Video Recording Issues

My Tesla software was upgraded a month or two ago and one of the new features I got was Sentry Mode. When this mode is activated, the car will monitor its surroundings while parked. If a threat is detected, such as someone leaning on the car, attempting to break in, keying it, pulling a hit-and-run in a parking lot, etc., the car will start recording video using its cameras, as well as display a warning on the large screen. If that doesn't deter the offender, the car will eventually start blasting classical music. It's sort of a car alarm on steroids.

I've been turning Sentry Mode on pretty much whenever I park my car outside my house now and, occasionally, when I get back in, I will see an alert telling me some sentry events have been recorded. When I get home, I plug the USB drive into my computer to see what happened.

This is how I noticed that my cameras seem to be malfunctioning. The recorded video is often glitchy and corrupted.

Here's an example from my front camera:

This doesn't only happen to the front camera. I've also seen it happen from the left camera.

And here is another issue I've seen with the left camera. The picture degrades over the course of the 1 minute recording:

Sometimes, the recording from the left camera is simply an empty file.

At this point, I'm not sure if the issue is with the camera or something related to the video recording process. Autopilot, which uses the cameras, seems unaffected. I've tried two different USB drives for the recording media and the problems do not go away.

A discussion at Tesla Motors Club seems to point to the problem being related to the USB drive the files are stored on. One person said he got rid of the problems by using a drive with a metal housing and he thought it might be related to better heat dissipation. I can't say I've noticed if my drive is hot when I take it out, but it's possible.

It's also possible the quality of the USB drive is an issue. Drives that have a faster write response time might not have problems. I've been using cheap USB drives I received for free as promotions from somewhere or another, so who knows what their quality is. I ordered one that the poster at TMC said worked, a device from SanDisk, which is a reputable company. We'll see how that works.

In the meantime, I've scheduled a service appointment for June 1, so if the new USB drive doesn't fix the problem, we'll see what Tesla says.

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The One In Which I Buy A Second Tesla

In August of last year, I gave up on my dream of buying a Tesla using passive income and just bought one using a loan. I explained all the reasons why in this post, but to sum up, there were just too many negatives in waiting to get enough passive income.

Now it's time to replace my wife's car and we opted to get her a Model 3. With this purchase, I'm likely not going to post daily details of the buying process like I did the first time around. I expect the process will be fairly similar, so I'll only post when things are different than they were before.

We've decided on getting a red Model 3 with the dual motor long range battery option. That gives us the same range as the Performance version (310 miles), albeit with a slower 0 - 60 time. But my wife isn't going to be drag racing any time soon (I hope), so we're fine saving the $11,000 extra the Performance version costs. I did want the dual motor version. I've got dual motors in my Model S and it made a big difference in the recent snowy weather we had. I also think it makes sense to buy the biggest battery you can. You never know when that extra capacity will come in handy. Look at it this way: if a gas car came with a 5 gallon gas tank or a 12 gallon tank, would you ever opt for the smaller one?

We did get the Enhanced Autopilot, which is a $5,000 option. After using it during my daily commute and during our cross-country road trip, I can't imagine owning a Tesla without this.

My wife also opted for the black interior, which is standard, and the red paint, a $2,500 option.

Funny story about the color. The Model 3 comes in five colors: black, silver, blue, white, and red. Black is standard and no additional charge. Silver and blue are an extra $1,500. White is $2,000 and red is $2,500. My wife doesn't like white or blue, so those were out. (Sadly. I really like the blue and wanted my car to be that color. Alas, she liked the silver and she won on that decision, but it was ultimately the catalyst for buying the car at the time, so I can't complain.) She didn't want silver for her car because that would be the same color as mine. That left black or red.

Black tends to show dirt really bad. My mom had a black car when I was growing up and I remember having to wash it all the time. On the other hand, we were worried about red attracting police and generating more tickets. That, it turns out, is an urban myth.

My wife couldn't decide between the two colors, so on our recent trip to Las Vegas she decided to let random chance determine her choice. She played roulette. If black came up, she'd get black. If red, she'd get red. Well, she played two spins and black came up both times. However, she ended up not sticking to her rules and decided to get red after all.

Things Are Different From Last Time

Right off the bat, there are two things that are different in the buying process this time around: The federal income tax credit has been cut in half to $3,750 and the loan interest rate has gone up to 3.75%.

When I purchased my Model S, the income tax credit was more than the total interest I would pay over the life of my loan, meaning I was borrowing money for free. Things aren't quite so rosy this time around. I'm putting down about 25%, so my loan amount will be roughly $44,100. On a 72 month loan at 3.75%, I'll pay $5,216 in interest charges over the life of the loan. Subtracting the $3,750 tax credit means the true cost to me of borrowing money is $1,466.

The good news is I can still get my total interest cost down to under the tax credit amount. The monthly payment for the above loan is $685. I am currently saving $967 each month towards this car. If I apply that entire amount to my loan, which I will, my total interest paid drops to $3,552 and my loan will be paid off in four years instead of six. If I do this, the federal tax credit will more than cover my interest costs, just like it did with my car.

So, just like with my Model S, even though I am taking out a loan, the cost of borrowing money for me will be zero.

I may be able to eke some more savings out of this. I am currently paying extra on my Model S loan. That loan has a current balance of $95,365 and I'm paying 1.74% interest. The loan for the Model 3 will be $44,100 at 3.75%. I'll need to run the numbers to determine where I save the most money by making extra payments - the higher balance, lower interest loan or the lower balance, higher interest one. I'll wait until we've actually taken possession of the car and everything is finalized before making that calculation.

I did notice what appeared to be a price discrepancy on the website. The price was shown in two different locations and they were not the same:

I downloaded the actual purchase agreement and it turns out the difference is due to destination and documentation fees.

I Didn't Forget The Tax This Time

This time around, I also remembered to reserve enough cash to pay sales tax on the purchase. When I bought the Model S, I assumed the tax would be included in the loan, but it was not. This left me scrambling for some extra funds.

Another change in the buying process is you can now enter a dollar amount for your down payment. Back when I bought the Model S, you could only enter a percentage of the purchase price. This is a welcome change.

Home Prep

I will be purchasing a second high powered wall charger. I could probably get by with the one I have, as I got the longer cord and it will easily reach both cars in the garage. However, that will make charging a pain in the ass because we'd have to remember to move the plug from one car to the other. I suppose we could charge one car one day and the other the next, which might not be too bad, but still.

I already had the major electrical work of getting a new electrical panel and 100 amp circuit installed done, so I won't need to pay those costs again. I will need to spend about $500 on a second wall charger plus whatever the electrician charges to hook it up. This nice thing about the wall chargers is they can be connected together in a load balancing configuration. This allows two chargers to share the same 100 amp circuit.

One thing I am completely ignoring in these calculations is the trade-in value of my wife's car. She has a 2010 Prius with 138,000 miles on it. Honestly, it has several scratches in the paint and it's not in the best of condition. I'm planning on getting about $1,000 for it, but I'm doing my calculations assuming I get nothing. I checked the Kelly Blue Book value and, even for a car in fair condition (their lowest rating), they say it's still worth between $3,500 and $5,300. Whatever I get for it will just be icing on the cake.

Wow! While in the process of writing this post, Tesla came back with a trade-in offer of $4,750! That's kinda crazy (but I'll take it). When I traded in my old car for the Model S, I had to take at least 10 photos of the outside and inside of the car, tire treads, etc. before they valued it. I had to do none of that this time around.

I called Tesla and asked about this. I was told if the value of the purchased car is under $60,000, they don't make you do all the photos on the trade in. When you pick up your car, they just do a cursory check to make sure the car functions. Either way, I think their offers on trade-ins are really fair.

One thing I am really surprised at: we placed our order on February 19 and Tesla said we could expect the car to be delivered in February! That's only 9 days max! We'll see if that holds true.

My wife has yet to decide on a name for her car... Any suggestions?

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Tesla Winter Performance And Wheel Repair Photos

Snow Days!

On the first weekend in February, the Seattle area got hit with the biggest snowstorm they've had since I moved here last year - 8 to 10 inches. Granted, that's not much compared to what the East coast gets, but it's pretty rare for this area. School was cancelled for three days and I worked from home all week instead of just two days,

The snow itself wasn't bad. It was the icy roads that caused the problems. It was particularly bad around our house. We live near the top of a mountain with curvy roads leading down into town. Evergreen trees overhang much of the road, meaning sunlight doesn't reach the pavement to melt the ice. Driving is quite treacherous in some spots.

On the third day of staying at home, the snow appeared to be lessening and I attempted to go in to the office. I only made it about 3 miles, before deciding to not risk it and head back home. I posted a couple of the dashcam videos to my YouTube channel.

Spoiler alert: These are the most boring YouTube videos you will ever see.

This video shows just one of the hills I have to go down (and up) to leave my house. There is another way I can get into town, but that has more downhill curves, so I figured this was the safer route. In this clip, you can see one car (a Jeep Wrangler) stopped on the side of the road. I'm not sure if he tried to make it up the hill and couldn't or what. The car in front of me was a Jeep Cherokee and I waited to make sure he could get up the other side. I figured if he could, I could too.



The second clip gives you an idea of the conditions I was driving in. It was at this point, I decided to turn around and head back home. Towards the end of the clip, you can see the snow being blown along the ground, which gives you an idea of the wind.




This last clip is me going back down the dip I just went through. It's only about 4 minutes after the first video and you can see in that short time, a van has spun out and gotten stuck. I'm not sure if the car in front of the van also got stuck or had stopped to help the driver of the van.




All in all, I actually felt pretty safe. The Model S is heavy and only slipped slightly once, as I passed the van in the last video. I had my foot lightly on the brakes. As soon as I felt my tires slipping, I took my foot off the brake and let the regenerative braking do all the slowing for me.

Ice Tests

Because I grew up in Southern California and lived many years in Arizona, I'm pretty inexperienced with driving in the snow, so I was going very slow and being extra cautious. The next day, the street in front of my house had a solid ice patch about 100 feet long. There was no one around and it was a straight stretch of road, so I decided to see how the computerized car handled on ice.

I drove slowly onto the ice patch and then stomped on the accelerator for about a half a second. I felt the wheels start to slip, then the computer kicked in and limited power, causing the slipping to stop. The car felt under control at all times.

I then did the opposite test - I drove onto the ice and braked hard. The ABS engaged and I felt the pedal pulse under my foot as the car came to a smooth stop without sliding. This experience wasn't that new to me, as I have experienced ABS in action on other cars.

The car handled really well on ice. Now, I was going in a straight line, so the chances of me spinning out of control were pretty slim. Still, it was good to get a little bit of experience of the car's traction control systems in action.

Cold Weather Battery Life

I typically charge my car every day or two, so I don't worry too much about battery drain due to really cold weather. However, last weekend, we took a weekend trip to Las Vegas and I was a little concerned about how much energy the car would lose while it was parked outside in freezing weather at the airport. The Seattle area had just had 2 weeks of unusually heavy snow and sub-freezing temperatures and I was worried there might be more snow and freezing rain while we were gone.

I did some Googling to see what other owners have experienced while parking in cold weather and found this article on Teslarati. The owner parked his Model S at the airport for two and a half days at an average temperature of 16 degrees Fahrenheit. He lost about 2.3% of rated range per day - roughly 14 miles total.

Based on that, I figured I would be OK leaving my car at the airport for 4 days. Using his recommendation of 3% loss per day, as opposed to Tesla's 1% per day recommendation, I figured I would lose 12% of my charge while out of town. To be safe, before I left for the airport, I charged to 100%.

When I arrived at the airport, my battery was at 79% and the temperature was 38 degrees F. The article linked to above mentioned putting the car into energy saving mode to help conserve power. I looked for this option on my car, but couldn't find it. A quick check of the owner's manual told me that, while this used to be an option on early versions of the Model S, the functionality has now been automated, so there was no longer an option for users to enable or disable it. (On a side note, I love that the owner's manual is electronic and can be searched from the display screen.)

We left Thursday afternoon and returned Monday afternoon. Here are the high and low temperatures while we were away:

Day	High (°F)	Low (°F)
Thursday		37
Friday	46	35
Saturday	44	33
Sunday	44	32
Monday	44

When I returned, my battery was at 74%. That 5% loss represents roughly 15 miles of rated range lost over almost exactly 4 days. That is more in line with Tesla's 1% per day guideline than the 2.3% the Teslarati article author experienced. Granted, the temperatures for my test were about 15 degrees warmer than he experienced, but all in all, I was happy the loss was less than I expected.

Just like my cross-country road trip eliminated any last vestiges of range anxiety, this test eliminated my fear of losing charge while parked out in the cold.

Wheel Repair

As I mentioned before, I had some curb rash on one of my tires repaired. I'm really pleased with the results. I can't even tell where the work was done!

Before 1

Before 2

After 1

After 2

I spoke with the person who made the repairs and he said they first grind down and buff out any damage to the metal of the wheel. He said not enough metal is removed to affect the wheel's balance and my particular mark was so slight, barely any metal was removed. Then they mix matching paint, apply it and feather it in with the rest of the wheel, then dry it. They actually get the exact color from Tesla, so the match is perfect.

Now I just have to keep from hitting another curb!

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First Tesla Service, Wheel Damage, and The Drop Stop

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.

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Two Month Ownership Update

I've owned my Model S for almost two months now, so I thought I'd post another update on my ownership experience.

Electricity Cost

I recently got my first electric bill that included a full month of Tesla ownership. You may recall that I estimated my monthly Tesla electricity costs to be around $42.74. And although that was what I calculated, I actually have budgeted $50.

Turned out, I was pretty close. My electricity bill for September was $86.64 and for October was $132.82. That's an increase of $46.18. I did own the Tesla for a bit of September, so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison, but it's close enough for me. The weather here is starting to grow colder, so electricity costs for the car will creep up a bit, then decrease again in the spring as temperatures rise.

There are a couple reasons for this. First, batteries don't perform as well when they are cold. In fact, Teslas have a battery heater to keep the batteries from getting too cold. And B, when the batteries are very cold, the car limits regenerative charging until the batteries are heated. I have yet to see this happen (an indicator is displayed on the dash), but so far, it's only gotten down to the low 50s in my area. When December and January roll around and temperatures drop to the 30s, I expect to see this more frequently. Of course, if regenerative charging is reduced, that will increase the power needed from the wall connector to charge. Lastly, when it is colder, I'll probably be using the heater more. The seat heaters are more energy efficient, so owners tend to use those more than the cabin air heaters to stay warm. I'm not sure which method I will use more often. I will say that I like the heated steering wheel. My hands often get cold on my morning commute and gripping a warm steering wheel helps keep my fingers toasty!

Service Visit

I took my car in for some minor servicing. After driving it for a week or two, I noticed it seemed to be pulling to the left a bit, so I needed an alignment. I also found two paint issues on the hood - one was a small chip and the other looked like a little imperfection in the paint - like a small paint bubble was there and popped during drying. I also noticed the edges of the rear spoiler weren't firmly attached to the hatchback.

Tesla service was quite professional. A technician took my car for a drive and confirmed the alignment issue and also checked the paint. He said the paint issues were probably from debris while the car was being shipped to my delivery location on a carrier. The spoiler has to be replaced - they can't just glue the corners down. They didn't have a replacement spoiler in stock, so that is still on order.

All work was done with no charge and I was given an older Model S as a loaner while they worked on my car. They originally wanted to charge me for the alignment, but I said the car only had 1,000 miles on it (at the time), and I had noticed the alignment issue since I first picked the car up. I admitted it was probably my fault for not bringing it to their attention sooner and if they had to charge me, I would understand. My service adviser consulted with his manager and she approved a no charge alignment, which was nice.

Paint Coating

I opted to get a ceramic paint coating applied to the car. After reading comments from a bunch of other Tesla owners, I decided on Opti-Coat Pro. This is a ceramic coating that chemically bonds with the paint to form a protective barrier over the car. It takes a month to fully cure and harden, but once it does, it provides protection against chips, fading, and messes like bird droppings. It also helps keep a great shine on the paint and makes water bead more readily. When this coating is applied, any paint imperfections are basically frozen in place, so I wanted to get this done as soon as possible, before any washing swirls or polishing marks got into the paint. It was pricey (about $1,000), but I had that much saved in my auto maintenance budget for a planned suspension replacement on my old car, so I used those funds. I plan on keeping this car for at least 10 years, so I figure this was a good investment to keep it looking good.

Software Bug

I have come across a bug in the audio system. Twice now, the audio just didn't work. No radio, no Bluetooth audio from my phone. Even the turn signals stopped making sounds. The fix was to reboot the 17 inch main display. You can't do this while driving, but I pulled over and parked to do it. It only takes about 60 seconds for everything to come back online. Both times, this fixed the problem. This appears to be a known issue from at least a year ago. I forgot I can submit a bug report from the car, so I'll do that if it happens again.

Road Trip!

We've planned our first Tesla road trip! For the holiday season, we'll be driving down to Arizona to visit family. I spent a couple hours using the trip planner at EVTripping.com. We're going to try to make the entire trip using only free Tesla Superchargers. I've made a spreadsheet of our route (because I'm a geek that way) and it looks like the trip will take about 25 hours of driving and 7 hours of charging spread over a three day period.

Planning the trip was an exercise in juggling several variables. Not only do we have to plan how long to drive and where to stop and charge, but, because we are also taking our dog, we have to plan our overnight stays at hotels that accept pets.

Our first overnight stop will be in Mt. Shasta, California at the Best Western Plus Tree House hotel. This site has 4 Supercharger stations available at the hotel and there are 16 more right across the street. This will be interesting because the location is up in the mountains and the temperatures in December are in the mid 40s. That adds up to significant energy usage.

Our second overnight stop will be in Riverside, California. This stop is not quite as convenient, but only because we are travelling with a dog. There are 24 Superchargers on the top floor of a parking garage (open 24 hours and free for Tesla charging), but the closest hotel that accepts pets is about 10 miles away from there. Not bad, but not quite as convenient as charging right outside your hotel door. We'll have to stop and charge a bit on the way to the hotel (at the end of our full day of driving) and top off again the next day on the way out at the start of the next day. I want to leave Riverside with a full charge, because from there, we cross the California desert and don't charge again until we hit Quartzsite, just across the Arizona border. I'm pretty surprised we can go that far, actually. The trip planner says we can make it using only 65% of our battery. I used to make this trip when I drove from California to Arizona State University back when I was in college, so I know there is a serious elevation drop (about 3,400 feet, according to the trip planner), which is likely why the energy usage is low. And if things look a little dicey, there are a couple Superchargers in Indio where I can always top off. (Going back will be a different story, though. I haven't planned that trip yet.)

Hotel charges will be about $200 and I figure maybe $250 in food costs. That's one-way, so double that for the return trip. Energy is free, so I'm looking at about $900 total cost for the trip. A quick search on Travelocity shows a single round trip plane ticket for our travel dates is about $750, plus we'd also have to pay about $100 in pet fees. That means we're looking at a savings of about $1,450 over flying for my family of three plus dog. Of course, I'm trading time for money, but my wife and I both have vacation time we need to use before the end of the year and my daughter will be on winter break from school, so we've got the time to spare.

It's going to be a different type of road trip for us. We normally want to drive fast and get to our destination quickly. But with an electric car, we need to watch our speed (going over 80 MPH or so really burns energy) and we'll have to stop to charge every 2 hours or so. I think this will be a more relaxing drive (especially with Autopilot), but who knows. The slowness might drive us crazy.

Still Love It!

All in all, the car is amazing and I still love driving it every day. And it keeps getting better! Two days ago, the software was updated to include a "navigate on autopilot" feature. A new dash cam feature was also deployed as part of the recent Version 9 software update. It had some issues initially, like corrupting the thumb drive it stores files on if you didn't manually turn off recording before shutting off the car. A software update about a week later seems to have fixed that issue.

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My Tesla Energy Costs Versus Gasoline

The Caveat

I'll state right off, that this whole post is based on very limited data. Sixteen days worth, to be precise, and my driving during this time involved mainly just my work commute and driving about on the weekend here and there. No long trips. I'll revisit this subject in the months to come, but because the Tesla is a new toy, I wanted to look into energy price comparisons now.

I thought I'd take a look at how much money, if any, I am saving by driving an electric car instead of a gas car.

Crunching The Numbers

Luckily, I have good data on how much I have spent on gasoline over the past year. Because I track all my spending in an app and on Mint.com, I can easily pull close to a year's worth of data. For this study, I'm using data from November 2017 (the first full month we lived in our house in Washington) through August 2018. (I got my Telsa midway through September 2018, so I'm excluding that month from my calculations.) My gasoline costs include all taxes.

To calculate electricity costs, I need to be a bit more careful. Unlike some areas, my electricity costs are comprised of only two components: costs for electricity used and taxes. My power company does not assess a delivery fee or a base monthly service fee like they do in other parts of the country. Here's a copy of my bill. As you can see, no extraneous charges. Just energy costs and city tax. (State tax is included in the electricity price.)

Click to enlarge

Based on this information, I have what I need to create a basic spreadsheet to compare my monthly average gas costs with the average electricity costs for my Tesla. Last week, I posted some efficiency numbers for the car, but here's a slightly updated version (2 more days of data). My efficiency dropped by 1 Wh/mi. (Technically, it rose, but that means it got worse because lower is better for this metric.)

Here's my spreadsheet. Formulas are pretty simple. I extrapolate the electricity costs to a monthly value based on a 30 day month. Electricity costs and taxes are taken directly from my electric bill.

Click to enlarge

Note that my electric company does not offer a Time Of Use plan to residential customers, where electricity rates are lower during non-peak hours. They tried it once in 2001 / 2002 but most customers ended up paying more, so they cancelled the program.

"Oops. My bad!"

Given that 16 years have passed and electric cars are becoming more popular, I hope they may reconsider this decision and try the program again. If they did, I could program the Tesla to charge when rates are lowest and possibly save even more.

The Verdict

Based on this, I am saving an average of $51.56 each month by driving an electric car instead of my Prius.

Last month, I adjusted my budget by lowering my gas budget from $100 a month to zero and increasing my electricity budget by $50. I picked that number simply because it was half of my gas budget, but it looks like that was a good guess.

Some Final Thoughts

The car is not going to pay for itself via gas savings. I never thought it would and I've never heard anyone claim it would. But in addition to gas savings, there are a lot of other savings an electric car offers: No oil or oil filter changes. No radiator fluid or transmission fluid changes. No tune ups needed. No spark plugs. No timing belts. No air filter changes. No emission test fees. These savings will add up over time.

My old car was a Prius that got between 48 and 53 miles per gallon. If I drove a non-hybrid car, my savings could easily be twice what they are.

My initial thought is that living in a mountainous area might result in better energy usage numbers. Sure, I have to use more energy going up hills, but I regain a lot of it going back down. Compare this to a place like Arizona, where I used to live. There, the terrain is pretty much flat, which means there are next to no opportunities to charge via gravity. Of course, you still regain some charge from just slowing the car via regenerative braking. I wonder if anyone has compared energy efficiency on the two types of terrain...

Electricity is a price-regulated commodity (at least in most states, including my home state of Washington). This means wild swings in prices are rare. Gasoline, on the other hand, is not regulated and wild pricing swings are common and subject to various geopolitical forces.

A Time Of Use plan could be critical in some areas. In Arizona, the electric company charges three different rates during the year. Lowest rates are in the spring and winter. Rates are higher in June, July, September and October, and rates are the highest in August - peak air conditioning season. Charging your car in such an environment would necessitate being on a Time Of Use plan to charge at the cheapest rates possible.

Installing solar power at your home would increase your savings, although maybe not enough to pay for itself.

Where'd his glasses go in panel 7?

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An Energy Primer And My Tesla Energy Usage So Far

(Not actually from my car)

I remember back when I first got my Prius, I was totally fascinated with gas mileage and how to maximize it. There is a whole community dedicated to hypermiling - trying to get the maximum miles per gallon from their cars. After owning a Prius for a while, my interest in gas mileage gradually tapered off and I just accepted that I would get between 48 and 53 miles per gallon. Tesla owners are no different only instead of miles per gallon, they geek out over watt hours per mile.

There are probably not many subjects drawing the attention of Tesla owners, especially new Tesla owners, more than energy usage. A Tesla keeps all sorts of statistics about its energy usage and a lot of that information is made available to programmers via Tesla’s API. This allows for programmers, be it third party developers or just amateur hobbyists, to look at raw data from the car and go full nerdcore on all sorts of technical information.

It’s The Internet. Of Course, People Are Arguing!

In reading Tesla owner’s posts about the subject, it’s clear this can be quite the rabbit hole and I have no intention of falling in. There is a wide range of disagreement on how much power a Tesla actually uses and ways to compare how much power actually gets into the battery versus what is actually drawn from the power company (which isn’t the same due to heat and resistance loses, efficiency losses, battery degradation, etc.), what the best current level to charge at is, as so on. And don’t even get me started on the semantic argument over wall charger versus wall connector! I’ve got a degree in electrical engineering and even I don’t want to get involved with these discussions.

I Don’t Care If I’m Off By A Tiny Bit

Instead, I’m just going to go with what the car reports. This may be slightly different from what is actually used, but trying to figure out anything in more detail involves making a whole lot of assumptions of information we just don’t have.

Look at this like trying to calculate a gasoline car’s miles per gallon. You fill the tank, reset your tripmeter, drive around, fill the tank again, and note your mileage. Your miles per gallon is the number of miles your tripmeter reports divided by the number of gallons of gas you put in. Simple, right?

The problem is that’s not going to be super accurate. Your tripmeter is calibrated for a certain diameter wheel and tire. Is your wheel the same size as what the manufacturer calibrated with or did you get custom wheels? What about the tires? Did you know different tires have different rolling resistances and that rolling resistance may account for 5% to 15% of fuel consumption? Tire pressure affects mileage, so if your tires change pressure (and they do with temperature, as well with possible leaks), you can’t get an accurate number. The density of gasoline varies with temperature, so if you initially filled your tank on a hot day then filled it again on a cold day, you might be putting more gas into your tank than you actually burned.

In other words, when you figure your car’s miles per gallon, you ignore a whole bunch of variables that may affect your final number and you just use the data the car reports to you (via the tripmeter and the gas pump). I’m going to do the same with my electric car and avoid falling down that rabbit hole I mentioned earlier.

I’ve linked my Tesla account to the EVTripping website. This allows the website to get an authentication token that allows it to connect to my Tesla and download data each night. I’ve had an account with them since I bought my car, so they’ve got my entire usage history from Day 1.

The MPG Equivalent For Electric Cars

The important number EV owners track is watt hours per mile (Wh/mi) – how much energy it takes to move the car per mile. The lower the number, the better. Just like it assigns gas cars a miles per gallon figure, the EPA rates electric cars with an energy usage value. They rate my car at 35 kWh/100 miles . That is another way of saying 350 Wh/mi because 1 kWh = 1,000 Wh.

Many of the apps that track Tesla energy usage calculate an efficiency number. This number is how your car compares to the EPA rated performance. In gas car terms, this is like comparing your actual gas mileage with the EPA stated gas mileage for your vehicle. If the EPA says your car gets 25 miles per gallon and your actual figure was 20 miles per gallon, you could say your efficiency was 80%, or 20 divided by 25.

A similar calculation is done by most Tesla-related apps. Your efficiency is your actual energy usage divided by the EPA rated energy usage. Numbers greater than 100% indicate you are using less energy than the EPA calculated you would.

It’s incredibly rare for a gas car to get better gas mileage than the EPA calculated value. After all, their tests are done under ideal conditions and your driving isn't. Further, with gas cars, fuel flows in one direction – from your tank through the engine. By that, I mean if you are going downhill, you may use less gas, but you don’t actually get more gas in your tank as you travel down the hill.

Wait, I Get Power Back?

Thanks to regenerative braking, electric vehicles do reverse the energy flow and refill your “tank” (aka battery pack)! As gravity pulls your car down the hill, your motor switches from consuming energy to generating energy and feeds it back into your batteries. In effect, this lets gravity “refill your tank.”

Now, there is no free lunch. Going down a hill will never allow you to recapture *all* of the energy used going up the hill. You lose energy due to friction, heat, wind resistance, and a bunch of other factors. However, going down the hill can regain you around 90% of the energy used to go up the hill in the first place. (Again, this is a number many people argue about, but it’s what most trip planning sites use when calculating energy usage over changing elevations and it seems to match well with people’s experiences, so I’m going with it.)

Being able to generate their own electricity is what helps electric cars achieve greater than 100% efficiency. For example, look at this data from my drive to and from work:

The trips are listed in reverse chronological order, so the bottom trip is my drive to work and the top is my drive home. You’ll notice my drive to work has an efficiency of over 100%. Part of this is due to the change in elevation. My home sits at 375 feet above sea level and my work is 138 feet above sea level. My morning commute is basically a 237 foot downhill drive. (For those sharp-eyed readers looking at the distance figures, I take different routes to and from work to avoid traffic, which is why the mileage is slightly different for the trips.)

I also use Autopilot in both directions, which helps reduce energy consumption by reducing the small fluctuations in speed that happen naturally with human drivers because they can't keep their foot pressure perfectly constant. (Cruise control in gas cars provides a similar boost to MPG.)

My Numbers

After two weeks of ownership, here are my lifetime energy usage numbers. Note that this chart lists efficiency as Wh/mile rather than a percent comparison to the EPA rated number (which again, is 350 Wh/mile).

My average efficiency is better than the EPA stated 350 Wh/mi. Granted, this is only after two weeks of use and, as you can see, there is no battery degradation. Over time, batteries do start to lose some of their energy storage capability. Real world testing by Tesla users has shown that I can expect about a 5% loss after 50,000 miles, but the loss really tapers off after that. Tesla battery packs should retain 90% of their capacity after 160,000 miles and 80% after 500,000 miles!

For comparison, with my Prius, I did not notice any battery degradation after 8 years and 145,000 miles. Granted, the Prius provided absolutely no way to measure battery usage other than a 6 segment image on the dash, so it’s not likely I would have noticed a 5% to 10% loss in capacity.

In short, I’m not worried about battery life.

Next week, I’ll talk about energy costs and compare it to what I would have spent on gasoline.

If you have questions or comments, be sure to leave a note below!

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My First Week Of Tesla Ownership

Ava, The Quickening

Wow. What a fun week! The car is amazing! Here are some random highlights:

What's In A Name?

In the Tesla software, you can name your car. I tested out an Easter egg by naming my car 42 - which was changed to "Life, The Universe, And Everything." I ended up going with a suggestion from my wife: Ava, which was the name of the robot from Ex Machina. Not sure if that means she thinks the car is going to kill us.

The Original Ava

Charging

I've set the car to charge nightly to 80% battery capacity. This gives me about 250 miles of energy. Tesla recommends charging to 80% to 90% for day-to-day use and only going to 100% for long trips. This is to help extend the life of the battery. I drove to and from work Monday and Tuesday, about 62 miles round trip each day and, without charging it Monday night, I was down to 28% charge on Tuesday night.

My car is scheduled to charge at 12:30 AM and the Tesla app tells me when it stops charging. On Tuesday night, to go from 28% to 80% took 3 hours and 15 minutes using the high power wall charger. Sadly, my local electric company does not offer a time-of-use plan for residential customers where power costs at night are lower. Still, I'm just going to leave my car programmed for doing scheduled charging at night.

I haven't tried a Supercharger yet, nor have we done a long road trip where we need one, but one is in the works. As part of planning for that, I also signed up for free cards from the ChargePoint and Blink charging networks. The cards are free and give you a discounted price when you use their chargers. I don't plan on using anything other than Tesla Superchargers, but it pays to plan for contingencies.

Tech Goodies

I love Autopilot!! It makes my commute so easy, especially on the way home when I sometimes hit stop and go traffic. Autopilot takes care of the tedious starting and stopping. Here are a couple videos I made of Autopilot in action on my way to work.






I'll be the first to admit these aren't the most exciting Tesla videos out there, but I wanted to show the dashboard display and the early morning hours seemed a good time, with it being dark out and all. You can see the Tesla detect cars in the adjacent lanes as they approach. I like that the image of my car changes - when the car slows, the brake lights on the car image come on and, as you can see, when the headlights are on, the image shows headlights. I am easily amused.

The displays to the left and right of the center image are configurable. To the left, I keep mileage and trip energy usage data. To the right is a graph showing my energy usage over the last 5, 15, or 30 miles. But if you don't like those, you can display other data - the air pressure of each tire, a navigation display, an analog clock, phone contacts, or media player info (either FM or XM radio or media from a connected phone, or some other internet streaming service). The left image changes to a turn-by-turn navigation map when you are using navigation.

The car uses GPS location to intelligently perform some tasks. For example, when I approach or drive away from my house, it will automatically open or close my garage door. I have the air suspension option and the car remembers the location of where you set it to the High or Highest position. Whenever you return to that location, it automatically raises the car. This is nice because I have a steep driveway and my Prius was always bottoming out. Now, whenever I am near home, the suspension raises. When you hit 35 MPH, the suspension automatically drops from Highest to High and at 45 MPH, it drops from High to Standard. For less wind resistance at higher speeds, you can tell the car to drop to the lowest position over XX MPH. (It defaults to 90 MPH.)

I can use the Summon feature on the Tesla app to have my car remotely pull out of or into the garage. Out of the garage works fine, but going into the garage has some problems. Because my driveway is so steep, the car won't go forward until at least the front wheels are in the garage and on a flat surface. But Summon actually works anywhere, so if I'm in a parking lot and someone has parked too close to let me open my doors, I can have the car pull forward so I can get in.

Fit And Function

The interior of the car has a very minimalist look. In fact, there are no storage pockets in the doors, there are no handholds on the ceiling and, something Tesla owners have been complaining about for years, there are no coat hooks. After a couple of days, I did find one storage area right under the main view screen. Unfortunately, this area does not have a door to it or even a small lip. When stuff is in there, it tends to come flying out when you accelerate quickly 😄

The car doors have a high threshold. I find I have to raise my leg fairly high to get out of the car. Maybe I just have my seat too low. You can set it to adjust the seat and steering wheel when you park to make entering and exiting the car a bit easier.

Buzz

We went out to dinner Wednesday night and I had my first instance of Tesla time. Tesla time is the term owners coined for the time Tesla owners spend answering questions from curious strangers about their cars. The waiter had seen me park and asked some questions about my Model S. He was fairly knowledgeable and commented that he hadn't seen many P100Ds around.

I'm A Scaredy Cat

I haven't tried Ludicrous mode yet. The car accelerates so quickly in standard mode, I'm honestly more than a bit scared to see what the faster mode is like. You want to know why I am scared? Read this Motor Trend examination of what happens during Ludicrous acceleration. One point four one g at 0.4 seconds after launch! Zero to sixty in 2.28 seconds! It hits 30 MPH after traveling 1.5 car lengths!

I also would like to first try it on a straight stretch of road, which is hard to come by in Washington. I am looking into racing tracks around the area. Seriously.

Show Me The Money

My monthly car payment is a bit lower than I planned. I also will pay less total interest over the life of the loan than I calculated. I originally thought I would pay about $6,800 dollars in interest. It turns out, I will pay significantly less (because I ended up putting more down).

Only $5,682! My purchase qualified for the $7,500 tax credit, which means even taking out a loan, I'm still coming out $1,818 ahead.

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The Tesla Purchase Experience: Week 6 Plus One Day

Sunday

The last time I spoke with the delivery advisor, she mentioned that her workweek was Sunday to Thursday, so on Sunday I was waiting for the written confirmation that my trade-in quote was actually good for 1,000 miles or 4 weeks, not the 500 miles or 2 weeks the paperwork said. Sunday night came and I hadn't heard anything, so I sent her an email asking for confirmation.

Checking the weather forecast, it looks like there is a slight chance of rain next Sunday when I am due to pick up the car. I hope it's not raining because I'd like to give the car a good once over. But, it's a week away and weather forecasts usually aren't all that accurate that far out anyway. And for all I know, the delivery place might be indoors or have covered parking. I should probably check it out on Google Maps...

Thinking of the weather also got me thinking about floor mats. It rains so much here, I definitely want some all weather floor mats so I don't ruin the standard mats. (I did the same thing with my Prius.) So I ordered these OEM floor mats. They are made by WeatherTech, the same people who made the ones I bought for my Prius. It looks like they are $35 cheaper if you buy them from WeatherTech, but they charge $33 shipping whereas Tesla doesn't charge shipping at all, so it works out to about the same. Plus, if you order directly from Tesla, you get the Tesla logo on them, which you don't get ordering from WeatherTech.

Monday

I received written confirmation of the longer time frame for the trade-in quote. The advisor asked me one last time if I wanted her to go ahead and submit the final paperwork. She had been holding off submitting in case I needed to resubmit with a different mileage. I told her to go ahead.

Shortly thereafter, I received my (second) delivery appointment confirmation. Hopefully, this one will not be postponed! The email said to check my Tesla account for payment information and instructions.

I logged in to my Telsa account and had a bit of a shock. Instead of the "6/6 Tasks Complete" image (like above) that I had seen the last several times I logged in, I saw this one:

I seem to have lost 2 tasks along the way. One of the steps now gone was the trade-in step. I can't remember what the other one was. But I also now had a payment section:

Goodbye, money!

When I spoke with the delivery advisor, she said I could submit the payment details at any time. Of course, I want to hold on to my money as long as possible, so I asked her if I could wait until Friday night, even though ACH payments are not processed on weekends. She said yes, that even if the funds have not actually transferred, they can see the payment is in process. So I'll probably submit the transfer Friday.

There is one other issue I just thought of: In Washington, as I was told by a Tesla employee back when I placed my order, the trade-in value of my old car can be offset against the cost of my new car when it comes to calculating sales tax. (I verified that here.) This should result in about a $505 tax savings for me. As you can see in the image above, it's not clear that happened. I emailed my delivery advisor to confirm this was calculated correctly. I asked for a line-by-line accounting of the totals.

Tuesday

I received an email from my delivery advisor regarding my tax question. She said she passed the request on to the contract team for more information.

Wednesday

No response yet, so I sent another email.

Thursday

My all-weather floor mats arrived today. Still no response regarding taxes. Stopped off at the gas station for what I hope will be the last time ever today!

Friday

Had some heavy rain early this morning, but it's stopped now. That's the first heavy rain in a couple months. Forecast for Sunday is 67% chance of rain, with 64% chance in the 10 AM hour and 61% in the 11 AM hour. My pickup appointment is at 11 AM.

No response on taxes. At this point, I need to initiate my payment, so there's nothing I can do about this. Truthfully, I don't have any leverage to force them to address the issue. It's not like I'm going to cancel my order and lose my $2,500 deposit over a $505 tax discrepancy. Likewise, I'm not going to delay taking possession of the car because there's a good chance a new trade-in value calculation will drop the value of my car by more than $505.

The Sales Tax Issue

I decided to take another look at the documents available to me in my Tesla account and I found the purchase agreement, which contained a breakdown of the purchase costs, including taxes.

Try as I might, I can't figure out how they arrived at that tax figure. It seems to be more than what I should have been charged, but less than I could have been charged, so I'm going to go with it.

The sales tax rate in Bellevue, where I am picking up the car is 10%:

If they charged me tax on the whole purchase price, I should have been charged $14,870. If they charged me tax on the purchase price less my trade-in (which is what they should have done), I should have been charged ($148,700 - $5,050) * 10% = $14,365. If they messed up and charged me the Seattle sales tax rate (where their other pick up location is located), which is 10.1%, I should have been charged either $15,018.70 or $14,508.65.

The actual tax rate I was charged is $14,795.96 / $148,700 = 9.95%. Go figure. So the difference between what I think I should have been charged and what I was charged is $14,795.96 - $14,365 = $430, in their favor. But they charged me $74.04 less than the flat out 10% tax rate I think they might have charged. It's not worth raising a stink about, in my opinion, so I went ahead and made the payment.

If only that were true, Tesla. If only that were true...

On the positive side of things, I timed this purchase just right for my existing license. The current license for my Prius is due to be renewed exactly one week after I get the Tesla, so that saved me $150 or so in licensing fees.

Saturday

Less than 24 hours to go!

I took a look at the pick up location on Google maps. It's a Tesla showroom as well. Still a 61% chance of rain at 11 AM tomorrow.

Spent some time getting my paperwork together (I need to bring my title, registration, and proof of insurance). Also cleaned out my old car. Then I spent about 2 hours watching You Tube videos from the Teslavangelist.

Too bad my weekly posts run Sunday to Saturday. You'll have to wait for next week for the big delivery!







Just kidding!! I wouldn't do that!

Sunday

The day is finally here! It was overcast, but not actually raining - yet. The clouds were definitely thinking about it though.

With my wife and daughter, I drove out to the Tesla service center in Bellevue. It was a pretty big building with a parking lot on two sides filled with Teslas. The building functions as a showroom, delivery center, and service center. We were greeted by an associate holding the door open for us and, when we entered, it looked like we were the only ones there. We were about 15 minutes early for our appointment, so the associate had us wait in a little lounge area, which had a big screen TV displaying a football game, a Koering coffee machine with a selection of flavors, and two big jars of Life Savers candy. The overall color theme of the place was white and the whole building had an Apple Store vibe to it.

After about 10 minutes, an older couple came in and started waiting as well. They were also there to pick up their Tesla. After another few minutes, a different person came in an introduced himself. He said they were just finishing up detailing my car and, while they were doing that, we could finish the paperwork.

He first asked for the keys to my trade in and went out to check it out and get the mileage. When he came back, he had a couple forms my wife and I needed to autograph. We had to sign over the title to our trade in, then a couple of papers giving Tesla power of attorney to file paperwork for the car on our behalf, then some ownership transfer papers.

The next group of papers were for the new car. One was for the loan, another was for the registration and license. The last piece of paper we were given was a cheesy little award that looks like it was made from a Microsoft Word award template and printed on regular paper, not even card stock. I mean, it didn't even have a facsimile of Elon Musk's signature, just had a tiny "Tesla SoDo" down where a signature might be. I'll forever be wondering what that means.

And that was it! It was really painless and we did it all right there at a little table in the lounge area in about 5 minutes. There were maybe 15 pages in all to sign. Based on what I had read online, I expected the process to be entirely electronic, but maybe the state of Washington doesn't allow electronic contracts yet.

We had to wait about 5 more minutes for the detail work to be done, during which time a family of four came in to pick up their car as well. Finally, a woman came and escorted us back to our car.

The Reveal

There were two cars parked inside the building in the back part of the showroom. This was obviously where they delivered the cars to their new owners and went over the brief demonstration of how to use some of the features. The woman had my wife and I sit in the car while she walked us through the basic controls.

I had read the manual many times and had watched lots of videos, so there wasn't really anything she told me that I didn't already know. One thing I did find out was that the Auto Pilot and Auto Steer functionality isn't enabled until the car has been driven at least 50 miles. This, she told me, was to allow all the sensors to calibrate themselves.

She told us how the key fobs operate (they look like little Teslas) and went over the charging adapters that come with the car. She also explained how to plug the charging cable into the car and how it locks and unlocks to the charge port. I then checked out the car to make sure everything looked fine, which it did. Finally, we got in and drove off into the sunset! Err, sunrise.. Well, high noon, partly cloudy sun, actually.

Our first stop was just 5 miles down the road to get some lunch. On the way, my daughter told me to "punch it," which I gleefully did. Holy crap! Everyone screamed at the surge of power. And that wasn't even in ludicrous mode!

We made it safely to the restaurant, where I parked and took some pictures.

We hit a little bit of rain on the way home, but for the most part, the sun shone on my new car all day!

First Thoughts

Wow. The car really is amazing! It takes some getting used to because when you take your foot off the accelerator, the car really slows down with the regenerative breaking. The first dozen or so miles, you can easily get nauseous because you have to learn how to moderate your foot pressure. You don't take your foot of the gas and coast before stepping on the brake like a gas car. In fact, you very rarely have to step on the brake at all!

One thing that really feels weird is there is no ignition or even an on / off switch. Being a Prius owner, I was used to no ignition key, but I still had to push a button to turn the car on and off. Not the Tesla. If you've got the fob in your pocket, you just get the in car, sit down, and put it in drive. When you arrive at your destination, you put it in park and just get out and walk away. It will shut itself off and lock all on its own. If I ever have to drive a regular car again, I know I'm going to just walk away and leave it unlocked and running....

When we got home, I spent the next couple hours playing with all the various settings in the car and doing things like connecting my phone, programming my garage door opener, connecting the car to my WiFi network, installing the all-weather floor mats, etc. The car notified my that there was a pending software update.

During software updates, you can't drive the car or do anything with it. I had the option of scheduling it to install at night (it estimated 1 hour and 40 minutes to install), but we were getting ready for dinner, so I told the car to go ahead and install it now. I was worried that if I left it to install overnight, I might wake up in the morning to find the update failed and the car unable to be driven. (Can you tell I'm a Windows user?) Later in the night, I got a notification on my phone from the Tesla app saying the update was successful.

This post is already running long, so I'll end it here. Next time, I'll talk about my first week of driving.

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