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The cost of Supercharging your Tesla Model S or Tesla Model X

Posted by Simon Houghton on 6th April 2017
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Until the 15th January 2017 all Tesla Models or Model X were delivered with FREE supercharging for the life of the vehicle. I have previously written about how it is possible to drive around the UK purely using the charging network. However, Tesla have revised their position on Supercharging and all vehicles ordered after this date will have to pay for using the supercharging network (after a small free credit). So what does this mean in real terms?

Let’s look at the pricing. In the UK the pricing structure is very simple. You get 400kWh of charge per annum for FREE and then every kWh after that is charged at £0.20 per kWh. This is a much simpler and fairer charging structure than Ecotricty, In my opinion. It’s also cheaper compared to the £0.28 per kWh from my tests.

It does mean that at current prices and my average of 325 Wh/mile the equivalent cost per mile is 6.5pence. That’s obviously based on paid for 100% supercharged costs. If charging at home it would be around 3.9pence per mile.

Bottom line is that Supercharging is now almost twice as expensive as charging at home but 29% cheaper than Ecotricity.

I have simulated my last 6 months driving to see what it would cost in real terms. Assuming every journey from home starts with a 90% full battery and returns home with more than 10%. So any round trip of around 200 miles is done solely on the ‘cheap’ home charge and any longer journeys, of which most of mine are, having been working in Cardiff and Glasgow for the last 6 months, would utilise the supercharger network.

I’ll figure out a nice way to represent the raw data but the outcome is this:

17,000 miles driven

7800 @ Supercharger rates = £507

9200 @ Home Charging rates = £358

Total Electricity costs £801.

If this were extrapolated over 12 months:

15,600 @ Supercharger rates. = 5070 kWh less 400 kWh free = 4670 kWh = £934

18400 @ Home Charging rates = 5980 kWh = £717

Total annual electricity costs of £1651 or £0.05 pence per mile. Which compares to my current car, the Toyota Auris Hybrid which costs £0.11 pence per mile

 

 

 

Quick Update on Ecotricty – Charging for the Electric Highway

Posted by Simon Houghton on 28th July 2016
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Taken from their own website “Britain’s first and biggest national network of electricity pumps, our mission is to make it easier for electric vehicle owners to make long distance journeys – to help make EVs the logical choice for Britain’s drivers…. After five years of providing charging for free, we’re now moving to a ‘charging for charging’ model.”

In my previous blog posts I have used the free Electric Highway charging points to supplement gaps in the Tesla Supercharger network. This week is the first time I have been in need of using one of the converted points that charge via the app.

By way of an experiment, I charged using the standard AC Type 2 connector and the DC CHAdeMO connector using the adapter which can be purchased from Tesla.

After some debate, Ecotricity have decided to charge £6 for 30 mins charge, regardless of connection type and the ratioanale for this is based on making the cost comparable to ICE powered vehicles and quote costs for a Nissan Leaf.

Firstly, on the AC connector. 30 minutes  got me 32 miles of additional range from 11.7kWh. That’s a price of 51.3p/kWh and around 3 times more expensive than the equivalent price for home charging if you get your electricity from Ecotricity (quoted at 15.9p/kWh) It also works out a 18.75 pence per mile!! *

After that I did 30 minutes on the DC  which added 58 miles of additional range from 20.9kWh. That’s  28.71 p/kWh or 10 pence per mile which at current forecourt prices for the same services equals 53mpg for a Diesel car.

In other words it now costs the same to fill up as a BMW 520D but you’d have to stop again in 58 miles.

I’m not sure this is fair pricing. Particularly when the pricing is the same regardless of charging speed and is so much more than the same company sells its Electricity to the market for.

I must admit that a fixed duration for charging is a good idea and (in theory**) means you know exactly how long you will need to wait if the point is busy when you arrive.

EDIT: I just watched This episode of Fully Charged where @bobbyllew talks to the guys behind the Dutch charging network Fastned. They have a range of pricing options targetting the infrequent to the extensive user. Their middle tier works out at €0.35/kWh which at todays exchange rate is 29p. So, very similar to that of the Ecotricity for the fast DC charge but not capped in duration or penalising for slower charging. Plus, you get a roof and a free Tesla CHAdeMO adaptor to use.

*Prices do not include the price of coffee

** Assuming the correct etiquette is in play

4 weeks in a Tesla Model S 85 – part 2

Posted by Simon Houghton on 27th May 2016
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Following on from Part One
Autopilot
On the whole, Autopilot is amazing. I have used it as often as possible including circumstances where I previously hadn’t expected it to be useful.
For cruising along a quiet motorway it reduces fatigue by allowing the vehicle to handle the speed and line maintenance while your concentration is on other road users and journey planning.
On busy motorways the autopilot will constantly monitor the traffic around you and be ready to react to any and all hazards by having constant 360 degree vision. This is something the human simply cannot do.
On todays managed motorways, simply set and forget. You will not miss a speed limit change because you were watching the car behind you, let the Tesla do that and you adjust the cruise control speed to match the posted limit.
In stop start traffic on the motorway (or A-road) the level of frustration is greatly reduced as Tesla takes over and simply follows the car in front. The only caveat to that is Tesla is a mimicker. If the car in front is an idiot and accelerates hard then brakes hard rather than progressively then Tesla will copy. Increasing the distance to the car in front (set in car lengths by rotating the cruise stalk) can help but unfortunately this is where the follow feature is let down compared to the human who can see beyond the car in front. Likewise if the car in front fails to spot a queue ahead, when they brake heavy Tesla will react and you should be prepared to be thrown forward against your seatbelt.
On delivery of the car there was a software update to download OTA. Part of this update was an improvement to the autopilot in which it “will give greater clearance to adjacent moving vehicles than to fixed objects (e.g., barriers)”. However, It *feels* like when you overtake a truck that it prefers to be closer to the truck than the white line on the Drivers side which is the opposite of the release notes. Overtake_AutopilotIt could be complete rubbish and that it’s just tracking true where the natural tendency of a human driver would be to use the width of the lane to put distance between Tesla and truck but it does feel like you’re being sucked towards a big dangerous truck. I’ve got some on-board video that should allow me to work out if this is the case or not.
<edit> On reviewing the footage it looks like Tesla sticks to the middle of the lane, therefore it’s purely a driver and passenger perception that it is getting closer to the overtaken vehicle
Lane changing. In an earlier version of Autopilot I felt that lane changing was quite severe. More of a swerve than a gradual drift. This has been addressed, though I still think it’s too severe but there is an issue that the vehicle will tend to move to the far side of the lane it is entering before recovering to the centre of the lane. Again, this isn’t much of an issue but if you’re moving from lane 3 to lane 2 on the motorway while a truck (or any vehicle really) is in lane 1, it does feel like you’re going to drive straight into the vehicle in lane 1. It never happens but again it’s just feel when compared to a human driver.
In roadworks where the lanes are narrow, autopilot can be a real advantage. The cognitive load of trying to keep a wide vehicle in the narrower lanes is removed and you’re free to concentrate on the other dangers. Or, in slower traffic, worrying less about the journey and watching your fellow motorists become increasingly frustrated. The only observation, one that Emily made me aware of, is that our current tendency in the UK to have the hard shoulder closed off with metal barriers in roadworks does mean that the Tesla tends to wander left to right if you’re in lane 1 as it struggles to maintain a consistent middle between the white line and the intermittent metal barrier. It’s never an issue as such, it just leads to a somewhat less smooth journey. Stick to lane 2 or 3 and all is good.
Coming up behind slow moving vehicles. The long range radar is very good at not only spotting vehicles ahead but also their relative speed. There is a clear difference between coming up behind a vehicle doing 65mph and one doing 56mph. This makes sense as the vehicle will react earlier and reduce speed quicker when coming up behind a truck. The issue is that it’s unnaturally risk averse and several times I have been planning a lane change and the Tesla has slowed significantly preventing me from making a smooth change. At the same time, if the vehicle ahead is moving slow, when you initiate an autopilot lane change to overtake the Tesla’s built in acceleration can be caught out and it accelerates, brakes and then re-accelerates. Something that could be engineered in to prevent.
Tesla_Hill_ClimbIgnoring SatNav. Do this at your peril if using cruise control. There is a built in routine that will slow the vehicle down when exiting a motorway ramp. It knows you’re doing this because the sat nav is linked in and telling you to exit to follow the route. If you decide to ignore the sat nav, and let’s face it who doesn’t know better than the sat nav? then as you pass the exit ramp end point the Tesla will start to slow, even though you’re still on the main carriageway. This could be dangerous. It tends to only happen for a brief second until the sat nav has reacted to your journey change and you’re then accelerating back to cruising speed. Obviously, the faster you’re going when this occurs, the more it will brake and longer it will take to react.
Parked cars. One way in which the Tesla has made the commuting traffic easier is by using Autopilot in slow moving stop start traffic. Be this on the motorway or A-roads. However, if used on A-roads, beware of parked cars. Tesla will happily follow the car in front (cruise or cruise and steer enabled) but if the car in front moves over to pass a parked car, Tesla will see that as the vehicle ahead changing lanes and the parked car now becoming the one you are following. It will therefore apply the brakes to come to a rest either behind (autosteer) or diagonally to (cruise) the parked car. Just something to be aware of. I’m not sure how you would get around this as it is logically the correct course of action.
The App,
Like quite a few other vehicles on the market now, there is a mobile phone app to support various functions. Tesla_App_ScreenshotsThe app allows you to see the state of battery both static and while charging. Unlock and even start the car as well as vent the roof. It also allows you to flash the lights, useful to find the car in a car park and honk the horn, useful for, well, childish things I need not go into. You can adjust the charge limit (the point of charge at which charging will automatically stop and against which the estimated time remaining is calculated). You can also turn on the climate control and set the target temp. This is very useful in warm or cold weather. There is an automatic pre-conditioning feature built in to the Tesla that learns your regular patterns and tries to have the car climate ready for you. The remote turn on is a quick override and will allow you to rapidly cool or heat the car before you get to it. Oddly, the ability to turn on rear screen heater or front de-misters is not in the app but is available in the API that the app uses. It would also be useful to manually schedule the climate control. Again, something that is possible but not offered. Should you forget where your car is parked the app also allows you to locate and navigate to it. The App will now also allow you to ‘Summon’ your car to and from a parking space or garage. I took this video as demonstration, it also shows the perpendicular parking feature
Size.
The Model S is deceptively large. In car parks it’s hard to lose it as the nose will normally be stuck out from the line of other Euro-boxes. It’s wide too and when you’re parked between two other cars it can be a struggle to get in and out (and you worry about door dings). It does seat 4 adults very comfortably and with the flat floor a fifth adult should be equally accommodated. Tesla_Frunk_StorageThe luggage capacity is really impressive. It’s about the same as an e-class Mercedes Estate. The Frunk and additional rear under floor storage means that your day to day stuff is not using the main luggage space. The small suitcase I use for my week away with work fits easily in the frunk.
Back to the width, single track roads, canal bridges and narrow lane roadworks do need careful progress but it’s not intimidating and with the array of sensors it’s not hard to place the car away from hazards.
Niggles (and some potential fixes ):
The lighting in the Frunk and boot is woeful, Small LED lights that do not illuminate enough for me to see.
The interior design is an effort to de-clutter. I applaud this but the lack of a centre cubby or door pockets means that nothing can really be left in the car when it’s parked as it just ends up in the centre of the yacht floor and on display
As a business traveller, no coat hooks means my shirts and/or jacket have nowhere to hang
No 12v socket in the Frunk or boot. Nowhere to plug in a cool box or to run an inverter
Turning circle. I’m not sure why this is but the lock to lock on the front is quite small and makes the turning circle unnecessarily large. Now they have a dual motor I wonder if this was always going to be a driving factor. The rear-wheel drive versions, to my mind. should’ve had a greater steering lock designed in.
That beep. It’s a really small thing but the beep that issues from the tailgate when you press the close button is a) loud and b) quite harsh sounding. In a quiet cul-de-sac late at night when the car has really been brilliant at sneaking in at the end of a long trip I feel almost guilty about closing the boot in case it wakes someone up.
When listening to an audio-book over Bluetooth there must be some sort of Gracenote lookup going on for album art as, for instance, when listening to Chapter 18 of Into the Black I got this as the Album Art
Tesla_Niggle_Audiobook
Faults and Failures:
Sun roof stuck open on a particularly hot day. A quick phone call to the service team at Tesla and they pushed an OTA reset command. This didn’t initially work but after parking, locking and unlocking the vehicle some ten minutes later all came back to life (This was in a patchy 3G area so it could be that the remote command took time to get through)
Spotify crashed once to the point that nothing else would play and I had to reboot the main control unit. On other occasions I’ve had MP3 playback stutter and cause the right hand side of the main dashboard appear to restart and the main control unit run slowly
Other useful things:Tesla_Takes_A_Bath
The Frunk is quite well sealed and as such, putting shopping in there actually keeps it quite cool during a journey back from the supermarket (see niggle above though)
Finally, due to the aerodynamic design, it’s a pleasure to hand wash

4 weeks in a Tesla Model S 85

Posted by Simon Houghton on 27th May 2016
Posted in: Uncategorised. Tagged: , , . 2 comments
A little under a year ago I had the good fortune to drive a Tesla Model S P85+ for a few days. The conclusion of the blog I wrote at that time was that using a Tesla as an everyday vehicle was viable.
Building on that I have recently had the opportunity to drive a 2015 Model S 85 for 4 weeks supplied by

Eden EV

IMG_9730
This model is a newer specification than the 2014 model I had before. All models benefit from Over The Air (OTA) software updates periodically but the 2015 model also had a number of hardware changes. Predominantly the addition of radar and additional cameras to support ‘Autopilot’ functions.This model has now been superseded and you can only now buy Dual Motor variants in the UK. This one being a rear drive only derivative. It’s also the least powerful in terms of performance. A mere 382 Rated hp and 325 lb-ft of torque means that the 0-60 time and top speed are 5.4s and 140mph respectively. By no means a slouch but on paper a fair reduction on the performance model originally tested. In reality I would say that the only time this reduced power is obvious is in hard launches from a standing start or very low speeds. Acceleration builds more progressively. This statement should be taken relatively though. With near instant torque delivery, the standard 85 is still blisteringly quick compared to pretty much everything else on the road and certainly compared to anything in the similarly sized 5-door sedan category. As one passenger said, “This ain’t no milk float!”
 
Cost of running
 Dash
2431 total miles driven
789.9 kWh total power used
average 325 Wh/mile
My range avg 262 miles based on a full 85kWh battery is pretty much bang on the EPA rated 265 miles.
The cost if domestic charged (i.e. at home) 100% of the time. £97.08 based on 12.29 pence per kWh ( British Gas, Standard tariff, Direct Debit rate for Yorkshire March 2016)
Which equates to 3.9 pence per mile. Tesla_at_Petrol_PumpTo put that in real terms a Diesel powered car would have to achieve more than 120 mpg to match that price and don’t forget that you don’t have to visit one of those nasty smelly petrol or diesel pumps
Reality though, is that I’ve only put about £12 of domestic electricity in, the rest coming from the free to use charging infrastructure. So the real price is 0.49 pence per mile. Even if it was double that for convenience charging at home it would be only £16.45 per month electricity costs to do 20,000 miles per year.
A 1.2 Nissan micra would be £232 per month in petrol to do the same mileage.
Supercharging
Tesla_Superchargers_UKThe Tesla  Supercharger network is increasing all the time but there has been a notable slow down in the number of new openings recently.
There are now 31 active Supercharger stations with a total of 112 available bays. These are free to use for the lifetime of the car and offer the fastest charging option available. Not all chargers are equal and I have found that some of the smaller 2 bay chargers are significantly slower than the larger ones. However, in all cases I have found them to be reliable and faster than any other option. Tesla_Mobile_OfficeI have queued to use one of the 2 bay chargers but only for a few minutes. I also encountered one Tesla Owner who’s model S was parked on the bay, fully charged for the full duration of my visit (25 minutes). On all occasions I am pleased to report that other owners have been pleasant to chat to if the opportunity arose and a lot of mutual vehicle appreciation. (The same cannot be said for Nissan Leaf owners but that’s a different story). I’ve often used the time taken to charge as an opportunity to use the Tesla as a mobile office.
The Speed of charge is interesting. On two occasions I have seen peaks of 300A at 360V which has seen 300+miles per hour. At the same time I saw both cooling vents in the front grille open and the cooling fans on full. I’m not sure what conditions allowed for such a high rate of charge or, more importantly, why this is a rare occurrence with the normal peak load being around 200A at 360V. I saw both the higher and lower rates of charge on subsequent visits to the same charger, same bay, only person using and similar initial capacity. On one of the higher charge rate occurrences I recorded the rate of charge over a 1 hour period. The initial charge rate was 312miles/hr but towards the end of the hour this had reduced to 112miles/hr as the battery was getting up and over 90% full. Still, the car was charged from 9% (22 miles range) to 91% (218 miles range) in 1 hour. That’s impressive.
Supercharger_Rate_of_Charge
CHAdeMO
The CHAdeMO connector available at the Ecotricity chargers (and others) is the proprietary connection for the Nissan Leaf and used by other manufacturers. As a DC supply it does not require the on-board Tesla chargers to convert from AC and can deliver a rated charge of up to 100A 400V. This gives a charging rate of around 100-110 miles per hour and compares the the AC charging at the same stations which tends to be around 60 miles per hour. The Tesla requires an adapter to used the CHAdeMO connector. I requested one of these be supplied with the vehicle and it does work. However at some chargers I’ve had the charging interrupted anything from one to ten times before charging then continued without issue. On one occasion I gave up and resorted to an AC charge. It *might* be that the lever type CHAdeMO connectors are more or alone in this issue. Not enough data to confirm. Nor can I establish if this is a Tesla, Tesla adapter or EcoCity network issue.
Home Charging.
One three occasions I have availed myself of the Tesla’s ability to consume Electricity from a standard 13Amp socket. One one of the occasions I even used a somewhat dubiously supplied property that had some considerable voltage fluctuations. I charged at between 6 and 10 amps at these locations and measured 6 miles per hour charge rate fairly consistently. This might seem slow but consider that an overnight 12 hour charge offers 72 miles of additional range and this will satisfy most people as a trickle charge option. This being the only charging option I have used that costs money, it was important to monitor and minimise these occasions. This is reflected in the figures above.
 
 In Part two of this blog post i’ll talk about Autopilot, The mobile app and some niggles and observations

Driving the Tesla Model S P85+

Posted by Simon Houghton on 15th June 2015
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In my previous post I answered the three most burning questions for any potential in Tesla Model S owner.

In this post I elaborate on the driving experience in some detail..

So with those burning questions answered, what’s it like to drive the Tesla. Well, approach the vehicle with the ‘key’ in your pocket and the door handles will pop out and it will unlock itself automatically. Open the doors and step inside, the sill is a little high and wide and the A pillar thick and steeply raked. That’s not to say it’s hard to get in or out of the car but you sometimes have to be mindful of your head. At this point the vehicle has switched on. The climate control is cooling/heating the interior and the navigation system is up and running. The big screen in the middle of the dashboard is on and showing you two of the apps. Most of the time I had the navigation app and the media app open. Switching to the Energy app when I wanted to see how the battery use was going. The Navigation app is Google maps with live traffic information pulled down from the net over the inbuilt 3G connection. This 3G connection allows the maps to be rendered, traffic overlaid and routing to be controlled accordingly. The routing also takes into account the range of the vehicle and will route accordingly to take advantage of topography, weather and Superchargers. So, for example, leaving our house near Wakefield to the Supercharger in Birmingham we were routed via the supercharger in Barnsley to ‘top up’ for 20 minutes and the navigation app predicted an end charge of 18% in the battery. The 3G connection is also used to stream media via Rdio. This is quite a good service which i’m sure you can get the best out of with some investment of time in playlists. The biggest problem is 3G. During the days I had the Tesla there were significant portions of the journey’s we undertook where the 3G connection was lost and such is the lack of investment in the UK networks, meant that dropping to 2G was pointless. At which point the maps do not render and we had no streaming media. Thankfully you are not blind in navigation as the dashboard turn by turn nav is from Garmin and does not require to be online. The frustration did become apparent when trying to find the Warrington Supercharger. The Google Maps were unavailable and Garmin only got us to proximity. It’s a small niggle but not one I see getting any better, in fact I have noticed a significant degradation of service on 2G in the last 2 years.

The 3G is also used to download OTA software updates. A great feature and as the car can also be connected to wifi, at home for example, which means that software updates can be scheduled to run overnight while you and the car are sleeping.

 

As i’ve said earlier, the driving experience is not dissimilar to a modern automatic but one that is very smooth and responsive like no other car on the road. The controls are familiar but it’s important to note that this is with ‘normal’ settings. There are two driver controlled settings that can make the driving experience different and less like a normal car. Firstly, you can turn off ‘creep’ mode. That is, when you release the foot brake it doesn’t move forward like an automatic but only moves when you apply throttle. I tried this and remain undecided if I like it or not. The other and more significant setting is that of regenerative braking. Turn it up to normal (low is more like a normal car) and when you lift off the throttle the drivetrain turns from motor to generator and adds power back into the battery. The effect is that you use the motor to brake and not the foot brake in a lot of normal driving. This takes more getting used to but when you do it makes for a very smooth driving experience that you simply can’t match in a traditional vehicle. The easiest way to describe it is when travelling on a dual carriageway 70mph road that has traffic lights. You’re doing the legal limit and the lights ahead change. Jumping off the throttle will cause the car to brake at a rate that would be classed as heavy. In other words, you’d wake up a sleeping passenger. In practice you feather the throttle to gradually and smoothly bring the car down to walking pace and transfer only to the brake pedal to scrub the last few mph. In some cases not requiring the foot brake at all. There are a few less obvious advantages here. Firstly less use of the brakes means more energy recovered into the battery and not wasted in heat. Secondly, less use of the brakes means less brake dust and less time cleaning 🙂 and finally, as the brakes are actually one of the few serviceable components, the service costs of owning the vehicle are reduced significantly.

 

*http://www.siliconbeat.com/2014/08/28/tesla-rolls-out-destination-charging-program-at-hotels-restaurants-and-resorts/

Driving and Owning a Tesla Model S – Can it be done?

Posted by Simon Houghton on 21st May 2015
Posted in: Uncategorised. Tagged: , , , . 2 comments

Much has been written, said and filmed about the Tesla Model S since its launch in 2012.  The continued development of the vehicle is fascinating and with new models due to come out alongside it, all the mainstream automotive model categories will have a Tesla alternative to the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered vehicles of other manufacturers in the next few years.

I’m a self confirmed petrol head and a technology nerd. I’m not an environmentalist. I do however recognise that at some point the fossil fuel supply will dry up to such an extent that ‘Driving for pleasure’ will become cost prohibitive (if in fact it’s not already) and while the future of personal transport may lie in many directions, one that is maturing fast and here now is the Electric Car.

Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla car maker, is a disruptor. He has chosen to disrupt the traditional automotive industry and doesn’t care if he ruffles feathers along the way. To this end there are many reasons why someone like me is attracted to something like the Tesla Model S.

In this first of several posts I will elaborate on how those reasons stack up into an argument for or against Tesla ownership based on my reading, watching and most recently experiencing what it’s like to own a Tesla Model S.

IMG_4991_e

The P85+ I tested

I recently spent 5 days doing an ‘owner experience’. More than just a test drive, I wanted to actually know if the car was as good as it’s supposed to be AND could it be used as a daily driver, in the North of England.

Having spoken at length with the Tesla Sales advisor I hooked up with the team at Eden EV and they supplied me with a 2014 Tesla Model S P85+. For those that don’t know the P is for performance (470hp, 443 lbft, 0-60 4.2s), 85 is the size of battery in KWh and the + means it’s the high spec version , with some toys thrown in. This model is also the Rear wheel drive, single motor variant and the newer versions come in single or dual (all wheel drive) motor variants.

I had a couple of significant questions to answer so let me cover those in this post:

In basic terms is it a ‘Good Car’? Yes. Ignoring the fact that it’s Electric, American and dripping in next Gen technology, essentially this is a good car. It’s easy to drive, comfortable to drive and passenger in and does all the things we expect a luxury sedan to do, reasonably well. In some areas it excels, in some areas it falls behind the likes of Mercedes. I’ll give you some examples. It’s quiet, VERY quiet up to 30mph. After that there’s a reasonable level of wind and tyre noise that you would expect from any vehicle in this class. However, every now and then you notice some things that aren’t what you’d expect from BMW or Mercedes. e.g. in a cross wind, there’s a whistle from either the A pillar or the door mirror and the wipers are noisy. They are also sporadic to react to rain in the auto mode requiring manual ‘flick’ sometimes and other times, turning off. There are other examples which I might cover later but in essence, ignoring the fact that this is a very different vehicle, it’s actually a good car.

IMG_4998_e

The interior iof the Tesla Model S P85+

Is it easy to drive? This is one I can only answer from my point of view. I’ve had the benefit in having driven well over 500,000 miles in a multitude of vehicles. Petrol, Diesel, Manual, Auto, big, small, old and new. I’ve learned to adapt very quickly to new vehicles and so getting into the Tesla was not daunting at all. The controls are familiar. Column mounted shifter for Park, Drive, N and Reverse. Indicator stalk lifted straight out of a Mercedes and normally weighed brake and throttle. Put the vehicle in drive and with the driver controls set to emulate a normal automatic it’s simply a matter of releasing the foot brake and applying throttle to move forward. Everything is ‘normal’ to drive and I feel that anyone who has driven a modern automatic will feel at home in the Tesla. It’s just a very quiet, very smooth, very responsive incarnation of a modern automatic. The quietness, particularly at low speeds is eerie. Moving cautiously around our works car park was surreal, hearing the tyres squeak as they crossed painted lines but the smoothness and responsiveness of the drivetrain is another world. In no time at all I was able to maneuver the car at super slow speeds, crawling up ramps at much less than walking pace in full and complete control. That micro level of speed control is then transformed at the other end of the scale with a massive shove in the back when you want it. It doesn’t matter what speed, the nature of the electric motor and single speed reduction drive means that full torque is available at all speeds from zero to illegal. More on that later. So, yes, it’s as easy to drive in most conditions as a modern automatic and in some, better.

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A fully charged battery from a Tesla Supercharger showing potential for 240 miles of range

The third major question is the one everyone wants to know. Is it really feasible in 2015 to own and run an all electric vehicle in the north of England? Yes! Everyone wants to know how far it goes on a charge and where can you charge it? I was determined not to drive it any differently from my current daily driver (A Mercedes 200 Cdi Estate) and see what the effective range was. So, I used the same speed on the motorway, kept up with in town traffic and when the roads were interesting, I used the performance to make progress. So, how far will it go? This model, with me driving, between 200 and 220 miles on a full battery. Where do you get a full battery? Well this is where I flipped my approach. I wanted to see if I could do the full five days driving off the recharge grid and NOT paying for electric. Yes, that’s right. NOT PAYING. I did 800+ miles and didn’t pay for a single mile of fuel. Did I have to plan ahead and change my routes to accomodate? Yes, sure I did but in reality no more than I do with the Mercedes in that I try to fill up with Diesel at my preferred supermarket chain to get me points and keep the cost of motoring down to a minimum. With one exception (through my own choice) I didn’t drive more than a handful of miles off my normal or preferred route in order to charge up. I also did most of my charging at Tesla’s own Superchargers. I didn’t charge up on my own domestic electricity which would’ve cost me but changed the convenience completely. So, even ‘oop north’ there are enough superchargers and EcoCity chargers to facilitate convenience. The downside is the time taken to charge. For every 200 miles you need to charge for between 25mins and 1hr 30 depending on the charging facility used. That requires planning. 20 minutes at a motorway services or hotel with a supercharger is enough for a Coffee but 1.5 hours is a meal stop. Far longer than the 10 minutes you’d stop to put over 600 miles of diesel in the Mercedes but do it overnight or while at work using what is being described as ‘destination chargers*’ and the inconvenience doesn’t just go away, it swings to a benefit over the ICE vehicle.

 

So, in conclusion, currently owning a Model S in the north of England and using it as your only vehicle is not only possible, but it is, with home charging, as convenient as a normal ICE vehicle. in my next post I will talk about the driving experience in some detail and how this compares to a ‘normal’ car.