Tag: car update

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.

Recently I was driving home and I couldn’t engage Autopilot. I kept seeing the availability icon come and go, and found this interesting, but also a sign of why Level 4 or 5 is likely hard to solve in a general way.

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

Denver Sun

When I first moved to Denver, I was driving down I-25 early one morning. There was a stretch that turned East and was blinded. It felt like the sun was directly in front of me on the horizon. This is something that I’ve gotten used to a few times a year, as the sun seems to be at a lower angle than I see anywhere else in the world.

My Tesla Model Y, Long Range (MYLR) apparently had the same problem this week. I was out early to town and ended up coming home around 8am. Driving East, the sun was low and seemed to be coming directly into the car. Fortunately it was slightly to the right, so I could see straight ahead. This is a section of road that I often engage autopilot as it’s got some ups and downs, is fairly quiet with a median, and I like letting the car control the drive.

However, when I engaged Autopilot (AP) I got the alert that it wasn’t available. I glanced down and saw the icon, which indicates AP is available, so I assumed maybe I’d done it at a place where there weren’t lines. The icon disappears in intersections or other places where the car doesn’t see lines immediately.

I tried again and the same thing happened. As I glanced down a few times, I’d see the icon come and then go. I looked out and realized that I could barely see the lines in the center of the road because of the glare.

This continued for a few minutes until the road turned left further and a large hill shaded the road. I engaged AP and it handled the rest of the drive out to the road that turns toward my house. Once engaged, it seemed to do well, even on a few hills where the glare was strong, though not as strong as it was leaving town.

Radar and Lidar

There are a number of situations and places where I think that lack of radar or lidar would help. This isn’t one of them. Unless radar is painting the painted lines in the middle of the road, it wouldn’t solve this problem.

Conclusion

In a city, or even suburb, where the roads are well mapped, this might not be a problem. In a neighborhood, or place where cars might park on the street, then perhaps radar could help, but vision is vision, and it’s not something that a computer can necessarily do better. Humans make mistakes with glare and blinding light, and cars that depend on vision can do the same thing.

Actually, I think the recognition of visual artifacts ( shadows, glare, etc.) is slower and more difficult for computers than humans. Humans will also make mistakes, but like many, I think I have less tolerance for computers making the same mistakes. Not sure that’s rational, but I do feel that way.

This is a reason that I think L4 or L5 isn’t easy, or likely, outside of highly mapped and geo-fenced areas.

Not part of my Tesla series, but this is related as I had an interesting electric car experience while traveling in London.

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

Booking Uber

I have known people using Teslas as taxis or Ubers, and I rode in one in Antwerp, but it was luck of the draw. The same thing happened in London, but it was a more interesting experience.

I was staying at Heathrow Airport, which is well West of London. I had an engagement in the center of London, at the Tower Bridge. A Google map shows this to be a 20 mile journey, but 90 minutes, traffic is bad. In a gas car, without enough fuel, this could be disconcerting. However, it works well for electric cars since minimal power is lost sitting in traffic.

Outbound East

It was an all electric day in London. I booked an Uber from LHR to the Tower Bridge. As it happened there was a Kia e-Niro that responded quickly. I got in and started chatting with the driver. He had been using the car for 10 months as an Uber and was very happy.

The car drove well, was well sized for 4 adults. I think 5 would be cramped a bit as it’s narrower than the Model Y. It was fairly comfortable for me in the back, but the seats were a little thinner and harder than Tesla seats. The car had quick acceleration but not Tesla quick. I’m glad as the driver would quickly accelerate when there was space in roads and Tesla levels would have me jerking around.

The finish felt a little cheaper and definitely not luxurious. Not sure it’s worth it. Starting at $40, maybe. Perhaps the $45 Premium is better, and since a Model Y is now $60, perhaps. I have to think more about this.

The driver said range was 200-220 for him and the cat had worked well as an Uber. He could go quite a few hours before charging and there was plenty of places to charge. He said charging was about 0.50p UK per kW, so for his 60Wh batter, that’s 30 pounds sterling. Not cheap, but a lot cheaper than petrol. He also said that he tended to run to about 20% and charge to 70-80, depending on time. Usually having a coffee and a short walking break. Not a bad idea.

Returning West

My return was a Nissan Leaf. Again, I didn’t pick this, it just happened to be close. It’s still 20ish miles, but a 90 minute drive from the Tower Bridge. I have a friend with an older Leaf, which gets about 80 miles on a charge, but the newer ones go over 150miles.

This driver wasn’t fazed. He’s had his over a year and it works for him. Again, he takes a few fares, then stops for coffee and charging. This was definitely a smaller and cheaper car, with much less acceleration, or at least the driver didn’t bother trying to hurry. The finish was cheaper, and felt like an economy car.

I haven’t been sure these cars would make sense for constant use but these two were finding ways to make it work. Apparently there is good charging infrastructure in London that works well enough for people to use electric cabs.