Tesla Model 3 - Finally.

wayne said:
Ah, I found the part about charging to 100% (ugh no copy-and-pasted allowed):

If the high voltage battery charge amount is below 20%, you can keep the high voltage battery performance in optimal condition if you charge the high voltage battery to 100%. (Once a month or more is recommended.)​
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I’m not sure that increases the battery’s performance, per sé. Rather, I think it calibrates the car’s software to make range and % of charge estimates more accurate.
 
FastEddieB said:
I’m not sure that increases the battery’s performance, per sé. Rather, I think it calibrates the car’s software to make range and % of charge estimates more accurate.
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Many days it is just ~8 miles going to the gym and back in the morning. That's not much to recharge. ;)

If we ever go back to the office, then I'll get a few more miles in. The easy route is 15 miles each way, mostly interstate. Surface routes are shorter, but typical a longer drive time.



Wayne
 
Decided to stop by the DC Fast charger on the way home from our daughter's home after lunch today. It's an Electrify America 150 kW DC Fast charger. So, I was surprised that it started at 176 kW. :cool: As it got closer to 80% it slowed down to 155 kW. Still really nice, especially for a 150 kW charger. Charged up to 80% in 16 min.

Even better, with the deal for new Kia EV6 owners the charging was free from Electrify America. :D
 
That review of the Rivian is interesting.

One impression I got, but they didn’t mention - it wouldn’t be good as a pickup truck for carrying anything dirty, and then hosing it out. The bed is more like a trunk in a car, with gaps and a compartment below that’s accessed with a door in the bed floor.

Maybe the intended customer is an off-roader?
 
NoHeat said:
That review of the Rivian is interesting.

One impression I got, but they didn’t mention - it wouldn’t be good as a pickup truck for carrying anything dirty, and then hosing it out. The bed is more like a trunk in a car, with gaps and a compartment below that’s accessed with a door in the bed floor.

Maybe the intended customer is an off-roader?
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There are a number of "trucks" like that currently. Honda Ridgeline comes to mind first, which has a storage compartment under the floor. Probably not aimed at the serious truck user, but those who like to buy some plants or bulky items on occasion.
 
New windshield & tire rotation. Man there are a lot of Model Ss here. Can’t be a good sign. :(
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Learned something new today.

Telsa offers the Universal Mobile Connector (UMC) and the Corded Mobile Connector (CMC). For orders prior to April 17, 2022 the UMC, with a 5-15 adapter, was included with the car. Additional UMCs costs $275 and the CMC cost $400. What I learned was what the difference was between the two connectors.

The UMC has a removable adapter than can be interchanged with adapters to fit a variety of 120V and 240V outlets. The CMC comes with a permanent NEMA 14-50 plug.

That I knew.

The bigger difference between the two is that, while the UMC is limited to charging at 32A, on a 40A or greater circuit, the CMC will charge at 40A, on a 50A or greater circuit.

With the new 'no charger included' policy, the shop.Tesla.com site is now showing both the UMC and CMC at $200.

In the past, buyers had the choice of using the included UMC with a 240V outlet ($45 for the matching adapter) or the $475 Tesla Wall Connector (TWC)--a $430 upgrade. Now, the choice is one of the mobile connectors for $200/$245 or the Wall Connector for $475.

I think the lower cost difference to upgrade to the Wall Connector will lead more owners to choose the Wall Connector.

At $200, I might just pickup a CMC to keep in the garage and carry the UMC in the car. That also gives me a backup if the mobile connect ever fails. Of course, both the CMC and UMC are currently out of stock.
 
Larry in TN said:
The CMC comes with a permanent NEMA 14-50 plug.
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Yeah, I looked at that before I bought my Wall connector (this was a few years ago when wall connector was more expensive).

It especially makes sense if you are going to install or already have 14-50 outlet in your garage (as opposed to the wall-connector that is wired-in directly).
That 14-50 outlet can be used for alot of other things, or you might be a renter and that's a compromise is just having the outlet, or whatever situations like that, it makes sense to use the CMC.

Another consideration is the Wall Connector previously had the 8.5' cord length which was (IMO) restrictively short, depending on how you park you car and the layout of your garage vs where the power-line can be installed. I'm glad the Wall Connectors now all have the 24' length by default. I have one with the longer length, and I can't imagine how its really 24' (doesn't really seem that long when you use it, considering it has to go down to the floor, across, and then back up to the car) and cannot imaging having to wrangle with anything shorter.
 
Teslas are cool. They really are, but to me they're just a computer that happens to have wheels. I am biased, I love my ICE cars. I love my V8s and V6s (@Audi supercharged 3.0T) but also acknowledge that the general consumer doesn't want to have to deal with changing oil, timing belts/chains, fuel injectors that fail, carbon cleaning intake valves, PCV systems, yadda yadda yadda. However I just can't get behind Tesla. Their anti-right-to-repair rhetoric just turns me way off and makes me never want to buy one. If I had a Rolls Royce or Bentley, I can walk into any dealer and get any part I want. What if I buy a totaled Mercedes and fix it up myself and have it recertified by the state with salvage title? No problem. I can still go to the dealer and get the parts I want.

Tesla... well. There were people that bought totaled Teslas and had to buy another Tesla to get parts from. Until recently Tesla didn't have a parts website. Now that they have a parts website, they label a lot of the items as being "specialized" for authorized personnel/shops only. Ok well lets say you fixed a totaled Tesla and got it recertified by the state as safe to drive. Great! Well actually no because Tesla is known to disable your fast-charging and not let you go to Tesla charging stations simply because you worked on the car yourself. When the Takata airbag recall happened, Tesla literally refused to replace them on cars that were rebuilt after being totaled. Yet Honda literally sent people to junkyards all over the country to remove Takata airbags. It took a lawsuit until Tesla went "huh, maybe we should be replacing these dangerous airbags which literally send shrapnel into people's face" The cherry on top is that you can't even get the simplest of parts like lug nut/bolt covers from them!

If you want some content, enjoy these two videos. One guy had his car in for service for multiple months and they continued to charge him for full self-driving (FSD) even though he doesn't have the car! you can skip to about 12 minutes if you want to skip the beginning of the video. The second video is Rich (a popular guy who rebuilds Teslas and talks about how anti-right-to-repair they are).


I would love to buy a Tesla for my daily driver and have my ICE cars for fun (but still drive them often). However they are so anti-right-to-repair that if anything goes wrong, I am bound to Tesla and Tesla only to fix my car and they know that so they charge you an unbelievable amount for any repair + their service is ungodly slow.
 
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MyDimeIsUp said:
I would love to buy a Tesla for my daily driver and have my ICE cars for fun (but still drive them often). However they are so anti-right-to-repair that if anything goes wrong, I am bound to Tesla and Tesla only to fix my car and they know that so they charge you an unbelievable amount for any repair + their service is ungodly slow.
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At last, some Tesla bashing with merit.

But, that 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty does help a good bit. I tend to buy new and keep for about 8-10 years (or more).
And I have it on good authority from some guy in India that I can buy an extended warranty for any car that will save me THOUSANDS!
 
There are plenty of new / used parts on EBay. I’ve already changed my sway bar links myself and got a frunk part coming in a few days. There are a few shops that service Teslas as well. Could be the difference between a $20K battery replacement and a $5K battery repair. But I’d agree, there needs to be more expansion in the non Tesla service market. Especially since their own service centers haven’t exactly gotten glowing reviews.
 
Velocity173 said:
There are plenty of new / used parts on EBay. I’ve already changed my sway bar links myself and got a frunk part coming in a few days. There are a few shops that service Teslas as well. Could be the difference between a $20K battery replacement and a $5K battery repair. But I’d agree, there needs to be more expansion in the non Tesla service market. Especially since their own service centers haven’t exactly gotten glowing reviews.
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While that's true that you can get new/used parts on eBay, you shouldn't have to get new parts from eBay. If I want a new part, I should be able to go to my local Tesla "dealer" and get the part or have them order it and shipped to the dealer. I shouldn't have to go to eBay to get new parts. Or you should be able to order from a trusted vendor/website online. Domestic and Asian cars have AutoZone, dealers, RockAuto, and more. Us euro guys have FCP Euro, ShopDAP, ECS Tuning, etc. Tesla? I really haven't heard of anything. Grant it 8 to 10 years since the Model S has come out is still fairly new but you think someone would've taken advantage of the market to open an online Tesla parts website, but it just isn't possible if you can't easily source parts from the get-go.

And honestly I shouldn't be penalized by Tesla for working on my own car. It's my car I do what I want. Don't go disabling fast charging or other features of the car.
 
Velocity173 said:
There are plenty of new / used parts on EBay. I’ve already changed my sway bar links myself and got a frunk part coming in a few days.
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I may want to hit eBay for a better drunk for my EV6. The ones in the US are tiny. Apparently it’s a “child safety” thing. :rolleyes: I’ll just need to make sure mine has the right setup to connect the bigger frunk they have for European owners.
 
JOhnH said:
At last, some Tesla bashing with merit.

But, that 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty does help a good bit.
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That’s just on the battery and drive units. 4 years otherwise.

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Though I often keep things for decades, the plan right now is to upgrade/trade the Model 3 after 4 years, if not sooner. And that’s a fair cop of poor Tesla service. We have not experienced it yet, but it seems legendary by all accounts.
 
wayne said:
I may want to hit eBay for a better drunk for my EV6. The ones in the US are tiny. Apparently it’s a “child safety” thing. :rolleyes: I’ll just need to make sure mine has the right setup to connect the bigger frunk they have for European owners.
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Heh, welcome to the U.S. The land where it took multiple years to approve matrix-LED headlights to update it from regulations from the 80s and the land where the FAA will ground you for anything! DOT is a joke.
 
MyDimeIsUp said:
While that's true that you can get new/used parts on eBay, you shouldn't have to get new parts from eBay. If I want a new part, I should be able to go to my local Tesla "dealer" and get the part or have them order it and shipped to the dealer. I shouldn't have to go to eBay to get new parts. Or you should be able to order from a trusted vendor/website online. Domestic and Asian cars have AutoZone, dealers, RockAuto, and more. Us euro guys have FCP Euro, ShopDAP, ECS Tuning, etc. Tesla? I really haven't heard of anything. Grant it 8 to 10 years since the Model S has come out is still fairly new but you think someone would've taken advantage of the market to open an online Tesla parts website, but it just isn't possible if you can't easily source parts from the get-go.

And honestly I shouldn't be penalized by Tesla for working on my own car. It's my car I do what I want. Don't go disabling fast charging or other features of the car.
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You don’t have to go to EBay to get new parts. I go through EBay to save money.

They won’t support a salvage vehicle but Tesla owners can order most parts from Tesla direct through their account. They started doing that a few years ago. Parts availability is a whole other issue.
 
I put my Tesla Model 3 LR info into KBB.com.

Trade-in: $4,088 - $7,699 more than the price (not including TTL) I paid on September 15 of last year.

Private Party: $6,951 - $10,753 more than I paid.

If I were to order a brand new TM3LR with the same specs today, it would cost $6,000 more than what I paid eight months ago. I would get an upgraded graphics processor and hardware support for the upcoming CCS1 adapter, neither of which my car has.

Crazy car market we have right now. I should have bought a few more and flipped them!
 
Agreed. Not a Tesla but I have a 2013 Audi allroad I bought in July 2020. After putting about 21k miles on it, I can still sell it for more. I was looking to get a C7 2012 - 2016 Audi A6 with the 3 liter supercharged v6 but those have gone up even more than my allroad. Not worth it right now. The market is certainly out of control.

My dad was able to buy a BRAND NEW manual 5.0 Mustang GT below MSRP. Bought it brand new since it made more sense than buying a used car since he was able to haggle below sticker price. Seems Ford of America has stuck true to their word about coming down on dealerships marking up their cars ridiculously. Not sure about other brands. Due to chip shortage though there are no heated seats, no all-digital gauge cluster, and no memory seats. It is a manual v8 sports car though so you really can't complain.
 
tspear said:
I do NOT know for Tesla. However, I know for older Nissan Leafs that a level 1 charger slightly degraded the battery each time, same with the DC fast Charging. The optimal charging solution for battery health was a level 2 charger.
I wonder if this is still true today, and if so is it the same for all cars? And also, does it make a difference in battery health between the lower end level 2 charger at 30amps to some of the newer ones pushing 80amps.
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Salty said:
Another dumb question on a totally different subject. I'm finding for my normal use the 110 charger is adequate. I have yet to need to pull out the 220 for my normal weekly commute. Is the 110 charger better for the batteries, or should I just use the 220 all the time? I've only been charging to 80% unless I know I have a long trip the next day, which will happen almost never.
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The main thing that causes degradation in lithium-ion batteries is heat. For many chemistries, sitting fully charged is a close second. (Yes, other things like charge cycles and extremely low charge are worse, but those are things we know about that are generally well controlled outside the cells themselves in any modern Li-Ion battery.)

The research I've seen on this is that the level 1 (120V) charging is ever so slightly worse than low-amperage level 2 charging because even though it doesn't heat the battery up nearly as much, it does so for a much longer time, since the 120V charging is also less efficient in addition to the obvious lower power.

So, the absolute best thing to do in theory is to charge at 240V and 12-20 amps. However, it really doesn't make enough of a difference to worry about, so I have no issue with plugging in at 120V/15A or 240V/40A. And given Tesloop's experience with their high-mileage Teslas with most of it being L3 DCFC/Supercharging, I wouldn't worry about this much, in a Tesla.

In other brands, it's worth paying attention to whether the battery is air or liquid cooled (liquid is far better) and how the BMS is programmed to handle heat. Nissan's early Leafs had terrible degradation in hot climates, for example. Hopefully there's enough hive knowledge in the industry at this point that some of the manufacturers who are relatively new to BEVs won't make these same mistakes over again.

Salty said:
Just curious if there is a way to pull this data from the Tesla other than looking at the console? I've been a hyper miler long before hybrids even, so yeah, speed and rain make a huge difference.
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Several sites/apps to do this. TeslaFi, Nikola, Stats for Tesla, TezLab are some examples. Being a data geek I got all of the above, but haven't decided which one(s) I'm keeping once my first year is up yet. :D
 
Just shut the rear left door on my Model S a few days ago and heard glass breaking. Opened the door and the window slid half way down and won’t go up now. Off to the service center again. Needs a new eMMC (daughterboard) for the touchscreen as well. :(
 
I hope nobody is stupid enough to pay $140,000 for a version 1.0 electric truck. But stupidity seems to be infinite, so I doubt it.
 
FastEddieB said:
A later tweet said it was a typo, where the list price was entered twice by mistake.
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I would hope so, but I can't stop the feeling that there are some folks that went running just to have an expensive truck to show off to friends...
 
FastEddieB said:
A later tweet said it was a typo, where the list price was entered twice by mistake.

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If that had been true after Ford corporate had just decreed them to stop that practice for these EVs, it'd be a great way to have your dealership contract revoked. I have a feeling Ford isn't messing around on the dealer markup for some of these new models that they are trying to beat everyone to market on.
 
"In fact this a demo unit and not for sale." :rolleyes2:

edit: It exists to get people to come to the lot so that we can sell them a car they didn't want. This is why I just bout my EV from Carvana. If I never go to another car dealership it will be too soon. Creeps.
 
Rich Holt said:
"In fact this a demo unit and not for sale." :rolleyes2:

edit: It exists to get people to come to the lot so that we can sell them a car they didn't want. This is why I just bout my EV from Carvana. If I never go to another car dealership it will be too soon. Creeps.
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Actually I prefer demo cars. The alternative is often buying a car that some random stranger has driven for already. And who knows how they drove.

Tim
 
Salty said:
You don’t use the cabin overheat protection feature? Or is that one of those “only certain models or years” things?
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I have it. And your mentioning reminds me I should make sure it’s engaged.
 
Salty said:
You don’t use the cabin overheat protection feature? Or is that one of those “only certain models or years” things?
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Somehow that got switched off. Fixed it.
 
A couple caveats about Cabin Overheat Protection in Teslas:

1) It only remains active for 12 hours .

2) It consumes a fair amount of energy, 75kwh. Not an issue if you’re home and plugged in. On the road, you have to be aware of the draw so as not to end up with much less range after it’s been in effect.
 
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