All Tesla All Day

All Tesla All Day

Almost three years ago I got it in my head that I might want to own a Tesla X to use out here when I moved for good. The experience from start to finish was interesting. Kim and I went to one of the urban malls that are scattered in San Diego. This one was near La Jolla, which meant it was close to the mother lode of excess disposable income. To be honest, I had recently had a nice private equity distribution, so I was feeling flush, as one does. It was strange going to a car dealership in an fancy outdoor mall (or any mall for that matter). We had to be taken out to the mall parking structure where there were a line of Tesla super chargers and a row of gleaming new Teslas. Test driving an EV for the first time, and especially a Tesla with all its snazzy interior equipment like the huge screen with big navigation and lots more is a trip. I am always about making sure I fit comfortably in a car I’m buying. I have bought two cars (and Audi-6 and a Cadillac Escalade) that proved disappointingly small for me in different, but annoying ways. I refuse to make that mistake again. I was very pleased about the way I fit in the Tesla, and the test drive was as exhilarating as these things come. As a motorcycle guy, I have rarely gotten enthusiastic about a car of any sort, but the Tesla very much rang my bell.

After the test drive, Kim and I sat and worked through the order with the salesman. The big decisions were whether to go for the regular 75D model or spend about 50% more for the 90 or 100D that is all about bragging rights and performance beyond anything you can use off the drag race course. Even Tesla calls the 100 “Ludicrous Speed”. I had no need for that and felt the 75 would be just fine even though it had a few miles less of maximum range, implying a slightly smaller battery. The difference between maximum range of 235 and 285 miles just wasn’t enough to justify the price point. Don’t get me wrong, range is perhaps the biggest deal you can have with an EV, but until they get it up to 400+, or, as Elon Musk likes to brag, a million mile range battery, I’m not sure it makes enough difference. If you are willing to spend time at Denny’s and Chile’s as you cross the country and wait things out at every supercharger station along the way, doing it every 210 versus 260 miles just isn’t a big deal. At an average speed of 70 mph, that is a three-hour stretch versus a 3.7-hour stretch. The other two big options were the 4/5/6/7 seat configurations and whether to add the autonomous self-driving feature. At the time, the seating was real, but the autonomous driving was only theoretical since Tesla would be downloading the software over the following year. We went for the 6-seater and full autonomous and ran up a bill that was 40% greater than any car I had ever purchased.

It took Tesla about four months to build our X and we took delivery in late December, 2017. When we went to pick it up, Tesla continued its “doing things differently” approach and had our car in what seemed like a showroom at the fulfillment center. There they showed us all the tricks of the vehicle, which are clearly more new to buyers than a normal car purchase. I imagine it was something like buying an internal combustion engine car in 1917 with all the usual questions like, “where and how do we recharge?” One of the real special early-adopter advantages with Tesla was that they gave me a lifetime (probably meaning the lifetime of the vehicle) free supercharging…a nice benefit as it turns out even if I don’t use it much. The funniest thing that happened during the pick-up was that after explaining the multiple sensors on the Tesla X that keeps it safer than other cars, one of the falcon-wing doors closed down on Kim’s head. So much for total safety.

In the 28 months that I’ve owned the car I have put a grand total of 6,000 miles on it. That’s an average of 214 miles per month or 1/5 of the normal usage for most cars and drivers. I think that will change now that we live here full time, but I bet it doesn’t go over 500/month since we only use the Tesla for local driving. I love the car and almost everything about it, but I don’t love the range anxiety that comes with longer distance traveling in an EV, even with free supercharging. I have decided that the people of the next fifty years are likely to have both an EV and a range car that can get filled up. Now that may be with gasoline, but soon that is likely to be hydrogen. But just having an EV will only work if we are all going to give up on long-distance car travel. That could actually happen post-Coronavirus, but I’m not betting on that yet.

I have decided that Tesla is a survivor as they soar versus all the other car companies struggling to match them on the EV front. Accordingly, I have decided to expand my use of Tesla products. I’m sure you’re thinking I have booked passage on Spacex for an orbital trek, but I’m guessing my size, while working in a Tesla X might not in a Spacex. I did, however, buy two Tesla batterywalls that come to me from the monster Tesla Nevada battery factory, supposedly the largest structure in the world. My friends at Baker Electric, who put in my solar panels on my roof last year spent this week installing the two Tesla batteries on the outside wall of my garage. That wall, which is fortunately not so visible for aesthetic reasons, now looks like the inside of a submarine with seven grey junction boxes, two massive gleaming white batteries and some shiny conduit that is much larger than you usually see on a residence. If I ever want to impress someone with the mechanicals of this house, that garage wall alone will work fine.

Now, when I go on my Tesla App, something I only did irregularly for the car since it only told me about the charge level and allowed me to get it cooled or heated before I went out to get in. Now I see that it has the valet and summons functions, but I have not yet tried to use it. Asking a car to autonomously pick you up by itself takes a level of comfort or confidence that I haven’t got just yet. I’m not sure I ever will. But as of this week, I can swipe to the right and see what’s happening with my solar and battery. I can see how much energy the roof panels are generating. I can see how much the house is using throughout the day. I can see where the battery charge level sits. I can see whether the battery is being used instead of tapping the grid. And overall, I can track how much of the home’s needs I am generating from the solar and how the battery is helping me time-shift to keep my grid usage during the expensive peak times to a minimum. In other words, between the car and batteries, I am now very much at the mercy of Tesla and its data gathering and energy management for me. Good thing I trust Elon since I am now about all Tesla all day.