We’re picking up our Tesla Model 3 on Saturday! It’s the Standard Range with RWD, with the partial premium interior. We sprung for the $5K autopilot, but not the $10k AWD and premium interior.
It will be used primarily as a commuter car; my wife’s workplace is 20 miles across Honolulu each way. Her commute will be mostly on the freeway; electric cars can use the HOV lane with 1 person.
Obviously, Oahu is a great environment for electric cars: temperatures rarely get out of the 75-85 range. We’re on an island, so no road trips: If you were to drive around the island, you’re looking at 100 miles tops.
Question 1: We live in a house with a detached carport (which has plugs). There are standard electrical outlets. If I were to charge overnight, how much % would it go up? Would this could get back the 40 commute miles overnight? We have PVC powered by Tesla batteries.
Question 2: Our carport is at a right angle from our driveway. It’s parallel to the street, which means we take an “L” past our mailbox. Does the auto-park feature work for backing in from the street?
Any other fun tips or things to do, even unrelated to charging?
Congrats! I still love mine more than a year later.
40 miles is pushing it for standard outlets, but you might get away with it. You can count on a charge rate of 4 miles/hr, so a 10 hr overnight charge will give you the 40 miles back, but not more. That said, if you don’t drive too much on weekends, you can use them to top off any weekday depletion. And of course you can hit public chargers occasionally if you need. I’ve been surviving just fine on 120v charging, but my commute is <10 mi.
I have to admit, I’ve hardly ever used autopark. Maybe someone else has more experience there.
I bought a 4" memory foam mattress for the rear, to be used with the seats folded down. I plan on doing some car camping in it–I can set the climate control to be always on, and the seats are nearly flat when folded, so it’ll make a nice comfy replacement for a tent.
Using an entire 110 circuit (12 amps) can get you 4-5 mph of charging. Unless you have time-of-use metering, the car can start charging as soon as your wife gets home, which will probably push you up to 12-13 hours of charging.
One thing to be aware of is what else is on the carport circuit. For example, it would be annoying to trip a breaker if you turned on the toaster while the car is charging. If it is the case that the circuit you intend to use for charging has a load on it, you can tell the car to charge at a lower rate.
I do recommend getting some estimates for installing a 220 circuit in your carport. You’ll have to decide what price is worth it to you, but it is much more convenient than 110. I lived with 110 for 1.5 months, and it was fine, but moving my unused dryer outlet was easy, and I’m glad I did it.
The autoparking on the Tesla is pretty bad. I mean, it does the actual parking fine, but it uses the cameras to look for spaces between other cars as potential parking spots. I’ve got 7000 miles on my car, and I think I’ve used autoparking twice. It just doesn’t see parking spots very well. Unless you have cars parked on either side of your carport, it will probably never see it.
A good feature you might use for the carport is geofenced folding mirrors. So as the car gets close to the carport, it will fold in the mirrors. They will open again when the car exceeds 8MPH (or whatever). This is in addition to auto folding the mirrors when parked, in which case they will unfold immediately when the car is put into reverse or drive.
D’oh! This outlet is in the laundry/mud room, just on the opposite wall of my garage. I used to charge my Fusion with 110 because I didn’t want to invest in 220, but I see a fully electric Mustang-inspired crossover in my future, and 220 will be absolutely required. This will make things vastly cheaper, if the cord reaches.
Since I don’t actually park inside my garage, would a charging station in the back of my garage be close enough to reach the charging port (probably on the left front fender)? The Fusion’s 110 VAC charger cable was very, very long.
Other people may tell you different, but honestly I would try to put the outlet as close as possible to the charge port. You’re going to be plugging/unplugging it a lot, and spending an extra ~30 seconds a day walking around the garage to plug/unplug and coil/uncoil cables starts to add up.
Totally agree. And if cost is an issue, the cable for a 50 amp line does add up quickly. But even a 20 amp circuit running to somewhere near where you will plug in will be much, much more convenient, and is all that most drivers would really need.
Oh, the Universe is having a good laugh at my expense. I wanted a Model 3 but had to wait until the “affordable” versions were available. They were delayed, and I needed to replace my car sooner than later so last September I bought my second choice, A new Focus ST.
In November, the $35k option is announced. “That’s OK”, I thought, “It still would have been tight with the lack of any EV incentives in Alberta or Federally in Canada.”
Then, oh, then I get an email from Tesla saying, “Good News! There’s a $5000 incentive available Federally for certain Model 3 and other EVs.”
Link here: Zero-emission vehicles
To loosely quote Basil Faulty: “Thank You, You Vicious Bastard! Thank you so Bloody Much!”
I’m not particularly enjoying the emergency lane departure avoidance feature. A cop was directing traffic due to one lane being blocked for tree cutting. He was standing in the left part of the lane so I had to steer to the edge of the road to go around him. Right as I was near him my car steered away from the curb and towards him. I was able to override the “auto-correction” back in time but it was quite alarming and I’m sure he was not happy about it. I don’t like that Tesla currently won’t allow you to disable the feature permanently. That said, I’m still overall quite happy with the car.
Oddly it’s actually a good demonstration. Normal door glass is designed to granulate when struck. This glass appears to be made like windshields with a think sheet of plastic sandwiched in the center. It’s designed to stop objects from penetrating the interior.
The optics of the demo sucked. They needed to explain what people were looking at. Not sure why you’d want it. Unlike windshields that need to stop objects at highway speeds it’s actually dangerous. It makes it difficult to gain entry to the interior in an emergency such as a child left in the hot sun.
The truck aesthetics reminds me of the Pontiac Aztec. How did that get past any kind of consumer focus group?. If I was hailing a taxi and that pulled up I’d wave it off out of fear it would take me to the mother ship. But Tesla has quite a following so it may sell well. The high end version is the world’s ugliest race truck so the Mad Max imagery may work in it’s favor.
It’s an impressive piece of technology to be sure, but I think that if their goal was to be competitive across the whole pickup truck market, they whiffed completely. Even if you ignore the, ahem, polarizing styling, the utility just isn’t there to make it an option for a lot of people looking at buying a pickup. They tow capacity is impressive, but it’s to a large extent sort of useless because most people who are regularly towing 10k+ lbs are going to be using a gooseneck, not a rear hitch. How are you supposed to mount the hitch to a unibody design when there’s no frame rails? Even if you could, what’s the point, because the sides of the bed are going to completely kill your ability to turn with the trailer. And you can’t modify it, because again, unibody. You can’t put a flatbed on it, or a service body, or anything but the 6.5’ bed because, guess what, unibody. I don’t see any way you could put a plow on the front with no frame to mount it to. The market so far as I can see is pretty much limited to people who want a truck for occasional Home Depot trips, or towing a boat or something a few times a year. Which isn’t a nonexistent market, but on the other hand it’s basically an electric Chevy Avalanche, and the Avalanche was never a very strong seller.
And how the hell do they plan to meet crash safety regulations if the whole thing is a slab of stainless steel? Where are the crumple zones?
Not only is that truck ugly as hell, it looks like it was designed by someone who has no idea what pickup trucks are used for. This is an urban runabout for the hipster Silicon Valley cohort, not a serious working truck. The bed is too small to put a 4x8 piece of plywood or drywall, the unibody makes it useless for the things Caldris bal Comar mentioned, it has terrible rearword and rear quarter visibility (necessary for a working pickup, as you’re always manoevering close to things), etc.
Also, this thing looks unfinished. There’s no way this vehicle could ever be sold commercially. For one thing, it has no bumpers. For another, the brake lights appear to be mounted in the tailgate, which is against regulations (and means if you tried to carry extended material with the gate down you’d be driving without taillights).
The range is impressive, but I’d like to see the figures for the range when towing loads of various sizes. Or when driving over fields, or on dirt roads. What’s the range like with a load in the back breaking up the airflow?
And that design… Gah. It looks like something cobbled together in a weekend for a scene in a low budget schlock movie like ‘Death Race 2000’. That steeply raked, flat windshield is going to be a nightmare for reflections, both seeing out and reflecting sunlight at others. No side mirrors? I assume there will be cameras, but again - side mirrors on a pickup are pretty important if you do actual work with it. And extended side mirrors are a legal requirement for towing wide trailers around here.
I could go on. As a pickup truck, there’s a lot wrong with that thing. As an ‘urban runabvout’ for wealthy hipsters, it might be okay. Kind of like a Honda Ridgeline or a Hummer, except with less utility.
Ack! Is that true? My Tacoma is a small truck and a 4x8 sheet has to ride on top of the wheel wells, which is a little inconvenient but at least it fits in the bed. How could you design a pickup that can’t transport a full sheet? The more I learn about this thing the less I understand who would ever use it.
At least according to this page, the most popular F-150 is the XLT SuperCrew, with only a 5.5’ bed. The Cybertruck has a 6.5’ bed (and no wheelwell cutouts). Crew cabs in general aren’t likely to have much more than a 6.5’ bed.
Put the tail down and strap in the plywood like all these guys do…
It’s not the length that’s a problem, it’s the width. If the bed is less than 4 feet wide, you’re screwed. I thought that’s what Sam Stone meant, but perhaps I was wrong.
There’s no way the bed width is under 48" wide. I can’t find exact specs of the bed, but the overall dimensions are comparable to an F-150, with ~78" total width, and the bed wall width doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. I’m pretty sure Sam Stone is just stuck 20 years ago when crew cabs weren’t the norm.
Sure, some people are hauling drywall and plywood all day, and they can still buy full-size beds. The Cybertruck isn’t for them.