This story begins back in early 2008. While I don’t consider myself an archetypal early-adopter, my engineer-brain has always been intrigued by new technologies. At that time, the first Tesla roadsters were starting to appear, and they were immediately added to my wish list. In the meantime, gas prices were at a low ebb, and our local Boulder, CO Toyota dealer had a lot full of Prius HEV’s. The price was good, the idea of a hybrid electric vehicle was appealing, and my tax-accountant wife loved the tax credits. The Tesla roadster remained in my dreams, but the red Prius took its place in my garage.
Two years later we found ourselves living in Santa Barbara, CA where a combination of climate and local demographics favor a high count of expensive automobiles. Before long, I had learned to spot at least two Tesla roadsters around town. My wife and I typically keep a new car for at least 10 years, so we had 8 to go on the Prius. Maybe someday…
Fast forward to late 2018, and we both agreed it was time to look for a new car. This time around I was determined to get a car that could be plugged in at least some of the time, and my short list boiled down to the Chevy Volt, the Prius Prime and the Tesla Model 3. Chevrolet announced they were discontinuing the Volt, so then there were 2.
Each of us will have our own unique set of requirements when buying a car, some practical and some not so much. After all the numbers were crunched (including rebates), the Toyota would cost around twenty grand less than the Tesla. It’s range was advertised as over 600 mi, and I had spent over 50 years operating comfortably under the gas-gauge paradigm. The long-range Tesla boasted of a 310 mi range (long by EV standards), but I was well aware of the reductions in this number that could be expected at freeway speeds. Searching for charging stations was a whole new thing.
The Toyota Prius Prime was the practical choice, but for some reason I kept returning to my shopping cart to look at the red Tesla Model 3 with the aero-wheels. Sometimes in life the decision is made long before you realize it.
It was a Thursday night in late November when my wife and I were out enjoying a nice seafood dinner. As I noted previously she is a tax-accountant, and the conversation at one point turned to the complexities of the new Trump tax code. She was expecting plenty of work, and lots of challenges on our own return as well. I just happened to mention that the next day was the deadline to order a new Tesla and be guaranteed delivery in time to get the full $7500 Federal Tax Credit. As if by magic, the planets were suddenly aligned and she asked why we couldn’t just place an order.
We could and we did. After pulling up the dream car on my iPhone, I pressed “Submit”, and the deed was done. To this day, I am in awe of how easy it was to spend that much money with one simple gesture.
The official estimated delivery time when all this took place was 4-6 weeks, but Tesla Motors would have to get us the car by December 31 in order to meet their promise of eligibility for the full $7500 Fed Tax deal. We expected to have about a month for some necessary planning, including the installation of a home charging system. There were a few surprises ahead.
The next morning I received an email from Tesla. Our car would be delivered, to our home, the following Thursday between 1 and 3 pm. This was exactly one week after we placed the order. When I shared that part of the story on Twitter, I was deluged with comments from people who had been waiting months for a car. I even felt a bit guilty. For the record, Elon is not a personal friend or relative. The only extras we chose were the red multi-coat paint and the long-range dual motor option. We may have benefited from a cancelled order, or perhaps ours was a popular combination that they were building ahead. Regardless of the reason, it was a good start to our EV adventure.
After a couple of confirming emails and phone calls, the Tesla delivery specialist pulled the new Model 3 into our garage as scheduled. We had plenty of time to sign a few papers and review the basic operation of the car before a Lyft driver arrived to pick him up. For those many who have asked, the battery was charged to about 160 mi range out of 310 maximum. I have purchased quite a few ICE vehicles in my lifetime, and have never had more than half a tank when I drove off the lot. I also noted that the odometer showed 9 mi. Since it is 3 mi from the Tesla Santa Barbara dealership to my house, that leaves 6 mi for getting it on and off the transport from Fremont, CA as well as whatever road testing Tesla does on its cars.
I can say without hesitation that the absolute joy of owning and driving a Model 3 was immediately joined by the well-documented feeling of “Range Anxiety.” Plugging the car into my garage’s 120 V outlet produced a charge rate of 4-5 rph (range miles per hour) which is more than sufficient for my 8 mi round-trip daily work commute. Our calendar showed a trip in two days to La Jolla, CA with some stops along the way to visit friends – approximately 500 miles of driving. It was time for a crash-course in Superchargers.
On an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) road trip, I would customarily estimate some good stopping points for gas, secure in the knowledge that any miscalculations could be easily corrected. I have no idea how many gas stations there are between our home in Santa Barbara and our hotel in La Jolla, but I feel safe in saying that if we ran out of gas along the way, we could probably coast to a nearby pump. If we ran out of luck and were somehow stranded on empty, it wouldn’t take long for the Auto Club to show up with enough gas to get us to the next station. The system I grew up with was built to keep our ICE machine chugging along.
I did some homework before buying the EV – enough to know that, although 120V outlets are more common than even gas stations, they are not a practical solution for a road trip, unless you are prepared to book a hotel room and spend a couple of days each time your battery icon turns red. If you do run out of charge, a Tesla Road Service vehicle will need to tow you to the nearest charger. The only way a Tesla makes any sense for a road trip is if you plan your journey based on Tesla Superchargers. The real genius of Tesla is that there are lots of these (over 1000 in the US as of this writing) and roughly one quarter are in California. Finding a Supercharger (which could fill up our car in about 30 minutes) didn’t seem hard – the one located in San Juan Capistrano appeared perfect for our trip.
This particular Supercharger location is 160 miles from our home – an easy reach for a car with 310 miles of range. It is located 3 blocks from a Marie Callender’s pie shop – perfect for picking up a coconut cream pie (the favorite of a friend we were visiting) while our car charged. My Range Anxiety was temporarily assuaged.
My very first Supercharger experience turned out to be a good one, but for none of the reasons I chose it. The Supercharger was located in a busy strip mall behind a bank. There were no signs to help find it. Once there, we realized there were only 7 stalls, with one luckily just opening up as we arrived. The station advertised a charge rate of 150 kW, which meant nothing to me at the time. We soon discovered that higher numbers mean faster charge times.
The real benefit of this first Supercharger event could not have been predicted. Recognizing that we were Tesla rookies (I wonder how he knew?) an older gentleman walked over and introduced himself. After complimenting us on our car, he indicated his Model S which he had owned for 6 years. He pointed out that we had chosen the busiest Supercharger station in all of Southern California (!) He further advised that each charge station has two cords, and if possible you want to choose a station where only one is in use. The reason? Whatever charge current is available at that station will be split between the cars using it. Your overall 150 kW capacity will be drastically reduced if all seven stalls are occupied.
That’s a lot of geeky tech stuff, to be sure, but the most important discovery was that Tesla owners are like an informal club, with lots of good information and tips to share while the cars are charging. In some ways, this informal Tesla Motors Club is like a Range Anxiety support group. I was starting to feel better.
The next long trip we took (the week after La Jolla) was from Santa Barbara to Stockton. The Mother of all Superchargers is located in Kettleman City at around the half-way point of this journey. It features an owners-only lounge with an espresso bar, comfortable seating, fast WiFi, clean rest rooms and lots of those aforementioned Tesla owners who love to share their personal experiences. Kettleman has 40 charging stations, some of which are V3’s (basically a super fast-charging 250 kW). The new paradigm was taking hold in our life.
Fast forward to about a year later – December 2019 – and my Range Anxiety was nearly cured. One nice advantage of owning a Tesla is that there is very little maintenance. At ~ 1 year or 12,000 miles, the first checkpoint is tire rotation, and so I made an appointment with the local Tesla dealer (there are warnings in the manual about improperly lifting the car and puncturing the bottom-mounted battery which can’t be good). Like our early Supercharger experience, this event was also good news / bad news.
The good news was that the tires showed only a 1 mm tread wear differential, and so didn’t need rotating. Although Tesla has gotten some bad raps for service, I was treated professionally and courteously. After telling me that my car needed no work, the Service Manager added that Tesla charges $126 for tire rotation (!), and then mentioned the name of a local tire dealer that will do it for free (and has the appropriate experience). Good news to share with my fellow club members.
After the tire service (which I still don’t need), the next check point is the two year mark, which we are now approaching. This one involves checking the brake fluid and the cabin air filter, and most likely doing that tire rotation and balancing. Although anything on a Tesla tends to be expensive, I keep telling myself that this cost is spread over 2 years and my maintenance cost to date is $0.
In the meantime, the Tesla Model 3 remains by far the most fun car I have ever owned. My accountant-wife loves the fact that she still hasn’t seen a bill for maintenance. One happy discovery was that many of the hotels we like to stay at offer free Destination Charging – basically an intermediate charge rate that will top off our battery overnight. In my 50 plus years of driving ICE cars, I never once stayed at a hotel that would throw in a free tank of gas with your room.
The above-mentioned Destination Charging was another Tesla-related discovery that ultimately turned out well. While plugging a Tesla into a 120V wall outlet is always an option, it returns a charge rate of 4-5 RPH – this will take ~ 3 days to fully charge our car. While this is not bad for weekly commuting of ~ 10 miles round trip, it is not practical for much else. At the other end of the spectrum is the Tesla V3 Supercharger which can reach a maximum of 1,000 RPH and theoretically top off our battery in ~ 20 minutes (barely enough time for a latte at Kettleman). In between lies the so-called Destination Charger, which is what most EV owners will eventually install in their homes.
Because we live in a condominium complex, our home installation was a bit more involved than average. Our HOA approved our request under the condition that we would tap into our own meter and not one paid by the HOA (reasonable), that we would have the wiring in our garage done by a licensed electrician (which was our plan anyway), and that we would obtain a permit from the County (not technically required, but a compromise we were willing to make). In retrospect, my big mistake may have been mentioning “Electric Vehicle” in my HOA request. EV’s are new and unknown to many – it would have been safer to say “Drier Outlet” or something less high-tech. Either way, the permit was only slightly more expensive than the electrician, and the total cost for both got our Tesla up and charging at home for less than the combined rebates from the electric company and the State of California. We had our own Destination Charging, and we made money on the deal.
