Tesla Chronicles #6 - 1 Month of Ownership

Stats: I have driven just over 1000 miles. For those miles, I am averaging 298 W/mi driven. Note that this stat is for ONLY driving, I am just starting to figure out how to keep the other phantom drains down to a minimum. I have charged the car 27 times.... all at home (0.14763 cents/kWh) except for 6 times that were 100% free, and once in Phoenixville where parking for EV had a $0.50/hour upcharge.... which was still cheaper than it costs me to charge at home. I have estimated that I have used about 500 kWh of electricity to charge my vehicle for this month....(this equates to a 500 W/mi...ouch) which has cost me about $55....as compared to about $166 it would have cost to drive my Highlander the same distance, I have saved $111 in "fuel". I hope to improve upon that with my better understanding of how to configure the vehicle settings while at work to reduce the battery drain when it is not being driven. My Electric costs are roughly 1/3rd that of gas.

At an average of 300 W/mi for driving, that would equate to about 250 miles of usable range on a full charge (they advertise the vehicle can get 329 miles of range). I have noticed that short drives are much less efficient in the W/mi category... I am guessing that for each drive, there is some overhead associated with getting the battery warmed up a bit at the start, when spread out over a longer drive, isn't a big issue, but when the majority of my drives are 11 miles.... I am not getting into that "longer" drive range. My 33 worst drives in W/mi were all < 12 miles in length.... my two drives on the PA turnpike that were over 90 miles were about 290 W/mi... this is due to much higher speeds = less efficiency..... at the end of the day, I feel confident I could easily do 200 mile segments of driving between charges on a long drive.

I have also noticed that short charges are generally not very efficient either.... adding less than 10kWh is just not great about half the time.... over 10kWh, the efficiency seems to be better.

I love the car so far...... no gas stops has been very cool. I did one Supercharger stop just to try it (and to make sure I knew what that was like)... I did this at lunchtime and was disappointed with the Wendy's nearby (drive through service only!? Still?)... I was tempted to walk through the drive through.....