Upgrading from LEAF to Tesla

#2 - heat comes out pretty quickly. Put the front defroster on and you get heat in a few seconds.

#3 - If the charger is the SAE standard J-whatever it is - which I assume is the case - you'll be fine. You get an adapter for that with the S.

#4 - Virtually zero unless you abuse the battery by range charging a lot, deep cycling it too much, etc. I usually charge my battery to only 80% of standard instead of the original default 90%. In almost 22 months of ownership, >30K miles, I might have lost a mile or two of range. Maybe. At most.

I'll let the cold weather folks speak to #1. I suspect the % of range degradation will be similar but the S has so much more range it won't matter for daily driving.

A couple of other things.

You can preheat the Tesla while it's plugged into the wall, so that initial heating boost doesn't reduce your range. The car also has seat heat, which helps while the cabin is cold.

baw said:

3) Can I use my existing indoor garage charger (Schneider Electric EVLink EV2430WS 240V/30A) with the Model S? This comes with its own cable that is permanently hanging on the wall (attached to the unit). My understanding is that the port on the Model S is different. Would I need an adaptor? Charge speed? Pros/cons?

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The S will with an adapter for your car. The only problem I see is that 30Amps is kind of low. If you switch to say a NEMA 14-50 plug you can get 40Amps, but that's up to you for the cost.

Welcome.

I can answer some of this. Real world range is usually over 200 miles except in some extreme circumstances (going up 6,000 ft elevation I found). You usually get closer to 220-240 miles under normal highway speeds (65mph). Range drop in cold is nowhere near 50%. Others have much more cold weather driving than I do and can answer that better.

The heat comes on almost instantly.

You can use your existing EVSE although it will be pretty slow. It comes with the J1772 adapter you need.

Shouldn't see more than 1-2% degradation per year with normal driving patterns.

lagann said:

The S will with an adapter for your car. The only problem I see is that 30Amps is kind of low. If you switch to say a NEMA 14-50 plug you can get 40Amps, but that's up to you for the cost.

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IMO, 240V/30A should be sufficient for overnight charging at least for now, unless OP use more than 50KWh per day (unlikely if Leaf was viable car for him in a last few years).

baw said:

Thanks. What do you mean by "pretty slow"? What is "normal" I guess? As far as yearly degredation, that number is very low (which is a god thing).

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I'd venture to guess about 33% slower (21mph vs 29mph).

I moved from a 2012 Leaf to a Model S and I can tell you the range variation from advertised to real world is MUCH better. When I sold it, my Leaf had 30k miles and exactly 85% of its original capacity, which I hear is actually pretty good for the age and mileage. Going to work and back in the winter went from easy in the beginning to quite challenging just before I sold it, and its 48 miles round trip. Every day I would get the low battery warning on the way home.

I too had a standard L2 J1772 32A (oddly it is listed as a 30A but the Model S always charges at 32A from it) charger in the garage and just leave the adapter on the end of it, no problems. I did buy a second adapter for $100 to keep in the car so I never have to remove the adapter at home. As far as charge rate, I've never had any issue with it being 32A. With the capacity of the Model S, and the fact it takes the full 32A (8kw vs Leaf 3.3kw) I don't ever have to even think about it. Using your existing EVSE also allows you to keep the mobile connector stored in the car instead of having to move it back and forth.

EDIT: Also, one more point, while it may be obvious, look at how many miles you drive in a typical day and divide that by 20 to get the rough estimate of your nightly charging needs in hours for your current EVSE. Will probably be a little more than that but its in the ballpark. So I drive around 60 miles a day so in this example it would take around 3 hours to replenish a typical day. No need to spend the extra on a NEMA outlet in most cases (in my opinion).

baw said:

Thanks. What do you mean by "pretty slow"? What is "normal" I guess? As far as yearly degredation, that number is very low (which is a god thing).

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The stock Model S can charge at 10kW. With your setup I think you'd charge a little less than 6kW.

It really depends on how much you drive and if you can charge enough to be full again in morning after a trip. A NEMA 14-50 outlet would be nice if you buy the Model S.

baw said:

I have owned a LEAF for 3 years now and am considering upgrading to the Model S. I have a few concerns/questions I was hoping to get some feedback on.

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Welcome to the forum and I have my standard request:
If you do "upgrade" in this fashion, please report back on your experiences after driving the Model S for a couple weeks. It's very interesting for those of us (me included) for which the Model S was our introduction to EV ownership.

lagann said:

The only problem I see is that 30Amps is kind of low.

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Huh !?!?!?

20 mos. and 36,000 miles with a 160-mile commute utilizing a 14-30 at ONLY 24 amps is more than ample for us.

In my experience in freezing rain and highway driving with a couple of stops having to reheat the battery and not really trying to save energy (e.g. driving fast with the heater on) I ended up with about 75-80% of the rated range...

I think 75% in deep winter is a conservative estimate of what you'll get with no preparation or thought put into it. If you plan ahead a little and warm the car while charging before you leave, drive more conservatively, etc. you can probably get much higher.

Really the biggest culprit in winter is the loss of regenerative braking capacity while the battery is cold... and that's something you could compensate for by giving yourself more time to slow down until the battery is warmed up.

baw said:

I have owned a LEAF for 3 years now and am considering upgrading to the Model S. I have a few concerns/questions I was hoping to get some feedback on.

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1) I've documented several of my trips:
Salt Lake City, Utah to Las Vegas, Nevada
Salt Lake City, Utah to Boise, Idaho
I would also recommend you check out Bjørn's videos, they'll give you a really good iea of how far you can go and through what conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/user/bjornnyland/videos

If I'm not driving like I'm racing everyone on the road, I can do the speed limits and get ~220RM without having to worry about range. If you need to go further, set the cruise at 55 to 60 and you'll get nearly the full 265RM. When I went down to Vegas from SLC, I was +20RM ahead (meaning I travelled 100 Miles and only used 80RM), though I was only going 55MPH the entire way.

Elevation changes really eat into your range, where I live in Utah at ~4000 feet in elevation, going anywhere east generally meaning gaining 2000 to 3000 feet in elevation. It's not uncommon to use 2 to 4RM per mile when going up steep hills. HOWEVER, when coming back down the hill, you basically get 90% of the energy you used going up, back. Plus the way down the hill is "free", as you're both moving, and generating energy.

2) In my experience, nearly instant.

3) Yes, the Tesla comes with a SAE J1772 adapter. As for the other comments saying it's "too slow". That entirely depends on how fast you need to recharge. 240V @ 30A is going to be about ~20RM gained per hour, or, 200RM after 10 hours of charging. I used that for several months myself, but finally decided I wanted the "full Tesla experience".

baw said:

Thanks. On #4 that is very encouraging to hear.

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Hi baw, a warm welcome to the TMC forums! Just a further tidbit of information regarding #4 (forgive me if you already know), in case you're wondering the reason why the degradation could be so much lower. Tesla has a fairly sophisticated thermal management system in place for the battery pack itself, the Model S uses liquid cooling to keep the pack within a nominal temperature range to minimize lifetime range loss. There's a lot of material on these forums regarding this system, and it's something I believe the Leaf does not have at all in its current iteration. Hope that helps!

brianman said:

Welcome to the forum and I have my standard request:
If you do "upgrade" in this fashion, please report back on your experiences after driving the Model S for a couple weeks. It's very interesting for those of us (me included) for which the Model S was our introduction to EV ownership.

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I have recently (10 days ago) upgraded from a Mitsubishi iMiev to the Model S. I have been driving the iMiev for 2 years as my daily commuting vehicle.

The biggest differences I experience:
#1 size: going from a tiny car to a massive one takes some getting used to: parking (both in garage and in parking lots), also you can feel the much heavier weight in the handling of the car

#2 range: the ability to visit friends in the next town without any worries, drive the car to work for a whole week without plugging in after a sunday overnight charge, ability to go on roadtrips (haven't tried yet, but I know I can)

#3 acceleration: I used to enjoy the first second of pulling ahead from a red light with the iMiev, but then the average ICE cars would catch up and I never had a chance against anything a bit sporty. With the Tesla it is a totally different ball-game -- nobody has a chance to catch up.

#4 automation conveniences: no keys, no start-up / turn-off, no unlock/lock, no need to think about headlights, auto-adjusting wiper to match the rain speed, named multi-driver settings of mirrors/seat making driver switch a snap

#5 infotainment system: its like comparing a Commodore-64 to a PS4 as a gaming rig (for those old enough to know the former)

I will report back with more later, e.g. when I have done some road-trip with the Tesla and when I have experienced winter driving.

Just as an example: I regularly take road trips up north in the winter. Typically about 175 miles on the farthest leg. I make it without too many worries. I don't get too carried away with excessive speed and heat. See pic below.

As a Leaf and Tesla S owner, first off, let me say that you will be blown away. so much of what is sub par about the Leaf has been ironed out by Tesla. Tesla has perfected pretty much every aspect of EV ownership. the size and chemistry and temperature management of the battery system in the S is vastly superior to the Leaf and it should be, you pay for it, but it's well worth it! the Tesla doesn't just have an 80% and a 100% charging option, it has a wonderful slider that allows you to be even more kind to the battery. I find that for most daily driving we set the charge limit to 50%, and it still out performs the Leaf. there are times I swear the S is more efficient than the Leaf, particularly on those cold days where the Leaf range plummets like a rock. the range on the Leaf is much harder to predict than the S because there are so many variables that effect it. the Leaf results in more anxious canoodling about range and public charging. even gunning it, you can pretty much assume 200+ miles out of the P85, and with the kind of hypermiling that us Leaf owners are used to, you can get 300 pretty easily. I drove the first 5,000 miles in the S without using a single public charger, which was such a breath of fresh air compared to the Leaf and the remarkably unreliable network of public chargers we have here in the Northwest. the S's Supercharging, on the occasion that you will use it, is lightning speed (up to 135kW) compared to the Leaf (up to 50kW), and only involves one, easy to use plug for all levels of charging, and the network of superchargers is vastly more reliable than CHAdeMO. having the Leaf before the S turned out to be a great way to fully appreciate just how many hurdles Tesla has overcome with respect to EV adoption. the big challenge for us has been, how do we use up all those miles left on our Leaf before the lease ends in February.

Welcome, Baw (and ZsoZso!). It's fun and interesting to hear comparison/contrast between different plug-in/BEV vehicles. Baw, if you do decide to move forward on your Model S purchase please do keep us posted on your thoughts. And ZsoZo I'm looking forward to your future impressions too!

I spent about 10 years driving "ordinary" hybrids (with an interlude in a Volvo convertible) before just recently getting my Tesla and it almost feels otherworldly in comparison.