Tesla Chronicles #39 - August Update

Well, it is mid-August and there is a ton of general EV news to cover! Since my last post in April (the battery degradation experiment...more on that below), the following has happened:

• Ford announced they are transitioning to the NACS (Tesla) charging standard

• ....which resulted in about a ton of other automakers to follow

• ....which resulted in about a ton of charging infrastructure manufacturers and providers to announce they too are going to put the NACS cables on their chargers.

• ...which may or may not have influenced 7 Automakers to come together to collaborate on building a nation wide charging network (also NACS compatible.... BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes and Stellantis) in the next few years. They claim they will hit the size of today's Tesla network in the US in about 5 years.... yawn....

• And.... drumroll ... The Tesla CyberTruck appears to be coming off the production line finally.

The adoption of NACS is fantastic news in my opinion. There are Tesla owners that are concerned but honestly, having the same connection available at all charging sites across the country is the goal. Given that Tesla is killing everyone right now when it comes to Charging Infrasturcture, the auto industry had to react. The lead Tesla has right now is ridiculous, it isn't even close, The auto industry tried to rely on the CCS infrastructure but it is failing their drivers terribly, so they HAD to make a change. I like the move. By 2024, there should be adapters available for CCS vehicle owners to purchase to go from Tesla to CCS. I have an adapter to go from CCS to Tesla and it works great. New EVs won't have the NACS plug in the car until sometime in 2025 likely.

I personally have my name on the list to get a CyberTruck. As long as they don't get to me for another 6 years or so (guessing there are at least 1M orders ahead of me), I will be interested in one depending on the price. We'll see. I hated it at first but now it is growing on me. Likewise, I have my name on the list for the Aptera. As with all new things, I don't recommend buying the first generation or two of anything (I learned my lesson with my robot mower experiment, trust me).

In my own EV corner, I have only added about 6,000 miles to my Modely Y and currently sit at about 42,000 miles. We let it sit at home for 3 weeks while we were on vacation in Ireland and Scotland in July. Left it plugged in and it just stayed at 80% the whole time. It used a couple of % every day for cabin overheat protection and charged back up overnight. I also just put new summer tires on after 24,000 miles of usage. A little earlier than I would have liked to, but not terribly all that much earlier than many of my other SUVs over the years. There was plenty of tread left for dry weather driving, but during heavier rain, I noticed some hydroplaning recently. That is the time when I start to look for replacements. I would guess the first set of tires on most of my SUVs to replace the OEMs came around 30,000 miles for most of them. I went with a set of all season tires (Pirelli Pzero for about $1400 total) to try to get a little less wear on the winter tires in the fall and spring so we'll see how the perform when it gets colder in November. Also hoping the long term wear is a bit better. So far, I haven't seen any change in my vehicle range with the new tires.

The car continues to operate flawlessly. Truly. No issues. I need to get the front seats looked at as a piece of trim has come loose on both front seats, but it is a known/common problem and for my car, it has been like it is now for over a year. The fix is to replace the OEM plastic clip that breaks with a metal alternate, but you have to go get Tesla to replace it, and I just haven't had time to make that happen.

We really haven't done many road trips since April. I took a trip across the state to visit family in Greensburg and made a few trips to Baltimore to visit my wife's family, and several trips to DC for work stuff. The trip I take from home to work sites in DC is just about the perfect EV distance.... about 180 miles one way, and when it is possible to do highway speeds on I-95, it takes about 75% of my battery to go one way. Finding hotels with EV chargers has proven difficult, but this last time, we all went out to dinner near the superchargers and I easily got a full charge while we ate dinner the one night we stayed there. When driving home....more traffic, slower moving = less battery used. In fact, we just finished a 4 day family / work trip where we put over 600 miles on the car in 4 days. The entire trip cost me personally about $32 or about $0.05/mile. A little more than $25 at the supercharger and $7 here at home to return my battery to the charge it was at before we left. More importantly, charging up cost me nearly zero of my personal time. Sure, the car was plugged in for a total of 26 hours to charge up, but the majority of this was on our 240V travel charger overnight, 1 hour was while we were at dinner, and 3 hours was on a 120V outlet while visiting family just to add a tiny bit of electricity while there. A gas car would have required at least 2 gas station stope which would have taken at least 15 minutes of my personal time to fill up.

Finally... the charging experiment. I'll be honest, I am not certain that much can be determined from my experiment. I think some of my observations might just be coincidence, but here is what I saw. For the first 5 weeks or more, charging every day to 80% seemed to result in an instant increase in my vehicle's reported max range (about 37,500 mile mark below). It increased by almost 4-5 miles. When I transitioned over to 90% everyday for a month, that trend of increasing reported max range increased some more, but at a much slower rate of increase (until about 39,000 miles). Returning to random charging throughout the week seemed to undo some of the gains I have seen, but then, when we went on vacation, everything flattened out again and now I am basically at the same range I was at when I started this entire experiment. What I notice is that the fleet average of other Model Y's are also seeing a pretty flat curve right now as well.

I don't know what to make of this little experiment. I have concluded that it probably doesn't matter what you do daily as long as you don't overcharge frequently or let it sit at a low state of charge. I am personally going to return to charging when I get down to 30-40% here at home, so a couple of times a week, and higher charges to 90-100% when we plan on driving around more the next day. It is just slightly more convenient for me to do it that way. To each his or her own though.