Tag: car update

Recently we had the need to charge the car away from home, with some interesting experiences. I also had a question from my Mom on the Tesla.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

A Long Day

We had a ski weekend planned in the mountains recently. I went up early one Saturday with one kid, who drove his fun WRX. His first time heading into the mountains, and I think the first time he’s driven us to ski in his car.

My wife had a horse class that day, so she drove the Model Y up north, going about 60 miles each way. I’d set the car to charge to 95% the night before, but her round trip ate up some battery, and as a result, she stopped partway on the journey to charge. She added 18kWh.

She and my oldest grabbed some food, walked dogs, and didn’t find it a problem to charge, spending about 13 minutes connected.

Winter Struggles

The next day, she ran some errands in the mountain town and noticed the car was down to about 30%. She stopped at the Supercharger in Silverthorne, finding only one stall open. When she plugged in the car, it recognized the charger, but didn’t charge.

She tried a few things, but gave up. She was slightly annoyed, and didn’t want to wait to try another charger when someone left.

Between her driving and the cold, we lost about 8% of charge in subzero temps. Some of this was thermal protection, and some was likely additional inefficiency of the battery in very cold weather.

Getting Home

The next morning, we woke up with 17% on the battery. I started the heaters to warm the car as we packed, as well as get the battery ready. We drove over to charge, stopping for coffee.

In 32minutes we added 42kW to the battery, which was more than we needed to get home, but it was what the planner recommended. Since we were chatting, handling some email, and drinking coffee, we weren’t that hurried. I might have stopped around 60% charge, but we let his get up to 72%.

The drive home was easy, and I had plenty of charge to run to the gym and a few errands later.

Charging Time

I chatted with my Mom about this a bit, as she’s curious. She has no interest in trading her Lexus for a Tesla, but she asks about how it works and how we deal with it. She hears a lot of FUD in the news about electric cars.

Here are our charging stats for 16 months.

My life supports charging at home, and the driving profile for me is that we almost never need 300 miles of range. Even a ski trip is about 220miles for me, so the car has plenty of range. I don’t tend to worry about it, and even on the ski trips, I don’t know if I can go up and back on a cold day with a full charge. I rarely charge about 95% and on ski days, I stop for 15 minutes to use the restroom, get coffee, and let the car charge.

In general, I just don’t think about charging the car. I have on trips, but I’ve also had to think about fuel on trips. We drive through Wyoming and Montana at times, and we usually fill petrol cars up when they’re 1/2 empty. We do this because the fuel is not as reliable in remote places.

The mountains of Colorado aren’t remote, but long trips require a little planning, and I don’t find that onerous.

I also just don’t think about range because I have a (mostly) full tank every day. With my gas/diesel cars, there are plenty of times we’ve run down the tank and have to plan a gas stop that day. I almost never do that with the Model Y.

I probably wouldn’t have written this post if not for the conversation with my Mom. While the charger not working was mildly a hassle, it was a 3 minute conversation with my wife, not something that was concerning.

For most people, electric works find. However, it is a different paradigm, and you should think about your lifestyle and driving profile. It’s not for everyone, but it is for me, and I really enjoy the car.

We had an incredibly cold front move through Denver last week. It was 46F one early afternoon, which dropped to 0F by the evening and down to around –15F overnight. Crazy cold, with snow.

Driving the Tesla was interesting.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

Driving to Town

I went to the gym the next day, and saw this as I headed out of the neighborhood:

It’s not a great photo, but what I noticed was that the 43mph had the D above it, for Drive, but not steering wheel for Autopilot. I use it on this road at times when traffic is light. You can somewhat see the road is a bit visible, and you can see some of the yellow through the snow in the middle, but no right line.

The cameras can’t tell where the road is, so they won’t let the car drive. I’m not sure LIDAR or RADAR, or anything would work here.

Here’s another shot in town:

If you look past the steering wheel, you can see the road looks better. Not great, but better. There are curbs here, so radar/lidar might work. Certainly humans can see them, but the car again doesn’t have the steering wheel showing Autopilot is available.

Update 1:

One other interesting note, a few days later, I was driving this same road, but more snow had fallen against the center curb. In essence, the middle lane was narrower because of snow piled up on the left side (in the image above).

I got repeated “lane departure” warnings, well 2-3 in a 1/2 mile, as the car thought I was crossing the lane boundary on the left. Strange, and disconcerting.

Update 2:

The next day as snow was melting, but the roads were very dirty, the car struggled to find the middle dividing line. I could see it as a human, but it was dim and barely visible. The car swerved a few times as it couldn’t always see where there was a turn lane on either side (L or R).

Can Level 5 Work?

This is a great example, to me, of why Level 5 is not likely to occur for cars. Maybe Level 4 within certain conditions and in well mapped/known locations. Or perhaps with sensors in roads that cars read. However, a little snow (this was 2-3 inches) has blinded the car.

Humans drive on these roads all the time in snow. To be fair, many drive poorly, and often they don’t know where the lines are. However, we negotiate. We slide our car slightly left or right when there is other traffic. We aren’t perfectly in the lanes, and depending on the plows, we might end up “losing” a lane and just working with one path that isn’t really in either lane.

Can computing learn to do this? Maybe, but it’s feels like an even more complex problem, especially when you now are asking the computer to react to how other drivers are moving on the road. Negotiating a route with them. Can a computer see another driver wave them on or ask them to stop?

Tesla isn’t Level 5 or anywhere close. It’s Level 2, and perhaps Level 3 with the beta self-driving software (which I haven’t seen). I don’t know that I think anyone is closer, though I’ve heard the Google/Waymo taxis in Phoenix are pretty good. I’d like to try one and see, but those aren’t Level 5.

I’m not sure I would trust Level 5 if someone claimed it, at least not unless every other vehicle was also a L5 controlled car.

I do enjoy Autopilot and it was worked well for me. The FSD version was OK, but not enough better for me to subscribe to it. I look forward to cars becoming better and safer, but I’m not expecting to be able to go to sleep in the car and have it take me to my destination anywhere, anytime. I just don’t think L5 is anywhere within reach.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

I caught a quick article recently that said you could have some fun in a Tesla with Santa Mode. You enable this in a few ways, but the quick one is to activate voice control and say:

Ho ho ho

This will change the UI. From the normal car to this:

Your car becomes a sleigh with Santa and reindeer and other cars are reindeer around you. The car also plays a song.

You can also activate a different song with “ho ho ho not funny”.

I made a quick video to show how this works as well: Santa Mode

A fun holiday trick for passengers.

I saw an article on the state of EV charging and what Ford is doing. First, I think it’s great that Ford (and others) are trying to tackle this. I don’t love the idea of each manufacturer doing this, though if they have interoperable stations, that’s not bad.

Second, this is one of the reasons I got a Tesla. Before I had an EV, I worried about needing to charge when I was driving around. This “range anxiety” had me stop considering the Polestar and Mach-E because I worried about finding a compatible, working charger.

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

Stats

Now that I’ve had the Tesla for over a year, this what my charging stats have been:

I’ve tried two non-Tesla chargers and gotten no charge from them. They showed:

• incredibly long charging times
• never got through the handshake to start charging in 5 minutes.

In both cases, I moved a bit further away to a Tesla Supercharger. Neither was a crisis, but it was inconvenient.

However, since those experiences, I’ve only rarely needed Supercharging and those were on trips to the mountains. The Silverthorne charger was needed, but the Idaho Springs one was for peace of mind. I’d likely have gotten home, but didn’t want to chance it and had time.

A New Mindset

Perhaps the most interesting thing about owning an EV is that I essentially have a full tank of fuel every morning. I plug in and charge at night, and I’m full. That means I have my 300miles of range every day.

That’s unlike a gas car where I often wouldn’t think about range because if I started the day with 1/4 tank, I’d just get gas somewhere. Rarely was my tank full, though we usually try to stay well above a 1/4 tank at the ranch.

Now I have a full set of fuel every day (well, usually 80%, so 250miles) and I really never drive further. And I drive all over the Denver area on a regular basis, especially during coaching season. I’m never really concerned about range anymore, though I do keep an eye on it, same as I do for gas fuel.

That’s still slightly strange to me.

Battery Degradation

Some people have worried about battery degradation. In fact, I’ve seen lots of posts in the Tesla groups I’m a part of about people seeing some low degradation. There are also no shortage of random FUD complaints from people who don’t have EVs, but hate them

In fact, I ran things down deliberately the other day to 11% ( I was hoping for sub-10) and then charged to 94%. I’ve heard that it’s a good idea to periodically do this and then recalibrate the battery. This is supposed to help with range.

I don’t know if this helps because the random watching I do of estimated range still seems to be what I had last year. When I got the Tesla, I believe the range was 315miles. If I look at today, I have the charge at 81%. If I switch to mileage, I see 254 miles. If I take 315*0.81, I get 255, so all seems good.

Just to test, I charged to 100%. When I do that, I see 328 miles of range. No degradation for me.

Overall, I think electric cars will dominate in the future, but not everywhere. That makes me wonder if fuel will start to become a challenge at some point and people needing fuel find themselves in the place where people struggling to find a working charger are today.