Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

Lots of snow and slippery streets again today. The tires are quite good in the snow, I'm happy about that. And I gave the car some acceleration so it could learn the available traction :) Handled things well. EV traction control is almost spooky, ABS feels the same as any other modern car. The drop in regen felt well judged, it was getting close to the traction limits but not exceeding them. I was still able to one-pedal drive now that I knew to expect the regen to scale with the conditions.

The XJ in open diff 4WD and no electronic assistance was less sure-footed. Definitely not as good at braking, but more fun to spin all four wheels and play with yaw angles. 

You know that squeal you get when you get a small stone stuck between a rotor and the dust shield? It sounds catastrophic on an EV.

It was probably only a mile and I had a pretty good idea what it was, but wow. 

    What have you heard about Tesla's new cheap model?  One write up had the price at $25,000 which if true and conforming to the tax rebate requirements. Would net out at $17,500 . Plus tax license and shipping charges. 
     Even if it's a bit higher I'd like to get my order in as soon as possible.  So any information would be greatly appreciated. 

I don't have any insider info on the Model 2. I know there's a refreshed Model 3 underway - although the cars have evolved a fair bit under that unchanging skin. Some of the production optimizations have been really interesting.

I'll believe the cheap Tesla when I can order one. That's true of any upcoming eagerly awaited model, I don't believe anything I read in the press about future models because 90% of it is made up. 

Keith , do you know how to store a Tesla battery ?

And how do you check for voltage and recharge when the battery is out of the car ?

My friend has a Tesla battery sitting on a pallet  and does not know how  to check it , 

Thanks for the info

In reply to frenchyd :

You'll be able to get your order in, if and when they announce it widely, as they did with the model 3. 

If they do it like they did the Model 3, they'll announce an aspirational price, say $25k without subsidies, and a planned production date. You'll put in a $1000 refundable deposit and wait, with no real communication. For years. Then when the cars start being delivered it will only be the versions with AWD, long range, and all the doodads that sticker for $15k more than your preferred model. And then, when they actually start making the RWD model with no add-ons years later, they'll sell them for $30k instead. 

As someone who reserved a model 3 on announcement, I might be a bit salty. I'm sure it's a great car but it wasn't available at the price I was told it would be, so after two years of waiting I cancelled the reservation and moved on. 

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Sorry, no. I store mine in my car :) Maybe check with one of the conversion shops. 

Putting a deposit on a future Tesla model does seem like a bad idea. Getting the machine up and running takes a while. I've got a friend with a deposit on a Roadster, I doubt he'll ever see a car because there's always a higher priority development project and it's not as much of a passion project as the truck. 

I don't think Tesla took deposits for the Y, and that seemed to be their smoothest launch. Coincidence? Or was it just that there was less anticipation for it?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

According to the internet, the factory in Mexico isn't even built and the fastest  Tesla ever made a Giga factory  is 9 months in China. The Texas and German factory's took longer. 
      Expected is a 36 KWH battery and a sketch of the proposed car.   

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

In reply to Erich :

I wonder whether there will be a shift in popular thinking when there's a critical mass of people who've experienced never using most of their 300 mile range and see the value in a daily driver that can do a couple of days of errands and short commute on a charge with a much lower price tag.

We already experienced a Leaf, but if we'd had a more viable road trip car, it would have been dandy. For some people, always having plenty of range is worth it. Once "range anxiety" isn't the first phrase after "EV," we might see some other folks thinking differently. Maybe? Thinking out loud.

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I'm with you on that. Once people start to realize how EVs work day to day, the perceived need for long range will likely fall off somewhat. And people will start doing different math. If you're road tripping, 200 miles of range with a 150Kw+ recharge speed may be more useful than 300 miles of range with a 50 kW charge rate. And with only 2/3 the battery cost!

Since range is basically a question of battery size, and the battery is such a big chunk of the cost of the car, the $/range equation is a fairly straightforward one and I'm interested to see if the market starts to respond to it. There will be games played by manufacturers where you can only get the big battery if you get the XLT+ Luxe Limited (or vice versa) that will skew things, but if someone offers the exact same car with different battery sizes how will the market react?

Also, will the market start paying more attention to efficiency? Sure, a Hummer EV has lots of range because it has a huge battery. But it's comically inefficient, and even a fast charge time means long stops - even to the point where Level 2 charging might struggle with an overnight recharge. And that big battery is expensive, and the vehicle is crazy heavy. Low MPG hits users in the wallet, but low EV efficiency also hits them with time when charging on the road. People don't like that. 

IIRC the Model 3 used to be like that, there was the RWD Standard Range and the RWD Long Range. The latter seems to have disappeared and all Long Range cars are now AWD. I don't know what drove that change, if it was a lack of demand or something else. I'm also not sure if there are other EVs with a similar option on the market at the moment.

FYI, we haven't charged our car away from home since May 2022. We do have a trip coming up this weekend which will change that stat, but certainly we're not pushing the limits of range very often. However, the big range number also means we simply don't pay any attention to the battery SOC at all. There's always enough power.

Road trip! It's been a while since the Tesla hit the open road - our last couple of trips have involved other vehicles for various reasons. This won't be a blow by blow, but a couple of things were interesting.

First, we were in a serious winter storm going over. Bad enough that both the Eisenhower tunnel on I70 and the Leadville pass closed down, which effectively cuts Colorado in half. We ended up stranded in Keystone for the night. The car, however, handled it well. The traction/stability control is extremely good on this thing - it's got just a little lateral slip, enough to tell you that it's slippery under the tires, but not enough to get you in trouble. I am glad I learned about how the regen scales back in slippery conditions, and the one time I had to go for the friction brakes it was basically immediate ABS time. So, car was talking to me about the conditions but dealing with it. Unlike our Grand Cherokee, which deals pretty well but tells you absolutely nothing.

Like our last winter storm, we topped up the battery before going into the worst of it. I'd do that with a gas car too. That turned out unnecessary because the roads closed soon after so we basically just drove to a hotel. The next morning, we decided to grab breakfast in Idaho Springs and that meant we plugged in so we had a good buffer for generally running around Denver. On the way home on Sunday, we made a "charging only" (no food or other reasons to stop) stop which also included a bathroom break and a chance to watch some hockey playoffs. We actually stayed stopped for longer than necessary because of the hockey game :)

The car feels so much different with 100% charge because there's no regenerative braking. It makes it feel heavier, which is amusing to me. I know one of the advantages of the LFP battery chemisty is that you can run it to 100% all of the time, but I think I'd always want that extra unused capacity in day-to-day driving in order to allow for regen to work all the time.

For those who are wondering, here's what a charging stop looks like in the app. We had actually changed our minds about where we wanted to stop ("let's stop in Edwards because they have bathrooms there") so it was just a matter of adding the Edwards chargers to our trip. The car rejiggered everything else and decided the previously-scheduled stop in Glenwood Springs wouldn't be necessary. All very transparent, it just works. Interestingly, the change in charging stop didn't affect the charging time so it didn't matter where we stopped. We needed X kWh to get home and we left with Y, it didn't really matter when we added the difference.

Here's what the new energy screen looks like mid-trip. On the next leg, I was in the green (outperforming estimates) probably because it was sunnier so we weren't running the heater. we may have been sticking a little closer to the speed limit, too ;) It's pretty useful real-time feedback. Had we really sucked down the juice, the car would have rerouted us to an earlier charging stop.

Otherwise, just a car trip. Supercharging cost us $52 for a roughly 600 mile trip. Our hotel had a destination charger but due to our  breakfast stop (and resulting high state of charge) on Saturday morning, we didn't really take much advantage of it. We also got home with a bunch of unused range because of that hockey game, so that means we bought a little power we didn't really use.  CO gas is currently averaging $3.909/gal for mid-grade. So our trip cost us the same as driving a 46 mpg gas car with no real attempts at power management.

Cool aero on display in the freezing slush. I love the way slush lines visualize the pressure distribution and direction of airflow across a car. Naturally, the nose gets a lot of buildup but the upper 2/3 of the headlights are nice and clear. The tail, naturally, gets covered. The top of the rear fenders are nice and clean, though.

Interesting story.   Especially about supercharging costs.    I've had the impression I should avoid that like the plague (I'm really cheap). But the affordable costs convinced me otherwise. 
Thank you 

So, about the LFP batteries and regen.  A friend reminded me that Tesla has rolled out a "blended braking" option which uses the friction brakes when regen isn't available. It allows one-pedal driving on a full battery. I missed my chance to try it out, but it makes sense that Tesla has added this now that they're delivering LFP cars.

Now I'm tempted to turn it on and charge to 100%, just to see.

frenchyd said:

Erich said:

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

For us older people that's not a problem.      Also the average American drives 12,000 miles a year that's a bit over 32 miles a day.  So 130 is plenty of range.  Plus a smaller battery like that would take very little time to recharge.  
     For single women?  For a  work from home parent?   Most families have multiple cars.   So one with long range or ICE. &  One cheap almost free to run EV?

     How many long trips do most people go on anyway?  

I agree.   I'd drive a $15K, 120 mile range EV to work every day.  No frills and lighter weight.  Kind of like a slightly more refined first gen Leaf.   I have numerous other nice ICE cars for all other duties.

onemanarmy said:

frenchyd said:

Erich said:

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

For us older people that's not a problem.      Also the average American drives 12,000 miles a year that's a bit over 32 miles a day.  So 130 is plenty of range.  Plus a smaller battery like that would take very little time to recharge.  
     For single women?  For a  work from home parent?   Most families have multiple cars.   So one with long range or ICE. &  One cheap almost free to run EV?

     How many long trips do most people go on anyway?  

I agree.   I'd drive a $15K, 120 mile range EV to work every day.  No frills and lighter weight.  Kind of like a slightly more refined first gen Leaf.   I have numerous other nice ICE cars for all other duties.

More refined? The 1st Gen Leaf was a fully functioning, comfortable, nice driving, spacious hatchback. I drove one for two years. I don't get what you're after there.

onemanarmy said:

frenchyd said:

Erich said:

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

For us older people that's not a problem.      Also the average American drives 12,000 miles a year that's a bit over 32 miles a day.  So 130 is plenty of range.  Plus a smaller battery like that would take very little time to recharge.  
     For single women?  For a  work from home parent?   Most families have multiple cars.   So one with long range or ICE. &  One cheap almost free to run EV?

     How many long trips do most people go on anyway?  

I agree.   I'd drive a $15K, 120 mile range EV to work every day.  No frills and lighter weight.  Kind of like a slightly more refined first gen Leaf.   I have numerous other nice ICE cars for all other duties.

You can buy a used BMW i3 that meets those criteria. We loved ours. Super cool interior, roomy and it was a hoot to drive. We only sold it because of a poor decision to scratch a Jeep Wrangler itch. :(

dyintorace said:

onemanarmy said:

frenchyd said:

Erich said:

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

For us older people that's not a problem.      Also the average American drives 12,000 miles a year that's a bit over 32 miles a day.  So 130 is plenty of range.  Plus a smaller battery like that would take very little time to recharge.  
     For single women?  For a  work from home parent?   Most families have multiple cars.   So one with long range or ICE. &  One cheap almost free to run EV?

     How many long trips do most people go on anyway?  

I agree.   I'd drive a $15K, 120 mile range EV to work every day.  No frills and lighter weight.  Kind of like a slightly more refined first gen Leaf.   I have numerous other nice ICE cars for all other duties.

You can buy a used BMW i3 that meets those criteria. We loved ours. Super cool interior, roomy and it was a hoot to drive. We only sold it because of a poor decision to scratch a Jeep Wrangler itch. :(

Good call, what a neat car.

frenchyd said:

Erich said:

In reply to frenchyd :

36 kwh would be a surprising departure for Tesla. I wouldn't expect a range of more than 130 miles with that battery.

For us older people that's not a problem.      Also the average American drives 12,000 miles a year that's a bit over 32 miles a day.  So 130 is plenty of range.  Plus a smaller battery like that would take very little time to recharge.  
     For single women?  For a  work from home parent?   Most families have multiple cars.   So one with long range or ICE. &  One cheap almost free to run EV?

     How many long trips do most people go on anyway?  

I may be underestimating the range. I forgot about Tesla's new motor.  
  The design should dramatically be more efficient than the typical electric motors in use.  
       I'll go out on a branch here and guess it might have a 200-250 mile range on that compact 36 kWh  battery. 
     So every 3 hours a 10 minute supercharge would be called for. 
    My wife and I need a bathroom break about every 2 hours or so anyway.  So the car should even be useful for long trip traveling. 

In reply to tuna55 :

I was very disappointed to hear GM has stopped production of their best selling Bolt.   
     I wonder if that's to make way for the Honda & GM partnership of EV's ? 

What's the preferred summer tire for the model 3, Kieth?

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I really don't know. As I mentioned when shopping for my all-seasons, big sedans are not my area of expertise :)

In reply to dyintorace :

Thank you for that. I was currently debating selling my i3 to buy a Wrangler, but that helps with the decision. 

frenchyd said:

        I'll go out on a branch here and guess it might have a 200-250 mile range on that compact 36 kWh  battery. 

200 miles on a 36 kwh battery would be 5.5 miles per kwh, which, lol no.