Tesla Sand Bagging the Model 3 Again?

It matters more in how much they pay for those refuels.

 

According to the NHTS, 99% of all automobile trips are under 70 miles. So your 640 mile range is not very practical for daily use.

If you have an ICE car, you are carrying around enough liquid fuel to power 640 mile range (in your case about 100 pounds of additional payload). Electrons weigh nothing.

I have never filled a car in 3 minutes. By the time you wait in line, fill up, visit the facilities, buy a beverage, etc. it is closer to 30 minutes. On a trip, I can recharge in 30 minutes or less.

In California, you will pay around $50 for your fill up. I will pay around $5 at the Supercharger.

You also haven't figured in the cost of additional health care caused by breathing polluted air as a result of ICE.

 

If you have a plugged in 3 (You have an S, but I'll keep the example a 3 to stay barely on topic) can you set it so that the cabin is warm and the windows are all defrosted at a certain predetermined time?

 

I've measured both of my Prius' at about 10% at 0°F.

99% of mine are under 30 miles, which is why my Prime is virtually all-electric in the city. However, that stat is little help when you are on a road trip and you have to go over 600 miles between charging stations, which I've now done three times in the last 16 months.

Batteries are crazy heavy. The 70 pounds of fuel in my Prime replaces 1500 pounds of batteries.

I've done it hundreds of times.

Where the heck are you going? We can leave the highway, find a gas station, fuel up, all four of us go to the bathroom, and re-enter the highway in 8 minutes. We usually take 10-12 so we can stretch our legs a bit more but the car is waiting for us, not the other way around.

For 300 miles of range, that would be $9.33 a gallon in my Prime. I was just in CA in June (Anaheim, Escondido, San Diego) and it was nowhere near that.

Fortunately the Prime's exhaust is cleaner than the air in LA.

 

At home, I always refuel at Costco, and my typical wait is zero. That's because I usually fuel up at opening time on a weekday. On the road, I fuel up in whatever town we're near and there's never been a line one time in my life. I just got back from a just over 3,000 mile trip (18 days, 12 hotels in 6 states) and never once had to wait in line for fuel. Not one fuel stop took more than the time it took for everyone to use the bathroom.

 

Currently, there are 30 Superchargers in Colorado, most of them less than 150 miles apart, none of the 600 miles apart. This is typical across most of the US, about 150 or less intervals.

The weight of the batteries is baked into the model 3, 310 mile range. The weight of gasoline is not baked into the Prius range.

Ah, so your 3 minutes just morphed into 8 minutes and then 12 minutes and if you were realistic it might morph into 30 minutes

You just changed the parameters on me - you were talking about 600 mile range! That would be 12 gallons of gasoline @$4+ per gallon in California equals $50. The model 3 can travel 600 miles for $5 to $10 depending on whether you charge at home or not when you leave.

The Prime exhaust is one of the reasons for the air quality in LA.

 

So what? I can easily drive hundreds of miles in my state without encountering a city with a supercharger. I can also leave my state.

My most recent >600 mile between superchargers trip was from Page AZ to Mesa Verde to Durango to Cortez to Montrose to Glenwood Springs. Just under 700 miles.

Which is one reason the range is so short - it's overweight.

Which is irrelevant since it's so light.

Totally wrong. I looked it up on my Google Timeline for that trip. Four of my fill ups we 6, 9, 9 and 10 minutes, including entry, exit and four people using the bathrooms.

No, you did, equating my full ups to your 30 minutes of charging.

Which is still wrong, still irrelevant, and doesn't include the cost of your time.

Prius is exceptionally clean. Prime is cleaner since most in city driving is electric.

 

I have to drive to the family homes in Stillwater OK or Coffeyville KS so I used PlugShare to map Tesla capable Routes:

I can make it by adding ~100 miles and 3 hour detour to a charging stop at Rogers AR. When the planned SuperCharger at Fort Smith AR is up, any of the Teslas can make either trip.

Imagine you need to drive from the left peak to the right peak of a "U" but they are too far to drive directly. So you'll have to follow the line of "U" adding too much time to a trip.

Calm my friend:

This is a classic case of letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough." For example, +90% of my miles in Huntsville are EV because they cost less than half the cost of gas miles. But my cars must meet my requirements which means the engine is available if a charger is down, occupied, or non-existent. My cars must earn their keep by meeting my requirements.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob, I already prepared a plan for your trip using a model 3 with both Superchargers and Plug Share. I'm not going to do it again.

This discussion started with the premise of a 600 mile trip. If all of your trips are less than 70 miles and you have 70 mile range for your plug-in hybrid and you never use your gasoline engine, then "good enough" is "good enough." Gasoline is the enemy of "good enough."

Teslas rarely if ever have a problem with chargers that are down, occupied, or non-existent. You are expressing "range anxiety" which is a common malady for first time users of BEVs but turns out to be a non-issue in reality.

 

Plugshare options are available everywhere, even the boondocks.

Range is 310 miles which is equivalent to about 4.5 hours of continuous driving. Most people should take a break sooner than 4.5 hours.

That must have been a fun trip!

It is possible to make a 600 mile trip in a model 3 with one 30 minute stop, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Fine if all your trips are 25 miles or less using electric and then charging for 5 hours to recharge. You are the one making 600 mile trips using gasoline.

 

Please follow through with "I'm not going to do it again." It didn't and doesn't help.

The gasoline is the solution for a broken, occupied, or non-existent charger between the start and end of a trip.

Actually having the charging network owned and operated by the EV manufacturer solves a 'finger pointing' problem. For example,

• 2014 BMW i3-REx won't CCS charge at Electrify America station
• Electrify America station won't charge 2014 BMW i3-REx
• Owner is 76 miles from home with ~8% SOC. August 24, 2018:

If the charging network and vehicle comes from the same manufacturer, there is no way to finger point to the other. The customer says, "You own both. Fix it!"

Bob Wilson

 

No, they are not. As I said, I've been places where there were no chargers - not even L1 - over a 600 mile driving route, several times just in the last 16 months.

Yeah, and if there are chargers where you take breaks, no problem. But what if there aren't? On my last trip, several of my legs didn't have superchargers during the leg.

Yep.

Or not, if there are no chargers along the way.

99% of my *in city* days in my first year were all-electric, in my Prime. But I left the state three times in that year, and all three trips had legs on them you couldn't have done in a Model 3ER or Model S 100. Two could have been done with substantial delay (hours) and diversion off the route, one couldn't have been done at all. My trip in June involved one leg which couldn't have been done at all. In fact, that last one could have easily resulted in disaster (stranding) in an EV because the road I took was closed by a forest fire just before I got to it (and was still listed as open by Google and CDOT while I was standing at the barricade), and I had to back-track for a total of almost 120 miles. That was the leg that ended up being 700 miles between superchargers.[/quote]

 

Here are two legs for you to plan. I don't want large diversions or hours of delay. Something close to what I actually did.

https://goo.gl/maps/xQ25EwArUYG2

https://goo.gl/maps/6CsxMwwyGA62

 

That has not been an issue with the Tesla Supercharger system.

You have just illustrated the glaring deficiencies of the i3 and BMWs current protocol for charging strategy. These deficiencies should be a banner headline in Business Insider. BMW needs to "fix it!"

Bob, you should test drive a model 3 and learn the technology behind the concept. Besides the Supercharger system, a Tesla can use different charging protocols with adapters. In addition, the Tesla User Interface can:

• show the driver how many chargers are in use or out of order at a specific Supercharger location
• automatically route you to another Supercharger location if no charger is available at your planned location (which is extremely rare outside of LA or SF metro locations)
• allow the user to set the minimum SOC to reach a location and U.I. will route the least time course based on the user preset desired speed (taking elevation changes into consideration)

Currently, Tesla has an advantage over other plug-in vehicles, both hybrid and BEV with its Supercharger system. But certainly Bolt, Leaf, and Kona E provide a "good enough" technology at that $40k BEV price point and you will be seeing those models on the resale market soon, within the year, at very reasonable prices.

Bob, keep an open mind, limited capability of the i3 should not be construed to all BEVs.

 

Obviously your mind is made up and closed to the realities of road-tripping in a Tesla.

Exactly why are you on the Tesla sub-forum? What is it you are trying to accomplish?

 

That's because every time I do the math on a trip I took, it looks like it can't be done in a short-range EV like a 100D Model S or Model 3 ER.

I'm not okay with misinformation, which is why I answered. However, you people probably have entirely the wrong idea about me (that I'm anti-EV). Nothing could be further from the truth.

My first all-electric experience was 1986 when I bought my first R/C airplane, which was an electric powered glider. I've been 100% all-electric on R/C for almost my entire 32 year R/C career. I went to school for Power Electrical engineering, specifically on power electronics and permanent magent motors. I started studying EVs seriously in 1990 and started following things like the T-Zero, the whole concept of V2G and plug-in hybrids. I've written papers and given presentations at conferences on this topic.

The problem is, batteries stink. They are low-energy-density devices. The engine/fuel tank combination in my Prime has an energy density approximately 5 times as high as just the battery in a Model 3. That means very heavy cars with very short range by comparison and that isn't going to change until batteries don't stink anymore.