Tesla Model S waffling

[ZBB]

Milestone update...

I hit 25,000 miles on the Tesla the other day. That's in slightly less than 16 months (which is Saturday....). I've never put that many miles on a car so fast. Even considering that 4250 of those were on our road trip, it's still racking up miles. September was a bit over 1400 for example.

[robg]

Originally Posted by ZBB

Milestone update...

I hit 25,000 miles on the Tesla the other day. That's in slightly less than 16 months (which is Saturday....). I've never put that many miles on a car so fast. Even considering that 4250 of those were on our road trip, it's still racking up miles. September was a bit over 1400 for example.

Cool. What do you attribute that too? Life circumstances? Enjoy driving the car more than past ones?

[Sharp11]

Originally Posted by robg

Cool. What do you attribute that too? Life circumstances? Enjoy driving the car more than past ones?

... all that additional driving searching for superchargers adds up

[ZBB]

Originally Posted by Sharp11

... all that additional driving searching for superchargers adds up

You don't have to search for them -- they are built into the nav system...

Generally, using them does't add any miles to a trip --- they are pretty conveniently located. but there were two stretches of our road trip where we did have to add some miles to the overall trip in order to stay on the Supercharger Highway, both on the way back south:

1) Along I-5 in central CA. We had to head into the Bay Area to hit the Vacaville and Gilroy Superchargers instead of staying on I-5. That added about 40 extra miles. Tesla does have one planned (per their "Coming Soon" map) that will allow traffic to stay on I-5 and skip the Bay Area.

2) From the Tejon Ranch supercharger on I-5 (just north of the Grapevine when heading out of the LA area) to the Phoenix Area. We were trying to skip going through the LA area for traffic purposes, so our plan was to go from Tejon to Barstow to Indio and then along I-10 into Phoenix. But the Indio supercharger was not yet open (it finally opened last week). So we decided to go from Barstow to Vegas, and then back to Phoenix via Kingman. That added 50 miles. But now that Indio is open, the LV detour wouldn't have been necessary. Additionally, the mayor of Needles CA was quoted this week saying that a Supercharger will be in Needles before year end -- so that would let us get from Barstow to Kingman in our 60 (which is currently a dicey stretch for an 85 and only possible in a 60 with extreme hypermiling and a detour onto an old highway that is a more direct route, but has a ton of switchbacks)

So <100 of the 25k miles were for Supercharger-restricted routing...

[ZBB]

Originally Posted by robg

Cool. What do you attribute that too? Life circumstances? Enjoy driving the car more than past ones?

There's a couple reasons.

The road trip was slightly over 4,250 miles, and was the longest we've ever done. We did a ~1700 mile trip from Atlanta to Key West before we were married once, but other than that the most we've done is Phoenix to San Diego or Disneyland, with a <1-day drive each way. Ended up being a great trip and my wife is already proposing another one (we're considering a spring break trip up to Monument Valley and Moab, and head back through Vegas next).

But that still leaves ~21k miles -- which averages 1400 per month (I used 15 months since the road trip was 3 weeks...). My last few cars averaged 1100-1200 per month -- they ended up being for commuting, and we drove my wife's car on weekends. Since getting the Tesla, my wife's MINI has seen 200-300 miles less per month than perviously -- we're just taking the Tesla more often. Its a combination of it being nice to drive, more comfortable than the MINI and it costs less to fuel - about $1 in electricity to drive ~60 miles, vs ~$8 for gas to drive the same distance in her MINI (which gets 26-28MPG).

Interestingly, before I got the Tesla, I tried estimating the energy cost -- and came up with a range of $40-$50 per month added to our electric bill. For the first year, our electric bills were no more than $45 higher than the same month the previous year. So the ~21k non-roadtrip miles cost less than $700 in fuel cost. The same miles in the Boxster would have cost over $3500 in fuel. $180 less in fuel cost per month goes a long way towards paying for the higher price of the Tesla (no net savings, but it allowed me to spend more on the car with the same monthly cash flow impact...).

[ZBB]

Had the car in for its 25k service.

A first: No service bulletins applied! Over the first year, I had 8 applied, plus the battery shield upgrade installed.

The car has been rock solid over the last 7k miles (when the last service bulletin was applied...).

[ZBB]

So there are now 10 Superchargers open in AZ!

The most recent one is in Cordes Junction, and is the closest to our house -- 51 miles away. Its on the way to Flagstaff, which we can also reach without a charge, but gives some safety since the 5000 foot climb up to Flagstaff really impacts range (we arrived with 13 miles remaining when we stopped in Flagstaff on the way to the Grand Canyon)...

On a side note, AZ has more Superchargers than any state other than CA (where there are 17 open, with another 3 either permitted or under construction). Germany and China both have 18 open also. Pretty amazing progress...

[ZBB]

FYI -- this week's Freakonomics podcast is about Norway's EV subsidies (and a little about Tesla)...

http://freakonomics.com/2014/10/16/h...radio-podcast/

[dan]

Tesla incentives are here! Sales off 26%...

[dan]

Can any Tesla-phile explain how this could be accurate?

http://www.benzinga.com/news/14/10/4...-vs-prior-year