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Electric Vehicles are Here: EV Owners Check-In

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This thread is about owning an EV and the changes one must adapt to as part of ownership. Follow along and ask questions if you like.

Please keep comments about EV’s in general or autonomous driving focused on the two threads below.

https://trackmustangsonline.com/threads/the-times-they-are-a-charging.5870/

https://trackmustangsonline.com/threads/autonomous-cars-or-let-hal-do-the-driving.10302/

I picked up my 2018 Tesla Model 3, or M3 as Tesla owners like to call it, yesterday. The entire delivery process was very simple as you do all registration and payment processing online prior to delivery. We only signed a couple of documents and then we were off to learn how to operate the new EV. This was quite refreshing.

This car is for my wife and two of the main drivers of this purchase were my wife hates putting gas in a car and wanted access to the CA HOV lane that comprises 18 of her 24 mile daily commute to work one way. Here in NorCal Tesla’s are everywhere and we put a deposit on one over two years ago so we could get one.

Here are some photos of the car.


IMG_E4470.JPGIMG_E4472.JPGIMG_E4474.JPGIMG_E4478.JPG
 
Next up is charging the car. At home I'm having a Tesla Level II charger installed next week but in the meantime I'm having to use the painfully slow 110V charger. It only charged about 20% or 60 miles in 12 hours. I drove the car into work today because my wife is working from home. In my office we have 10 chargers and staging slots. It's kinda annoying that they are the best parking spots in our garage. But today I got to use them. You can see your charge level from the Tesla app and the app works well and has a lot of functions to it.

charging - Copy.pngdash - Copy.jpgIMG_E4492.JPGIMG_E4494.JPG
 
A couple of you have asked me privately for my driving impressions. Let me say up front after reading the reviews and issues I was expecting to be underwhelmed. Surprisingly I’m very impressed. The car drives very nice, it’s solid and has a great on center feel. The panel gaps are way better than my 2016 GT350, which was horrible, and about as good as my Acura MDX. The interior is very plain looking and having most controls on the 15” LCD panel will take some getting used to. From previously sitting in an M3 and seeing photos I thought the steering wheel looked cheesy. Reality is I really like the look and feel of it and it’s very sleek looking. It’s nice and fat with a relatively small diameter. The braking is fine, the car already has the Tesla braking software update, and the regen braking is different. The regen has two settings: standard and low. I have it set at low for now as were not too worried about maximizing range but I’ll let my wife decide how she wants to set it.

The control panel is pretty complicated and I spent an hour on it last night programming my personal settings. We have touch screen controls in our three other cars and I personally prefer more buttons. This will be distracting as we get familiar with the car but I suspect it will get much better with use.
 
Thanks. Yea the blue looks very similar to kona blue on the 2012 Boss 302 but just a shade less burple. My wife really like the blue on the Boss so she picked the color since it's her car. I have some extra AA batteries ready to go. ;) The more I drive the car the more I'm impressed. I live a few miles from the regional Tesla service/delivery location and in the past week I'm seeing 1-2 M3's around town daily. The hounds are loose!
 
Yes the car has regen. Standard and low. Both slow the car as soon as you release the gas pedal. On standard the car will come to a stop pretty much on it's own. I'm not quite sure how the technology works on it but my impression is there will be very little brake dust and the brakes could last a long time. When using the brakes they feel pretty good, similar to our 2013 Fusion Ti which has a nice firm pedal.
 
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Love that color!I know it was a wait for you guys. Glad your happy with the car! I understand what you mean on the tech side of these cars.:) Ive had my Gen 2 2016 Volt for over a year now and very much still impressed with the car and learn new things about it all the time. I'm at 41k miles on the car and have had it since 25K. Ive used the level 1 charger (120v) and it takes 13 hours at 12 amp for a full charge. (53-57 miles) I bought a level 2 charger but i still need to have it installed from electrical panel on complete opposite end of the house to my garageo_O.(this will cut the charge time to 4.5 hours that i can program to run late night 1am to 530 am at the cheapest rate plan) Maybe ill get to that this summer. Racing has come to a stop in Az seeing its 105 plus until Sept. Might have some more free time on hands if I'm not at the lake with the kids. With gas prices going up I'm sure this was great timing. Congrats with your purchase and hope you have a long run of trouble free driving.
 
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Looks great, Rick!

I'm trying to figure out what I'll get to replace my Fusion Energi. I'm VERY disappointed Ford doesn't have an all electric vehicle better than the outdated Focus. That said, I might buy a Focus to bridge me to the upcoming SUV next year.
 
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Does the state of California give a credit for this install? How long of a pull was it from your panel?
 
It's been a long time since I've posted (was here when it was BMO). Just as a little bit of reintroduction, I've gotten into a Subaru BRZ (and sold it), my first house (in Southern CA, I'm in Orange County) and am now putting around in style in my Tesla Model 3.

The pictures are basically

(#1/#2) When I picked up the car
(3rd) Nema 14-50 plug that I installed myself as my house was already wired for EV charging. (I get 32 miles/hr with my setup at home, I'm on a 40A breaker there so I limit to 80% of that current or 32 amps)
(4th) The "fitment" issues I had with my build.

The last photo is the only gap/quality issue I had with the car.

Pros:
Direct (more on this in the con section)
Brakes barely get used due to regenerative braking so it's easy to clean!
Super quiet
Great sound system
Never get gas
My solar system basically pays for all the driving I do

Cons:
Indirect (the steering is nice but I can't help but feel nothing is mechanical)
Super quiet (can hear the tiniest rattle)
Software some times has to be rebooted

I thought the center screen would really bother me but I just have gotten used to it in the month I've owned the Model 3. Overall for my DD I just don't see myself ever going away from a BEV. Not having to ever worry about getting gas and basically having all fuel paid for is absolutely amazing. The instant torque is also super amusing as is having one gear. The pick up from a roll is hilarious and hasn't gotten old. I do expect that if I do all the minor maintenance myself this car will last forever. I'm really holding out for the affordable everyday go cart (think 2300-2700 lb) electric sports car.

The other thing that I don't think people convey enough is it really is like using an appliance (toaster, cell phone, computer, what have you). You just walk up to the car, open the door (the phone app can be finicky some times) and the thing is on. You don't even touch anything to lock the the doors when you leave as it autolocks and turns everything off once you're a certain distance away. If you left the default settings on you can creep where your car is like your Uber driver coming to you. You and your wife can creep on each other, Rick! I've been driving manual cars as my daily driver for almost two decades and it's really a shift in how you think about a car for transportation from the moment you enter and leave to when you need to "fuel up." In spite of how much less connected it is it's not a bad thing particularly for a daily driver.

As I bought this one I'm looking to get my girlfriend into a Volt or Bolt lease to replace her Prius but I seemed to have missed the days of $0 down, $175/mo deals for 10K/miles and 36 months.IMG_2005.jpgIMG_2018.jpgnema_plug.jpgtm3_gap.jpg
 
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I haven't heard or seen any info about charging stations in my state (Ct). Maybe I'm not looking hard enough or not seeking far enough? Anybody else in this state have any more info to provide? This surely looks like the wave of the future, not that I'm getting rid of my Boss any tyme soon! Fees for charging your car will come fast! If this is a freebie now, it definitely will not last............trust me
 
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