The trip to Arizona over the holidays put about 3,200 miles on my car, which brought me to around 8,000 miles total. Tesla recommends rotating the tires every 6,250 miles, so it was time for that service.
Making the appointment was easy - I could do it through my Tesla account on the web. The Bellevue service center was booked for weeks, but the one in Seattle had openings, so I took my car there on a Saturday morning. The location is in a warehouse district and I can understand why the other location was booked out so far in advance. The Bellevue center is in a nice part of town with shops nearby. It also is a showroom and delivery location, so there are lots of shiny new Teslas there. This location was more industrial, although the street was still lined with Teslas. Here's an image from Google Street View:
Nothing wrong with the location, but it's not as nice as Bellevue. Rather than dropping my car off, I opted to wait for the service to be performed and the little waiting room inside had a old Roadster on display, covered in signs asking people not to touch it.
I had a free cup of coffee and started reading a book. By the time I was done with the coffee, my car was ready. Total cost was $68 plus tax.
Wheel Damage
While I was there, I asked about getting some road rash on one of my wheels repaired. About 1 month after getting the car, I was in a parking lot trying to turn down an aisle to find a parking space. A car going the other direction was leaving the aisle and was taking up more than half of the lane. I turned sharp to avoid it and my rear wheel hit the curb. I was pissed! Here's a couple views of the damage:
Ouch!
The service center does not repair wheels, but they did give me a card of a company they recommend for repairs and I scheduled an appointment. The wheel is being fixed on Friday and will cost about $350. A whole new wheel is $1,000. *sigh* I'll post pictures of how the repair turned out.
I have not had any other issues with the car. In the wrap up in the post about my road trip, I wrote about how Autopilot could be a little jerky on the brakes and somewhat swervy when the lane width changes. The car got a software update the other day and it seems that Autopilot is a bit smoother now. I've only used it a handful of times since the update, so maybe it's just my imagination, but it's possible they improved their driving algorithms a bit.
Drop Stop
One problem I have, as well as many other people it seems, is dropping stuff on the side of the seat, where it falls down between the seat and the center console. I came across this YouTube video of another Tesla owner who bought a squishy tube that is supposed to stop that from happening. The Drop Stop, as it is called, fits between the seat and the console and basically fills the gap so items can't fall between there. There is a hole that the seat belt buckle goes though and that is what holds it in place.
For twenty bucks, I figured I'd try it. I've got black seats, so when it is installed, it's really not noticeable.
What can I say about a tube of squishy material? It works. Because the phone charger is in the center console, I would often drop my phone down the side of the seat when I was picking it up or plugging it in. That's a pain because once that happens, you have to wait until you are parked to go into the back seat, reach under the driver's seat and retrieve your phone. This device stops you from having to do that.
The package comes with two stops, one for the driver's seat and one for the passenger seat. The only complaint I have is that the unit doesn't stay firmly in place in my car. During normal driving, it's fine. However, I've got Easy Entry set up on my car, so when I park, the seat moves back to make it easier to enter and exit, and then when the car is powered up, the seat moves forward to my driving position. This repeated movement causes the front part of the Drop Stop to either slide down towards the floor or up and out from between the seat and center console. It's not drastic and it takes about a week of driving before I have to readjust the front part of the stop, but it's a bit annoying. Still, it's less annoying than losing my phone between the seats! And if you had a car where the seats didn't move so often, this would be perfect.
Two weeks ago, our household did what many other households are doing in droves: we cut the cord. Specifically, we cancelled our satellite TV subscription.
The final straw was a notice I received saying DirecTV was going to raise rates at the end of January. I no longer have the notice, but if I recall, it also stated that they would no longer issue refunds for cancelled services. With cable and satellite TV, you pay in advance, so if you cancelled, they used to refund you your unused subscription based on the day you cancelled your service. Now, with DirecTV at least, you no longer can cancel at any time. Well, you can, but your cancellation becomes effective at the end of your billing cycle. This means if you just paid for a month of service and you want to cancel, instead of getting a refund for the rest of the month you aren't going to use, your service won’t be cancelled until the end of the month you paid for and you won’t get any money back.
Exit Cable TV
That notice caused me to re-evaluate my subscription and the industry in general. The no-refund policy is a big “F you” to subscribers.
We rarely watch TV and earlier in 2018, I dropped from DirecTV’s 2nd lowest tier (“Entertainment”) to their lowest (“Select”). Because we have two televisions we were also being charged a $7 second television fee each month. Talk about gratuitous fees! (Back when we were subscribing to Dish Network, we were also charged a monthly “DVR fee.”) Even at their lowest tier, the price increase in 2019 would push our bill to over $100 each month.
There is no way we watch enough TV to justify that expense. I can’t think of a single television show we watch regularly that isn’t available elsewhere. Most of the shows we watch are on Amazon Prime or Netflix and we rarely watch sports, usually only viewing the Super Bowl or a World Series game or two. The most basic package we could choose from DirecTV gives us 155 channels, of which we watch, at most, 3. It was like throwing money down the drain.
The cable industry knows they have a problem. Bloomberg just published a story about how cable companies are raising their rates to offset losses caused by cable cutters.
Cord cutting is accelerating. According to the Bloomberg story, the third quarter of 2018 saw the largest ever rate of decline in subscribers. So what do the companies do?
Raise rates! Sure! That won’t drive more people away!
Good lord. This is Economics 101. When people stop buying your product, you don’t increase the price!
The companies are blaming the rate increase on increases in costs for carrying local and sports programming. Try getting rid of some of that crap instead!
Guess what? Not everyone wants all those channels. I don’t need 4 varieties of ESPN (or even 1 for that matter), FETV, Enlace, Jewelry Television, or World Harvest Television. I don’t even know what most of those channels are! Why should I have to pay for them? Until I can order channels a la carte, I won’t be going back to cable or satellite.
Enter Streaming
Instead, I’m streaming what I want (and only what I want) from Internet services. That also makes it easier to add and cancel subscriptions as needed.
Amazon Prime Is King
We, like roughly 65% of all American households, are Amazon Prime subscribers. That gives us access to some movies and music programming already. We also subscribe to CBS All Access (for Star Trek: Discovery), Starz (for Outlander), and Amazon Music Unlimited (for greater music options). We just decided to start watching Game of Thrones (yeah, we’re a bit behind the times), so we subscribed to HBO as well. (HBO on DirecTV would be an extra $53.99 per month, although that would include Starz.)
What’s nice is each one of those channels is available through Amazon Prime as a standalone subscription. No additional TV hardware to install. No satellite dish to put on my house. No monthly equipment fees.
Stopping and starting subscriptions is easily done through my Amazon account. My wife only needs Starz when the current season of Outlander is airing. There are about 13 episodes per season and they air once a week, so we subscribe for 13 weeks, then cancel Starz. Same thing with CBS All Access. Star Trek: Discovery had 15 episodes last season. When that season ended, I stopped our subscription.
So What Are We Saving?
Amazon Prime is $119 per year, which translates to $9.90 per month. I would be a Prime subscriber even if no movies were included (indeed, I became a Prime subscriber before the program included any video or music) simply because I order a lot from Amazon and the free shipping is worth it. But let’s go ahead and include the cost of Prime in this comparison.
Our Amazon Music Unlimited plan is the Family plan so all three of us can use it simultaneously. That runs $14.99 per month.
Starz is $8.99 per month (but we only subscribe for 3 months).
CBS All Access (commercial free version) is $9.99 per month. I could save $5 by getting the version that has commercials.
HBO is $14.99 – we’ll cancel this as soon as we are done with Game Of Thrones (the final season should be out by the time we finish the previous seven seasons).
Total monthly cost for all packages: $58.86 per month maximum. Given that we’ll be subscribing to some of these channels for only two or three months a year, the average monthly cost (assuming we keep CBS All Access all year) comes to $40.86. And that doesn't change no matter how many TVs I use to watch.
For DirecTV, the monthly cost with HBO and Starz would be about $160 and I’d be stuck with a 1 or 2 year contract, preventing me from changing programming or cancelling without another charge. And that doesn’t even give us the option to stream music to our TV, phone, or tablet like Amazon Music does.
Is it any wonder people are ditching cable?
What Am I Missing?
I won’t lie. There are some things we are missing. My wife wanted to watch the Golden Globes Red Carpet on E! We had no way to stream that. So for now, we went without. It wasn’t a big deal and those two once yearly events certainly aren’t enough to justify a year-long cable TV subscription. I’m also certain that those events will end up on some streaming service eventually.
We’ll also likely want to watch the Oscars and the Oscars Red Carpet. I don’t know if we’ll be able to stream those, but the main Oscar show will be broadcast over the air, so we can get that for free using an HD television antenna.
Those Damn Millennials!
Although I am not a Millennial, I have to agree with them on this. Add cable and satellite TV to the list of things they are killing.
It's not their fault, really. They were born into a world where the Internet makes just about anything available. I remember years ago, when I was a wee lad and cable TV was just becoming available. Because it was so new, everything was amazing. Most people went from having 12 or so local over-the-air channels to several dozen or even a hundred channels. In those early days, more channels was a huge selling point. It didn't matter if they were channels you never watched. The important thing was you could watch them if you wanted to! One hundred channels was far better than twelve!
And two hundred was better than one hundred! Cable packages started to swell, as providers added more and more stations, which were becoming increasingly more niche and of interest to fewer and fewer viewers.
Then the internet came along and each niche now had its own unlimited, worldwide platform. Sadly, cable companies have never quite grasped this. They continue the arms race of who can provide the most channels. Unfortunately, those channels are not free to cable customers or the cable companies. Someone has to pay for them and the current means of doing so is to spread the cost out over all cable subscribers.
That has now reached a tipping point and cable customers are cancelling in droves. I've joined their ranks.
I know I've been away for a bit and I missed posting a net worth update for December. My only excuse is it was the holidays and we went on a road trip (which I did manage to blog about). Today, I'm going to write about a couple of little things that are too small for individual blogs posts. Look at this as the blog equivalent of petit fours, or perhaps a few amuse-bouches, if you will.
Cash Back Rewards For 2018
In October, I posted my cash back rewards for the year to date - $1,026.66. At the time, there were three months left in the year, so I went back to see what my year-end number turned out to be.
I added almost another $400 exactly to finish the year with $1,425.63 in cash back rewards. That's over fourteen hundred dollars that credit card companies gave me simply for using their cards. To put that in perspective, that's like getting one free car payment on my Tesla.
Card Card Interest Charges For 2018
How much did that money cost me or, in other words, how much credit card interest did I pay in 2018?
I'd like to say zero, but I actually paid $2.14 in interest. This was only because I entered a date incorrectly on my bill pay app and missed a due date by a couple of days one month. Missing a perfect record of no interest charges pissed me off. At least I wasn't also hit with a late fee.
Stock Market Volatility
Although I was not able to post a December net worth post, I have been following my net worth. As most people know, the stock market has been incredibly volatile since last September. Take a look at how that has translated to the value of my brokerage accounts:
Click to embiggen
That chart is just my brokerage accounts, not my total net worth and the first big drop in September was when I withdrew money to buy my Tesla. But look at the fluctuations after that, especially compared to before. Crazy! It's even crazier when you realize I add money to these accounts every week, yet I still saw some serious declines. So yes.. You really need to take a long term view when investing in the stock market.
What's Coming Up?
There is a good chance I will have some exciting news in February. Let me just say that it started with a trip to the mall. Stay tuned!
The holidays are over and we've returned from our first Tesla long range road trip. I have to say, I am very happy with how it went.
We drove roughly 1,600 miles from Seattle, Washington to Phoenix, Arizona and back again for a total distance of about 3,200 miles. We only used Tesla superchargers along the way. Because I have free supercharging, energy for the trip was free.
Before we left, I spent a couple hours using the route planner at EVTripping.com to plan our charging stops. I did this for two reasons: 1) This was my first Tesla road trip and I did have some range anxiety. 2) We were travelling during the holiday season and with our dog. I wanted to make sure the places we had to stop and spend the night not only had rooms available, but also accepted pets.
In retrospect, I think if we did not have a pet with us, I would be comfortable not planning so diligently. The Tesla navigation system will give you an estimate of how far you can go on a charge and will recommend charging stops along the way if it determines it can't make it to your destination. I would have no problem just getting the in car and going.
We averaged about 1.5 to 2 hours of driving between charging stops. Using superchargers, we were able to charge enough to get to the next stop in 20 to 30 minutes. This was just enough time for us to get out, stretch our legs, use the restroom, and take our dog out for a short walk so she could relieve herself. Truthfully, by the time all that was done, 95% of the time, we had enough charge to continue the trip. The few times we had to wait a bit longer to get enough charge, the wait was only another 5 or 10 minutes.
Washington To Arizona
Our planned route took us down I-5 through California and then on I-10 to Arizona. Our first stop on the way out of town was the Centralia Factory Outlet mall in Centralia, Washington. Here is where I discovered one of the drawbacks of supercharger locations - stores. While supercharging will save you money on gas, it's easy to waltz into a store and spend more money on buying things than you would have spent on gas at a gas station. We picked up an ugly Christmas sweater for my daughter while we charged.
Our next stop was the Holiday Inn in Springfield, Oregon. We didn't stay the night, but while we were charging we did meet up with some friends for dinner at a restaurant next to the hotel. (Hi Jim and Michelle!)
From there we went on to charging stations at Grants Pass, Oregon and finally to Mt. Shasta, California, where we spent the night at the Best Western Tree House. The Grants Pass location was behind a Black Bear Diner restaurant, but since we had already eaten, we walked to a gas station across the street and grabbed a couple bottles of water while we charged.
Charging at Grants Pass, OR
The Mt. Shasta charging location is actually two locations - there are 4 chargers in the hotel parking lot and another 16 across the street. Since we were staying at the hotel, we used the chargers there. (On the way back home, we used the ones across the street.) As I tended to do on our overnight stops, I did not charge at night, but instead woke up the next morning, plugged the car in, then proceeded to get dressed, eat, and pack. By the time that was done, the car was charged. I was a little bit worried about possibly getting up in the morning to find all the chargers occupied, but that never happened.
Charging in the morning at Mt. Shasta
The drive leaving Mt. Shasta was beautiful, with low clouds / fog in the trees.
The following day, our first two stops were in Corning, CA and Sacramento. The Sacramento charger was probably the furthest off the freeway of any of the chargers we used - about 4 miles. It was in a shopping area parking lot. We walked to a restaurant and got lunch to go. By the time we were back, we were charged up.
Charging at Corning, CA. There are 2 more chargers behind the wood box on the left.
Charging in Sacramento, CA
At the request of my sister-in-law, (Hi Mindy!) we took a slight detour on the way out of town to look for "something" on L Street, between 15th and 16th Avenues. She made us promise not to Google Street View it before going. So what did we find?
Hello. I'm Johnny Cash.
Turns out, Google Street View shows this building without the mural, so we couldn't have cheated and looked it up first if we wanted to.
The next stop was an hour and a half and 118 miles south in Gustine, CA. This time, the charger was at an Andersen's Pea Soup restaurant and I popped in to pick up a couple cans of soup.
Gustine, CA supercharger
While we were charging, a sharp looking Model S pulled up. It was all black with custom wheels and had all the exterior chrome blacked out. It also was sporting the old-school black and yellow California license plates that have become available again.
Black Beauty
The next stop was in Bakersfield. This was the only supercharger we used that was at an actual gas station. I suppose technically, it's at an IHOP, but the restaurant shares a parking lot with the gas station.
Bakersfield, CA
Our final stop for the night was in Glendale, CA. We spent the night at my sister-in-law's house and also took in the Moonlight Forest exhibit at the Los Angeles Botanical Garden. This was a display of lighted "lanterns" (sculptures, really) and was really cool to see!
The Glendale charger was about 3 miles away and located in the parking garage of the Americana mall. We charged in the morning while we ate breakfast at a restaurant there. One thing to note here: there are EV chargers on the first level of the parking garage, but they are not Tesla chargers and are REALLY slow. The Tesla superchargers are on the seventh level of the parking garage.
From Glendale, CA we drove 133 miles to Indio. I charged about 10% more than I needed to here, as we were now starting our driving across the desert and I didn't want to risk running out of power.
Charging in Indio, CA
The next stop was a Carl's Jr. in Quartzsite, AZ. Again, I charged more than I needed to, as we had to drive through the desert for about 1 hour and 45 minutes until the next charging station at Biltmore Fashion Park in Phoenix. The charging stations were starting to get a bit crowded now, but I still did not have to wait for a spot to open up.
Quartzsite, AZ
The Quartzsite supercharger has 8 stations - two are on the far side of the wooden enclosure in the photo. Unfortunately, those two were not functioning.
Our final stop was in Phoenix. We could have made it to our final destination, but because there were no other chargers nearby and my parents do not have a 220V outlet I could use, I opted to get a full charge here. That would last me for the week I would be in town and leave me enough power to get back to the Phoenix charger on the way back home.
Phoenix, AZ
This was the only supercharger we stopped at that had the old style charging stations. You can identify them by the solid design. The newer ones are hollow in the middle (see above pics). These charge at a maximum rate of 72 kW instead of the 120 kW the newer ones do.
Update: Turns out, these solid body chargers are actually Tesla's newer "urban" charger design. While they charge at a slower 72 kW as compared to the 120 kW other chargers can provide, they are unaffected by cars charging in the adjacent stalls.
We had dinner at the mall here and were charged and ready to go before we were done eating. In fact, since the chargers were busy, I had to step out of the restaurant and move my car to avoid getting charged the $1 / minute idle fee.
Solar roof on Phoenix Supercharger
This station appeared to have solar panels, which makes sense, given it is in Arizona. I believe the long term plan is for all supercharging stations to be solar, but in the interest of getting the charging infrastructure built out quickly, Tesla has decided to add the solar panels to most locations at a later date.
Fun In Arizona
While in Arizona, I drove onto the Indian reservation just south of my parent's house to test out Ludicrous Launch mode. It's an ideal place to test this - the roads are straight for miles, traffic is light, there is high visibility, and (presumably) there are fewer police patrols on the reservation than there would be in city limits.
I tested Launch Mode a couple times with some different people in the car. Holy crap! It's like being in a roller coaster! Here's a video of me taking off with my wife in the back seat and my mom in the front.
Looking at the speedometer and timing the video, it looks like I went zero to 60 in 3.3 seconds. This is slower than the 2.28 seconds Motor Trend clocked it at. But I'm just watching the video on YouTube and clicking start and stop on the clock app on my phone. Not a very precise measurement. My battery was not also fully warmed up to provide maximum power.
Arizona To Washington
The return trip had us stopping at some of the same places we charged on the way down, but we did stop at a couple different places as well. This was for a couple of reasons: we were starting our journey at a different time of day and we were stopping overnight at different stops. We also deviated a bit from the itinerary I created at home because we felt more comfortable judging our energy usage.
Our first three stops were at the same places we hit on the way in to town: Biltmore Fashion Park in Phoenix, Carl's Jr. in Quartzsite, and Indio, CA. The two non-functioning chargers we saw in Quartzsite were still out of order. The station was fairly busy and we had to wait about 5 minutes for one of the working spots to open up - the first time we had to wait to charge. Later on, I discovered there is a phone number on the charging stations I could have called to report charger issues. I should have done so.
After Indio, the original plan called for us to charge in Riverside, but we instead opted to charge at the Desert Hills Premium Outlet mall in Cabazon, CA, about 40 miles closer than Riverside. This wasn't due to range issues, but it was simply getting to be lunch time and we opted to stop sooner rather than later to eat. There are 16 superchargers at Cabazon and we thought it would be a quick stop. Turned out, that was incorrect.
This was the day after Christmas, so the mall was packed with people either returning gifts or hitting the after Christmas sales. The parking lot was packed and all the superchargers were full. In fact, there was a line of Teslas waiting for spots to open up. The layout of the chargers in the parking lot here is not conducive to waiting. The chargers are along the front row of the parking lot, so cars pulling in from the steet had to drive right by the chargers. Also, the long row of chargers is at the end of about 3 aisles of parking spots, so there isn't really one spot for Tesla drivers to form a line. This creates confusion and possible frustration about people cutting in line.
Cabazon, CA chargers. Barely controlled chaos.
I don't know how it is here during non-peak shopping times, but it was a bit hectic when we were there. When we pulled in, there were about 4 Teslas ahead of us waiting to charge. I could see more Teslas pulling in and a couple waiting in a different row. My wife was driving, so I decided to get out and start directing traffic, telling people where the line for charging ended, etc. Everyone was very good about it and it was fun to talk with other Tesla owners. I've read a lot about how friendly Tesla drivers are and have experienced it firsthand when someone once directed me to an open charger I hadn't noticed instead of taking it for himself. I felt it was important to continue to project that friendly camaraderie to the flood of new Model 3 owners that I was seeing. It helped that cars were leaving fairly quickly and no one had to wait very long. We had to wait about 10 minutes before we were next in line.
A spot opened up and we pulled in. When I plugged in the charger, I got a yellow warning light at my plug instead of the expected flashing green to indicate charging in progress. My screen said the car was not charging. I disconnected and tried again. Same thing. Hmm.. I didn't really want to back out and get back in line, but I didn't see that I had any other choice. Luckily, another car started pulling out. My wife talked to the driver behind us and told her what had happened. She agreed to let us get the next spot.
Almost at the same time, another spot opened up, so she didn't have to wait. We moved into a spot and this time, we started charging. I walked down to the next Tesla driver in line to explain my experience with what seemed to be a bad charger. As I was speaking to her, another Tesla came in from the street and drove right into the spot we had just vacated. Apparently, he didn't see the line of Tesla waiting. (To be fair, it was easy to miss.)
I walked over to him and, buy the time I got there, I noticed he was plugged in and charging. He and his companion were still in the car, so I explained my issues with the charger and asked how his charge was going. It appeared to be working fine. Then I politely told him that he unintentionally cut in line. I said I couldn't make him leave, but he might get a whole lot of dirty looks as he walked away from his car. He apologized, said he didn't see the line, and immediately said he would disconnect and get in line. He was a really good sport about it.
I walked back to the first person in line, told her what the other guy said, and she decided to try her luck at the charger. It worked for her too, so I have no idea why it wouldn't work with my car.
But I was very happy with how everyone behaved. With the rush of after-Christmas shoppers, high traffic, and abundance of people wanting to charge, there was a potential for things to get real ugly. I'm glad everyone was calm and accommodating. As the population of Tesla owners grows, I hope things remain this way.
After Cabazon, our next stop was the Bakersfield charger, where we grabbed dinner at the IHOP. Our last leg of the day took us to the Harris Ranch Inn and Restaurant in Coalinga, CA. I forgot to take any pictures, which is a shame because this was a pretty nice place. The hotel is fairly large and it's on a working ranch. It can smell like cows a bit, but hey, it's a ranch! They have two restaurants on site, one of which is a steak house that requires reservations. I've heard good things about it and, from the flyers in the room, it would seem almost everything the restaurant serves is raised on the ranch. Unfortunately, we arrived after having eaten dinner, and we opted to eat breakfast on the road the next morning, so we didn't try either restaurant.
The hotel has 18 supercharger stations. As usual, we charged in the morning while getting ready to leave. There were only two other Teslas charging at the time.
The next day, we started off and charged first in Sacramento, where we charged a few days earlier on the way south, then back to the charging station at Corning, CA, where we picked up some lunch. At both of these stops, we kept seeing people we had seen in Cabazon, so it appears we weren't the only ones heading north. Luckily, we kept ahead of the crowd and didn't encounter any more waits to charge.
Another shot of the Corning, CA charging station. These two chargers seem like an after thought. Note the extension cables from the transformer.
From Corning, we kept going north and our next stop was Mount Shasta, CA. We spent the night here on the way down. but this time we were here in the middle of the day. During the time between our visits, some snow had fallen and we were treated to some spectacular views on the way there. These pictures don't really do it justice.
The road to Mt. Shasta
Mt. Shasta, CA
Instead of charging at the hotel we charged at previously, we opted to charge at the 16 stations across the street from the hotel. This was near a small strip mall. The temperature had dropped to about 42 degrees, but there was a strong wind that just cut right through you and chilled you in an instant.
The other Mt. Shasta chargers
There were a couple businesses here - a hardware store, a grocery store, and a theater. The wind made us all so cold, we sat in the car instead of walking around. Even the dog didn't want to go out to go to the bathroom.
Our next stop was Grants Pass, Oregon, another location we stopped at while heading south. This time, we had dinner at the Black Bear Diner. My wife said their meatloaf was the best she's had!
Our final leg of the day took us to the Holiday Inn in Springfield, Oregon again. We spent the night here.
On our last day of the trip, we charged before leaving the hotel and drove to the next stop in Woodburn, Oregon.
Woodburn, OR
As you can see, we were the only ones there. We walked around bit, but other than a restaurant, there wasn't much to see. It was fairly cold out though. If it were warmer, we would have walked a bit further to check out some other places nearby.
It was still too soon after breakfast for anyone to be hungry, so we piled back into the car and went to our next stop - the Centralia, WA outlet mall. This time, we managed to not buy anything. After charging up here, our final stop was back at home!
Lessons Learned
One good takeaway from this was confirmation of what I had read online: There is no need to charge to 100% at each stop. In fact, doing so will slow you down. It takes longer to charge from 50% to 100% battery than it does from 20% to 70%, even though you're adding 50% of your battery capacity in each case. As the battery charge reaches maximum, the charging rate slows down to protect the batteries. Instead, you make better time driving until your battery is down to your lowest comfortable level (which is about 10% - 15% for me - you want some reserve in case you get lost or have to drive further than expected), then just charging enough to get to your next charging location.
The Tesla energy consumption app does a pretty good job of estimating how much charge it takes to get to your destination. In order to use this, you have to be using the navigation function, naturally, so the car knows where you are trying to go. The graph shows your battery charge level in real time and projects what it will be at your destination using a green line. A gray line indicates the rated (ideal) consumption. Sorry the picture below is so blurry. When your battery charge drops to 25%, the line turns yellow and under 10% it's red. A couple times during the trip, the gray line would suddenly change, as it did in the below photo. I'm not sure yet what causes that. This graph went a long way toward removing any last little of bit range anxiety I had.
Tesla energy consumption app
Supercharging is fast and you can get spoiled easily. Most chargers we stopped at were the newer 120 kW models. Those charge crazy fast. When you get one of the older newer urban charger models (72 kW), it seems like a disappointment, even if you don't have to worry about cars charging next to you. If you are on a trip and have a choice between the two models, go for the 120 kW one.
Superchargers are wired electrically in pairs. You'll see numbers on the units like 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc. A pair is an A / B combo of the same number. When charging, it's become Tesla etiquette to try to not use one half of a circuit if someone else is using the other half, if at all possible. This is because the entire circuit can only supply 120 kW. If two cars are using the same circuit, for example, if I am charging at unit 1A and someone else is charging at 1B, one car will get more power than the other. From my experience, the first car connected will get about 70 kW and the other will get around 50 kW. Once the first car disconnects, the second will bump up to 120 kW until another car plugs in, then the power will drop to 70 kW and the new car will get 50 kW. Since lower power results in longer charge times, it's polite to try to position yourself at the chargers so everyone gets the fastest charge possible.
I saw a lot of Model 3s charging. I think as more and more people start owning Model 3s, there could start being congestion at chargers, especially in out of the way places. Elon Musk has mentioned Tesla plans to double the number of superchargers by the end of 2019, as well as introduce a higher powered charger toward the end of summer, which will charge cars even faster.
Cold weather affects energy usage. We used the seat heaters mainly to keep warm when needed and typically left the air heater set to 68 or 69. Even so, really cold temperatures, like in the low 40s to mid 30s, required more power to move the car and also more time to charge. When we were about 5 minute from pulling into the Mt. Shasta location on our return trip, we were at 14% charge at the car displayed a warning about the cold weather possibly causing increased power drain and increased charging time.
We were a bit nervous leaving our dog in the car while we went into a restaurant to eat. Most regular car owners don't know that you can leave the Tesla climate controls running when the car is parked. I was worried someone might think the dog would freeze (or, in hot weather, would roast), so I printed a one-page notice I left on our dashboard that said the dog was fine, climate control is on, and she had water. I said we would be returning shortly and included my phone number in case someone was worried. "Dog Mode" is supposedly in planning, but it has not been released yet.
Charging stops make long drives more enjoyable. We didn't feel like we were rushing to get somewhere and the forced charging stops allowed us to step out of the car for a bit and stretch our legs and take a break. We got to see some interesting things and talk to some other friendly Tesla owners.
Alternate chargers, like the Blink network, are mostly Level 2 chargers, which are too slow to be useful. These operate at 240V and 30A, which is basically like your dryer electrical outlet at home. They should really only be used as an emergency backup. I mean, they work and every Tesla owner gets an adapter to use these chargers, but they are so slow as to be worthless on long trips.
For example, I tried one in Arizona. I was at 40% battery and when I connected, I was told it would take 9 hours to reach a full charge. Oh, and this charger cost $0.02 per 30 seconds! That's $2.40 per hour. For 9 hours of charging, that would be $21.60. Still cheaper than a tankful of gas for my old Prius, but really, 9 hours? It was faster for me to drive 30 minutes to the nearest Tesla supercharger, charge there, then drive back. So treat Level 2 chargers as an emergency backup and stick with Tesla chargers for long trips.
I find the Model S back seat to be somewhat uncomfortable for long rides. The seat back is very vertical and not adjustable. The headrest is not adjustable either. This may just be a personal preference, as my daughter rode the whole trip in the back seat without complaint.
Autopilot is great, but can be a bit jerky. When I drove on this trip, I used Autopilot about 80% of the time. I have noticed it tends to brake harder at times than I think it needs to when cars in front of us slow down, but increasing the "distance to the next car" setting seemed to help that.
Autopilot can also make an unexpected swerve when you first turn it on or when lane lines change. For example, using Autopilot, I discovered I tend to drive more towards the left side of the lane. When you initiate Autopilot, it often steers directly to the center of the lane, which can be a bit disconcerting for any passengers you have.
I also noticed the "swerve to the middle" behavior when using car pool lanes in California. In these lanes, the right hand lane marker is often a double set of yellow lines - so four paint lines plus the space between them wide. Drivers are not supposed to cross these lines. When you arrive at a point where drivers can enter and exit the lane, those lines change to a single dashed white line. At that point, that lane, in effect, widens by approximately 3 paint line widths. Autopilot detects this and swerves slightly to the right to center the car in the now wider lane. When the dashed lane ends and the four yellow lines return, Autopilot steers the car back to the left to center it in the now narrower lane. This can also be unnerving.
Locating the charging stations felt like playing Pokemon Go. Sometimes, they were hard to find.
For help finding them, the charger discussion forums at Teslaratiprovides tips from previous Tesla owners, as well as general information about the locations.
Almost all superchargers require you to back into the space to connect the charging cable. A few were configured to allow head-in charging. You can see examples in the Indio and Cabazon photos above. Because Tesla's Autopark feature only works for back-in parking between two cars, you can't always use it at a supercharger. It would be nice if Tesla could equip the chargers with some sort of device to allow Autoparking without other cars on either side.
Even with these little quirks, a cross country trip in a Model S is an enjoyable experience. I would have no qualms about doing it again!
