First Road Trip!

 

Road Trip to Saratoga Springs!

Our first road trip with Val was a long-awaited one - a visit to my parents in Upstate NY! Other than 20 minutes in their garage in early December, separated by 20 feet, I haven't seen them since the last weekend of February, 2020. So it was with much anticipation that we set out on Friday, April 9 to visit them!

I had planned to charge to 100% on Friday - 95% overnight and then 'top off' Friday morning. But when I started charging Friday morning, it said it would take well over an hour to go from 95% to 100%, so we ended up leaving at 96%. Tesla Navigation advised we should stop at the Kingston NY Supercharger station (located at a QuickCheck) for a few minutes, and we did, as it was a good stopping point for bio break and lunch. We arrived at about 45% State of Charge (SOC) and were asked to charge for about 6 minutes to 65%, which would have us arrive at my parents at 21% SOC. We ended up charging a little longer (about 20 minutes) while we ate lunch, so left there at 89%, arriving in Saratoga at 45% - using 44% of the battery in that stretch. If I did not have free Supercharger miles, that charge would have cost about $7.79*. 

I had brought my charging cable with me, as I wanted to plug in to my parent's 110v garage outlet just to see how long it would take to charge using that method (vs my 240v plug at home). I plugged the car in Saturday night at 32% SOC at 7:30 pm, and the power barely registered on the screen (see pic #4 below)! It would have taken 24+ hours to charge to the set limit of 95%.... When I unplugged at 9:30 am on Sunday, I was at 52% - so over the course of 14 hours, the battery add 20% of charge. Not very good - so I'm glad I decided to upgrade my outlet at home. My Dad said he'd send me the bill for the charge. 😏

As noted, we left their house on Sunday morning at 52%, with a planned stop at the Guilderland NY Supercharger station (Crossgates Mall). It wanted me to charge for 25 minutes and get to 90%, which would get us home with 12% SOC. I wasn't really comfortable with the buffer, as this was our first road trip, so we charged to about 85% there (after walking around the Mall for about 20 minutes) and planned to stop at the Kingston Supercharger station again for bio break and lunch at QuickCheck. When I plugged in there, I received a notification on my phone that they were only allowing charging up to 80%, as the SC station was busy (about half the 10 stations were currently in use). No big deal as 80% would easily get us home. Sure enough, after we got back in the car, it predicted we'd be at 31% when we arrived home. We actually went a slightly different way than the Nav sent us and got home at 30%. Cost of the 2 charges would have been about $10.67* + $2.90*, respectively.

In terms of my free Supercharger miles, I was charged with using 202 miles between the three stops. Total cost would have been about $21.36* without the freebies. 

Ok, the * next to the charges - these are estimated, as I won't receive a monthly statement from Tesla until early May. The on-line billing statement just indicates these are free charges, using my 1000 free Supercharger miles I got when I used a friend's referral code when buying the car. I'll update this when I can see what the actual charges would have been. I'd expect them to be slightly less. Unfortunately, you can't make a direct comparison to this and the amount of gas I would have used, as I have no cost of charging at home (the initial 95%) or the 20% I did at my parents yet. However, just to give a sense - using our 2014 Mazda CX-5, I would have filled my tank at home prior to leaving which would have cost me approximately $33 (15.3 gallon gas tank, filling it from 1/4 tank to full, gas current price of $2.89). I would have used about 3/4 of a tank on the drive).Assuming the same going home, another $33. So $66 based on today's prices - using 3/4 of a tank twice. 

Enough of the numbers - how was the car? It drove beautifully! I found the ride to be very comfortable, and the seats are excellent - soft but very supportive. At speed, you do get wind and road noise, probably similar to our previous car - actually, probably a bit less as we have no roof rack on the Y and the drag is probably less. You might just notice it more because there is no engine noise. The Traffic-Aware Cruse Control is really great - it maintains a set distance from the car in front of you (you can adjust it) and then goes back up to speed when you pull out to pass. And it works down to zero so can be used in stop-and-go traffic! It did brake sharply when the cars in front of us did at one point, then went back up to speed as they did. Very neat.

I did use the Autosteer function on some stretches of the NYS Thruway. It does a great job of keeping between the lines, so with that function and the TACC, the drive is pretty effortless (you are required to put a little torque on the wheel every 20 - 25 seconds or so, to indicate you're paying attention). I did not use it in heavy traffic as Autosteer does keep you planted in the center of your lane and if someone kind of drifts over to the edge of their lane, it made me a little nervous - especially if it was a truck.. I'm not sure whether it would adjust by moving you to the opposite side of your lane. Will have to test that out. 

We did run into some raining heading home and the auto wipers are great, although they do jump into high-speed mode a little sooner than I prefer. But I also liked that the headlights come on automatically with the wipers. Since that's the law in many states, I don't know why all cars don't do that. 

In summary, I'd have to say the trip was pretty much effortless - a little longer than with our previous gas car, but probably more relaxing due to stopping and eating. There are accommodations to be made when traveling in an EV but only very small ones - and frankly, if I'm not in a hurry, what's the big deal with an extra stop? I'm looking forward to our next trip! It may be a trip to visit family in the Boston area in May. 

Charge status at home before heading out - actually charged up to 96%.

Charging at Kingston NY on the way to Saratoga.

Watching the charger ramp up!

Plugged in to 110v at my parents - this is gonna take a while!

Fast charging at Guilderland SC!

Back at Kingston on Sunday, much busier - limited to 80%.

Back home and plugged in, 500 miles later!

Tesla Model Y One Month Report

 

It's been exactly one month since I picked up my Tesla Model Y - christened 'Val' due to the build date of February 14 - and I have to say, as a quick summary - it has exceeded all of my expectations to date!

I guess that is kind of a boring take, and frankly, there are a few things I don't like about the car - or, maybe I should say 'like less' because there isn't much to dislike about it. I'll also note that this early update is before I've taken any road trips - we do have one scheduled to Upstate NY this coming weekend, and I figured that would be worth it's own report. 

But let's start with the good stuff..... I did a lot of research prior to purchasing this car, leading to a reasonable (but high) set of expectations going in. I had read about the quality issues (panel gaps, paint issues, dirt/smudges from factory handling) as well as the range "issues" (I put that in quotes because people had unrealistic expectations that the car would match the EPA rating of 326 miles, when in reality very few cars match their ratings, ICE or otherwise). I also made sure that I had a home charging set-up as well as some key accessories ordered (floor mats, jacking pucks, shelves for the console, front license plate holder).So I felt fully prepared for the car.

I have to say that my expectation level has been blown away! Upon pickup, after a scan of the exterior and interior, I have to say that the panel gaps were all perfect, no dirty spots in the interior and the paint quality seems very good to me. The color is fabulous! So the initial impression was great!

The driving experience is way beyond anything I expected, even after 2 test drives. The car is totally silent and the wind and tire noise is much less than anticipated. The acceleration is addicting. The technology, in most cases, is very easy to access and works well. Having Spotify available 'in the car' vs streaming from the phone is great, although I wish we also had Sirius/XM in the same format. (See below for some comments on how this all works - this is one of the 'less liked' features of the car.) The sound system is very good to my ears - good bass levels out of the box, and better when pumped up a bit, like I prefer. The voice commands seem pretty comprehensive as well, although I am still learning them. One strange omission seems to be the ability to turn on all of the exterior lights via voice. But maybe it's there and I haven't used the correct command. 

There are a lot of things you can tailor to your preference - the usual seat/mirror/steering wheel position (which are saved in your driver profile) but also driving mode (Chill/Standard/Sport) as well as steering effort (Comfort/Standard/Sport) Driving mode affects the acceleration and regen braking (tones both down a bit). I've been doing Standard and Sport and that seems to be good for me.

I've also tested out the Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer. TACC essentially allows you to set a following distance from another vehicle and the car will maintain that distance when in cruise control, and when you pull out to pass will accelerate back up to your set speed. Autosteer - which is an additional function - keeps the car centered in it's lane while using TACC. Pretty cool and it seems to work pretty well in the few times I've engaged it. You can use TACC without Autosteer but not vice versa. This is the standard Autopilot suite that comes with the car.

I did run the battery down to about 25% a couple of weeks ago, so I could check out the Supercharging experience. I went to the location in North Brunswick, 10 minutes from my home. It charged from 25% to 50% in about 11 minutes, adding 48 miles of range in that time. It charged at up to 115 kW, which is below the rated speed of 150 kW at that location - but the temp was only 40 degrees so that probably impacted it. But the process is the same as at home - pull up, park, plug. No big deal. And if I didn't have the free miles, it would have cost me about $5.00. So pretty cheap. The next test will be to try out a non-Tesla charging point - I set up accounts with ChargePoint, Electrify America and EVgo and will try one of those that is close to my home next week.

I mentioned earlier some of the foibles of the sound system - Spotify is included on the car and you can easily stream anything from your phone. For example, SiriusXM - you can stream from the phone but it's occasionally a little clunky - if you exit the car and then come back in, taking the phone with you, it takes a few minutes (literally) to reconnect. And with Spotify, if you leave that to listen to another format (FM radio or stream from the phone), the playlist goes back to the very beginning and then will shuffle from there. Ideally, it should simply pick up where it left off until you change the playlist. Maybe in a future software release. 

I've also had an intermittent issue with the car connecting to the home Wifi network. Most of the time it works fine but a couple of times I've had to reboot the screen to get it to work. That's important because the car won't download a software update unless connected to Wifi. I will say that since the last time I did this 2 weeks ago it's been fine.

The final 'complaint' is that the 2 USB-C ports on the back of the console, intended for rear seat passengers, don't seem to be working. I'm sure those can be fixed with mobile service, but I'm not going to have them come out for just that.

So that's it for now. Next update will be after our first road trip!