Smart ED and CPO Tesla S85 in Toronto

Hello, long time poster and first time introductions.

• Live/work in Toronto Ontario Canada in the Tech industry.
• Personal hobbies and interests span renewable energy, tech and sports.
• Our household pays for 100% carbon-free electricity and natural gas via "BullFrog Power", a Canadian renewable energy company. Our family take considerably effort to recycle, re-use and otherwise keep our footprint on this planet to a reasonable amount.
• We drive two electric cars, my Smart ED, and my wife's Tesla Model S.

In May 2013, I bought a Smart Electric Drive after test driving at the Midtown Mercedes dealership. I'd driven a number of other electric cars, but as soon as I drove the Smart ED, I was hooked and put down my deposit immediately after getting out of the car following the test drive. Took 8 months to get the car, and it was one of only a few hundred produced for Canada that year.

Here it is on delivery day:


The Smart ED is the most fun car to drive I had ever owned (prior to the Tesla), and that includes my 1996 Camaro Z28 and 1991 Chevy Beretta GTZ, both of which were lowered performance cars. I routinely use 250 Wh/km on my commute in the summer, and 300 in the winter (don't spare the electrons!).


Meanwhile, the Tesla Model S has been something I have been obsessed about for more than a year. My wife gave in a finally got me a Tesla...

...cake for my birthday this year:

The cake was great, but it only served to fuel my desire for the real thing. It all finally became a real possibility when Tesla started the CPO program a few months ago here in Canada. The initial inventory was mostly P85(+) models traded in for the P85D, but I was looking for a well-used S85.

Note : The "P" offered more performance than wanted, sometimes you need to "know thyself", I'll leave it at that. |-)

So, that said, we traded in our Mercedes GLK for a 2013 CPO Tesla Model S 85.
Ref:
CPO or Inventory Purchase Experience in Canada - Page 2




We immediately embarked on a 2500 km road trip to jump directly into the Tesla lifestyle, and to prove to ourselves that this car was capable of completely replacing our gas SUV and our yearly RV rentals which we had used for all previous road trips.
Ref:
Toronto to New York city - trip planning

We have taken 3 supercharger aided trips in the past week, and are now electro-confident and will never look back!

We are a 100% electrified household, and are happy to kick-gas. We are driving the future and using our purchasing power to speed up this movement to cleaning up our consumption, bit by bit.

Buffed and ready for Wasaga beach this past weekend:


This is why I love my Smart ED, check out this premium parking spot for electric car charging at a local Mercedes dealer...yeesh, MB will get there, but they are mostly "phoning it in" right now.


Both of our electric cars are "minimalist" in their interior design, my Smart is refreshingly free of tech gadgets which would cause no end of distraction on my commute, sometimes simpler is better, and the Tesla is simple in a totally different way, just see this picture below, the clean lines of the interior, the single focal point of the 17" display, it's just brilliant, and a wonderful place to be when kids and adults are travelling together for hours together.



Talk soon, thanks for listening friends.

Thanks for the replies and encouragement.

Here's a picture I took with both cars in the same shot, but I tell you, the depth of the black paint on the Tesla is so much richer looking than the black on the plastic panels on the Smart, but in the right light, hard to see that difference.

Took a nice picture of it on our recent road trip.



- - - Updated - - -

How many people can claim they have three electric cars in their driveway? :tongue:

In order largest to smallest, Tesla, Smart ED and Mini-Mercedes all of which are lithium-ion powered.

Some historical perspective on why we ended up with two EV's :

I had been waiting for electric vehicles to come to Canada, and the wait took so long our existing cars had run to 10 years each and more than 300,000 km total.

When the Smart ED came to the Toronto dealer in March 2013, I test drove one and ordered it on the spot, waiting 9 months for delivery was agony. Meanwhile, Tesla had only just released the Model S in Canada a few months earlier.

We decided to get a Mercedes SUV as our first premium car, as my wife wasn't as positive as I was on battery electric vehicles.

Funny thing happened, my Smart ED arrived, and I was over the moon happy with it, but every so often I'd go to the garage and find she'd taken it out instead of her SUV. A few more months passed and it became clear she liked the Smart ED for it's quick acceleration and silent driving.

It all came together two months ago when she traded the Mercedes in for a CPO Tesla Model S.
We are 100% electric now and will never go back to gas!

Oh, and I drive my Smart ED in preference to the Tesla for most trips, I like the freedom of throwing the little car into corners and "sorting it out" on the other side, whereas the Tesla is just too good, and the drama is more due to me not being able to find the limits of the car.

Having a fun but "appropriately limiting" car for my daily commute will likely see me never getting two Tesla's...

Recording my first experience with Tesla service.


Today, Tesla came to our house at 8 AM and dropped off a loaner vehicle, and drove away with our CPO Tesla Model S85. They added the 85 badge to the back trunk, fixed a wind shield wiper issue (they were hitting too hard on the down stroke), checked on all maintenance items and cleaned and detailed the vehicle. At 5 PM they returned the car to our house and picked up the loaner.


Positives:


1. Having door to door service even though I am the second owner of the vehicle is a pleasant and welcome surprise.

2. There was no cost. The service person even refused a tip!

3. The P85 was excellent for giving rocket/test rides at work. Only two of 10 people got sick from the full throttle launches (on private property so there was no chance of a ticket). Seriously, actually sick.

4. The P85 was more car than I was expecting. I was able to even get it to "bunny hop" on one launch with the car fully loaded with passengers. I'm going to ask more about this hop, as I only experienced similar behaviour in my 1996 Camaro Z28, namely, that the car "hooks up" and then looses enough traction that when a fraction of a second later it hooks up again, the experience is "violent" (and amazing), basically thrown back in the seat very strongly.

5. Tesla did exactly what they promised on the service, and the loaner experience was extremely convenient.

6. The P85 had the "auto pilot" hardware, so I was able to test/demonstrate the radar cruise control, the lane departure warning and parking sensors and camera features. Very cool, my wife was a big fan of these newer safety features.



What I learned:

1. I am very happy with our 85, and the P85 "cured" me of wanting any more (for now). Next time, I'd like to try a dual motor AWD car to see how that handles.

2. Everyone who experiences the car is amazed, even those who are not "car people", and even one sceptic was "converted".

3. The P85 center display had more "lag" than our 85. It's possible that the fact I periodically (weekly) "reboot" our 85 may help reduce lag/delays on the screen. Our 85 never lags.

4. While our 85 is one year older, and driven 30000 km more than the newer more powerful loaner, the driving experience is very similar, and both cars were virtually identical to drive "normally".


Cheers!

Sent an email today:

to: [email protected], [email protected]
cc: [email protected]
date: Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 2:25 PM
subject: Cobourg Ontario : visionary choice to put in an electric vehicle charging station





Wanted to contact Lakefront Utilities and HDSupply to thank them for their visionary choice to put an electric vehicle charging station (EVSE) in a great location.


Reference:
PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find a place to charge your car!


We chose Cobourg as a day trip destination this past weekend based on the availability of charging for our EV.


I have CC'd Cobourg tourism so they understand the value of providing value added capabilities in the town which attract electric vehicle owners who are generally early adopters at this stage, and will broadcast their experiences on forums (like I do).


We spent money in the town and supported local businesses, which we hope is part of the reason for generously providing the charger and it's electricity. My compliments on the EVSE (aka charging station), the brand you picked is reliable and worked perfectly.


We had never spent time in Cobourg before, and were pleasantly surprised, to the point where my wife and I discussed researching more about the town/region. We had often visited Sandbanks and other destinations when we owned gas powered vehicles a few years ago. But now, given we only own electric vehicles (two of them), the fact those destinations do not offer electric vehicle charging was Cobourgs gain in this case.

Click to expand...

Picture from Oakville Ontario on Oct 3 2015.
The waves in the background are crashing into a concrete break wall.
The water shot 6 meters in the air, over topping the wall, and making a wonderful sound.

As posted on my blog:
Smart Electric Drive: What kids say about gas vs electric cars


My son wrote a "book" (his words) the other day as part of a home work assignment.

Check this out:



Quote : "I was learning at my school and a author came to visit and she told us the polluted air we make is not good for us because we could not breathe and she told us to not drive gas cars and start driveing electricity cars the end."

He wrote this without any prompting. This story is completely made up, it was just his imagination. Very cute!

Was driving home from a long day at work, and looked down to realize I had thrashed the ECO score on my Smart ED dash down to 3%, meaning, nothing ecological about the way I was driving...I love this little Smart Electric car...

Just came back from a weekend roadtrip in our electric car.


The interest and thrill people have when asking questions and being amazed by the answers, like


yes, no gas
yes, fully charged every night, always has 400 km range every morning
yes, can do road trips through most of north america, with no fuel cost (supercharging included in cost of car)
yes, pre-heats in winter, in your garage, no fumes
yes, no oil changes
yes, that's right, it's 5x cheaper than a normal gas car to fuel/drive
yes, it's peppy! faster than the 300HP Camaro Z28 I had when I was a young man


All types of people are loving the car, the technology and the innovation happening.


From the couple who chatted us up at the hotel where we were staying (and charging!) overnight.
To the guy at the sub shop parking lot who loudly declared "thanks for buying that car!"
To the little boy in the back seat who loves how clear the stereo is because the car is so quiet on the highway

Crested 70,000 km recently, lots of smiles.

My answer to a recent poll on how long will we keep our Tesla:
How long do you plan on keeping your Tesla? - Page 5

Went to the theatre (did the VIP dinner+movie to see Deadpool) on Saturday night with friends, picked them up in our Tesla.


While looking for parking, we came across 3 other Tesla's in the lot. Four Tesla's in the same parking lot. This is Canada folks, not California, that's a lot of Tesla's in one place!


When the movie was over, I told them to wait, I'd come up to the door to pick them up. I used the car voice command to "PLAY WHAM! Careless Whisper" (in-joke, it's the second last song played in the Deadpool movie) and drove up with the premium audio at 11. We had a great laugh.


Many nice cars had picked up patrons at the front door, and my wife and friends were commenting on them, but then I drove up, and they said "nicest car yet". ;-)

New look on our classic Tesla S85. Went with "Replika R187" rims. Told my story over on the Canadian winter tires and rims thread:
Winter Tires and Rims - Canadian Availability

Once more, with feeling.

My 2013 Smart ED has been flawless. $0 in maintenance, never seen the dealer since purchase 2.5 years ago. It runs strong and is super manoeuvrable, especially in traffic, which is fun and keeps the interest up during my commute on side streets.

Just checked the trip meter on the Tesla S today, we did 20000 kilometres since purchase in June 2015, most of the driving distance covered was through the past winter.

Averaging 230 Wh/km over the past 20000 km = 4600 kWh of energy used
~3000 of those km were on free superchargers provided by Tesla.

The remaining 17000 km * .15 / kWh (overnight electricity) = $590 in "fuel" (fed at 24Amps/245V charging every night for an hour or two on average)

Mid grade gas (what we put in our Mercedes SUV) averaged $1.16/L in 2015, ref:
Ministry of Energy » Fuel Prices

Our 2010 Mercedes best efficiency was 10L/100km in (left lane) highway conditions, and 13L/100 city year round.
Our old Ford sedans averaged just a bit better than that, about 10L/100 year round.
$590 / 1.16 $/L = 510 L of gas which would have been good for around 5000 km
20000 km would have been $2000 in gas in any of our previous cars.

Savings of ~$1500 in fuel in 8 months of driving compared to the gas car the Tesla replaced.
Not bad!