Finally got it...

[Krom]

After almost 7 months since placing the order, picked it up today.

[Alter-Fox]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice

Here before somebody tries to make this political...
I think they'll probably fail -- it's kinda too obvious -- but you never know.

[Krom]

Second day of ownership, I had to move my Altima forward to open up a parking space for my dad when he gets back tomorrow (I may not be back before him). Only took me a second to figure out why it wasn't shifting in to gear: because I forgot to start it. At least I remembered to turn it off once I was done moving it. Tesla makes you forget how to drive normal cars really fast.

[Alter-Fox]

Oh, you mean it's an automatic?
Those are no fun XD

[TigerRaptor]

You should look up Easter eggs for your Tesla. Unless you did already.

[Krom]

They aren't even really Easter eggs anymore, since you can just pull them all up from the main screen in the toybox menu.

[TigerRaptor]

Well that takes the fun out of it. Are there any surprises left?

[Krom]

Its got plenty of surprise when you stomp the accelerator.

[TigerRaptor]

Do you need any Tide coupons?

[Isaac]

The speed is cool, but the autopilot feature is something I really want. I live in Texas, so we got a lot of long straight roads that are 30mph. Why 30mph? #CopsWalletsMatter. So I have regular cruise control, which keeps me locked into the speed limit. But the dream is doing these back roads totally on autopilot.

Anyway, I'm jelly of you

[Tunnelcat]

Really nice car Krom. Love the color. Did you splurge for the 220V charger? Out of curiosity, does it make any kind of warning sounds when backing up? I've heard some pretty weird solutions from newer electric cars recently since it's now a safety mandate. I was standing next to some guy's Fiat in the garden store and I didn't know it was electric. It started to back up and I was almost ready to walk behind it. All I heard were the rocks crunching under his tires in the parking lot, which was my only indication the car was moving, hence the need for some kind of back up safety warning with electrics.

I just got a 2020 Mazda Miata MX-5 RF. I haven't had so much fun driving a car until this one and I literally feel like my butt is scraping the pavement in this car it sits so low. It's almost like a little jet fighter. It's pretty peppy and I can out accelerate most people on the road, except for a Tesla or a Muscle Car I'm guessing. First time owning a little sports car too. I think however, that the next time I purchase a car, it will be an electric. Way less maintenance and much quieter. My neighbor's been through 3 Teslas over the years. He loves them.

[Krom]

Yes it has a pedestrian warning speaker, it plays "spaceship" sounds (there are some examples on youtube of the sound it makes). Having a car move without making any sound is still a somewhat bizarre thing to see, and the speaker doesn't play any noise when the car is in drive, only reverse so you can still sneak up on people sometimes.

I did splurge for a high power wall connector, although I had to replace the breaker for it before I could seriously use it. First breaker was defective or worn out and kept tripping. Definitely a splurge over just installing a RV or other 240 outlet and using the mobile charger which still delivers respectable rates. While the HPWC was out I charged it off the 20A 120v outlets in the garage and it took 18 hours to go from 38% to my 75% target. Once I replaced the breaker the HPWC could do it in under 5 hours (2KW vs 11 KW).

I think I have seen Miatas like that before, good looking car.

[Tunnelcat]

I've got a 50 amp dedicated 220v plug in my garage. We wired it for an arc welder since there was space in the panel, but it could just as easily have a charger plugged into it, probably in the future. I'd like to see a small electric Tesla sports car someday in an affordable price range. Tesla has made some really nice well styled sports cars, but wow are they crazy expensive. You going to have a ceramic detail job or PPF put on?

My Maita MX-5 looks like this one, a hard top model and an automatic. I'm getting too old to shift these days and besides, it has steering wheel paddle shifters. The seats are black, not red and the steering wheel is on the left of course. I need to raise the back of the seat about an inch, which a lot of people have done. I'm a little short and the seat is a little too low.

[Krom]

Yeah, with that plug you wouldn't even need a separate charger, the car comes with a universal mobile charger and you can get an adapter to plug in to almost any outlet for it. I shamelessly bought the NEMA adapter bundle with 8 different plugs for the mobile charger so I can charge off of almost any plug you would find in North America. The 50A outlet you would commonly find for welders is the 6-50, the other common 50A outlet is 14-50 which is most often used for powering RVs and you will find them at campgrounds a lot. Both will charge a Tesla model 3 at a rate of +30 miles of range per hour, so they can easily fully recharge overnight on one of them. Both those outlets could actually go even faster, but the UMC is limited to 32A continuous output. The HWPC I have is rated for up to 48A continuous (on a 60A breaker with appropriate wire) and can charge at up to +44 miles per hour. But with the UMC any 240 outlet is preferable to 120 because it is more efficient since there are more conversion losses when stepping up from 120.

I don't think I'm going to bother with PPF, too expensive and too high maintenance, the cost of a good PPF is more than the cost of getting the entire car repainted before you resell it and it only lasts a few years before it has to be redone. I could see myself spending a long weekend super cleaning up the car and then applying a ceramic coat every year or two since there are DIY kits for like $60, but I'm honestly not that interested in it. The paint is gonna get scratched and chipped, its inevitable because it my daily driver so it won't be perfect forever.

Yeah Teslas are expensive, but they are gradually getting better. This year all trim levels of the model 3 dropped by $2000, the main expensive part is the battery and practically every industry out there with anything to do with vehicles or electronics is investing huge amounts of capitol into lowering battery costs so they will continue to become more affordable.

The seats in this model 3 are very comfortable, I was a little worried at first because they are lower to the floor than I'm used to (because the whole floor is the battery and is thicker than a normal car), but I settled right in after a couple adjustments. I don't need shifting paddles or any of that, because my car only has one gear (the hella fast gear). This thing pulls away violently when you want it to (it does 0-60 in less than half the time of your Maita).

[Tunnelcat]

My 50A receptacle is an Oven or Range type. I wanted one plug type for all my tools, so I changed the plug ends on my compressor, heater and arc welder to match. I'd have to change the plug end on any car charger if I got one too, or hard wire it.

I have absolutely no doubt your Tesla would leave my Miata eating your dust. You'd be long gone by the time I even got through second gear. Electric motors have way more available torque through the entire power band, even from a standing start, so it's no contest. No clutch, no converter, just go. The only caveat is that you can rev a gasoline engine and gain an extra jolt from the start by dropping the clutch, but gasoline will still lose in the end. It must be nice to not have to worry about shifting too. I've heard some comments from mostly guys who like the sound, power and feel of an internal combustion engine and that an electric motor just can't replace their butt dynos in any vehicle, especially trucks. I think even woodchip made a comment along those lines years ago. He said he'd miss the sound and vibration and hate the quiet. Some things will need getting used to I guess.

Near stock Tesla verses IC muscle cars.

[Krom]

Yeah, the torque response is way different than anything you will ever experience in a combustion vehicle. Sure, you can dump the clutch in first gear and get an incredible launch out of a combustion car, but in a electric you can get the same sensation even when you are already rolling at 30 MPH. A couple weeks ago I was on an on-ramp to a highway and saw there was a truck coming up along side and I needed to accelerate harder to safely reach the gap in front of it. So I floored my Altima and it took it quite a while to wind up and start seriously accelerating, the Tesla would have just been there already. It is the most ridiculously muscle car I've ever driven and it does it while being almost disturbingly quiet. My boss who has a Corvette for his weekend car was suggesting a little race at first, but I think he looked up some videos because later he said "you know what, I think I don't want to race it after all".

[Top Gun]

They are pretty amazing pieces of technology. I made my first actual purchase of a Golf GTI last year, and in the back of my mind I wondered if it might be the only new internal-combustion car I'll ever buy depending on how the tech progresses.

[Tunnelcat]

They are pretty amazing pieces of technology. I made my first actual purchase of a Golf GTI last year, and in the back of my mind I wondered if it might be the only new internal-combustion car I'll ever buy depending on how the tech progresses.

Might be my last IC car too. Electrics just have way too much going for them. If they get the range and price comparable to a gas engine car, they'll eventually take over the market. A longer usable battery life is also needed since that component does wear out over time and is the most expensive part of the car, although Tesla is doing a good job in that department. My neighbor's Toyota hybrid car battery failed, the only component that wore out, and he was only offered $80 for the car when he tried to trade it in. He said "no" and eventually found someone to buy it from him for $600. He then bought a regular gas car, not a hybrid.

Krom, I always wanted to ask a Tesla owner these 2 questions. What was the process you went through to order and purchase the car (no dealership I assume) and if you ever need repairs or warranty service, where do you take the car? I see these cars all over, but no Tesla branded repair places. It's still a highly technical piece of machinery and stuff does break or wear out.

[Krom]

I ordered it online at Tesla's website. Even if you go to a show room, they just have you create an account and log in on a computer/tablet there and order it that way. Had Tesla arrange financing, they got me a decent rate from U.S. Bank and when it was finally ready for delivery day, I got a ride down, signed a couple of papers, they handed me the keys and then synced my phone app with the car. Then I just drove it home (well, about half of the way anyway, car drove itself for the other half and I only had to supervise it).

There are service centers where they do the heavy lifting, but for most things they can just send a "mobile service" van out to handle it. I've heard of people getting their computers upgraded/replaced by mobile service even, so they can dig pretty deeply into the car if necessary. The mobile service will come to your house or even your workplace and service the car while you aren't using it. Most issues with the car can be diagnosed remotely, some of them can even be reset/fixed remotely because the car has a built in cellular modem (note: don't buy a Tesla if you are paranoid because they are gathering a ton of telemetry).

I did test drive a standard range+ back in December and I was convinced, but I didn't actually place my order until January 29th. The reason why is because I was holding out for a particular configuration (Performance with 18" wheels, aka "stealth performance"). On January 29th till about the end of April that was a configuration you could just order online, where as most of the time the factory just makes a few small batches of them and you have to have a sales agent watching for them to match you to one. Most Performance model 3s come with a "performance upgrade" which includes a rear spoiler, an increase of top speed to 160 MPH vs 140 MPH, sport aluminum pedals, lowered suspension, and 20" wheels. The problem being the 20" wheels are notorious for breaking on potholes because the final diameter of the tires is the same but the wheel is 2 inches larger, so the tires are "rubber band" tires that are REALLY thin and don't provide as much protection from the road. Also the 20" wheels are heavier which makes the car slower to accelerate and reduces the range by almost 10%, they only come with summer tires on them which cannot have any weight on them below 40 degrees (which means you can't use them for about 8 months out of the year here). And the tires are considerably more expensive with few alternatives because of the thin size.

Originally my order was scheduled for delivery around the end of March, then covid happened, the factory got shut down for a month and a half, and it got delayed till "closer to summer". Eventually a date came up on my account: June 27th, and it was looking like that was going to happen, but then about a week before that day we discovered the factory had made an error on the paint codes and had matched me to a black one instead of the blue I ordered. Which of course threw the whole process off the rails, my sales agent and their supervisor had to call all the way up to the senor manager of operations for the company to find and lock in the one I eventually ended up with and get it shipped from Los Angeles all the way to Chicago. If I ever order another Tesla, I'll just get a normal on the menu one and buy aftermarket wheels the size I want for it to avoid that kind of disaster. Even with all that I was lucky, the quality of the experience depends greatly on the quality of the sales agent and I had a good one who really went the extra mile in a tough situation.

[Tunnelcat]

Holy Crap! You hit the Murphy's Law of disasters. Covid really threw a monkey wrench into everything I guess. I'm glad it worked out for you on something so important. Telsa sounds like it's a good company and I like their repair and service model. I'd almost rather get my teeth pulled than buy a car through a dealer anymore and I had to drive 40 miles north to get to the nearest Mazda dealer. I just hate haggling with car salesmen and finance people too. Ugh! If it hadn't been for Covid, you would've had a better experience than I did.

[Krom]

Driving this thing is like riding in the future, the other day I did some rough math on how much it costs to drive the Tesla vs how much it cost to drive my old Altima. Now keep in mind; nobody buys a Tesla Model 3 Performance expecting "this is going to save me money in the long run", because it absolutely wont. The energy efficiency savings will never make up for that initial price tag. The only thing the Tesla will put you ahead on is lifetime carbon emissions, which won't even necessarily take that long to do vs buying an ICE car.

So the Altima at its best got about 42 MPG, divide that by $2.19/gallon for fuel and it comes out to 19.1 miles per dollar. The Tesla is averaging 250 Wh/Mile (4 miles per kWh), divide that by the flat rate of $0.11/kWh for electricity here and it comes out to 36.3 miles per dollar.

Now my actual MPG average in summer for the Altima on my very short commute was a rather bad 20-22 MPG, and in winter it got down to 10-11 MPG if it was especially cold and I had to idle it a LONG time to get it defrosted. So in reality the Altima was as low as 10 or even 5 miles per dollar from how I actually used it (and gas was more expensive then too). The Tesla will also use probably close to double its summertime energy during winter because of heating costs, but it will still be roughly the same difference proportionally to the Altima. Everyone should look forward to the day there are good affordable EVs, once you can get one for a similar price as an ICE vehicle it will definitely save you money over time to do so. And it is just super nice to have you cars fuel "full" every morning when you go to get in it.

[Alter-Fox]

Yes, I think more cities/states/provinces need to start seriously planning the infrastructure for these things. Charging stations on roads and highways and whatnot... once people can see for themselves that the supports are in place, I think far fewer of them will be afraid of the change, and adoption of the technology should seriously increase.

[CDN_Merlin]

Until you can go at least 1000KM per charge and charge it to almost full in an hour, I won't be buying this. A hybrid is a diff story though but even then they need to be better

[Krom]

Well, the model 3 can supercharge to 80% in like 30 minutes on a V3 supercharger (250 KW). But as far as range goes we're still only about half way there. But not even that many gas vehicles will go that far on a tank (although my Altima did indeed have a 1000KM highway range without too much hypermiling fuss). I mean someone already did drive a Model 3 that far on a single charge, but they only pulled it off because it took over 18 hours and they never exceeded like 30 MPH.

Charging to near 100% in an hour is probably going to be the harder of the two to crack because that is a ridiculous amount of energy. Getting the capacity up to a 1000KM range will eventually happen, but I wouldn't expect it till the 2030s (it would require something like a 200 kWh battery, which just from the size of it will take longer to charge up for obvious reasons). I mean to put things in perspective, if I could reverse the direction and power my house off of my model 3's battery, on average it would run our house for just over 3 days. Cars use a ridiculous amount of energy if you start converting and comparing it to ordinary household energy usage.

[Top Gun]

The one thing that would still give me pause on an electric vehicle would be living in an apartment situation, which unless you're in new construction in a trendier area probably negates your ability to charge at home.

[TigerRaptor]

Until you can go at least 1000KM per charge and charge it to almost full in an hour, I won't be buying this. A hybrid is a diff story though but even then they need to be better

One of the reason why I haven't considered going to EV yet. I also want to see what the future holds for hydrogen fuel cells.

[Top Gun]

Honestly I think advances in battery tech have already largely supplanted the need for hydrogen-powered vehicles, at least for the consumer market. Hydrogen has a notoriously low energy density, it's challenging to store properly (with catastrophic consequences if it's not), and fuel cells are extremely expensive. They don't make much sense from an efficiency standpoint, either. If you're going to need to use electricity to produce hydrogen gas, why not cut out the middleman and use it to charge an electric vehicle instead? Electric vehicles can also take advantage of existing electrical infrastructure, which means that they'll automatically become renewably-powered if energy generation switches to that.

[TigerRaptor]

True. Maybe not so much with passenger vehicles. I do believe fuel cells are here to stay, and will probably take over as another power source for heavy vehicles.

[CDN_Merlin]

My 2014 Kia Optima could get 900KM per tank on highway.

[Krom]

We went out for a cruise today, mostly driving like a grandma, but in one stretch of flat wide open road I gave it a moderate bit of accelerator for only a couple seconds. On my old Altima that would have taken me from the 58 I was going to about 75, the Tesla hit 103 and made no indication whatsoever if it being effort.

[Tunnelcat]

A converted electric Miata beats the pants off of a Tesla even though the Tesla cheated with a slight head start.

[Tunnelcat]

Ever wonder what happens to a Tesla in a violent 100 mph crash? A crash so bad that the car was ripped into shreds, including the battery pack? You get a bunch of hot flaming projectiles. It happened just down the street from where I live.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s ... is-oregon/

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/11/19/tes ... de-2279192

The driver somehow survived and ran off (caught later), but he's lucky. If you look at one of the pics, there's a piece of aluminum, probably from the front of the car, that speared into the passenger compartment and just missed the idiot driver's head, who was stoned to the gills by the way.

[Krom]

Yes, this has been making the rounds in various EV/Tesla forums. TL;DR: >100 MPH into trees/utility poles destroys any vehicle.

While I've seen some fuss about burning hot batteries going through windows, landing in peoples laps, and starting small fires it is also worth mentioning that a whole wheel crashed through a wall into a bathroom, destroyed the plumbing and flooded two levels of the apartment. Not all cars have HV batteries, but all cars do have wheels.

The guy not only survived, he fled on foot and was captured with only minor injuries. Two things saved his life: one of them is just dumb luck the driver side of the vehicle isn't the one that got torn off, the other was the battery pack. A normal combustion car would have likely killed him in that crash because it would have folded up like play dough where the battery pack kept portions of this car vaguely Tesla Model 3 shaped. Either that, or the engine block would have come out of the dash and right into his face.

He is also extremely lucky there were no passengers in the car, because the entire right passenger side of the vehicle is gone, and the rear left was wrapped around the utility pole violently enough that the airbags wouldn't have saved an occupant in that seat.

Definitely would be interesting to see the telemetry from this crash and see just how fast he was going when he lost control. These cars stream telemetry in incredible detail, so if they had a data logger running you could know basically everything about this crash (or at least everything up to about a second before impact, not likely the vehicle computers/modem were still alive after the right side was ripped open).

For a hint at how much telemetry you can get, here is a short drive I did between two houses on a delivery run for meals on wheels last week:

[Tunnelcat]

Yeah, it would be interesting to see the telemetry. I'm sure the cops are looking at it right now. What's funny is that I've driven by that spot and I can't see where it happened. They cleaned it up very well. As for the driver surviving, he was the luckiest man alive even though the driver's side wasn't thoroughly smashed. Take a look at that aluminum bar, which was probably part of the front fender, now sticking through the firewall and dashboard and sitting right beside the driver's seat headrest. A couple of inches more to the left and his head would've been on a pike, airbag or no airbag.

[Krom]

Yeah, I did spend like a couple hours looking at footage/pictures of that car, the amount of damage is pretty incredible.

[Tunnelcat]

I finally saw the spot where the accident happened. They cleaned it up pretty well, but there are telltales if you look closely, like a repaired house and some trees missing The guy had to blow through 4 stop lights, a school zone and a 25 mph zone after a 35 mph zone when he went on his wild ride. Makes me wonder where he started going 100 mph, because it's all residential. There's also only a berm that separates the street from the residences and it's only in that spot, so if the power pole and trees hadn't stopped his car, he would've plowed through someone's house. At that speed and with the berm, he could've launched his car into someone's second story. I'm surprised he didn't hit a deer too, since we're rotten with those things at night.

[Krom]

So the Christmas update loaded on later in the afternoon this Christmas. My car can now play custom sounds through the pedestrian warning speaker and or replace the horn sound with a selection of custom sounds.

So basically; I can load Descent 3 style audio taunts into my car and play them through an external speaker.

[TheWhat]

So basically; I can load Descent 3 style audio taunts into my car and play them through an external speaker.

I would have so much fun with that.
Can you have a bunch loaded at the same time and play them at different times like a sampler? I can imagine their might be some free speech cases with what people choose to broadcast.

[TigerRaptor]

I'd love to hear the Descent afterburner and the Earthshaker missile when fired coming through those speakers.

[Krom]

Sadly while you can load up to 5 into the car at once, you can only play one at a time and it takes flipping through some menus that are only accessible while in park to switch them.