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My nephew was in this type of situation. I made him an 80' electric dryer extension cord out of home depot parts and ran it out his second-story window into the garden area next to where he parks; worked great. Use 10-gauge 3-conductor SOOW outdoor cord.

Is it possible that bitcoin is a carbon-light replacement for gold mining? As I understand it, the bitcoin blockchain, while energy intense, runs largely on hydropower because the miners have to go where electricity is cheap or they won't make any money. Digging gold out of the ground, on the...

Minus 7 miles (though at the time the display just showed zero or charge now). The trick when you are driving near or beyond zero miles of range is to keep the load on the battery light by reducing your speed, going light on the throttle, and maximizing regen. That way you push the "shutdown...

The door sagging that I observed while driving with the wing doors open (parade mode) has been fixed by the updating to 2020.24.6.11 - although there is no longer any way to silence the beeping (in the past you could use the autopilot engagement lever to do so).

I've driven my 2017 Model X in parade mode several times in the past. Just did a test today and found there is once again a problem with the doors sagging (it's an old software glitch from 2016 that has come back). Is anyone else seeing this? I'm about to get FSD and MCU upgrades so hoping that...

Is anyone expecting these new versions to have 500+ miles of range? I thought that was the whole point of the tri-motor configuration - pushing the envelope on both performance and range.

I remember in the 1990s when the Las Vegas taxi union blocked city funding and approvals for the Monorail, forcing the Casinos to bankroll it themselves (with the help of a state bond issue) to the tune of $3 billion (and locate it outside of the city limits). I've been irritated about that for...

The same court system was pretty tough on VW when it came to Dieselgate, and the country recently boosted their EV incentives, so at least Tesla is winning in Germany when it comes to the things that really matter.

Tesla's EMI weight is 4% at present. Total EMI assets could be as high as $400B, but a conservative guess would be $200B. The retail versions of EMI funds at Vanguard and Fidelity total $91B, which is roughly 2.5 million shares. These would all be sold while S&P 500 index funds are buying.

There's only about $3 Trillion in S&P 500 index vehicles; the rest is active funds that are benchmarked to the S&P 500. Also you have to consider that Tesla will move out of the Extended Market Index where it has about a 4% weight, and those index funds funds will be selling it. I'm guessing the...

Ran some numbers. At Tesla's current valuation, if the Standard & Poor's index committee decides to add it to the S&P 500, it would debut as one of the top 20 stocks in the index with a weighting of nearly 1%. Assuming that there's roughly $3 trillion directly indexed to the S&P 500 and perhaps...

Having logged over 350,000 Tesla miles over the last 11 years, I've been in situations like that several times, and in recent years I've encountered some truckers who see a Tesla coming and pretend like they are moving into your lane to trigger an Autopilot response. As such, if I am next to the...

That station is in a private pay-for-parking lot, and the rate per hour (after a ~30 min free period) is not cheap. Since the casinos re-opened yesterday, I'll bet it's all cleared out at this point because they are likely collecting parking fees again. Anyone seen it lately?

Thanks! Just placed the order.

A few hundred early Model X vehicles had reversed cooling system lines that eventually led to cooling system failures. But when it happened to me on a hot summer road trip from Reno to Vegas, it only slowed down the charging, not the driving, and fortunately the Vegas service center had me up...

Wikipedia lists the dimensions as 19' 4" length (almost 3 feet longer than Model X), roughly 6' 10" width (similar to Model X with mirrors folded), and 6' 3" height (9 inches taller than Model X).

I used the Roadster as a daily driver for about four years in my early 50s. The Roadster's firm straight-back seats have always been great for my back, which gets troubled by seats that are too soft under the seat and/or lack support near the base of the spine (such as the Model 3). Getting in...

I wonder if they finally got the okay to eliminate the exterior mirrors, making it possible to fit in an average garage without size reductions?

I actually got quotes for both options two years ago (my 5000 sq ft Reno home is at the 6000' level and I wanted to replace two problematic gas/AC units). The quote for a closed geo-loop system was about $110k ($50k for vertical drilling costs), versus $44k for a system based on two Mitsubishi...

A new Chademo / CCS station just opened up on Highway 95 in McDermitt near the Nevada/Oregon border. This is a key route that connects Boise to Winnemucca. Curiously, Tesla has not been willing to put a Supercharger anywhere along the route - even backed out of a plan to put 4 destination...

I use back-up mode in the winter (when there is not much difference between peak and off-peak rates and my main concern with a long outage is frozen pipes). In the summer I switch to self-powered because there's a lot of money to be saved by avoiding the peak periods, and enough sun every day...

I would guess there's a Tesla short-seller dreaming up a new post and new identity every day or two. It would be interesting to run a word usage analysis to see how many of these are written by the same person. My own solar system (originally installed by Solar City) has been performing well...

Small gasoline generators are not very efficient, probably closer to 10%. Large stationary diesel generators, like the ones used for some remote EV charging stations in the Australian Outback, can be as high as 55%. Pretty wide range!

This is interesting to me because the world's most expensive modern tunnel (Seattle's Alaska Way Viaduct replacement, nearly $2 billion / mile) and the world's cheapest modern tunnel (LVCC people mover, $50 million per mile) will be opening within two years of each other. This isn't just another...

The shudder is wheel independent. Only thing affecting it is the electric shock height (more shudder on higher settings; less on lower settings). It's never bothered me that much (lots of gas cars do strange things under full-throttle acceleration too), so I've never tried to do anything about it.

Finally had a chance to stop by and try things out. Near as I can tell, it's the 72kW urban Supercharger power system paired with V3 cables. (perhaps a temporary solution until they are able to upgrade to a reliable V3 system down the road). At any rate, nice to have a few more destination...

Agreed, most likely Tesla goes into the S&P 500 next year. But there is a small chance it could happen this year, as the S&P 500 committee sometimes adds companies that don't meet all of their requirements. And I think the risk is great enough that it is prompting some of the covering activity.

I think what's really going on is the shorts are covering because any day now we could get an announcement that Tesla is being added to the S&P 500, which could mean some $10-20 billion would flood into the stock over a 5-day period. It's not a battle the shorts can win, because disinformation...

Yes I've Supercharged at that V3 station in Vegas several times without paying for parking, but I was always out in about 20 minutes, leaving as soon as I had comfortable range for getting to Beatty.

When Guy Hall drove his Model S to Alaska I made him an 80' extension cord that plugs into electric dryer outlets. At 6 kW it's not as good as a 14-50 outlet, but would still provide about 75 towing miles with an overnight charge.

Actually his example was with a 5,000 lb trailer. I have no issue with his energy calculations, which were spot on. But he mis-represents the situation with his energy density chart. The energy density of gasoline, if adjusted for engine efficiency losses, is five times lower. The energy...

You might get 1/3 of the energy into mechanical power with a diesel engine, but there's no way that happens with a gasoline engine.

I'm assuming you're in Alaska, as that's the only place where Superchargers would be thousands of miles away. But you could always plug in at the RV parks, where a 50A outlet is good for about 125 towing miles after a 12-hour overnight charge.

Given that Eldorado Resorts (50% owner of Caesars which owns the Linq) is partnering with Tesla on this, it would not be surprising to see this station mirroring the Vegas High Roller implementation, with a restricted access pay lot that makes the first 30-45 minutes free. And since Caesars has...

He fails to point out that the system efficiency of an F150 is less than 20% (more than 80% of the energy in the gasoline ends up as waste heat; that's why pickups overheat all the time when towing uphill). In reality a 200 kWh pack in the Cybertruck provides roughly the same towing range as 30...

Unsworth was first on the scene because he lived close by. But Rob Harper was the real hero and was honored by Thailand's government.

You know, if you're in a bar fight, and it's someone else who threw the first punch, it doesn't really matter who's a billionaire and who isn't.

Perhaps a thin camera extender that mounts to (or slides out of) the rear lift gate? Or maybe wireless wi-fi/bluetooth cameras that could mount on the trailer and display in the pickup?

Second that. I've driven a total of about 150,000 Tesla miles in four different dual-motor Tesla vehicles and never heard a transmission-like clunk. Perhaps because there is no transmission.

Last couple days I've been having fun with Track Mode on slippery roads. It improves traction considerably under light acceleration, reducing the mild fish-tailing that frequently occurs with the rear-end, giving more of a Model X feel. When you accelerate harder or turn sharper (not recommended...

Probably more efficient to charge the cars one at a time. But I could see a scenario where AAA (or its major contractors) buys a fleet of these trucks to gain mobile charging capability.

Wild - this takes single-pedal driving to a whole new level. Curious to see what happens when regen is limited in cold weather plus impact when roads are icy.

Hoping to do some Model Y tow testing next year. If I can come up with 700 lbs of dead weight I could probably get a pretty good idea of the range impact of the heavier Endless Highways version. A rough guess would be 10-15% less range on mountainous routes and 5-10% less on flat routes.

Sometimes there are unavoidable situations where cutting it close is the only logical option. A couple of years ago I was towing my Bowlus trailer home from the L.A. area. While traveling North on I-5, the Santa Clarita Supercharger went off-line while I was en route to it. Running the numbers...

Winter is basically here in Reno-Tahoe at the 6000' level and I usually have winter tires on my Teslas six months of the year because it snows a lot between October-March. During that time I frequently drive at high elevations on the Mt Rose Highway (mostly for skiing but sometimes for...

Just curious, has anyone been driving year-round on Tesla's 20" winter tires (Pirelli Sotozeros)? Just put these on my Model 3 and they seem to grip surprisingly well on dry pavement. With a W speed rating I don't imagine they can be damaged by heat, but I am wondering about treadwear.

In the summer I see a lot of overheated F350s on the side of the road on the way up to Mammoth Lakes on 395 - it's simply not possible to tow a 16,000 lb trailer up that 7% grade on the 100 degree days. The Tesla pickup with a 200 kWh pack should have no such limitation - and like the towing...

Imagine if the Dutch had figured out magnetism, electricity and electrolysis (but not batteries) in the 1400s. The world's transportation system might have developed around wind-generated hydrogen and (clean) combustion engines with wind-to-wheel efficiency of about 10%. Then along comes natural...

The Model S/X are not exempt from tariffs because they are imported. But they will avoid the purchase tax.

No idea - I confronted the guy (facilities manager) in the Hyatt lobby a couple years ago when I was meeting some Hyatt guests for a Hyatt-sponsored boat cruise I had paid for. I wanted to charge but he had ICEd out all the chargers with valet vehicles. I told him he had the obligation to make...