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JoeS

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Joined
Dec 15, 2011
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Hills above Silicon Valley, California
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Pre-Autopilot 2013 but fully-loaded with all options (and with the preferable-by-me 19" brand-new Michelins), including rear-facing seats. 85kWh. Exactly 30K miles. Absolutely 'Pristine'. Motor/drivetrain replaced six months ago and battery pack contactors upgraded. Fully debugged. 1/2 the price of a new Tesla. Great drive back up from San Luis Obispo where we bought it.

Present for my wife as a thank-you for caring for me over the last several months (long story) and primarily for her long-distance drives to Oregon. We plan on taking an extended tour of the USA, starting in May.

Now, we have the best of both worlds. No intention of replacing the i-MiEVs which are ideal for all our local driving.
 
Awesome! I've always thought that the i-MiEV and Model S complement each other well, even if they are polar opposites :lol: .

Congratulations.
 
Great find, love the color. She will likely miss the awesome MiEV torque and quickness, but hopefully will come to accept the tesla over time...
 
OMG,

I am so jealous of you Joe.......

i would love to do the same but alas used Model S's in Canada are pricey and importing a US one with the 1.3 exchange is also difficult.

It will be great to hear your prespective on the Model S after owning an iMiev for so long.

Congratz

Don.....
 
Congratulations Joe
Definitely the best of both worlds, At least you won't be wondering what color to wear in the car department.
Definitely what Don D said, looking forward to your driving experience comments in comparison to the i Miev.
How fitting to take it out for an adventurous road trip. Now I'm jealous.
My wife and I are hoping for a smaller hybrid of the S and the I in the Model 3 in the near future.
:D
Enjoy and try not to grin to much - some people might not understand.
Just kidding
:)
Hope you enjoy many miles with smiles.
 
Thank you all for your well-wishes and I appreciate the humor. :D For now, the Tesla (Tesia) is esconsed in the garage as I continue with my chemo following the surgery and thus wife is not going anywhere. Still reading the manual - love the fact that so many features are programmable. All I've gleaned so far is that a software update is available, but where I live we have no AT&T reception and my home WiFi doesn't reach the garage yet (yes, the Tesla has built-in WiFi connectivity), so I can't install the update.

My '67 Saab had been my primary daily driver for most of my life (interspersed with other vintage Saabs and toys such as a Austin-Healey 3000, Lancia Flavia Vignale convertible, and Lancia Fulvia Zagato), and I have enough Saabs and parts lying around to keep it running forever. First the more-modern Gen1 Honda Insight with its ABS and now the i-MiEV with its ASC were my gentle introductions into this-century's technologies. The subtle i-MiEV panic braking-rate detection and response still leaves me gobsmacked! Of course, the Tesla blows all this away. :geek:

My logic for buying used without Autopilot (and all the sensors needed for many of the functions such as lane-keeping, Summon, smart cruise control, etc.) is that the price for this feature adds about $30K on the used market so one might as well buy new, but who knows what further enhancements are coming…? Even though we had originally planned on taking our lovely red Gen1 Honda Insight, I had considered renting/leasing a Tesla for our cross-country tour but for the cost of doing that we might just as well buy a used car and if we don't like it we can sell it after our trip. If we like it (wife already loves it) we'll keep it and we always have the option of blowing some of my son's inheritance and buying new…

Incidentally, the used Tesla market has recently been opening up as present owners are moving up to Autopilot and 'D' versions.

Once we get to driving Tesia I'll be posting our learning experience on this thread (after all, it is OffTopic). In the meantime, our i-MiEVs are our faithful daily workhorses for all our local driving, as no way would we take this flawless Tesla into the cramped parking lots of our local shopping centers - having driven small cars all our lives and the snoutless i-MiEV for the past four years, both my wife and I are appropriately concerned driving this huge but agile pachyderm. :roll:

Time to snap some photos and get rid of my Saab stable and most of the other vehicles... :mrgreen:
 
Congrats Joe- I'm glad you'll be taking your Victory Lap in comfort and fume-free style rather than in the venerable but outmoded Insight...
 
Well, Tesia has been sitting in the garage since we got her and I've been reading the manual and selected topics on the massive Tesla Motors Club website. A few peculiarities so far -

1. Neither my Panasonic Mitsu EVSE (or EVSEUpgrade.com Mitsu EVSE) nor my SPX Power Xpress (now Bosch) EVSE works with the Tesla, nor does the early Leaf's Panasonic. Evidently, they do not conform strictly to the J1772 spec which specifies a +/- 12v square wave and these EVSEs supposedly only put out a positive-going square wave [unconfirmed, I'm repeating what someone wrote].

2. In order to get the Tesla portable EVSE to work with its 14-50 plug, both the Neutral and Ground need to be tied together, which is normally done back at the panel when one has four-wire wiring. Since all I have is three-pin L6-30, I had to 'spoof' the Neutral pin and tied a 220-ohm resistor between it and ground inside my L6-30P -->14-50R adapter. Edit: I have subsequently replaced the resistor with a dead short between N and G. :geek: Have the car's charge rate using this configuration set to 24A.

3. The vampire load is 4A on the 33Ah Tesla 12v battery (same capacity as we have in the i-MiEV)!! :shock: Without a recharge, it would be dead in eight hours! The car wakes up when the battery drops down to some voltage level (I don't think they do coulomb counting on that battery) and the dc-dc recharges it. Talk about continuous deep cycling! Tesla recommends keeping the car plugged into the wall (I do that using my L1 (120vac) Clipper Creek, with my charge level on the Tesla screen set to 50% for now while we're not using it). Tesla's 12v batteries evidently usually don't last more than a couple of years. :( So far, Tesla is eating the cost of these batteries under warranty and is now putting in a high-grade deep-cycle AGM, but still... Edit: The vampire load has now dropped to 0.5A following numerous software updates; nevertheless, I now have the Tesla 12v battery on a smart 'float' charger (e.g., Battery Tender) whenever I put the car back into the garage, which has completely stopped the gradual (~1%/day) main battery depletion which was occurring as the car woke up to recharge that 12v battery..
 
Just a brief update -

Since our Tesla is only used for long trips, it normally sits under its cover in the garage for long spells. The only mod I've made to it is adding a float charger for the 12v AGM which has completely stopped the 1%/day depletion of the traction pack due to occasionally waking up the car and recharging the 12v battery (thank you siai47). Other than the 12v float charger, I no longer keep the Tesla plugged in.

In the last three weeks we took two 1000-mile exploratory round-trips up to Oregon. Just as CHAdeMO was an order-of-magnitude improvement over J1772, so is Tesla's huge capacity and SuperCharger network another giant leap forward. The Tesla met all my initial expectations for a long-distance car, and every time we stopped for a recharge the car told us it was ready to go before we were. Yes, we're spoiled rotten by all the features and creature comforts!

That said, the i-MiEV is a far more practical car for local driving - no worries about getting it dinged, its small size and turning radius are superb, ingress/egress is much better than the Tesla (especially when carrying really old people around), and the i-MiEV's tall aft opening and completely flat floor with the back seats down is so nice for carrying large bulky objects. Like I keep saying, I own the best of both worlds.

Now that I have been deemed healthy, tomorrow we are setting off on a long open-ended Tesla trip around the US, initially taking the southern route through New Orleans and then down to Key West. Picked up a CHAdeMO adapter and I'm also taking my huge collection of power adapters and a few extensions. Looking forward to visiting friends we haven't seen in years as well as simply being tourists.
 
Very happy for you about your over your heath issues ,
Wishing you a very exciting and safe voyage
Keep us posted of your travels.
Did I mention that I love road trips! !!
 
OK, we've already put on over 4500 miles in our cross-country Tesla tour and we're heading north up the East Coast to Washington DC after visiting Key West. We took the southern route east using primarily Interstate 10, and so far have been lucky in avoiding floods and tornados.

As I've come to realize, driving the Tesla is no different than driving a luxurious ICE vehicle long distances, the only caveat being that one simply plans ahead where to recharge.

What follows are some of my random thoughts and impressions and contrasts with the i-MiEV.

Range and Charging

I've been driving BEVs for twenty years. My original EcoScoot had a range of about five miles, which meant I had to scrounge a charge if I wanted to get back home from town. My EV conversion pickup has a range of 11 miles, which made for an 'interesting' drive home (uphill) after dinner in town on a 'winter' evening. My Corbin Sparrows have a range of 20 - 50+ miles, and, of course, our i-MiEVs' range is, as we know, whatever we want it to be (nominally 50-80 miles on a single charge).

I mention this to put into context how my perception of 'range' differs from that of the casual observer who invariably asks that question first. With the Tesla, to me, it is a total non-issue, even when crossing New Mexico and Texas on Interstate 10 where there are no SuperChargers. A SuperCharger is a very high-power DC charger that stuffs so much energy back into the car quickly that, invariably, the car is ready to go well before we are. Tesla so-called 'destination chargers' (High Power Wall Charger - HPWC, simply a 240vac EVSE with Tesla connector capable of up to 80A) are now liberally scattered at hotels and restaurants across the country. In any case, there are RV resorts seemingly everywhere with their NEMA 14-50 outlets, lots of private homeowners on PlugShare willing to share their EVSEs, and there are plenty of welding shops in industrial areas if things really became dodgy. As a last resort, plain old 120vac wall receptacles are everywhere and I actually used one a few nights ago as an old friend we were staying with overnight didn't want to leave his door open between the garage and laundry room for access to the 240vac dryer outlet there. My huge collection of adapters simply gives me peace of mind knowing I can plug into anything. I actually used an RV campsite in Van Horn TX for a brief NEMA 14-50 opportunity charge even though I didn't really need it - we were stopping for lunch there, anyway.

To date, our longest drive on a single charge was from Bisbee NM to Las Cruces, NM, a distance of 243 miles (391km). I started with a 95% charge and arrived with 13% remaining, and I purposely used that leg of the trip to see how the car reacted to my driving style. Piece of cake, especially with Tesla's incredibly-accurate range-predicting algorithm.

With proper planning, there is simply no situation when one is idly sitting there waiting for the car to charge - after all, who watches their cellphone charge? Wherever we stop, there's always something to do (usually meals), even if only taking a walk to stretch our legs and explore the surroundings.

So far, every SuperCharger I've gone to has worked perfectly, as have various destination HPWCs.

Oh, and to answer the question: I'm sure I could easily do well over 300 miles in my Tesla MS85 on a single charge.

Range Prediction and Hypermiling

Tesla provides two 'range' metrics you can choose from: State of Charge or Distance (either miles or kilometers). You get to choose one or the other. I personally prefer SoC, but in talking with other Tesla drivers it seems that their heads are wrapped around 'miles'.

I still don't know for sure what variables go into Tesla's range predictions shown on their Trip display graph. I've been told by Tesla reps that the variables are outside temperature, inside temperature, elevation ∆, speed, and airspeed/direction, but, strangely, NOT actual battery capacity. That last one doesn't make sense to me. I sure would like to know exactly what 'speed' Tesla has programmed into that equation so that I can know how to adjust my driving when I need to. In any case, the Tesla display provides a graph at the start of a drive to a destination which shows its end-of-trip SoC prediction (or distance remaining, if you wish) and then provides another line on the graph which shows one's 'actual' performance throughout the trip with dynamic correction of the endpoint. What boggles my mind is how incredibly accurate this thing is when simply driving 'normally'.

As best I can tell, the prediction does not take into account a driver's past pre-trip history, unlike our i-MiEV's RR.

If a destination is programmed that the car can't achieve, it provides lots of cautions and warnings and (much to my dismay) automatically directs you to charging stops along the way - fooled me a couple of times as I thought I was going to a destination in one shot.

Unlike the i-MiEV and its relatively-high coefficient of drag, Tesla's low Cd, coupled with its weight, means that kicking it into neutral on level ground results in the car just rolling and rolling with barely-diminishing speed - a treat for hypermiling. Unlike my driving the i-MiEV, I don't often do this with the Tesla as I still haven't found myself in a situation where I'm trying to eke out every last mile from the car.

Varying one's driving style (e.g., hypermiling) does result in an improvement in the end number, but nowhere near as dramatically as with the i-MiEV.

Anyway, for the long distances the Tesla covers the highly-accurate predictions are appreciated, but for the i-MiEV's short-range daily driving the RR is just fine, IMO.

Simply no such thing as 'Range Anxiety' in either car!

Performance

With the Tesla, you stomp on it and the response is immediate. With the i-MiEV, it takes a couple of (sometimes agonizing) seconds for the car get up and go. With the Tesla I've now had a couple of instances when pulling out onto a high-speed highway from a cross-street where I appreciated the Tesla's acceleration - and mine is only a plain-vanilla 85 model (0-60 in 5.4 seconds) and not the neck-snapping Performance model with Insane or Ludicrous Mode (0-60 in 2.8 seconds). Accelerating onto an Interstate I frequently find myself suddenly realizing the car is up to 90mph … oops.

Recall, the NA version of the i-MiEV's 0-60 is 14+ seconds (in other countries it's around 12 seconds), but we have an 8-year battery warranty. I think that's the reason Mitsubishi put a time delay into the i-MiEV's acceleration, but perhaps it's to limit loading on the drivetrain. Hey, I still think the i-MiEV is nice and peppy, no matter what the numbers say.

The Tesla's handling is excellent IMO, but this is a very heavy car and I am still not comfortable with fast cornering on wet roads. Haven't pushed its limits and hope to find a large empty lot when in a rainstorm so I can play with it and see what happens.

Regeneration and Stopping

Tesla has quite high regen when one releases the accelerator - good, but not quite as high as the original BMW i3; nevertheless, when driving normally, one-pedal driving is the rule with only a need to step on the brake when the car gets down to 5mph. The i-MiEV is pretty good in that respect with B mode, but unfortunately 'creep' kicks in on the i-MiEV somewhere around 9 mph. Unlike all other BEVs, Tesla's brake pedal only actuates the brake without increasing regen (note that the i-MiEV significantly increases regen even when in B-mode when the brake pedal is depressed). I haven't experienced the need for an emergency stop in the Tesla but I'll be surprised if it's better than the i-MiEV simply due to the weight difference between the two cars. Probably need to look up some car-test results (other than Consumer Reports) to see what the numbers are.

The Tesla does provide a 'Creep' mode simulating an ICE automatic transmission - one of many features that can be enabled or disabled. I've used both, and have settled on disabling 'creep', although I've come to like the i-MiEV's 'creep' feature.

The car only has two regeneration settings: 'Standard' which is pretty aggressive, and 'Low' which is meant to simulate an ordinary ICE automatic transmission. I personally would like a 'zero-regen' option for hypermiling on long open-highway stretches, as well as an even more-aggressive 'high-regen' setting for both city and mountain road driving.

Cruise Control

I do not have the latest Tesla model with the sensors to enable Autopilot, Summon, AutoPark, etc., but do have a plain old dumb speed-control capability. This definitely is inferior to manual driving for maximizing range: changing the speed control by even one mile per hour results in a sudden power spike. On level ground and climbing up a simple overpass the car unnecessarily sharply adds power, only to sharply drop into regen on the downhill side. IMO I would sure like to have a de-sensitized option for CC. Better yet, give me a 'throttle' that merely applies power at a constant setting - so what if it slows down on an overpass? As I discussed in the section on hypermiling, there is a scenario that differs between BEV and ICE: in order to maximize range, going down hill and artificially restricting the car's speed using regen is preferable to simply letting the car coast. Cruise Control does this very well.

Comfort

Having put in a number of long driving days in the Tesla, both my wife and I are amazed at how rested we feel at the end of the day - I think it's due to the car's silence rather than the fancy leather seats. The legroom, both in the front and back, in the Tesla is amazing. Getting in and out of the Tesla is certainly more difficult than the i-MiEV when transporting elderly friends.

Battery Management

As the car is pumping over 300A dc into the batteries from a SuperCharger in sweltering 100degF (38degC) heat I can't help but be thankful for its liquid-cooled battery environment. The battery thermal control system kicks in when needed, very noticeable audibly from outside the car when charging.

Air Conditioning

The aircon for humans has been on every since we left home - Tesla does offer some range-extending climate control attenuation features, but I haven't felt the need to use them. A recent post on the Tesla forum allowed as maybe this feature even raises the battery temperature slightly - something I want to stay away from for now.

Displays

The car has two - the huge thing in the middle and the one in the dashboard in front of the driver. Both are programmable with well-thought-out features. I appreciate having so many car settings adjustable to meet my own specific desires. Still learning and, when driving, I have to restrain myself from using the main display and simply ask my wife to access the feature(s) I'd like displayed at the moment. The car is always connected via AT&T 3G (if there's a signal), and even has a Web browser built into that display! Comes with access to an incredible variety of Internet audio.

'Nuff for now. I was going to address cultural differences between Silicon Valley and what I've experienced during this trip in some parts of the country, but it's too hot to put a flame suit on. Thanks for bearing with me and I'll be happy to answer any questions, recognizing that I'm still a Tesla novice.
 
Thanks for sharing & the great report on your Tesla trip.
This has assured us of the Tesla quality. I believe putting down a reserve deposit on the M3 was the right choice for us so far as I can see. (We much prefer a smaller car.).
Have a great & safe trip.
If you make it up the east coast as far north as Montreal, Quebec, Canada ,
Look us up.
 
Nice update. Glad to hear the trip is going well so far.

Any chance you'll be rolling through Pittsburgh?
 
We met Joe & Katie for lunch when they came though Biloxi

What impressed me most about the car is that it's so 'programmable'. As I understand it, the car is always connected to the Internet and software updates happen automatically from time to time, no matter where the car happens to be. Joe mentioned that owners can even request a change in options or features and the factory analyzes those requests and some of them actually get implemented into all the cars. Certainly the *opposite* of Mitsu's 'support' for our cars - We're totally disconnected from the factory and nothing we'd like to see is ever going to happen

Don
 
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