Tom Suddard said:Any idea why CarPlay still isn't supported? That was one of the reasons I sold my Leaf, but it seems odd that Tesla wouldn't support such a common feature.
I think it's either because it's not fully integrated into the car like the onboard infotainment system is, or because it would require Tesla to relinquish control. You decide on the spin you prefer :)
They may not need attendants, but I can't even fathom how much a supercharging station costs to build and how much they've spent building out the network. $25b/year is nothing to sneeze at, though!
Of interesting note for myself earlier this week.
We are planning a trip from Charlotte, NC to Upstate NY for memmorial. As a father of three young male cretins (8,6,2); I had written up a full itinerary with planned stops every 2.5 hours to stretch and play for about 30 minutes.
That's when it hit me. Parents of young children need a mini van that's EV, capable of the Supercharging stations. The charging would fit in perfectly with stopping to smell the roses and actually see the country vs trying to canonball all 9 hours in one go.
Model Y can jump in a lake with those stupid doors IMHO.
My truck is a 2014 F150 Ecoboost. 100k miles with fairly minor issues over the years. Long since paid off so it's hard to justify (even without the insane prices for new vehicles) changing things up.
Random thoughts had after that:
I wonder if a lightning could have made the trip. Need to see i there's a way to plan a trip as if I had one and see if the charging would even be available.
I bet the charging ports are always somewhere boring for kids, rather than at a "serivce station, with playgrounds" or at national parks. (i.e. stopping at the New River Gorge for a short hike with the kids while the car charged would be awesome).
On the lightning/rivian line. would a camper cap affect the mileage in anyway? Since aero seems to play a strong role in these car's designs.
In reply to Mad_Ratel :
Model Y has regular doors; model X is the one with goofy "falcon" doors.
Mad_Ratel said:
I wonder if a lightning could have made the trip. Need to see i there's a way to plan a trip as if I had one and see if the charging would even be available.
So I found ABRP. This shows a 14 hour trip with a rivian R1t
Extended range F150 Lightning: 15 hours with 4.5 hours of charging
Tesla Cybertruck dual motor: 11.5 hours. 2 hours of charges.
Heck of a lead giving to the nebulous Cybertruck, if true, there would be zero or near zero affect to my normal trip in my trusty f150 vs the cybertruck.
edit: 2021 tesla S long range. 1 hour 15 min of charges, (4 times each less than 30 minutes max).
and my current dream is a Taycan Cross turismo S, 13 hr 40 min, 2 hr 15 min in charging, 8 charges in the < 20 min range each.)
also interesting is the different routes the ABRP has to do for each vehicle. The Porsche has to do almost 100 miles more (732 vs 618 tesla 2021LR) for the same trip as it does not go through beckley or morgantown.
In reply to dculberson :
I would bet that a supercharger station is substantially cheaper than a gas station. The hardware is designed and gets cheaper every time they build a new one. All they need is a parking area and a large electrical service. All the stations I've seen are in existing parking lots so no site work to be done beyond running the electrical and a few concrete pads to mount the chargers. No stormwater design, no water service, no sewage service, just power, and an internet connection. If I was a mall I'd give them parking areas for free to very cheap. Probably right outside the food court.
The biggest savings of all will be telling the EPA to stick it. No 10k gallon tanks in the ground, no special vent system to capture evap emissions, no explosion-proof electrical. I bet the insurance savings is huge.
In reply to Mad_Ratel
Once you get your own you'll get comfortable. They really make easy for you. And cost you a lot less to own than a traditional ICE. 95+% of your charging will be at home.
Realize traveling with kids slows you down. So if it's all freeway driving figure 60 mph average. So about 4 hours in you'll want to stop. Bathroom and eat.
The dash has the charging points and local turns to get there.
Please realize the average American travels 31 miles a day. So it makes little sense to concern yourself about rare events.
Fast charge takes 15 minutes to get you another 150 miles. So if you stop for lunch with your family you'll leave with a full charge.
The basic Ford will get you 230 miles on a charge ( more if you go down, (regenerative) hill less uphill) the expensive Ford will go 300 miles To spend the extra $20,000 for 70 extra miles doesn't make sense. Unless you like fancy whistles and bells.
Regarding the Tesla Model Y. My wife wants one for those rear doors.
frenchyd said:In reply to Mad_Ratel
Once you get your own you'll get comfortable. They really make easy for you. And cost you a lot less to own than a traditional ICE. 95+% of your charging will be at home.
Realize traveling with kids slows you down. So if it's all freeway driving figure 60 mph average. So about 4 hours in you'll want to stop. Bathroom and eat.
The dash has the charging points and local turns to get there.
Please realize the average American travels 31 miles a day. So it makes little sense to concern yourself about rare events.
Fast charge takes 15 minutes to get you another 150 miles. So if you stop for lunch with your family you'll leave with a full charge.
The basic Ford will get you 230 miles on a charge ( more if you go down, (regenerative) hill less uphill) the expensive Ford will go 300 miles To spend the extra $20,000 for 70 extra miles doesn't make sense. Unless you like fancy whistles and bells.
Regarding the Tesla Model Y. My wife wants one for those rear doors.
We are anything but the average American user.
My wife has a 30 mile each way commute. (Focus ST). I've been looking at electric for her as a possible replacement next time, though she keeps on insisting that when our eldest learns to drive it's perfect for him so she's not getting a replacement until then.
She has zero interest in something w/o sliding doors to replace her car. We looked at the Mach-E but she hates huge vehicles too. (she's 5'4" and loves manual).
Myself:
I drive maybe 10 miles a week on average in the winter (groceries or the odd fetch a kid). once a month i drive 12 miles to the airport and 12 miles back when flying for work.
During the summer I drive 30 miles to pick up a 6,000 lb 25' boat and tow it home for the weekend. with several trips to the lake. then drag it back to storage.
mix in 6 to 9 autocross events a year where I drive the boss.
otherwise nearly all my yearly mileage comes from one or two long trips with the family a year. (5 plus hours) we use the truck due to ease of carrying all the E36 M3 you need with kids.
My thoughts were merely a meandering of seeing a cross over where people might actually be forced to enjoy the drive again vs cannonball. Pre-kids we would only stop for gas and drive 1,000 miles in a day. Get there as fast as possible and get it over with. I never drive 60 mph and often am the guy waiting at 80 mph for someone to get out of my damn way in the fast lane. Our usual trip of 5 hours is done with a cooler in the truck to minimize stoppage and the older kids know to go before we leave. This longer trip merely made me pause to evaluate stopping more often so we can overall go further before the kids need to be free'd. (I'm not a tyrant).
Mad_Ratel said:frenchyd said:In reply to Mad_Ratel
Once you get your own you'll get comfortable. They really make easy for you. And cost you a lot less to own than a traditional ICE. 95+% of your charging will be at home.
Realize traveling with kids slows you down. So if it's all freeway driving figure 60 mph average. So about 4 hours in you'll want to stop. Bathroom and eat.
The dash has the charging points and local turns to get there.
Please realize the average American travels 31 miles a day. So it makes little sense to concern yourself about rare events.
Fast charge takes 15 minutes to get you another 150 miles. So if you stop for lunch with your family you'll leave with a full charge.
The basic Ford will get you 230 miles on a charge ( more if you go down, (regenerative) hill less uphill) the expensive Ford will go 300 miles To spend the extra $20,000 for 70 extra miles doesn't make sense. Unless you like fancy whistles and bells.
Regarding the Tesla Model Y. My wife wants one for those rear doors.We are anything but the average American user.
My wife has a 30 mile each way commute. (Focus ST). I've been looking at electric for her as a possible replacement next time, though she keeps on insisting that when our eldest learns to drive it's perfect for him so she's not getting a replacement until then.
She has zero interest in something w/o sliding doors to replace her car. We looked at the Mach-E but she hates huge vehicles too. (she's 5'4" and loves manual).
Myself:
I drive maybe 10 miles a week on average in the winter (groceries or the odd fetch a kid). once a month i drive 12 miles to the airport and 12 miles back when flying for work.
During the summer I drive 30 miles to pick up a 6,000 lb 25' boat and tow it home for the weekend. with several trips to the lake. then drag it back to storage.
mix in 6 to 9 autocross events a year where I drive the boss.
otherwise nearly all my yearly mileage comes from one or two long trips with the family a year. (5 plus hours) we use the truck due to ease of carrying all the E36 M3 you need with kids.
My thoughts were merely a meandering of seeing a cross over where people might actually be forced to enjoy the drive again vs cannonball. Pre-kids we would only stop for gas and drive 1,000 miles in a day. Get there as fast as possible and get it over with. I never drive 60 mph and often am the guy waiting at 80 mph for someone to get out of my damn way in the fast lane. Our usual trip of 5 hours is done with a cooler in the truck to minimize stoppage and the older kids know to go before we leave. This longer trip merely made me pause to evaluate stopping more often so we can overall go further before the kids need to be free'd. (I'm not a tyrant).
That's pretty average, other than the fishing and the autocrossing and the sliding doors! I don't think there has ever been a sliding door vehicle smaller than a Mach E since 1990 though.
In reply to tuna55 :
We were on our way to buy a Pacifica several years ago based on your's and I changed my mind on the way. She was laid off a week later. We still think its one of the crazyest things to happen to us.
She views a minivan as "small". She cant stand the sight lines on trucks or SUV's. We have yet to drive a Mach-E because i refuse to spend that kind of money on a vehicle. (because cheapass).
In reply to Mad_Ratel :
The charging ports are not always in boring places. The Superchargers in St. George, UT are in a park that's a pretty pleasant place to hang out, for example. In Idaho Springs, CO there's a nice pedestrian mall with an ice cream store and a good deli and room to run around. Some of them are pretty boring for sure, but not all. The nice thing about a charging station is that it's basically a parking lot, so you can put it in a nice area without destroying the area.
The required breaks from charging stops are really restful, honestly. They're not long, but they let you refocus your eyes and move your body for a few minutes every couple of hours.
Mad_Ratel said:In reply to tuna55 :
We were on our way to buy a Pacifica several years ago based on your's and I changed my mind on the way. She was laid off a week later. We still think its one of the crazyest things to happen to us.
She views a minivan as "small". She cant stand the sight lines on trucks or SUV's. We have yet to drive a Mach-E because i refuse to spend that kind of money on a vehicle. (because cheapass).
You said the Mach-E was too big? The Pacifica is far bigger in every dimension. Mach-E is 186x74x64 and Pacifica is 204x80x70. I think you're right about it being tioo expensive, and honestly not that great, but I don't understand the size thing.
We drive the hybrid Pacifica. It's nice but it's enormous.
Keith Tanner said:It's a sad time. Someone at Tesla noticed we were still getting free Supercharging (it was supposed to end in October 2019) and turned off the tap. So I got to pay for electricity on a road trip for the first time. We basically got a bonus trip to Vegas and a bonus trip to Denver out of it, that's about 1500 miles. We didn't get to take full advantage of the free Supercharging because we didn't go on a lot of trips in 2020-21 for obvious reasons.
Turns out Superchargers are between 39c and 43c per kWh in Colorado. I don't know why there was a variance, but at 43c we're paying the same as a 30 mpg car burning 87 octane - ie, my CRX. I got spoiled being able to drive for free, but since I pay so little for power the rest of the time it's hard to complain.
The car was unsettled on rutted interstates, I need to check the toe. Based on tire wear, it's not quite right in the front. The Denver pavement also made it pretty clear the existing tires are getting pretty worn, tire noise was noticeable. That's a feature of Denver highways, they're just noisy. Not sure why, something about the aggregate in the mix.
I learned a new trick the other day. You can share destinations from Google Maps to the car - you just hit "share" on the Maps app and select the Tesla app. Then, when you get in the car it's ready to go where you want to go. That's pretty handy when you're making plans in the hotel room, there's no need to enter the destination into the car's nav system. Since the nav system also calculates energy use and charging stops (it'll tell you how much power will be left when you get where you're going as well as how much power will remain if you make it a round trip) it's much better to use it than one on your phone.
Otherwise, it was a normal road trip. We went to a concert at Red Rocks during a pretty cold evening - 37F as the low - and the ability to pre-warm the car as the band played their finale sure was appreciated.
Sharing routes from Google is pretty cool, but what might be even easier, if you use a calendar app religiously, is to enable calendar sync on the Tesla app. If you do that, when you get into the car, it will automatically route to your next destination per your calendar app.
I drive by quite a few superchargers daily but I never really paid attention, is there a screen or something that tells you the kwh cost? Or is this something you will see on the car once its plugged in?
Curious what the cost is in Florida.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to Mad_Ratel :
The charging ports are not always in boring places. The Superchargers in St. George, UT are in a park that's a pretty pleasant place to hang out, for example. In Idaho Springs, CO there's a nice pedestrian mall with an ice cream store and a good deli and room to run around. Some of them are pretty boring for sure, but not all. The nice thing about a charging station is that it's basically a parking lot, so you can put it in a nice area without destroying the area.
The required breaks from charging stops are really restful, honestly. They're not long, but they let you refocus your eyes and move your body for a few minutes every couple of hours.
Agreed. Several years ago I started watching what i eat and drinking substantially more water. This forces me to stop every 2 to 3 hours to pee. (and buy another 1 liter bottle of water). i find i can drive further, longer doing this than i did when i was trying to minimize all intake and just keep going straight.
I'm a very capitalist minded person, but having the government mandate charging stations at National Parks seems like it would go a huge way to improving access for all and use of more "eco" friendly choices.
tuna55 said:Mad_Ratel said:In reply to tuna55 :
We were on our way to buy a Pacifica several years ago based on your's and I changed my mind on the way. She was laid off a week later. We still think its one of the crazyest things to happen to us.
She views a minivan as "small". She cant stand the sight lines on trucks or SUV's. We have yet to drive a Mach-E because i refuse to spend that kind of money on a vehicle. (because cheapass).
You said the Mach-E was too big? The Pacifica is far bigger in every dimension. Mach-E is 186x74x64 and Pacifica is 204x80x70. I think you're right about it being tioo expensive, and honestly not that great, but I don't understand the size thing.
It's a perception and sitelines thing for her. In a pacifica or the focus, her perception is that the front end is a "similar" size. The "aero" shape of a modern minivan means that the hood feels small and allows her to easily place the car. Vs my F150, which she struggles to drive because of horrible sitelines. She is always terrified she hits something with it.
In reply to Slippery :
There is no screen on a Supercharger. I'm not sure how you'd find out what the costs are ahead of time.
Mad_Ratel said:Keith Tanner said:In reply to Mad_Ratel :
The charging ports are not always in boring places. The Superchargers in St. George, UT are in a park that's a pretty pleasant place to hang out, for example. In Idaho Springs, CO there's a nice pedestrian mall with an ice cream store and a good deli and room to run around. Some of them are pretty boring for sure, but not all. The nice thing about a charging station is that it's basically a parking lot, so you can put it in a nice area without destroying the area.
The required breaks from charging stops are really restful, honestly. They're not long, but they let you refocus your eyes and move your body for a few minutes every couple of hours.
Agreed. Several years ago I started watching what i eat and drinking substantially more water. This forces me to stop every 2 to 3 hours to pee. (and buy another 1 liter bottle of water). i find i can drive further, longer doing this than i did when i was trying to minimize all intake and just keep going straight.
I'm a very capitalist minded person, but having the government mandate charging stations at National Parks seems like it would go a huge way to improving access for all and use of more "eco" friendly choices.
Level 2 chargers make perfect sense for National Parks. In fact, they basically already exist in campgrounds with RV hookups. High speed chargers are a little less obvious for the parks, but a mid-speed (50 kw) would work well for places where you'll be out of the car for about an hour. At the really fast chargers, it's usually the car that's done and gets you to hustle back.
One other note from the last trip - we were joined by a couple in Denver who had driven their Volvo EV from SF to Denver via SLC and Idaho. We were both heading back the same way, but there was no point in traveling together because we couldn't use the same charging stations. That made us both laugh. Although it turns out the Edwards CO Superchargers also have EA.
If I uograded the modem in our car and bought a CCS adapter, we could have charged at the same spots. Now that we have to pay regardless of where we stop, I might look into doing that.
When I was towing in convoy with my old boss, we used to stop at different spots because of his gas truck and my diesel, so this really isn't new. In those days, we'd travel separately and meet at the destination hotel.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to Slippery :
There is no screen on a Supercharger. I'm not sure how you'd find out what the costs are ahead of time.
So I pulled over at a cluster of chargers today, there were three Model3s charging with people inside, a couple of Model Ss and an X all abandoned. Of the three Model 3 only one guy wanted to talk ... the other did not want to be bothered.
The one guy I spoke to had a Model 3 LR with 329 miles on the odometer, he had rented it. He went from 14% to 89% and it cost $13.89. He mentioned that the kwh rate varies depending on how fast you are charging. He was smoking a joint and told me that it took about 20' to charge from 14 -> 89 % ... same amount of time it takes him to smoke it lol.
I did some math, not sure its correct.
89% - 14% = 75%, Model 3 LR has an 80 kW battery so he added 60 kw (75*80/100)
$13.89/60 kW = $.232 kWh
Not bad, but cheaper at home since it is anywhere from $.03-.08 kWh.
My last fill up in the e46 M3 was $75.04 and that yielded 296 miles ...
The way charging is billed varies by state because of different utility regulations. For some, it's time based. For some, it's power based. In CO, it's priced per kWh directly.
Here's a little bit of information on the time-based costs: https://www.tesla.com/support/supercharger#payment. Looks like I might be able to look up the cost of an individual Supercharger via the car's nav system. You can't get it via the website that I've found, but you can see all of them: Find a supercharger. That link also shows Tesla destination chargers, which are usually free but are a Level 2(ish) charging speed so they're for when you're stopped for something else. Staying in a hotel with a destination charger (Tesla or otherwise) is fun because it's like someone comes by to fill your gas tank for you at night and you don't have to make a gas stop before you hit the road.
A Model 3 will do, very roughly, between 3 to 4 miles per kWh. I use the former for my calculations even though our lifetime is quite a bit closer to the latter. So 60 kW is approximately good for 180 miles.
Your pot-smoking friend would have been better to unplug at 80%, the charging rate drops off pretty quickly above that. Of that 20 minute stop, he probably spent a third of it getting that last 9%. But then he wouldn't have been able to get quite so relaxed, man.
Our least expensive charging stop this week was also the only one where we got over 180 kW, I think I saw 220-something briefly. A Model 3 can only do that when it's fairly close to empty, the new S can hold that speed much longer. Charging rates are like horsepower, everyone only pays attention to the peak number but it's area under the curve that really matters.
It was interesting how we found out we no longer got free Supercharging. On our first stop this trip, I plugged in and walked away (lunchtime!). The car proceeded to charge but I eventually got an alert that Supercharging was suspended until I entered a payment method. I was able to easily approve the card that Tesla has on file (for the premium data subscription or for ordering parts) but it was interesting that Tesla didn't automatically help itself to that payment method. The car didn't stop Supercharging, it just wouldn't have allowed me to do it again. It appears that Tesla errs on the side of "let the car charge and we'll figure the rest of it out later".
I know that's true in the case of a communications error - if the Supercharger can't make contact with home base to confirm access, it'll just turn on. Most of the other networks do not. There was a recent survey of CCS charging stations in the SF Bay area that showed that around 25% of them were not working, and the most common problem by far was payment authorization failures.
More about charging costs - I just discovered I can download a spreadsheet of every charging stop I've made for a given month, going back to when we took delivery. And it lists the "UnitCostBase" even if I didn't have to pay. Looks like the CO numbers have increased quite a bit, the Edwards charger was $0.35 (before taxes) in November 2021 and it's $0.39 now. Glenwood Springs was $0.24 in October 2019 and it's up to $0.40 now. That wasn't a step change, it's been gradually creeping up.
Generalized update.
I'm going to have to put new tires on this before winter. I can definitely hear increased tire noise from the back and we're clearly running low on tread depth. It doesn't help that the county has chip sealed all the local roads so everything roars now. I'll get it aligned first, I should have done that when I got it. Given the tire wear, we may see some changes in steering feel. That'll be interesting.
New Model 3s have seen gradual iterative updates. Range is up, it's got a heat pump, the CCS-compatible modem, a new infotainment processor that's hungry enough to actually affect range (!), better headlights, dual-pane side glass, some tweaks to the interior, etc. Fundamentally it hasn't changed although I expect a step change when they start using the gigapress to basically make these things like Hot Wheels. So there's no temptation to trade in, even if pricing for cars hadn't gone nuts. I could always retrofit the modem and the side glass if wanted.
Right now, though, we're very happy to be driving an EV. We put a very large solar array on the shop about six months ago, and the math is looking very good. Because our payment for the array is fixed, we are isolated from swings in energy costs - and that includes the fuel for our car. The payment for the array is less than our electricity cost used to be. I feel like I'm getting away with something.
I'm starting to think I'd love to take a crack at some alternative suspension tuning, but I don't really trust the aftermarket options out there. Bad Keith, stop thinking about that.
On a more fun note, the reflective rings on the wheels are holding up nicely even through automated car washes. They're a perfect color match to the wheels so you don't see them unless they catch the light. But man, when they catch headlights at night they flare right up. I don't know why it gives me such childish satisfaction, but I love it.
There's something incredibly satisfying about using your own solar array to charge your EV. I like that a lot.
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