The Model X has flush handles, but they’re really just buttons. Press the button and the car opens the door for you. Because simple is great, but too simple is too hard, one side of the handle is a button; the other side is nothing. So press the handle, wait like an idiot for a few seconds, press the other side of the handle, then the door opens.
It’s not just California any longer. This is a gift article that should work for folks.
I am certain that this will get pushed out for many years similar to Real IDs.
Anyway, I’m stuck on 110V until the County approves my permit which could be a couple weeks. I need to do a faster charge up so I’m at the local supercharger. It’s cheaper per kWh than I get at home! Is this typical?
Not in my very limited expense. We are at .09/kWh while the couple times we’ve used a Supercharger, it was between .24 -.40 per. However, if that is the case for your area, Supercharge away!
Insert a dollar sign in front of those. It causes the formatting to go bonkers and I don’t remember the solution.
Put a backslash in front of the dollar signs you want to preserve.
While I can’t edit at this point, you can still attempt an edit and see the results and, yep, that does the trick. Thanks.
Charging wss .32/kWh at the supercharger. It would have been .38/kWh at home.
That seems like a normal price for the supercharger, but expensive for home charging. Is that just your normal electric rate?
Some superchargers have variable pricing throughout the day, and you can see it in the app by going to location, then pressing the 
button, and then tap on a supercharger to see its pricing. This will also show you how many are available. It probably isn’t worth charging at 4am to get the lowest rates, but it might be worth going before 11am to save $0.08/kWh, or whatever.
I switched my home electric to time of use pricing, so I pay more to run the AC in the summer, but that is more than made up for by the savings of just charging the car overnight. If you’re on a flat rate plan, it is probably worth investigating, but the decision can require usage calculations and estimating.
I hate to gloat, but we got free supercharging for life when we bought out Model X. I’m sorry to say we’ve only used it a handful of times (so far).
I think you have two Teslas, true? You have to figure out how to get that X to a Supercharger and then transmit that free power to Tesla #2.
Insert Elon Evil Laugh here.
Nope, one Tesla and one Jaguar EV. If we had a supercharger nearer we could probably figure out a way to make better use of the free charging. As it is, we’d have to drive at least 40 miles to get to one.
Why limit yourself to EV charging? Get a PowerWall at home and power your whole home with free electrons.
Ok, there’s actually no way to do that with a Model 3/Y/S/X–the juice only flows one way. But it is doable with a Cybertruck and its bidirectional charging (plus 240V plug).
Well, there is one more way–get one of those dynos with the wheel rollers, but instead of dumping the energy into an oil bath or whatever, run a generator. And then have that generator charge a PowerWall.
Sure, you run the risk of Ferris Buellering your car, but that’s a small price to pay for free electricity!
That’s called thinking outside the roundish Tesla-shaped box! Throw a brick on the go forward pedal and you’ll be in business.
if it makes you feel better you can do that and wire Elmo some cash just to be sure.
Easy, hook the Jaguar to the back of the Tesla and tow it to the supercharger. The regenerative braking on the Jaguar will charge it, then the supercharger will refill the Tesla. Two charged EVs on Musk’s dime.
Just helped my mom buy a Volvo XC40 Recharge. In order to get the $7500 rebate she had to use the lease option. MSRP for the car was around $64,000; after the EV rebate and dealer discounts the purchase price was around $52,000. If she buys the car at the end of the lease the total payment will be around $59,000. So basically a 3 year loan with 5% interest, which doesn’t seem too bad. Without the lease she would have financed it anyway. There should be a state tax rebate of $4000 on top of all that.
The XC40 seems like a nice car. I just road around in the back seat, and it was comfortable. The control layout and everything seems pretty reasonable, too. I’m happy with the glass cockpit on my Tesla, so accessing controls through the screen doesn’t scare me, though. I didn’t get to use it enough to know if the screen control layout is good. The screen had big buttons for map, media, climate, and something else, so it was easy to go into any of those apps. Once in the app it was also easy to go back to the home screen with a dedicated hard button below the screen.
Right now you can drive away in a dual motor Model Y for around $40,000. She wasn’t interested in that, but for the price difference I’m not sure I’d have chosen the Volvo. The XC40 certainly presents as much more like any other conventional car than a Tesla. While inside there isn’t any strong clue that it’s an EV instead of ICE. No reason a company couldn’t build a minimalist-interior ICE car, but as far as I know, no one does that.
We’ve gone and done it. A 2024 Hyundai Ionic 5 SEL. Hyundai had (up to today) a great lease deal on Ionic 6s, not as great on the Ionic 5 but the wife wanted the station wagon smallish CUV. Still, $7500 on the lease tax credit (had to be a lease) plus $2500 on the hood from the dealer. Free charging at Electrify America for two years, also our lease term; 12,000 miles/yr. We have one of those chargers within 7 miles of our place (multiple positions) and adjacent to a Super Walmart and a favorite pizza place (a win!). 303 miles/charge optimally, fastest charging speed among most electric vehicles (18 minutes to 80%), basic white with the two tone grayish interior. Back seats have enough room to adjust fore and aft and recline a bit besides folding flat.
We drove Bolts, Teslas, Niros and a couple of others. We’re getting our feet wet (electrically) for our eventual full time return to Oahu. (I know, don’t plug in the cable with your feet wet)
How much does it cost to ship a car to Hawaii (if that is what you intend)?
Does that mean that you won’t do any at-home charging?
Probably not ship to Hawaii - just testing the ownership experience. Runs about $1100 to ship right now from the west coast. Add another $600~ for the cross country transport. We can (may on occasion) home charge, just plug into 110v overnight (tested the outlets - running about 122v - we’re near a distribution transformer station. Daily drive to take grandkids to/from school and various sport practices is <30 miles. I do grocery errands on the trips. I can see hitting the fast charger once every 10 days or so while shopping, pizza, or hitting a Culvers 200 ft. from the chargers.