Tesla Model 3 - Finally.

I started watching several Tesla-oriented YouTube channels three or four years ago. The single, central display was one of my concerns. When the opportunity presented, I went for my first test drive (M3P) primarily to see what it felt like to drive with that display instead of a conventional instrument cluster. It didn't take long to figure out it was a non-issue for me.

I like Tesla's minimalist design. It is different from conventional designs and that feels right to me. Other EV brands are building more conventional designs and interiors and those will be preferred by many buyers. They include a number of very good options for EV buyers who don't want a Tesla. No one design is going to be right for everyone.

Any car still eligible for the $7,500 federal tax credit is built by a manufacturer who hasn't yet delivered 200,000 EVs. Tesla past that mark several years ago, and is not delivering over 300,000 per quarter, yet still has demand which exceeds it's ability to supply. The other manufacturers will run past that mark soon. Anyone interested in those cars should consider ordering sooner rather than later so they don't miss out of that substantial credit.

FWIW, when Tesla's credit ran out, they lowered the price of the cars a bit, though not by the full amount of the lost credit.

The only credit I was able to receive was a 30% credit on the cost of installing my "EV charging station" in the garage. That didn't affect my purchasing decisions at all but I still took the credit. I think the need for these EV credits is quickly coming to an end. EV car production is lagging well behind demand for all makes and models. People aren't lining up for months to buy an EV because they want the credit.

Lots of very good reviews coming out on the two EV pickup trucks that have started deliveries; the Ford F150 Lightning and Rivian R1T. They look like great options for those who need or prefer trucks. Fast Lane Car and Out of Spec Motoring channels are posting videos of their F150 and R1T now. FLC had a recent towing test (up and down the Front Range) of the F150 that was pretty interesting. Long lines to get either of those trucks right now. Hopefully, they'll be able to ramp up production soon.

Bit of a heat wave here in Tennessee (and elsewhere) right now. When I arrived home from work yesterday the app said the interior of the car was 142° with an outside temp of 103°. I started the AC on the app as soon as I landed which had the car comfortable by the time I arrived. Newer ICE cars have that feature too, but they have to run the engine to run the AC. There's also a defrost mode for winter. Haven't gotten to try that out with real ice on the car yet.

With the heat wave, I found an easier way to get the AC fan to Hi than through the touch screen. The voice commands of "Set fan to 10" then, later, "Set fan to auto" work great. Don't know why I didn't figure that out sooner. (Fan settings are 1 through 10)
 
Ghery said:
Good to hear that. We bought a new 2021 Ford Escape Hybrid the end of October of last year. Just over 4000 miles on it now. Sounds like battery life should be a non-issue of us.
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had to share this - the display from my 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid after a short trip...


200mpg.jpg

yeah, I know... I don't see it that high normally.
 
So, it turns out I was right. I didn't have full self driving yet. I was "in the queue" for it, but it just enabled for me this week. It's significantly more capable, and from one short drive it does seem to address some of my complaints about "auto steer". However, there were still a few times on a short ride that I had to wrestle control from it. Two of them were understandable, in a construction area with a lot of confusing crap going on. The third was a regular right turn at a stoplight where it mis-judged where the lanes would be after the turn and swung me into the oncoming lane - then swerved violently when it detected where the actual lane was. Honestly, my biggest complaint is when it does rapid adjustments. If it decides it needs to take evasive action, there is no buffer there at all, it just instantly racks the wheel to the stops. That would be good to avoid an accident, but in some scenarios (this is before I got FSW, it may be better now) like a car crossing the road in front of you, it would slam on the brakes, or swerve the wheel after the car had already gone past and was no longer an issue. It makes you look like a drunk driver.

I'll report further after driving with FSD a bit more.
 
Bob Noel said:
had to share this - the display from my 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid after a short trip...


View attachment 108199

yeah, I know... I don't see it that high normally.
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Nice! I haven't seen anything like that, but given the hill I have to climb to get out of our neighborhood, that isn't surprising. We did get over 44 mpg coming back from eastern Washington a couple weeks ago (better than the estimated 44 mpg in town according to the sticker) and finally gassed it up a couple days ago in Vancouver, WA before coming home. 2 weeks between fill-ups when most of the miles were on the highway was darned good. Only took about 13 gallons in that time, as well. We'll see later this month if that was a fluke as my wife's high school class 50th reunion is in the same place as my Class of 70 turning 70 was a couple weeks ago.
 
I recently joined the EV club when I bought a new to me BMW i3. What a joy to drive. I use the car to commute to work (15-mile roundtrip) and charge at the house overnight. The first month of "fuel" cost me $15. I can only imagine the savings when I finally get around to installing the solar system.
 
Rich Holt said:
I recently joined the EV club when I bought a new to me BMW i3. What a joy to drive. I use the car to commute to work (15-mile roundtrip) and charge at the house overnight. The first month of "fuel" cost me $15. I can only imagine the savings when I finally get around to installing the solar system.
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Your unimaginable savings will be $15 a month. Far less than a solar system is going to cost you.
 
Rich Holt said:
I recently joined the EV club when I bought a new to me BMW i3. What a joy to drive. I use the car to commute to work (15-mile roundtrip) and charge at the house overnight. The first month of "fuel" cost me $15. I can only imagine the savings when I finally get around to installing the solar system.
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Just be aware that the i3 suuuuuucks on snowy roads. Looks like you're in SC so probably not worth buying winter tires, and I guess down there everything shuts down when it snows, so you're probably OK. Just be aware if you decide to take any road trips to the north (or move that direction).

Other than that, it's a fun little car.
 
My electric bill is almost doubled with my Tesla. No way the grid is even close to being able to support 50% EVs on the road. Cali, with their optimistic renewable energy grid system encourages EV owners to charge at night because they get rolling blackouts during daytime peak. That’s with only 5% of EVs on the road.

 
Salty said:
Your unimaginable savings will be $15 a month. Far less than a solar system is going to cost you.
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Yes, for that use case. I like the idea of no gas station stops, $20/mo fuel, much less MX, etc.

We will likely add solar to add resiliency against outages as well as offset our electric bill.
 
Velocity173 said:
My electric bill is almost doubled with my Tesla. No way the grid is even close to being able to support 50% EVs on the road. Cali, with their optimistic renewable energy grid system encourages EV owners to charge at night because they get rolling blackouts during daytime peak. That’s with only 5% of EVs on the road.

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That is 50% of new car sales. Not of the fleet. I do not recall the math, but even a straight line calculation shows 50% of new car sales with an average life over twelve years, represents roughly 4% of the feel switching to EV in 2030. Not nearly as a large a problem as your headline grabs.

Tim
 
Velocity173 said:
My electric bill is almost doubled with my Tesla.
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How is that possible? How many miles do you drive per month?

I think you have a Model S which should get around 350 Wh/mi. At 14¢/kWh, 95% charging efficiency, and 12,000 mi/yr, you're around $58.50 per month in electricity. Do the same in an ICE vehicle averaging 22mpg (Model S is a large sedan) with today's US average $4.44/gal, you'd pay $201.82 in gasoline for the same 1,000 mi.

I've spent $13 in electricity to charge over the past 31 days. I don't drive a lot of miles, of course, but, if I did, the higher my electric charging bill the more I'd be saving in gasoline. The same 1,000 miles in my Model 3 (264 Wh/mi) and my 9.8¢/kWh would be $36.11 in electricity compared to about $177.27 in one of my similarly-sized Mazda3s.

No way the grid is even close to being able to support 50% EVs on the road.
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No way we could convert 50% of the cars on the roads to EVs overnight, either. Some projections I've seen is to have 50% of the new car deliveries electric by 2030. Even then, you're still nowhere near 50% of the cars in service behind EV. It will take decades to get there.

When does the grid currently have the most capacity? At night. After 9pm, or so. Offer lower rates then, as some areas already do, and most of the EV charging will take place during those hours when the grid has the most excess capacity. That's easy to set on the Tesla app or on the car's screen.
 
How are lower middle class going to afford all these EVs, especially when forced demand is going to push the price higher.
 
Larry in TN said:
At 14¢/kWh,
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That's probably the issue. Where I am is a flat $0.075/kWh.
But in many places I've lived it starts at x, then once you exceed some usage it goes up, often way way up. So if you were just under the spike in usage the additional EV charging would be at a much higher rate.
Randomly pulling up the big California scumbags, er electric utility, PG&E tells me: $0.32 baseline, $0.39 101% to 400% of baseline and $0.49 above that. Baseline varies based on a bunch of stuff.
Here's an EV specific rate card they have.

rates-ev2-a-745px.jpg
 
chartbundle said:
Randomly pulling up the big California scumbags, er electric utility, PG&E tells me: $0.32 baseline, $0.39 101% to 400% of baseline and $0.49 above that. Baseline varies based on a bunch of stuff.
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I was just in California last week. Saw lots of gas station signs showing 6.179 for Regular in L.A. It's expensive, no matter what they drive.

Am I reading the card right that charging from midnight through 3pm would be 24¢/kWh? That would be $88.42 per month for 1,000 miles per month in a Model S.

Still, the kWh usage for EV charging shouldn't be a large percentage of your bill. Maybe he lives on the coast and never uses A/C? If so, the statement that "my electric bill almost doubled" will mean something very different to him than it does to the vast majority of us in the rest of the country.
 
Larry in TN said:
How is that possible? How many miles do you drive per month?

I think you have a Model S which should get around 350 Wh/mi. At 14¢/kWh, 95% charging efficiency, and 12,000 mi/yr, you're around $58.50 per month in electricity. Do the same in an ICE vehicle averaging 22mpg (Model S is a large sedan) with today's US average $4.44/gal, you'd pay $201.82 in gasoline for the same 1,000 mi.

I've spent $13 in electricity to charge over the past 31 days. I don't drive a lot of miles, of course, but, if I did, the higher my electric charging bill the more I'd be saving in gasoline. The same 1,000 miles in my Model 3 (264 Wh/mi) and my 9.8¢/kWh would be $36.11 in electricity compared to about $177.27 in one of my similarly-sized Mazda3s.


No way we could convert 50% of the cars on the roads to EVs overnight, either. Some projections I've seen is to have 50% of the new car deliveries electric by 2030. Even then, you're still nowhere near 50% of the cars in service behind EV. It will take decades to get there.

When does the grid currently have the most capacity? At night. After 9pm, or so. Offer lower rates then, as some areas already do, and most of the EV charging will take place during those hours when the grid has the most excess capacity. That's easy to set on the Tesla app or on the car's screen.
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Yeah, my electric bill used to average around 600 KWH per month. With the Volt that went to around 800 KWH. With the Tesla, I’m pushing over 1000 KWH. $58 a month increase is pretty accurate but when I used to pay around $70 total, it’s significant.

No doubt charging at night is the best time. But like I said, I’m California they have only 5 % EVs on the roads and they’ve warned customers to charge at night to prevent blackouts. What if they had 15 % EVs on the road? Would the grid even be able to handle charging at night? My point is, just as the Congressman pointed out, our grid is no where near ready for the ambitious plans of this administration. Thomas Massie is an MIT grad who believes in renewables but he’s also a realist.. He knows EVs aren’t going to save the planet.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah, my electric bill used to average around 600 KWH per month. With the Volt that went to around 800 KWH. With the Tesla, I’m pushing over 1000 KWH. $58 a month increase is pretty accurate but when I used to pay around $70 total, it’s significant.
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Okay. We live in very different worlds. My last electric bill was over $250 for over 2,100 kWh. Doubling the bill for an EV is unthinkable in my environment. Of course, so is paying CA gasoline prices! Currently $3.689 at the station nearest my house.

Yes, the grid can handle the charging load at night. Commercial and industrial use is way down. Airconditioning load is way down. The heavy period for appliance usage is over with the majority of the population asleep. EVs are easy to time-shift for most owners. Just set them to start charging at midnight, or whenever you off-peak start time might be. Most EVs will only need an hour or two per night to replace what was used during the day. At 1,000 miles per month, that's 12.3 kWh per night in your relatively inefficient (i.e. large) EV. Under 9.2 kWh in mine which is just a little over an hour's worth of charging.

ICE driver's don't fill up an empty tank everyday. EV drivers top off daily, but only what they've used that day, not the whole battery capacity.
 
Just for a quick trip example…

Karen drove from near Knoxville, TN to Peru, IN today, about 450 miles. She left home with a full charge of about 350 miles, and after charging 3 times arrived in Peru with 190 miles remaining. Here’s what it cost:

52232936405_a58596b0e6.jpg


You can compare that with what a typical ICE vehicle would have cost.

Note: the trip could have easily been done with 2 charging stops. The 3rd stop in Kokomo was just to add some reserve for running around in Peru. Always wise to have a cushion.
 
FastEddieB said:
You can compare that with what a typical ICE vehicle would have cost.
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I like doing the math!

I looked up typical gasoline prices for each location on Gas Buddy. Came to an average of $4.30/gal.

I used a gasoline car efficiency of 34mpg to approximate a gasoline car of similar size.

You paid $27.87 is Supercharging fees.

The ICE car would burn about $56.91 in regular gasoline.

You'd still need to bring the Tesla up to the same charge as your starting state-of-charge. Charging at home, that would probably be $4 to $5. Supercharger? I don't know. $10.00?
 
It probably seems more significant to me in that both our alternate vehicles - a Ford Flex and a Honda Ridgeline - get just over 20 mpg, making the savings more substantial.

Edited to add: Our prior trip car was our Honda Clarity PHEV. On gas only it got about 42 mpg. At $4.30/gal, it could have made the trip for about $46, not including the first 45 miles or so on electric, which would have reduced it a hair. Pretty darn efficient regardless. Especially at roughly half the cost of our Tesla.
 
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Serious query..... would a electric vehicle make a good toad behind a Class A type Rv.??
 
Home charging draws about the same power as an oven or a clothes dryer. Virtually every house has both of those. Why don't we have videos bewailing the inability of the grid to handle cooking and laundry?
 
Ed Haywood said:
Home charging draws about the same power as an oven or a clothes dryer. Virtually every house has both of those. Why don't we have videos bewailing the inability of the grid to handle cooking and laundry?
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Do you do laundry or cook for 12 hours straight? What about when you get home, plug in the car, and then turn on the oven to make dinner? Do you cook less or do less laundry to compensate for charging your car?
 
Ed Haywood said:
Home charging draws about the same power as an oven or a clothes dryer. Virtually every house has both of those. Why don't we have videos bewailing the inability of the grid to handle cooking and laundry?
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not my house and many many many others. Think gas dryer, gas water heater, gas oven.
 
Bob Noel said:
not my house and many many many others. Think gas dryer, gas water heater, gas oven.
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I have electric range, but gas on the dryer and water heaters. Yes, multiple.
 
Salty said:
Do you do laundry or cook for 12 hours straight?
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Nobody's going to charge their EV at that rate for 12 hours straight, either. More like 12 hours per week, or less, or less than two ours per day. Mostly at night.

I think this is one of the biggest changes in thinking that occurs when switching from ICE to EV. We're accustom to filling the tank, driving for some days, then going to refill the tank. With an EV, you charge for an hour, or so, every night to replace what you used that day.
 
Larry in TN said:
Nobody's going to charge their EV at that rate for 12 hours straight, either. More like 12 hours per week, or less, or less than two ours per day. Mostly at night.
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It's still an addition to the existing load without the car. The fact that we already have dryers and ovens is irrelevant. You're charging a car using power you weren't using before you had the car to charge.
 
Salty said:
It's still an addition to the existing load without the car. The fact that we already have dryers and ovens is irrelevant. You're charging a car using power you weren't using before you had the car to charge.
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You charge at night when the grid has excess capacity. Total energy used is less.
 
Larry in TN said:
You charge at night when the grid has excess capacity. Total energy used is less.
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So everyone charges their cars only at night, and nobody ever uses their oven or dryer at night. Got it.
 
Salty said:
So everyone charges their cars only at night, and nobody ever uses their oven or dryer at night. Got it.
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Not really sure what you're arguing about.

All EVs, that I know of, including Teslas which make up 75% of the EVs in the US, make it very easy to set the time of day that they will start charging.

Electrical providers that have peak demand issues will frequently offer time-of-day metering which offers a lower electric rate doing off-peak hours. This incentivizes all users to shift their shiftable electric demand to off-peak hours. There is no shortage of grid capacity during off-peak hours. I have needed to charge during times which would be peak hours exactly twice in the past ten months. (We don't have time-of-day metering).

None of this has anything to do with washers, dryers, or stoves. Someone else mentioned them as a comparison to show how much energy an EV uses when Level 2 charging.
 
Larry in TN said:
Not really sure what you're arguing about.

All EVs, that I know of, including Teslas which make up 75% of the EVs in the US, make it very easy to set the time of day that they will start charging.

Electrical providers that have peak demand issues will frequently offer time-of-day metering which offers a lower electric rate doing off-peak hours. This incentivizes all users to shift their shiftable electric demand to off-peak hours. There is no shortage of grid capacity during off-peak hours. I have needed to charge during times which would be peak hours exactly twice in the past ten months. (We don't have time-of-day metering).

None of this has anything to do with washers, dryers, or stoves. Someone else mentioned them as a comparison to show how much energy an EV uses when Level 2 charging.
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And you don't think that the power companies will adjust their billing practices when overnight loads from EV's start to increase? How cute. If I could pat you on the head I would.
 
EdFred said:
And you don't think that the power companies will adjust their billing practices when overnight loads from EV's start to increase? How cute. If I could pat you on the head I would.
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You didn't think about your post very much. Changing their billing practices removes the incentive to charge cars (and do other activities requiring higher electrical loads) during off-peak usage.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
You didn't think about your post very much. Changing their billing practices removes the incentive to charge cars (and do other activities requiring higher electrical loads) during off-peak usage.
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It would appear that you are assuming the time of "off-peak usage" would not be impacted by new load users (EVs)
 
Bob Noel said:
It would appear that you are assuming the time of "off-peak usage" would not be impacted by new load users (EVs)
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No. I'm assuming @Larry in TN comments are correct in this thread. So far, I haven't found wrong, except for this highlighted statement:
Larry in TN said:
You charge at night when the grid has excess capacity. Total energy used is less.
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I'm pretty sure he didn't finish a sentence.
EV's charged during off-peak will tend to equalize the loads compared to peak usage.
 
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