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"Are you serious, Dad?" 82yr-old Tesla's across Canada

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With all the newswires I go through each day, I found this piece quite delightfully-refreshing and real-life (it makes up for the huge onslaught of fcv newswires that I have to wade through, that Big-Oil and Automakers are pushing for profits). I posted the piece on the evdl.org nabble archive:

Electric Vehicle Discussion List - EVLN: “Are you serious, Dad?â€￾, 82yr-old Tesla's across Canada







Read my EVLN newswires posts:
Electric Vehicle Discussion List - Search for 'evln'


Here are just the ones mentioning Tesla:
EVDL Archive / Forum Interface - Electric Vehicle Discussion List


{brucedp.150m.com}
 
Embarrassed to recognize that charger under the stairwell as the one in my city - a Delta Hotel no less! It's the only CS 90 in town. I had the pleasure of meeting Chris from Sun country highway when they drove across Canada late last year. Fantastic effort on their part to make these long trips possible in Canada
 
Good read. Our own Doug_G was mentioned there and may chime in about Alf..

Yes I met Alf because he wanted to top up his car before heading out on his adventure. He had just picked up the car, and found our nearby office's CS-90 charging station on the Sun Country Highway web site.

My wife and I had been running errands and were on our way to the office when I got a call. There was an elderly gentleman with a Roadster trying to figure out how to get his car to charge. As it happens we were about two minutes from the office. I pulled up beside him in my Model S and went to investigate. Crown Assets didn't exactly give him the same overview of the car that Tesla did for me! He hadn't found the little slider switch on the Roadster adapter that engages the proximity signal. I slid that forwards and the car started charging.

At that point I invited him in for a chat, and later we drove over to the local Tim Hortons for lunch and more chatting. Alf is an interesting fellow and had lots of fun stories. I gave him a lot of information on "best practices" for Roadster road trips, having done a few myself. Some obvious things he had already thought of like "always keep a good reserve charge"... but also less obvious things such as how huge an impact speed has on efficiency, the effect of temperature on range, etc.

I was also able to tell him a little bit about the history of his car. I had previously met one of the engineers who had been testing it. We took the opportunity to download the logs from his Roadster, to see what sort of things they had been doing with it. There were quite a few endurance trips at very precise speeds. It looks like they had been driving in circles on a track at a constant speed to verify the range capabilities of the car. That matches some of what the engineer told me, but it was cool to see some of the data (no doubt they had more a lot more instrumentation than the car's logs).

We both enjoyed our chat, and by the time we got back his Roadster was topped up and ready for his grand adventure. Off he went! We've stayed in touch and I got occasional reports from his daughter on his progress. As you can tell from the article, he made it to Vancouver safe and sound, with only a few minor glitches and misadventures along the way.

Gotta say, it's impressive that anyone would go on a cross-Canada road trip on his first time ever driving a Roadster! It took me a bit to work up the nerve to drive to Toronto. Of course, back when I first got my Roadster there wasn't a single J1772 in the entire province of Ontario! It's really wonderful having the Sun Country network in place, so that adventures like this can happen.
 
Good read. Our own Doug_G was mentioned there and may chime in about Alf.

This thread may be in the wrong forum though.

I thank everyone for your comments. I am glad it was received well, and hope it makes up for the other non-newswire posts I make to this forum of my local EAA Chapter annual EVents on National-Plugin-Day.

I agree that this post may be in the wrong section because it is about a Roadster. But I did not place it here. I originally posted it in the news section (since this was a newswire), but after a moderator approved it, they moved it here (I am not going to argue with a moderator).

fyi - each and every day, I sieve through many, many newswires. I post them on the aforementioned archive to make them available for the public to read (search engines find them on that archive - media outlets routinely purge their newswires, so the public is left with no history to follow). I have been doing this for free since the 1990's when the Internet was new (though much was lost on the previous archive).

Thanks for reading.



. ____
~/__|o\__
'@----- @'---(= Get Amp'd
Bruce {EVangel} Parmenter
Electric Vehicle List News
brucedp.150m.com
*Originator of the above ASCII art
% Renewable Energy for your Electric Vehicle %
(Near Silicon Valley, south of SF, CA USA)
 
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I met Alf yesterday at the Vancouver service centre while he was helping his son in law and daughter again by taking the roadster in for a check up, and i got my 12V battery swapped. He showed me his logs of every charger he stopped at along his trip , he has very meticulous records. He even bound everything up in a booklet. He was very excited to see all the S's about the centre. He used to drive a 22ft high electric mining truck years ago too! He is a member of VEVA too. Great guy to talk to while we had our cars worked on! :)