Poll: For P/R reservations, which battery/motor did you finalize ?

[gregincal]

I thought I'd bump this up to the top. A ton more people have finalized in the last month or so who may not have voted. It would be nice to continue to see data added.

 

[100thMonkey]

I wonder if Tesla keeps track of how many times a person changes the model type in the on line design studio, post reservation, and I wonder where in the curve my wife and I stand, we felt pretty OCD by the end of it :~). I suspect a lot of folks start out at 40 and gradually add features, then bump up to the 60 and subtract features, then gradually adding features back only to go through the process again with the 85. We literally built and rebuilt every variation there is, many times over several months going from bare bones minimum to fully tricked out and then back again. The final choice was kind of amusing, we ended up with everything but the paint armor, and we left that out because hell, after spending a $100K why not wrap the whole car, LOL!

The size battery pack can be quite a puzzle. there is how far you drive in a given day, all three battery sizes cover most anyone's daily commute. there's how valuable being able to take an extra long jaunt is even if occasional. there's worst case scenario strong head wind, cold temps and snow and the rare but horrible multi-hour traffic jam that requires going no where, stuck between exits, with the heat on full blast. There's also gradual loss of capacity with age to factor in.

With 25K miles on the Leaf, we did have some experiences to gauge from. We came to an interesting conclusion, that inconvenience was not necessarily proportional to frequency but rather timing, in other words, getting stuck can wipe that EV grin off your face even if it's once in a long time, if the timing is bad. The memory of being limited stays with you and stands out, even more so with my wife. Just a couple of bad EV range experiences with my wife and her entire impression of EV's changed more for the negative. the worst was getting stuck on a slow charger with our kids in the car, for 3 hours, they were 1 and 3. we ran out of diapers and food, it was cold out, it was midnight before we could head home, it was miserable. the reality is that public chargers are sometimes behind locked gates, aren't working or are being used. I hope Tesla's chargers are more reliable than what we have seen so far.

All and all, it became obvious to us that we want to limit the potential for running out of juice at a particularly bad time, as much as possible. the best way to do this is to limit the likelihood of having to use a public charger by having a larg battery pack. We even ended up ordering the HPWC for fast turn around time, as long trips sometimes require errands before hand, timing is everything when it comes to EV charging, IMHO! I suppose it's possible that we have swung from one extreme with the Leaf to the other with the Tesla S and that we may find all this to be overkill, but I'm pretty convinced that we did the right thing, particularly when 5+ years down the road the battery has lost some range and we are still able to do pretty much anything we want to do. I figure that we will spend less in the long run by spending more up front and having to upgrade less frequently... time will tell!

 

[Kauai]

I wonder if Tesla keeps track of how many times a person changes the model type in the on line design studio, post reservation, and I wonder where in the curve my wife and I stand, we felt pretty OCD by the end of it :~). I suspect a lot of folks start out at 40 and gradually add features, then bump up to the 60 and subtract features, then gradually adding features back only to go through the process again with the 85. We literally built and rebuilt every variation there is, many times over several months going from bare bones minimum to fully tricked out and then back again. The final choice was kind of amusing, we ended up with everything but the paint armor, and we left that out because hell, after spending a $100K why not wrap the whole car, LOL!

The size battery pack can be quite a puzzle. there is how far you drive in a given day, all three battery sizes cover most anyone's daily commute. there's how valuable being able to take an extra long jaunt is even if occasional. there's worst case scenario strong head wind, cold temps and snow and the rare but horrible multi-hour traffic jam that requires going no where, stuck between exits, with the heat on full blast. There's also gradual loss of capacity with age to factor in.

With 25K miles on the Leaf, we did have some experiences to gauge from. We came to an interesting conclusion, that inconvenience was not necessarily proportional to frequency but rather timing, in other words, getting stuck can wipe that EV grin off your face even if it's once in a long time, if the timing is bad. The memory of being limited stays with you and stands out, even more so with my wife. Just a couple of bad EV range experiences with my wife and her entire impression of EV's changed more for the negative. the worst was getting stuck on a slow charger with our kids in the car, for 3 hours, they were 1 and 3. we ran out of diapers and food, it was cold out, it was midnight before we could head home, it was miserable. the reality is that public chargers are sometimes behind locked gates, aren't working or are being used. I hope Tesla's chargers are more reliable than what we have seen so far.

All and all, it became obvious to us that we want to limit the potential for running out of juice at a particularly bad time, as much as possible. the best way to do this is to limit the likelihood of having to use a public charger by having a larg battery pack. We even ended up ordering the HPWC for fast turn around time, as long trips sometimes require errands before hand, timing is everything when it comes to EV charging, IMHO! I suppose it's possible that we have swung from one extreme with the Leaf to the other with the Tesla S and that we may find all this to be overkill, but I'm pretty convinced that we did the right thing, particularly when 5+ years down the road the battery has lost some range and we are still able to do pretty much anything we want to do. I figure that we will spend less in the long run by spending more up front and having to upgrade less frequently... time will tell!

How right you are! Contrast that 3 hour nightmare with 1/2 hour of supercharging at Hawthorne on a sunny afternoon on our recent road trip to Disney. The 3 and 5 year old got out and ran around the reflecting pool in front of the supercharging oblisk for 1/2 non stop, had a civilized bathroom break where they sampled not one, not two, but three different hand soaps before heading off to the Magic Kingdom... Still waiting for the HPWC which once or twice would have allowed me drive my errands all out rather than cautiously and conservatively ( or worse still break out the mothballed ICE SUV).

 

[wraithnot]

I thought I'd bump this up to the top. A ton more people have finalized in the last month or so who may not have voted. It would be nice to continue to see data added.

I'm also bumping this since I just finalized and added my 85 kWh data point to the poll. Since this poll is only useful if lots of people see it and vote, can we make it sticky?

 

[EU-P1422]

I'm also bumping this since I just finalized and added my 85 kWh data point to the poll. Since this poll is only useful if lots of people see it and vote, can we make it sticky?

UP.