Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

I find this whole experience so interesting.  A bit over a year ago we bought our e-Golf (first ev for us) and truly love it.  We just added the new Lightning to the fold and it's fabulous as well.  I went from electric-skeptic to full-on adopter, nudged at first by some of your posts.

I have to admit the new Model 3 Performance has my interest.  I have the Mustang GT which I have been contemplating selling to buy a C7 or C8, but the M3P is so much performance with a little more practicality thrown in that it's definitely on the radar.

I imagine talking to 25 year old me and making the point that I could end up only owning electric vehicles (not including my wife's Wrangler, she says replacing that is a non-negotiable).  I would have thought that sounded pretty crazy for sure!  

I continue to marvel at the evolution of technology and the performance it brings.  It's no wonder that when I bought my childhood crush years ago (1986 Grand National), that it was such a major disappointment relative to newer vehicles.

Keep on posting Keith, I learn something interesting every time you do!

Mcivstx said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Hi Keith, 

I was hopping to get some Koni Red or Yellows myself and was wondering if you could share your dampner settings on stock springs. Thanks!

-Ricky

The Special Active shocks I'm using aren't adjustable, so I have no suggestions along those lines I'm afraid.

I will admit to occasionally stopping at a convenience store to grab a drink. The EV doesn't prevent that. But it's optional :)

Mike, I'm glad this has been interesting and useful to you. I've been following along with the Golf and Lightning as well of course!

It's hot here. I have been abusing the "maintain HVAC" button mightily as I run errands in the Tesla. I've definitely mentioned that in the past, but I very much like it. Even if you only give the car 30s of advance warning, it does a good job of dropping the interior temp into the survivable range.

One thing that having the solar array and an EV has done is completely remove any perceived cost of driving the car. Our array overproduces, so it doesn't cost me anything to leave the AC running when I go shopping since we wouldn't be using that power anyhow (I'm ignoring the long term theoretical effects of battery degradation here because AC use is almost a rounding error compared to actually driving). Also, since I don't have to worry about an ICE not getting up to temp, I'm more comfortable doing short trips in the EV. This is almost incentivizing us to drive the car more, which is really the opposite of what we need as a society in the long term. We have offset that a bit by adding a couple of class 1 pedal assist ebikes to the fleet, which means we are more likely to take the bikes downtown to visit our favorite restaurant or go watch our nephews play soccer. But it's an odd side effect.

Janel was in Denver last weekend with her sister and ended up navigating a GMC Denali around town as her sister isn't comfortable in the big city traffic. Other than being the size of a school bus, the one thing she noticed was the lack of the side camera view when the turn indicator is on. Turns out that's something she uses all the time in the Tesla. Personally, I probably would have missed the big map display myself.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

While I agree and love the idea of maintaining the temperature, I already see people idling their gasoline or diesel vehicles while they shop, as absurd as that sounds. I know that these people complain loudly about their fuel costs. 

Oh yeah, lots of idling vehicles at the grocery stores here. Simply designing a parking lot to have a bit of shade would go a long way. One thing you can see in the Tesla app is the current interior temp, and it's amazing how quickly it climbs once you park a car and turn off the HVAC. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Keesler AFB installed solar panels above the parking spaces at their commissary. I'm not sure if it will pay for it's self, but the covered parking is nice.

The only problem is they left small gaps between the panels, which causes the sun shining through them to look like the parking lines. So you'll walk out back to your vehicle & it may not actually be in a parking space. 

I've seen solar "roofs" for parking lots as well, I think the government building I went to in Denver for my citizenship test had them. Interesting concept - and I hadn't considered that failure mode you mention! But even something as mundane as trees would do just fine. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

A local car dealership made a solar panel covered carport and allegedly it makes their electricity use neutral.

I put Koni Reds on my car this weekend. 

First impressions: In some situations my car rides smoother than stock. Around town where the road is very wavy or rutted it rides similar to stock. It smooths out the smaller stuff that the original suspension used to transmit through. My wife drove it to work and said it's better on the interstate. Definitely firm but not as jarring as the stock suspension. Most of the head bouncing against the headrest is gone, but there's a little bit at highway speeds. The car feels planted through hard turns. It holds a line better. In a nutshell, ride is somewhat better, handling is improved. Will see how the new suspension settles in over the next couple weeks. Just goes to show you don't need expensive height adjustable coilovers to make this car right if you're not tracking it.  
 

I might pass by the Tesla dealer and drive one of the 2024 cars to see how their upgraded suspension compares. They're still using Mando supplied shocks, but this time with their own variant of frequency responsive valves. I've heard these do a great job of isolating the ride, but want to know how they hold up in the twisties. 

In reply to SQSpeed :

Put a few thousand miles on these already and I have the same thoughts. The Konis overall do ride better than factory, especially on long interstate drives, but the trade off is more body motion over the large repeated bumps. Stock used to move around with lower amplitude but was harsh. Koni is slightly firmer at base level but softer when high frequency inputs loosen up the damping. The car is indeed more responsive and holds a line better. Mid corner bumps still seem to upset the car some. I'll hold my judgement until it's on proper tires.

Overall this is a good upgrade for the street. Its not quite a German sport sedan feel - the differences are subtle and it still has more of a Japanese feel to me.

I've yet to go drive a 2024 car again to compare. The Mando shocks used in those aren't quite the same technology Koni uses. I poked around on their website, and their "EV Solution" appears to use two sets of spring disks. They could have reactive compression damping as well, whereas the Koni is only active in rebound. 

Keith,

how do you feel about the new HVAC interface?

I think it may grow on me as it seems more inline with the original control placement (that I never experienced) but right now it's super frustrating to not know where the icons are. 
I enjoy this "future" ability to update and improve OTA, but I really wish we could preview what would change before updating the software, and opt out of some parts of desired. 

My only interaction with the HVAC while in the car is to occasionally set the target temp higher or lower, and that's done with an icon on the bottom of the screen - no change there. They haven't moved much if at all from what I can remember unless I missed something, but I didn't notice anything yesterday when I was in the car. I almost never pop open the full control panel although I do remember noticing it was different.

I've been driving the 35 year old Miata with no AC and a hardtop to and from work this week. Highs in the high 80s, I've been missing AC regardless of interface :)

I agree that it would be nice to be able to yes/no interface changes. They've settled down from early days. You can find out what the changes are going to be in some of the enthusiast forums, although I never bother to look.

Nuts.

OK, this isn't really a future car problem, but it's interesting how we were warned about it. While driving, we started getting a little icon on the dash. Tap that and it pulls up all four tires along with color coded pressures. The threshold is somewhere around 36 psi (recommended pressure is 42). I initially thought this was due to the cooling weather, as we'd seen that in previous years and all four tires were starting to drop pressure - but the right rear seemed to be a couple of pounds lower. A few days later Janel took the car out and within a half mile the car yelled at her and this popped up. Obviously, she turned around and returned home to exchange our good car for the 24 year old Jeep it replaced.

Four days later, I got a chance to deal with the car. Here's what the tire pressure monitoring screen looks like. Yes, we have a problem.

Pumped it up, drove into my shop and fixed the tire. I'm guessing the tire picked up a screw a while back and it sealed pretty well, then the screw disappeared and the leak rate increased. I'm pretty happy with the information the car gave us, first a warning with details followed by a high priority alert when the pressure dropped to a dangerous level.

The car was complaining that tire service (rotation) was overdue, so that was an obvious thing to do while it was on the lift. It's already showing wear on those rear shoulders due to zippiness. I also realized the stock wheels looked a little familiar. Unfortunately, the 17x9 Flyin' Miata wheels have too much backspacing to fit the Tesla without spacers :) I might have to check the load rating too...

Also, it's been just over five years since we drove to SLC to pick up our new car. We've got over 49k on it. It's still acting very much like a new car. There's a small buzz in the dash that I need to fix with a piece of felt - you can stop it by pressing on a particular spot. The car's picked up some freckles and one small dent on the nose from stones but the windshield is pristine. The interior looks brand new. The reported range at our 80% daily charge level hasn't changed for a long time - I might run a full battery diagnostic just for fun, but there are no indications of any real degradation. In other words, it's pretty much what you'd expect from a five year old car that's been cared for.

Maintenance costs over the past five years have been two sets of HVAC filters, an $85 12v battery, one set of tires and a liter of brake fluid. The car's also had a couple of OTA recalls performed and one in-person one, done in my driveway.

Since January 2022 (that's as far back as the stats go in the app), we've used 8744 kWh of electricity. Less than 10% of that has come from Superchargers. Our at-home vehicle charging is basically free due to our overproducing solar setup (this means there is no change in electricity cost as use fluctuates), but if we had to purchase it that 8744 kWh would have cost us right about $875 to purchase. The Supercharger costs total $234. Assuming gasoline is $3.75/gallon (the current local cost for 91 octane) and that our mileage per year is consistent, that means our fuel costs would be approximately equivalent to a 100 mpg gas car. Which they're not because we couldn't refuel a gas car using sunshine :)

While the price of the entry level 3 has dropped quite a bit, the cost of our particular model is within $1000 of where it was five years ago ignoring inflation. The tax incentives have improved, but overall we didn't pay a huge penalty for picking it up when we did and I have no regrets. There's no indication of anything that would make this car difficult to live with anytime soon, although it does need a modem upgrade to use CCS chargers if I decide that's necessary. There is more choice on the market today (finally) and I'm not sure what we'd end up with if we bought today as I haven't driven any of the other offerings - the Ioniq5 would probably be near the top of the heap and costs almost exactly the same. It would be hard to avoid the Y as well, as that larger trunk would be useful as we now carry two sets of hockey gear regularly. It all fits, but it's a good thing neither of us is a goalie :)

Funny, I just had to replace the tires on mine last week. I had the exact same experience last month with the flat warning and sure enough with all the construction nails here it had picked one up. Discount Tire did the repair for free even though they had never seen that car (got a set for the E90 mounted by them though). Last week the tire was flat when i was leaving work, so I took it back to them and they weren't able to repair it. I had 25,000 miles on the tires (16 months old), and just a bit under 5mm tread so I was not happy replacing it. Because of concerns about the sensors and traction control being unhappy with different depth tires I replaced all of them and went with the Michelin Defender 2s. I've gone from averaging 235Wh/Mi to 245, but I also took off the aero covers and only have 600 miles of usage so far.

I've spent a total of $200 on supercharging, and $90 in @home and travel charging costs. The rest of my juice has been at no cost to me. It replaced a BMW drinking premium at 23mpg, and average cost here is $3.85. Same miles would have cost me over $4,000 in just gas.

It's too bad that there's no space to fit a donut under the trunk floor. I had a similar experience, and nobody local had the same tire. Had to throw it in the back of the second car and drive to the next town over for a match. 

What is it you like about the Ioniq 5? I find the 5 and 6 to be handsome cars. 

The 5 just seems like a decent package and it's not saddled with VW software. Also, I am a sucker for the Integrale look. I haven't driven one, but if I were shopping that would be one of the first I'd test drive.

I forgot to update - my fix didn't hold. On a road trip out of town, I got the yellow warning light about tire pressure gradually dropping. We stopped by a gas station and inflated it enough to get home. My local tire shop declared the tire unfixable, so I replaced the damaged tire. Luckily, it was originally on the right rear which sees the fastest wear so I figured the diameter was close enough to the remaining three. So far, so good in terms of warning lights.

Meanwhile, on my last work trip to California, I had both a slow leak (caught by TPMS) and an explosive blowout on two new trailer tires on the same day. It's just not been a good couple of months for tires.

Just got back from visiting my mom. Her car is a 2018 VW Sportwagen with a 1.8T engine, DCT trans and AWD. Good car for her, the perfect size. When I'm home, I chauffeur her around because that's what you do. We had both dry weather and snow and some cold. Observations:

The throttle response was atrocious. Combined with a DCT that is programmed for maximum efficiency so it's always running at 1500 rpm, the car had no reflexes at all. When trying to navigate through the city, I found myself leaving it in Sport mode just so I could respond to given directions quickly. Which meant that it was cruising around at 3000 rpm all the time. Clumsy. People rag on EVs for not being fun to drive, this was more of a chore. If we were goofing around on a twisty road at a higher rate of speed, I might have a different impression. But as a city car, the Tesla is a lot more relaxing, entertaining and capable.

Janel missed the ability to pre-warm the car and the rapid response heater very much. She also spent some time in the back seat and missed the heated seats back there. Basically, she was cold too much. I've said it before, I'll say it again - pre-heating/cooling the car is the biggest luxury available.

It was not as sure-footed as the Tesla in the snow. Not really surprising as the ICE can't control torque as well as the EV.

I kept forgetting to lock the VW :)

I do like the way VW handles lane departure warnings, though, it's very tactile. The car also is reluctant to get too close to the lines, it just shies away from them and centers itself in the lane if you don't have the turn indicator on. It's subtle but effective.

Something new happened yesterday! 

Tesla has started opening up the Supercharger network to non-Teslas, which is a good thing overall for EVs. Currently (ha ha), I think only Rivians and Fords have access. And that reveals a problem. The charging port on every Tesla is on the left rear, so the charging stalls are laid out to match. But it's on the left front on a Rivian and the Fords. This means the cords on the chargers won't reach if they're parked in the appropriate spot. So they have to park one slot over, and depending on the layout of the lot that might mean they're blocking one charger whilst using another. And that's exactly what we came across.

This was at the Idaho Springs Supercharger, which only has 8 spots available and is fairly high demand - I've mentioned it before. The problem is exaggerated by the fact that the Tesla routing software tries to balance Supercharger availability and will inform Tesla owners of how many stalls are open, and it thought there was at least one stall that could be used. Within a minute of us showing up, two other Teslas pulled into the lot.

It wasn't a big deal for us because someone was walking to their car when we arrived, so we quickly swapped spots with them. The other two Teslas nicely waited their turn and at least one of them got a spot by the time we'd plugged in. Had it been an unworkable situation, we had four other chargers on our route with a total of 46 stalls where we could have stopped without affecting our trip. We'd also just driven past another one with 16 stalls. We were stopped at Idaho Springs because we like the food there (shout out to the Frothy Cup and the Two Brothers Deli).

The solution is longer cables, and the newer Superchargers are being built that way. Doesn't fix the legacy ones of course. We also dropped in to the newest chargers on our route on the way home and they also use these older V3 pedastals, but in that case they're installed in the middle of the parking space instead of at the edge so the cord can (probably) reach both corners of the car. Might be a problem if the charging port is not right on the corner. But it's a good workaround if longer cables weren't available. One of the Idaho Springs chargers is small trailer friendly, one of the Parachute ones is large trailer friendly FYI.

Our trip this weekend was a Denver run, and it's notable because we did not make a single stop dictated by the car. On the way out, we left at 4 pm and wanted something to eat on the way because we knew we'd arrive around 8:30, so the car charged whilst we grabbed a quick bite. We had access to a destination charger at the hotel, so we woke up to a full battery. That was enough to keep us going for the weekend as we ran around town, even though we couldn't get access to the hotel charger the second night. On the way home with an identical 4 pm departure, we stopped at Idaho Springs for dinner and charged while that was happening. The car said we were going to arrive home with about 28 miles of range left but I had to stop for a quick bathroom break so I told it to prepare for a stop in Parachute. During the time it took me to run in to the convenience store, pee, grab a drink and get back (6 minutes plugged in), the car picked up 14.7 kWh which is good for about 45 miles of range at highway speeds. Not really necessary but since we were there it was nice to have the extra cushion.

And in case anyone's interested, the trip was about 600 miles and we spent $48 on electricity.

Keith Tanner said:

We had access to a destination charger at the hotel, so we woke up to a full battery. ...

And in case anyone's interested, the trip was about 600 miles and we spent $48 on electricity.

8c per mile is pretty efficient. Is destination charger cost baked into room rate? Billed to room? Or comp'd by hotel ie subsidized by other guests?

Yep, the older Tesla stalls are an issue with the Mach-E (we have had them open for at least 2 years now). The newer ones are usually built more like gas station where you drive "past" the stall instead of up to it, and it's easier even with the short cables.

Looking at the picture above, if I was the Rivian I probably would have chanced parking lengthwise over the yellow striped area to only cover one charging spot, if possible.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

We had access to a destination charger at the hotel, so we woke up to a full battery. ...

And in case anyone's interested, the trip was about 600 miles and we spent $48 on electricity.

8c per mile is pretty efficient. Is destination charger cost baked into room rate? Billed to room? Or comp'd by hotel ie subsidized by other guests?

It's like WiFi. Mostly it's included with the room rate, but some hotels will charge or have third party pay chargers. The cost to the hotel is fairly small, they're about $500 units and the electricity cost to them is about 10c per kWh (the difference between wholesale and retail!). We sucked down about $3 worth of power during our session.

We did choose to stay at this hotel specifically because it has chargers. It's been one of our favorites for years, but now it's our first choice. So it's a value add that the hotel chooses to offer like a pool or a basketball court or a happy hour. They  have two chargers and there were at least five EVs rotating through them. 

That $48 is for electricity that we had to pay for at $0.38/kWh. It doesn't count the initial charge or any power we picked up at the hotel. 

I forgot to mention - the hotel was also the first time I've used the J1772 adapter. They had both a Tesla-specific and a generic L2 charger, but the Tesla one was already in use. It was as simple as you can imagine. The L2 charger was also used by a Mercedes and a...generic EV CUV, maybe a Kia. Last time, there was a Wrangler 4xe on it. I saw plates from Maryland and Texas.

therealpinto said:

Yep, the older Tesla stalls are an issue with the Mach-E (we have had them open for at least 2 years now). The newer ones are usually built more like gas station where you drive "past" the stall instead of up to it, and it's easier even with the short cables.

Looking at the picture above, if I was the Rivian I probably would have chanced parking lengthwise over the yellow striped area to only cover one charging spot, if possible.

I thought about that. It's the clearance area for a handicapped spot, though, so your thoughtfulness towards other EV owners comes at a price! I'm not sure it was wide enough to make that move work anyhow.

Keith Tanner said:

therealpinto said:

Yep, the older Tesla stalls are an issue with the Mach-E (we have had them open for at least 2 years now). The newer ones are usually built more like gas station where you drive "past" the stall instead of up to it, and it's easier even with the short cables.

Looking at the picture above, if I was the Rivian I probably would have chanced parking lengthwise over the yellow striped area to only cover one charging spot, if possible.

I thought about that. It's the clearance area for a handicapped spot, though, so your thoughtfulness towards other EV owners comes at a price! I'm not sure it was wide enough to make that move work anyhow.

Yeah, I would only do that if I could sit and monitor the car and move it in case someone needs that spot. The handicap spots should be respected.

I have actually yet not been really caught in a charging line, but I have avoided crowded places and sometimes settled for a slower charger instead of waiting. Usually I plan so there is at least one option close by, but that is not always possible.

The only times we've been caught in a line were:

- a Supercharger that had 3 out of 8 stalls inoperative in a busy area. This was five years ago, the number of stalls in that area has increased considerably since then. Yesterday was the first time since then that we've come across a blocked or inoperative charger.

- a Supercharger at a busy mall in Denver on the same trip. Maybe a 5 minute wait. We haven't tried to use it since, and again the number of stalls in the area (both at that actual mall and in the Denver area as a whole) has increased. The presence of a destination charger at our hotel has rendered that particular stop irrelevant for us anyhow.

We've come close in Idaho Springs, twice showing up just as a spot was opening. We could easily have gone down the road to one of the bigger, less popular chargers but the food is really good in Idaho Springs :) The Supercharger map shows that Glenwood Springs (another favorite restaurant) is getting a new Supercharger location, which will help the people on a road trip. We'd probably stick with the current, older, slower Superchargers in Glenwood because our restaurant is not super-fast but totally worth it for the food. Civilization is worth another 20 minutes :)

Also, looks like  Grand Junction is also in line for more Superchargers. That will have no effect on us, but it'll be very useful for roadtrippers as the current ones are fairly old and slow and the next set in either direction is 100 miles away. There's a stretch after that that doesn't even have gas stations for 100 miles :)