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Great Tesla Review Makes the Globe's print edition front page!

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The Globe’s Peter Cheney takes an electric Tesla for a 2,800-km test drive from San Diego to Whistler, BC. Although he experienced a couple of hiccups along the way, this was a glowing article from a real ICE car guy. Finally some love from the Globe!

http://globe2go.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=JB3QL1TY42I5&preview=article&linkid=58d50e1c-54fc-4354-9aea-866bea4c0ccd&pdaffid=HtwE6VLnHgXsPgsk6GOGhg%3d%3d



http://globe2go.newspaperdirect.com...b53686b98bbc&pdaffid=HtwE6VLnHgXsPgsk6GOGhg==
 
Thank you for the link, it is indeed a great article from a former Porsche-VW mechanic.

Could any other car get such a glowing review without the author being paid?

The few hiccups were caused because the driver wasn't experienced with road tripping with an EV. However, unlike Broder he took it in his stride. I guess he hadn't installed the smart phone app. I always check mine when I'm charging overnight.
 
This is a real-written, authoritative, and realistic portrayal of a first EV road-trip. He was sold on the car for all the reasons we all have been, and honestly owned up to his one mistake. I have always found that the enemy of range security is an enforced schedule or outright impatience. Once Tesla FINALLY gets elevation (and wind) compensation into the trip-planning (guess it is not coming in 6.0 as I had hoped), even newbie drivers like Peter Cheney will find it hard to screw up on charge planning.
 
It feels good to be so ahead of everyone else when it comes to automobiles. Range anxiety is a joke. Perhaps only an excuse for others like Lexus to make a falsified case against EV cars.

I would respectfully disagree about range anxiety being a joke. I've run into it a few times since owning my Model S. Month after month the anxiety minimizes on long trips as I get better estimating real-world requirements for driving to spots where there are no superchargers. But it can be a pain. Plus the added HOURS for trips of >500 miles make for a completely different kind of driving. The good news is, it isn't necessarily bad, just different. But 265 mile range is still low in terms of what I'd like to see in an EV battery. Gimme 500, or 600. Then we're talkin'.
 
Thanks, that link to the article works on my iPad.

The Globe website navigation within that article is terrible. Trying to get from one page to another sometimes requires going back to the first page, sometimes not. Bizarre.

The article is pretty reasonable. The author is obviously a smart guy with a rational mind. I do wish he had pointed out that one can buy a Model S for a lot less than the $140K (Canadian dollars I assume, so US$128K) price he said his cost him. It appears he got all the pricey options.

A takeaway lesson is never trust a hotel to plug in and charge your S. Always check, in person or using the app, to make sure the car is charging properly. In fact when I am charging at a destination using an outlet I've never plugged into before, I check several times over the first few hours to make sure the car is still charging and a breaker hasn't flipped. At a destination earlier this year, even though after 10 minutes the car was charging properly on a 240V L6-20 outlet, 30 minutes later the breaker flipped and it stopped charging. Had to decrease the amps down to 28 to get it to charge for hours at a time.
 
I guess even these hiccups will go away within two years time when the whole of the US and the most populated parts of Canada are covered by superchargers. And Tesla probably won't stop there, putting up more SC's and making sure every conceivable route is covered. There will probably be 400-500 SC's in North America five years from now.
 
A takeaway lesson is never trust a hotel to plug in and charge your S. Always check, in person or using the app, to make sure the car is charging properly. In fact when I am charging at a destination using an outlet I've never plugged into before, I check several times over the first few hours to make sure the car is still charging and a breaker hasn't flipped. At a destination earlier this year, even though after 10 minutes the car was charging properly on a 240V L6-20 outlet, 30 minutes later the breaker flipped and it stopped charging. Had to decrease the amps down to 28 to get it to charge for hours at a time.

This is definitely sound strategy. I would add that its not a bad thing to even check on outlets you've used before. I recently had trouble with NEMA 6-50 plugs I'd previously used without issue. The didn't outright quit, but the Tesla power reduction algorithm kicked in, greatly extending my charge time. I had to go out, dial down the power a bit, and restart the charge. Safety is all well and good, but that thing is damned annoying on a road trip!

I guess even these hiccups will go away within two years time when the whole of the US and the most populated parts of Canada are covered by superchargers. And Tesla probably won't stop there, putting up more SC's and making sure every conceivable route is covered. There will probably be 400-500 SC's in North America five years from now.

One can only hope.

Enjoyed the series, with none of that Broder negativity.

This article was like the anti-Broder! He made a mistake, admitted it, and continued on...almost like he didn't have an agenda (GASP!). And he didn't let the mistake become the point of the article.

All in all, this was a pretty great story (and I say that with minimal bias). Peter pretty much outlined one of the main reasons I first became interested in EVs; they're just better. Look at all the complex parts and work-arounds, designed to make such an inefficient system useful, that you can just toss out!

I drive an EV for the same reason I have SSDs in all my computers. Sure, the cost per unit may be higher than the outgoing technology, but that's something that will change over time-And they're superior in almost every other meaningful way! That's something that won't change!
 
Once Tesla FINALLY gets elevation (and wind) compensation into the trip-planning (guess it is not coming in 6.0 as I had hoped).

Well it may not be in the software now, but here in the Netherlands we have, thanks to a Dutch programmer, software that does the trick in calculating elevation and the related estimated energy consumption.
A week ago we made a trip through the Swiss Alps into France to the vicinity of St. Tropez v.v. The software of this guy, forum name Merijn, predicts nicely the extra energy needed when driving from one supercharger to the next (or any other location on the map you are driving from/to). Everything worked fine for us, it is very handy indeed. Maybe you can convince him to adapt (or help him adapting) the software for the USA routes and superchargers? :rolleyes:

By the way, to get a grasp of the software (in Dutch), go to Tesla | Home and click "Hoogte" (which means 'hight') and you will get an idea how it works for Europe.