Tesla Roadster – Page 3 – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

Tesla CPO Program and Driving on SoCal Surface streets – comparing Meerkat and Periscope

Something different on today’s post.

After being in the Model S for 23 days straight on our Roadtrip 2015. I felt like it’s time to “shift gears” and write about the Roadster.

It has been a while since I’ve written (and ridden) the Roadster.

Soon after our return from our trip, I took the picture below, but I was in my “usual” seat in the Roadster – the passenger seat, or as I call it, Batman’s seat.

I had an appointment last Wednesday and asked my wife if I can borrow her Signature Green Tesla Roadster. We purchased her car under Tesla Motors’ original Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program. With all the hoopla over the CPO Model S program it’s important to note that it isn’t their first CPO Rodeo.

As I understand it, the current Model S CPO program adds another 50,000 miles and 4 years to the warranty of the vehicle at delivery. The Roadster CPO program is 37 months and 37,000 miles from the car’s delivery to the CPO owner. They chose the Roadster numbers to be one more month and 1,000 more miles than when the car was sold brand new. The Model S warranty is an improvement over the Roadster’s CPO program In that you get 23 more months and 23,000 more miles, however the CPO Model S warranty is similar to a new Model S warranty in that Tesla warrants it for 50,000 miles and 4 years. The battery warranty on the car is lock-step with the drivetrain warranty of 8 years and infinite miles (for 85 kWh cars, I believe that it was 150,000 miles for 60 kWh versions.) It is important to note that Tesla remains consistent with its own practice of not including any battery degradation in its warranty.

Unlike its competitors at BMW and Nissan, Tesla does not warrant the pack to maintain a certain level of use for a certain amount of time. This issue continues to be one of the things that I find irritating with Tesla. Granted, as others have found, the degradation seems to stabilize after 30,000 miles our max. range on the Model S has stayed firm close to 255 rated range miles (a ten mile loss from factory pickup, the Model S community reports its range loss in rated range miles) and our Roadster now is consistently around 179-180 miles of ideal range (the Roadster community reports its loss on ideal range vs. rated range, go figure.) Our current ideal range numbers is actually an improvement from last July’s Roadster Battery degradation panic (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3) where the car was reporting as low as 172 ideal miles range that improved to 175 after a few weeks of testing.

I wanted to compare and contrast my experience while driving the Roadster and broadcasting the experience on Meerkat and Periscope. Being an active Twitter user, I’ve noticed the competition between the Meerkat App and Periscope. Each product brings live streaming to the masses via app extensions to Twitter. Furthermore, both applications provide realtime engagement between the broadcaster and his or her audience. I figured to experiment with this further and see if the previous test during our Model S Roadtrip 2015 cross country video has improved in a little over a month since I last tried it out.

This time, I wanted to bring viewers with me on a drive around in my wife’s Signature Green Tesla Roadster. So, how did i do it? My initial plan was to take viewers with me around surface streets in the Roadster. There have been more Model S videos out there and thought that folks might be interested in the Roadster.

My first streaming video experiment was on Periscope. Since neither app lets users store the video ad-infinitum, I stored the archives on Youtube.

Drive through Beverly Hills in a Tesla Roadster

We had some active users, and they were fairly engaged. Periscope overlays viewers questions on the video that the broadcaster sees and thus provided the broadcaster with the ability to verbally answer the questions posed. When I archived the video, the questions and interaction disappears, so I transcribed it below. (no timestamps, you can see the logical flow for the folks that I did get to answer.)

@Baderj57 – hi

@AdamClistWynant – Love the sound of the electric motor

@meier_audrey – People like to hear their sports cars 🙂

@AdamClistWynant – How is your range?

@ILushYouM – you’re in SoCal?

@ILushYouM – Omg 😍

@ILushYouM – I can’t wait to live in LA

@ILushYouM – I’m in Maine

@ILushYouM – 😮 !!

@AdamClistWynant – In SD and LV

@AdamClistWynant – Go to Cafe Gratitude while you’re out there.

@AdamClistWynant – Have a good day. Peace

It was a fun few minutes of driving. However, I had to use Youtube’s tools to fix the “herky-jerky” nature of my hand-held filming of the event. (Not a steadicam operator.)

I did do a good job parking the car on the surface streets.

The next experiment was later that morning on Meerkat.

Drive through Culver City – Meerkat

It is important to note that on Periscope, I had viewers pop in rather quickly. I gave Meerkat the same amount of time, and no participants joined the stream. So I quickly ended that session.

Drive through Culver City – Roadster

I was having some fun with the live streaming video thing that I decided to do another Periscope session, and again we got a bunch of viewers right away.

And again, I partially transcribed the questions on this short drive below. Now, I took the liberty of editing out the handle of a participant with a handle that others may find offensive.

@Unlock_Success – Hi from the UK

@f[edited]inglawn – Is that a Porsche Panamera

@f[edited]inglawn – I think I’m Behind You

@f[edited]inglawn – Oh Okay I see you

Later on the drive home in the freeway, I was behind a White Model S in the HOV lanes. Not on video, but always a fun sight to have in front of me.

I wonder whether the driver noticed that another Tesla was behind him or her.

What can I conclude by this quick drive and test? It’s definitely a load of fun to drive the Roadster.

My other takeaway, on the live broadcast of streaming video front, at least for those that follow and find me in public, it seems that Periscope has more participants than Meerkat. I don’t know if Meerkat does enough to promote the broadcaster’s feed more or if there are more subscribers to the app, but it definitely is more fun and engaging to stream in Periscope.

As for the apps themselves, they seem similar from the broadcasting perspective and I would like to have the archive function allow the broadcaster to save the chat overlay with the video. In the meantime, enjoy the ride in the Roadster. I did.

Oh yeah… Thanks for the reminder…

Two Roadster posts in a row… Must be some sort of record…

Well, I got the following in the mail the other day…

I guess having work done at non-Tesla locations subject one to some really interesting car offers.

A few months back, we found a nail in the Roadster’s tire. The tread was still good, and the leak was slow, so we had the tire patched at Just Tires.

This was an interesting repair because, the Roadster did not have a standard location to jack the car up to get the tire removed, so Just Tires refused to do the work… Initially.

So, I called the nearest Tesla Service Center (which was less than 2 miles from the Just Tires) and requested them to remove the tire, instead of doing it at their location, Tesla sent a Ranger to the Just Tires parking lot and removed the tire, waited for the repair to be done, and re-mounted the tire back on the Roadster. That’s the sort of service that’s somewhat screwy, but above and beyond. Tesla refuses to patch the tires, but understand that customers may opt to do this anyway (within reason) and the service center staff are reasonable enough to adjust and have workarounds that they help with.

Needless to say, I was happy with the work from Tesla.

Just Tires did a great job with the patch. They also patched the Model S a few months ago when I got a similar road debris issue with the Model S.

I think that Just Tires does have to figure out how to make their CRM system understand the needs of electric vehicle drivers may not be the same as internal combustion engine drivers.

A day with the Tesla Roadster… 16,061 Miles

Got to take the Roadster out for a “spin” this past week and it hit 16,000 miles in the process…

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch it at 16,000, so I remembered at 16,009 miles… But that’s kinda boring.

So, I thought, 16,016 miles would be a good shot…

Well… That’s nice, but not quite “memorable” enough for me. I figure a palindrome would be better…

So, let me present… 16,061 miles…

Now… What have we learned in the nearly 14,000 miles that we’ve owned the Roadster. Well. It’s squeeky. Especially with the hardtop on.

I spent part of my day stopping by the Tesla Motors Hawthorne Design Center (also known as the site of the original Tesla Los Angeles Supercharger.) It’s now pretty empty, looks like more people stop off at Culver City or Redondo Beach now that those two are open. I stopped off at the Design Center because they have a bank of eight Model S HPWCs for folks that don’t need to supercharge.

I thought the start of charge looked promising (started around 205V and 61A) the rate with which the Roadster with the CAN SR charged fluctuated between 205-208V and 44A. That’s not much faster than using a 40A UMC at 240V at home. Still, I wanted to see the behavior, so I stuck around for a little while to recover some miles and hung out with a few Model S at the center.

Here’s a Panoramic of the eight HPWCs with Model S charging at the occupied ones, with the exception of HPWC 6 which I was charging at:

The HPWCs were all well labeled, and I only tested one of them, so, I don’t know whether the others will provide the full 80A to a Model S or 70A to a Roadster with the CAN SR. I posted my statistics on teslamotorsclub.com and Henry Sharp (hcsharp) advised that perhaps the PEM was overheating. I was driving for a while before the stop, so that could have affected it. I know that the adapter and car work at 70A because I’ve had it tested at the Service Center on a Model S HPWC and I’ve seen it at that speed on OVMS. So, I’ll have to try charging it with a cooler PEM in the future.

It would seem that what looks like premature battery degradation on the Roadster can be rehabilitated. Since then, we’ve been closer to a CAC closer to 149 and full standard daily ranges closer to 177-179 miles. One of the things that we’ve done since July of last year has been to leave the car unplugged until it really needed to charge. In general, in a protected garage, the vampire losses on the Roadster are minimal, especially compared with the Model S. So, what does this mean? The battery on the Roadster seems to perform better when you let the charge drop low (but not too low.) We’ve been advised to let the car drop to 40 miles or slightly less at least once a week. We do this closer to lower than 60 miles of range rather than 40. It’s just how the math works with the car’s usage patterns. For the record, the Service Center did a range charge the last time I had it in and that looked to reach 226 miles in Range Mode. So, that’s increased as well.

Another thing that we learned in the approximately 14,000 miles that we’ve owned the Roadster, is that the squeaks can be taken care of, at least for a while. There is some sort of lubricant that the center applies to the hardtop to take care of these squeaks.

The car’s not so squeaky with the soft-top, but we like to use the hardtop, so squeaks it is.

Apparently, before installing the hardtop, apply some of the substance above to the parts of the roof and car that touch each other and it lessens the squeaks. And it works great. For a while. However, a Roadster is not the comfortable car that the Model S is. It’s a driver’s car, and the adrenaline that comes with driving it is really part of the “fun.”

Appreciating the past and hopeful for the future of EVs.

This past weekend, my wife and I joined our fellow members of the Orange County Tesla Club on a visit to the Nethercutt Museum and Collection in Sylmar (Los Angeles), CA. [SIDE NOTE: For those not from Southern California, the city of Los Angeles is the largest city in Los Angeles County and within the city there are distinct neighborhoods that have their own identities, but are part of the city of Los Angeles. Hollywood is an example of such a neighborhood, as is Sylmar. West Hollywood, on the other hand, is its own city. As is Long Beach, where the Formula E race will be held on Saturday, April 4, 2015. (which is why I wrote Sylmar with (Los Angeles) in parentheses, that’s my own editorial on it, and not convention.) Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.]

The Nethercutt family are the founders and heirs to the Merle Norman cosmetic company and have built an impressive collection of automobiles and other “mechanical art”. The OC Tesla Club has been itching to have longer drives for our group outings and this venture into Los Angeles (City and County) was just one such drive.

So, the day was meant to appreciate the company of fellow Tesla enthusiasts and appreciate the Nethercutt Museum and Collection. As with most automobile museums, I was prepared to view beautiful and restored relics of the past… ICE cars.

Well, I was in for a surprise and a treat. (The benefits of not really paying attention to the marketing brochures and online information about what was in store for me at the Museum and Collection. The only thing that stuck to my head from the materials was the restored locomotive and Private Train Car in the back, and that was pretty much it.)

As was pointed out by some of my fellow OC Tesla Club members, as impressive as the car collection is, the automated music collection was even more impressive. Unfortunately they didn’t allow us to record the audio or video of the event, but here are a few photos from that

This piano entertained us while we strolled the car collection:

and the piece de resistance was this automated/programmable pipe organ that came from a movie theater (for silent films) from Denver

You can see the rest of the visit in my flickr album.

But what does the Nethercutt have to do with EVs? Well…

I love to play “EV Spotting” and in the guided tour portion of our visit (at the Collection this time, and not at the self-guided museum section) in the ground level of the visit were TWO EVs!

Front view

Back view

Most EV junkies would recognize the more modern EV as the pre-cursor to this generation of EVs and focus of the documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (and the movement which spawned Plug in America, the 1997 GM EV1. The other one is older and not as well known. The 1914 Rauch & Lang Model B4 Electric Brougham.

Both vehicles were shown with their respective chargers connected to the vehicle in the Collection.

Rauch & Lang

IMG_20150328_132918

Charger information

Interior

1997 GM EV1

Interior

One of the things that I noticed and would like to draw our attention to is the price of the GM EV1 at the time it was being leased out. Interesting that the price of the GM EV1 was $43,995 and the average car price in the US at the time was $14,000. That means that the EV1 is about 3.14 times the price of the average car.

So, the average car price in 2012 is around $31,000 and the Model S average is around $100,000, that means that the Model S is about 3.22 times the price of the average car. However, considering what you get in a Model S vs. an EV1. However, as was pointed out to me by David Peilow in my post at Speakev.com, “Just shows the jump with the Leaf or Volt in terms of value for money. I wonder how much of that is a reduction in the design price vs benefits of economies of scale, though.”

David’s point is made even clearer when one looks to see what the 2012 Nissan Leaf sold for in 2012. It started at $35,200 before the Federal Tax Credit of $7,500 for the purchase of a battery electric vehicle. So, that’s 1.13 times the amount of the average car without the application of the Federal Tax Credit. If the purchaser in 2012 was eligible for the whole credit, it also means that the Nissan Leaf at that point is 0.89 of the average car price. Food for thought.

The 2012 Chevrolet Volt had a MSRP starting at $39,145 when purchased new. I don’t remember whether it was eligible for the whole $7,500 Federal Credit, but let’s assume that it was. So, looking at the same ratios again. The Volt was 1.26 times the average car before the credit and 1.02 times the average car after the tax credit.

I used 2012 as my figure to compare as it was the easiest recent year for me to find the average car price for. Assuming mild inflation in the averages, it’s even more dramatic to see the drop in MSRP for the 2015 model years of the same two cars that I used for my example. The 2015 Nissan Leaf can now be purchased around $29,010 and the 2015 Chevrolet Volt starts at $34,185 before the tax credit.

It’s interesting that when one looks to the past, it really makes one appreciate what the future holds for us.

100,000 All Electric Miles reached by our household today…

About 1/3rd of the way home today, we reached 100,000 All Electric miles on all vehicles owned or leased by our family. We reached this landmark mileage figure with the help of our Active E, which we picked up on February 23, 2012 and returned on February 23, 2014, as well as our Roadster and Model S…

One of the side-effects of tracking our hybrid garage (our minimizing gas use post, first year, and recently posted second year) use has been to track the number of all electric miles that we’ve done since we picked up our vehicles. Which means that we deduct the original 2,220 miles on the Roadster when we picked it up CPO, we deduct the 14 miles that we had on the Active E, and the 22 miles that was on our Model S on our acquisition of each vehicle. That’s how we get to the 100,000 Total EV miles on our family vehicles.

So at 3:29 PM Pacific Time on March 10, 2015, we hit 32,221 miles on the Model S which made our total for the family at 100,000 all electric miles. Additionally, it turned out that we hit that 100,000 EV miles target on day 1,111 of our ownership/lessor of our primary EVs. These totals mean that we averaged about 90 miles of electric driving per day for the past 1,111 days. That’s more than double the US average commute of 40 miles roundtrip. Additionally, 54,321 of those miles are on an EV that averages 80-100 miles of range in the Active E. So to those that say that EVs are for short distances only, need to check on the mileage that we did with our vehicles. Range Anxiety? Not around here.

Ended today at 100,024 total household EV miles. Next target? 10 MWh [corrected from 1 MWh thanks to @grahamparks] of energy consumed on our Tesla Model S. [as was pointed out by @grahamperks on Twitter, I understated myself. 1 MWh=1,000 kWh. So, I’m about to hit 10MWh on the Model S]

9901.3 kWh consumed for the 32,245 Miles that I ended my commute to home today at a conservative 291 wH per mile for the day (still at 307 wH per mile since we picked up our Model S).

Second Year’s tracking of Hybrid Garage use.

So, it’s been two years since I’ve started tracking our garage’s EV vs ICE use. As I previously wrote two years ago on my Minimizing Gas Use article and on my update a year ago, I do drive a hybrid garage. For those that need a refresher, a hybrid garage is one where some of my cars are EVs and the others are internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. As a family that is a part of the rEVolution, why do we still have ICE cars, it’s because we’re not as good as those that have gone to an all electric lifestyle. Hats off to them, but there are just times that I like to use our vehicles that happen to use gasoline.

This past “winter” was better than last year’s “winter”, but we did not brave the mountains with our fourteen year old BMW X5. The X5 lets us go to the mountains around LA when there are restrictions to drive when the snow is fresh. Additionally, when we need to buy large items to move, we’ll use this same workhorse to help us move them. Granted the Model S does have a LOT of space, but I’m not one of those brave souls to carry “cargo” in them.

Last year we also had our BMW 328iC Convertible. But we sold that now that we’re more comfortable removing and re-installing the roof on the Tesla Roadster. So, on those days that we feel like driving around Sunny Southern California with the top down, we just use the Roadster.

That being said, I understand the costs of our addiction to oil and gas and we try to minimize it.

Two years ago, I started tracking the number of miles my household used ICE vs. EV to see what percentage of our private car travels are electric and what part are powered by internal combustion engines. Since we travel a little bit, I’ve decided to count the miles driven in rental cars to this spreadsheet and the miles that we’ve lent our ICE vehicles (and EVs) (ICE is now singular over the course of the second year of this study) to our friends and family when they visit Southern California. This is why I created some tracking spreadsheets and tracked mileage for a year. However, the results from last year to this year are impressive.

In the first year of the study, we drove EV a total of 81.20% of the time and ICE 18.80% of the time.

In the second year of the study, we drove EV a total of 92.64% of the time and ICE 7.36% of the time. ~~94.78% of the time and ICE 5.22% of the time~~. [Correction from 3/10/2016, discovered transposed number in tracking miles a year later.] We sold our second ICE car in Month 4 of the second year (or 16th Month overall). Additionally, we did try to rent EVs on trips as much as possible, unfortunately, even in areas of the country that have EVs available to rent, the vehicles were rented out ahead of the time of our trip there (specifically Honolulu and Orlando). We tried to rent an EV on a trip to Portland, however, at the time, there was no onsite EV rental at PDX International Airport.

As a whole, the household (as defined earlier, my wife and I and when we lend the cars to family and friends) drove about 46,000 total miles (both EV and ICE in the previous period) and we drove a total of approximately 39,300 ~~55,000~~ total miles in the second year. That’s a~~n increase of 9,000~~ decrease of 7,000 ~~more~~ miles of total driving of which ~~52,500~~ 36,422 of those total miles were EV. ~~That’s nearly 6,000 more miles than ALL the driving that we did during the first year of the hybrid garage study.~~

Interestingly, I did a quick 31,310 Tesla Model S update the day before the end of the second year of the study period and I had a lifetime Model S efficiency of 308 wH per mile. At the end of the day of the second year of the study, that average went down to a more efficient 307 wH per mile.

Throughout the past year I’ve been using 308 wH per mile for my calculations. Now going to have to use 307 wH per mile. That achievement is something.

One of the things that I was hoping to announce in this post is, as a family, we’ve reached 100,000 all EV miles across all three EVs that we’ve leased or owned, but sadly at the end of the second year of the period, we’ve been able to get to 99,665 miles on all the EVs that we’ve owned or leased. Now if we were to count our loaners and the few times we’ve been able to rent EVs in this count, I’m sure we’re well over 100,000.

Looking forward to seeing what else we can achieve with our hybrid garage next year.

29,000 Miles in the Tesla Model S

We’re getting to the point where we’re close to “doubling up” on the miles on the Model S than our Roadster. It’s got a lot more to do with the utility of a Model S vs. a Roadster as well as the number of miles that I drive for work.

The Model S is a 2013 that we picked up in November 2013 and the Roadster is a CPO that we picked up in September 2013. The Model S had around 20 miles when we picked it up and the Roadster had around 2200 miles when we picked that up.

They’re both great cars in their own rights and we’ve put in close to 15,000 miles on the Roadster at this point.

Ideal Miles – 291

Rated Miles – 251

The battery degradation on the car has shown its effect in the last few hundred miles. My 90% daily charge has gone down to around 226 Rated miles/261 Ideal Miles. Range charges in my most recent charge is 251 Rated miles/291 Ideal Miles. Most parts of the world, winter has a very noticeable effect on range. This is not normally the case in Southern California. With 291 Ideal miles or 9 lost miles. Doesn’t look bad vs 300 miles. But I live in a rated miles world and my 265 is now down to 252, so that sorta hurts, after all 13/265 is almost 5% of usable range gone vs. the Ideal loss around 3% (291/300) though this is also 4.6% (291/306).

I often charge the car to 90% on most days. The Roadster has a feature called “Top Off” that I mimic on the Model S. What that means is before I roll off, I extend the charge and run the pre-conditioning to cool the car and battery down. I wonder if that contributed to the degradation. Either way, there it is. Still waiting on Tesla to step it up and provide some sort of warranty and guidelines on what to expect.

If battery loss is linear, then should I expect 20% loss by 116,000 miles? Or is loss on a curve and 20% is closer to 150,000 or even 200,000 miles? Or is it accelerated and 5% loss is actually good for 29,000 miles. Not to mention the fact that I am measuring this based on Rated miles, which is what really works, but should I continue to normalize and look at Ideal miles, which may be ideal, but unrealistic. Because, as I’ve written, that’s currently closer to a 3-4.5% loss of Ideal miles.

Do I need to change my charging behavior? Because 9,000 miles ago, I was still range charged to 260 Rated miles. So, if we plot my two data points. I lost 5 miles in the first 20,000 miles and 8 more miles in the next 9,000 miles (Rated miles again). One thing to note is the car has been constantly updating with new firmware. So, one needs to wonder if these losses were already in the car and that changes in the rated mils is because of firmware changes and “fine-tuning of the algorithm. If it’s based on our driving, I’ve been rather conservative over the past 29,000 miles. My average since we picked up the car has been 308 Wh/mile (see the Trip A meter on any of the three pictures.)

Perhaps I should charge the car less and let it dip below 100 miles more often. Some guidelines from Tesla really would help here. In the meantime, we’re saving for replacement battery packs for the Roadster and Model S. Even without some sort of guidelines on what that will cost, the recent 400 mile Roadster upgrade announcement makes me hopeful that the same, or at least a replacement pack price will be announced for the Model S when our pack drops down to a level where either something kicks in to replace it or it gets unbearable and we decide to replace it ourselves. Tesla Gigafactory anyone?

As I’ve mentioned before, c’mon Tesla be AWESOME again! Publish a Battery Degradation Warranty that we can count on or at least start to provide pricing on replacement Model S packs for folks to start saving up for.

[UPDATE 2015-01-17]
I’ve been asked several times on social media as to the firmware at the time of the publication of this post.

It is V6.0 (1.67.125). The car is actually going in for a patch to fix an unrelated bug with regard to the clock switching from 12h AM/PM to 24h seemingly randombly.)

Now updated to v6.0 (2.0.81) at the Service Center.

The CAN JR and The CAN SR… Must have accessories for the Tesla Roadster

Elon Musk and Tesla Motors tweets regarding the upcoming demonstration of upgrading the Tesla Roadster to a 400 Mile Range has increased the interest in Roadster ownership. To continue further the previous post upon receipt of the CAN SR a few days back. Each version of the CAN is sold for $695 each and is well worth it.

What makes the CAN from Henry Sharp a valuable accesory is that it allows Roadster owners a nicer/smaller adapter to standard J1772. The Tesla produced product is rather bulky and a car like the Roadster space truly is a premium.

Here is a photo from Tesla (from their shop) of the Tesla produced adapter.

Tesla Roadster to J1772 adapter from Tesla

Whereas the CAN from Henry Sharp is rather compact.

This first picture is the J1772 side that the Roadster driver uses to plug the J1772 into.

This second picture is the Roadster side that the Roadster driver uses to connect to the Car.

You can see that the CAN is not much larger than a Blackberry Curve Telephone.

And here is the CAN attached and charging a Roadster. To ensure that the CAN does NOT walk away at public stations, there are slots in place to place a small padlock into it.

It works great with the JESLA from Tony Williams of QuickChargePower.

Henry’s been making the CAN JR for a while and have just released the CAN SR. The naming convention of JR and SR means that he’s converting J1772 to Roadster (for the JR) and SR is converting Tesla Model S to Roadster. Henry reluctantly released the SR because the testing showed a 95% success factor for Roadster 2.x and 99% success with Roadster 1.5 between Model S Chargers and Roadsters. (you can read the SR thread on teslamotorsclub.com)

Before purchasing the CAN SR, I would highly recommend that Roadster owners get the latest Firmware upgrade. There is a known bug between unpatched Roadsters and EVSEs that charge greater than 70 Amps. A fully configured Tesla Model S HPC is configured to run at 80 Amps and the Roadster, if unpatched, would be confused by that issue. The patch for this error has the Roadster understand an 80 Amp signal and drop the rate to 70 Amps, which is the maximum speed that a Roadster can handle.

This next picture is the Model S side that the Roadster driver uses to plug the Model S nozzle into.

This once again is the side that plugs into the Roadster.

Henry sends each CAN with a neoprene bag to protect and store the adapters into as pictured.

Here is the CAN SR plugged in and getting ready to charge in our garage.

IMG_20150107_224844

Lastly you can see the detail of the construction of the CAN SR. It’s a great accesory.

So, how do I use these adapters.

For the CAN JR

1) Attach the CAN JR to the Roadster
2) Plug the J1772 into the CAN.

IF in a public charging spot

3) I insert the padlock into the slot for the CAN to lock it in place.

4) If I need to interrupt charging to leave, I press the stop charging button on the VDI of the Roadster OR stop on the charger, otherwise, if it IS stopped, then proceed to the next steps.

IF in a public charging spot

5) I take the padlock off.

6) Unplug the J1772
7) Unplug the CAN, put can in the bag, and put the bag in the Roadster.

For the CAN SR

1) Attach the CAN SR to the Roadster
2) Plug the Model S nozzle into the CAN.

IF in a public charging spot

3) I insert the padlock into the slot for the CAN to lock it in place.

4) If I need to interrupt charging to leave, I press the stop charging button on the VDI of the Roadster OR stop on the charger, otherwise, if it IS stopped, then proceed to the next steps. I have not yet tried this, but according to Henry, I can pull the ring around the Model S nozzle to stop charging as well.

IF in a public charging spot

5) I take the padlock off.

6) Unplug the Model S adapter.
7) Unplug the CAN, put can in the bag, and put the bag in the Roadster.

There are very few “must haves” for the Roadster, and the CAN JR and SR are two of the things Roadster owners should consider owning.

Just got “The CAN SR”… A must-have “accessory” for the Tesla Roadster

A more in-depth review will follow, but thought to just share some pictures with you…

The CAN SR is Henry Sharp’s latest iteration of the CAN... (now renamed the CAN JR). The SR designates that the adapter will change a Tesla Model S plug to work with a Tesla Roadster. Whereas the original CAN adapted J1772 to Tesla Roadster.

Just got this at the office and thought to post some pictures of it.

Here is the end that the Model S connector goes into.

Here is the end that connects to the Roadster

And here is the whole thing in the protective bag that both the original CAN (JR) and now the CAN SR is sold with.

Per the Teslamotorsclub.com forum posts on the subject, it looks like it should work with about 99% of Model S Chargers out there for 1.5 Roadsters and about 95% for 2.x Roadsters.

Inconsistent Tesla Service at Tesla Service Centers… (make that Coffee service)

…You’ve been click baited! 😉

I’ve had service on our cars done at pretty much all the Los Angeles and Orange County service centers open by the end of 2014.

And I’ve found that the coffee service at all the centers have been inconsistent.

So, what are the levels of coffee service at the centers? I have it in three levels.

The first level can be found at the (old, pre-late 2014) Costa Mesa, Torrance, and Van Nuys location. And we’ll call this level the Good level of coffee service. I enjoy K-Cups and these centers all used a well stocked, well maintained K-cup machines.

Here are pictures from Van Nuys and Torrance:

Torrance:

Van Nuys:

The previous Costa Mesa Service Center had similar machines as well.

The second level first debuted in the Los Angeles and Orange County service center areas at the large West Los Angeles Service Center on Centinela. I would call this the Better level of coffee service. These are similar to the automated espresso/coffee machines found at some airport lounges.

The same machine that debuted in Centinela is pictured here from the “new” Costa Mesa Service Center.

In fact, if you don’t like coffee… These machines can also do Hot Chocolate

Or perhaps you DO like different kinds of coffee and coffee drinks

or just coffee

each of these options can be “boosted”

However, what I’ve found is that the First one in the area continues to be the best one.

The original Service Center in West Los Angeles provide customers with the locations’ own Starbucks Gift Card to use to go and purchase Starbucks coffee from next door.

Now, this center continues to be rumored to be closing soon and be re-converted back into a showroom. So, until then, if you like Starbucks coffee and rate that as I do… Then, perhaps you would consider having your Tesla serviced at the West Los Angeles (Santa Monica Blvd.) location.