worked, so you pivot and move on.
I have been loosely following this thread, and I really appreciate all of the honest feedback from a "car person" on the experiences of living with an EV. I have a lease coming due in april, and I have been looking at EVs, but the cost to lease or buy new is still pretty high, as there are not AWD models in "family budget" territory. I do have concern about extreme cold weather and battery degradation and range, this is also why AWD is mandatory. If they made FWD only I think it wouldn't be as big an issue. I know my truck won't go up icey snowy hills in RWD but will in 4x4, but the fiesta motors right up like a champ in all it's roll up window 5 speed hamster wheel glory. If the model 3 had a 35K FWD version, I'd be talking to the bank about financing already. I do have concern for the software side of things and telsa really not supporting after market repairs and rebuilds, but there has been some court cases that have changed that. They must provide parts to repair vehicles outside of their repair facilities to some extent now, but I know it's limited and not always cheap. That will be the big hurdle to all EV transportation space, dealing with battery recycling, older cars and repairing, or rebuilding damaged cars/trucks. Being able to buy a new battery back and put it in, is critical to long term EV adoption, and building battery packs as structural components will make repairs difficult and expensive for those trying to buy older used cars. Supporting software long term is also a hassle, I work in IT, when we deal with clients that have 5-6 year old software, it just doesn't work on anything, or trying to get new software to work on old hardware... EV's are VERY software dependent, it's a computer telling electrons where to go, not fuel and air exploding and moving a hunk of metal, you can always replace metal, but you can't always fix or replace software. What will the laws be regarding selling a 10 year old EV with known security flaws that are not patched because the manufacturer as declared it EOL? I'm excited to see where it goes, but there are big hurdles to overcome. I'm am hopeful the big 5 (ford, GM, toyata, honda, and Vee-bmw-W) will be able to help the start ups on the longevity side. Teslas are awesome, but they are not built for resale or re-use and you can see them struggling with it now. They will get there I hope, but cause they have really pushed the tech forward.
EV batteries are looking like they last longer than internal combustion engines these days. When looking at battery degradation and end of life, take that into account. The price of batteries has been falling fast and Tesla is about to start using a new battery type that promises to drop costs even further. We don't know anything about the structural batteries, about how that will be implemented and what it means for repair. Hopefully that will be taken into account.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/heres-what-tesla-will-put-in-its-new-batteries/
Battery recycling has been happening for nearly a decade. It's easier to get the rare earth materials out of an old battery than the ground and it's a LOT easier to manage a recycling program for big expensive batteries than little cheap ones, so that's not really an issue.
Comparing a truck in RWD to a car that actually has some weight on the rear wheels and has a very sophisticated torque management system is not really apples to apples. I think you'd find that a RWD Model 3 would be a whole lot more competent in the snow than a random pickup.
Software - ICE cars have been dependent on computers for decades. They're a long way from fuel and air exploding and moving a hunk of metal. The software is arguably more complex for an ICE than an EV because of all of the emissions management and the pesky transient conditions that are always happening. But EOL security support is a legitimate concern. It may require the cars to be airgapped at some point. The automotive industry already supports their products for far longer than the consumer electronics industry does, so I guess we have that on our side.
That's an interesting list of the big 5. It doesn't reflect the actual relative size of automotive manufacturers and there are 6 listed :)
Update on our own car - Janel reports she listened to the radio on the way home from the gym this morning since the car won't natively stream anymore. Our "premium connectivity" subscription has expired. Like, terrestrial broadcast radio. She thinks she may be the first person to do so in a Tesla.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Won't natively stream through built in apps, or Bluetooth streaming went away too?
With the rumors swirling of a $25k model in the next 3 years, I'm more interested than ever.
Keith Tanner said:EV batteries are looking like they last longer than internal combustion engines these days. When looking at battery degradation and end of life, take that into account. The price of batteries has been falling fast and Tesla is about to start using a new battery type that promises to drop costs even further. We don't know anything about the structural batteries, about how that will be implemented and what it means for repair. Hopefully that will be taken into account.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/heres-what-tesla-will-put-in-its-new-batteries/
Battery recycling has been happening for nearly a decade. It's easier to get the rare earth materials out of an old battery than the ground and it's a LOT easier to manage a recycling program for big expensive batteries than little cheap ones, so that's not really an issue.
Comparing a truck in RWD to a car that actually has some weight on the rear wheels and has a very sophisticated torque management system is not really apples to apples. I think you'd find that a RWD Model 3 would be a whole lot more competent in the snow than a random pickup.
Software - ICE cars have been dependent on computers for decades. They're a long way from fuel and air exploding and moving a hunk of metal. The software is arguably more complex for an ICE than an EV because of all of the emissions management and the pesky transient conditions that are always happening. But EOL security support is a legitimate concern. It may require the cars to be airgapped at some point. The automotive industry already supports their products for far longer than the consumer electronics industry does, so I guess we have that on our side.
That's an interesting list of the big 5. It doesn't reflect the actual relative size of automotive manufacturers and there are 6 listed :)
Agreed on the snow. I drove a 2wd longbed through Syracuse, NY winters for years. It had a carb which had icky throttle response, especially in the cold, and no weight on the back.
Any EV is going to have such a remarkably better... uhhh... handle... on its torque output that you will be fine.
As far as software, that's really more of a A OTA issue than an EV issue. GM doesn't have any more control over my Bolt than they would a Cruze or a Camaro. I would be equally in trouble if the software wasn't supported in all three cases. Tesla's OTA updates don't seem designed to shut things down, but I suppose it's possible. Rich Rebuilds proves that he can make them cars again with no control from the Mothership, albeit he loses some functionality in terms of future updates and charging, but oh well.
RevRico said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
Won't natively stream through built in apps, or Bluetooth streaming went away too?
With the rumors swirling of a $25k model in the next 3 years, I'm more interested than ever.
It won't natively stream through built-in apps. Basically, the car has lost its data connection for anything other than navigation. She can still stream from her phone via Bluetooth but this isn't something she has ever really done so I need to make sure it's set up properly.
Tesla has announced an upcoming $25k model. When you look at the trajectory of battery prices, it's plausible. Everyone seems to be waiting for some transformative change in battery chemistry that will increase range and decrease cost dramatically overnight, but in reality we're seeing a bunch of optimization and tweaking and volume production that has had a significant effect on battery costs year over year. That's probably where our car will start to show its age first, the fact that we bought it when batteries were still around $150/kWh.
I agree that software updates are not a Tesla-specific problem. It'll be easier for Tesla to roll out upgrades - remember Jeep's remote control Grand Cherokee problem? that had to be fixed with a dealer visit, which means that there are probably a very high percentage of them still susceptible - but it's also possible that this mechanism could be misused. The only reason it's more of a visible concern for Teslas today is because they're currently the only company that does it on all their vehicles.
Three updates on three subjects.
We went for a short road trip this weekend - headed up to Ouray just to get out of town. That's an out and back that involved a fair bit of climbing and a total distance of about 220 miles. There are no high speed charging options on the route, but there is destination charging in Ouray as well as in Montrose. There's a Supercharger coming to Montrose by the end of the year but that wouldn't have affected this trip.
This gave me the first chance to check out the "glide path" display. Basically, when you have a destination in the navigation system, you can display a graph that shows predicted battery capacity vs distance along with actual. Here's a bad picture:
The gray line is the predicted usage, the green line is actual along with the expected battery capacity upon arrival. As you can see, I'm using a little more energy than expected. This was because I was maybe not sticking to the posted limits :) I set the cruise for the speed limit and the graph started following the prediction almost exactly. If you were doing long-distance travel and pushing the limits of your range, this would be a useful display. A friend of mine who's done a near-Cannonball trip across the US used it to fine-tune his interstate cruising speed.
The graph can certainly take altitude changes into consideration. You'll see that we're expected to use nearly half our battery on the way there, but on the way home it predicted (accurately) 18%. I've seen the graph for big mountain passes and the predicted battery level will actually climb on long descents. So I watched this for a little while and quickly realized that it was very accurate if you stuck to the speed limit, and thus turned it off. Next time I'm on a winter trip, though, it could be interesting to see and it would be a useful tool if you were needing to manage energy.
I also performed an experiment. I set my phone into airplane mode with Bluetooth enabled. This was a test to see if the car NEEDED the Tesla app to be talking to the mothership or not. ie, if Teslas servers were down, would it prevent me from using the car?
Answer: no change. The car is using the phone as a key via Bluetooth. We wouldn't have been able to do anything to the car remotely such as pre-cooling the interior, but that's it. Also, if you unlock your car remotely via prodding at menu items in the app instead of just walking up to it, that functionality will be broken. It's the high effort way to unlock the car, but maybe some people do that.
So all the news stories about Tesla owners being locked out of their cars by app downtime are uninformed clickbait. As is the norm for Tesla news articles, alas.
Third of three. Streaming from phone.
This is what seems to be viewed as The Future. Everyone wants the car to just be a display unit for their magic smartphone doodads. Why have the car able to stream when you can just stream from your phone? Well, after spending both short and long trips in the car using this as a music source, it has some major flaws. Turns out that interacting with a little handheld display with tiny icons is far more attention-intensive than voice controls or big icons on a fixed screen.
Car: If I want to play a certain song, I press a button on the steering wheel and say "play Bohemian Rhapsody". Or, if something is a little more obscure or specific, I could specify an artist. Maybe an album, I don't know. I'm pretty sure the car would switch the audio source at this point, I'll have to check that.
Phone: if I want to play a certain song, I have to launch an app and find the song somehow. Voice commands are clunky if available. The phone will usually but not always re-pair and start playing again when you get back in the car on short trips. If you do have an CarPlay/whatever the android equivalent mirror, you're still dealing with an interface that's designed for a totally different type of use. It's one thing to go through this when you're trying to play off a bluetooth speaker in the garage, it's something else when you're driving. It's also got about a 5% failure rate which leads to you screwing around with tech instead of driving. In the ND Miata, it's more like a 75% failure rate if you're trying to use the built-in Pandora support.
I knew all this already, but even for someone who's tech-savvy it's very high friction and this means very distracting in a car. EFor Janel, who wants her technology to just work damnit, it's just got too many extra steps. So we're probably going to pony up for the Premium Connectivity so the streaming audio just works, damnit.
Consumer Reports just released a report on predicted maintenance costs for EVs. There's some definite extrapolation - the Mach-E was used as part of the report, for example - but it indicates that EVs are considerably less expensive to run than pure ICE as well as hybrids. Basically, the high-dollar stuff like motors tend to last the lifetime of the vehicle and battery pack replacement is on par with an ICE rebuild.
Ars Technica report on the report: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/owning-an-electric-car-really-does-save-money-consumer-reports-finds/
The actual report: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-repair-maintenance/pay-less-for-vehicle-maintenance-with-an-ev/
I guess I'll find out over the next decade or so how accurate this is :)
But here's an interesting thing that showed up in the comments. The usual complaint about EVs is battery life. We've all seen what happens to laptops and cellphones over time, and we assume the same will happen to an EV. Of course, the EV has a far more sophisticated battery management system than those disposable consumer items 0 but Nissan's short-lived Leaf packs have not helped. Here's a scatter plot of Tesla reported battery capacity vs mileage generated by (apparently) a Dutch Tesla owner's group based on member reports.
I was cruising around yesterday in the XJ and realized that the taxi next to me at a traffic light was a Bolt. Interesting choice for that application - I wouldn't have pegged it as an ideal fit for an EV, but the typical stop/go/wait usage may mean that you get a lot of regen and of course you're not burning fuel while idling. It would be interesting to have a conversation with the company about how it's working out. We don't have a lot of taxis in our little town so maybe the use case is different around here.
Oh - the other interesting thing: EV owners with a range of 250 miles or so charge at home 92% of the time and only need DC fast charging 6 times a year. That maps pretty well to our experience if you look at charging as a function of mileage.
This is just the inner cheapskate in my coming out but I wonder how many people forgo charging at home and only/primarily charge at work/out and about?
I think if I had an EV I'd definitely be trying that.
That's a matter of balancing cost vs convenience. We pay about 3c per mile for electricity when we charge at home. At that price, it's not worth chasing electrons.
iansane said:This is just the inner cheapskate in my coming out but I wonder how many people forgo charging at home and only/primarily charge at work/out and about?
I think if I had an EV I'd definitely be trying that.
It's like $20-$40 per month, and I drive 400 miles per week minimum. It's not worth it. Fuel costs become inconsequential.
Here is an interesting Tesla story on BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszl41
it probably will be on the website in a few hours , its live right now Pacific time 0ct 8th , 2pm Pacific
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I recently read an article about a Vancouver Yellow Cab driver buying and operating a Tesla 3. He figured it to cost neutral so he decided to pay the bank rather than the gas companies.
First, I would like to get in the row of people who thank you for a very informed and interesting thread.
I follow it mostly because I partly work with EV infrastructure roll-out in our city, albeit more on a "political" or maybe strategic level. My life choices currently mean we "need" both cars to tow (in Europe, as you know, we tow with passenger cars and not trucks), so at the moment the Tesla Model Y is what looks most promising with a 1600 kg tow rating (unless Ford mans up on the Mach-E for us here). So my own EV adventure will wait a little while. Anyway, I like your "cross-country" trip experiences.
A comment on taxis, in Sweden and quite some other areas of Europe, the taxi people have really taken on the Teslas. In our larger cities you will see large fleets of Model S's being used as taxis. With our gas prices and the emission restrictions for some airport access it is not only cost neutral, it is "cost positive" to use a Tesla like that. From our research it also seems like the range degradation is on par, or better, than a diesel vehicle. Old ICE cars also loose range as they get worn...
Gustaf
Thanks for joining! Maybe you can add some perspective on the charging infrastructure development.
They broke ground for a new Supercharger in Montrose last week, which will give us more options for future trips to Durango. But what's interesting about that is that it will be a shared Supercharger/ChargePoint station so it will have options for Tesla, CCS and CHAdeMo. This is the first shared station I'm aware of. Are you doing that sort of thing in your city?
Keith Tanner said:Consumer Reports just released a report on predicted maintenance costs for EVs. There's some definite extrapolation - the Mach-E was used as part of the report, for example - but it indicates that EVs are considerably less expensive to run than pure ICE as well as hybrids. Basically, the high-dollar stuff like motors tend to last the lifetime of the vehicle and battery pack replacement is on par with an ICE rebuild.
Ars Technica report on the report: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/owning-an-electric-car-really-does-save-money-consumer-reports-finds/
The actual report: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-repair-maintenance/pay-less-for-vehicle-maintenance-with-an-ev/
I guess I'll find out over the next decade or so how accurate this is :)
But here's an interesting thing that showed up in the comments. The usual complaint about EVs is battery life. We've all seen what happens to laptops and cellphones over time, and we assume the same will happen to an EV. Of course, the EV has a far more sophisticated battery management system than those disposable consumer items 0 but Nissan's short-lived Leaf packs have not helped. Here's a scatter plot of Tesla reported battery capacity vs mileage generated by (apparently) a Dutch Tesla owner's group based on member reports.
This is a really helpful and encouraging chart!
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