My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental – Page 5

National Drive Electric Week 2016 – Diamond Bar

For the past few years, I’ve always attended several of the National Drive Electric Week events throughout Southern California. This year, the first EVent that we visited was in Diamond Bar at the Southern California Air Quality Management District.

Drive Electric Week is happening Internationally now and have started today, September 10, 2016 and continues on until next week. Our club, Tesla Owners Club of Orange County (formerly OC Tesla Club), will be attending the event in Long Beach on September 17, 2016. However, we, as a family, try to hit several throughout the week.

You can look up where the nearest one is to you on the driveelectricweek.org site. With 241 sites worldwide, here’s to hoping that the event grows even more.

We took some great pictures of the event and set up a Flickr album.

I chose our parking spot today to complete the Red, White, and Blue Classic Tesla Motors Model S parked on the edge of the event.

We’re on the left, have to read it right to left to get Red, White, and Blue.

Previous sessions at Diamond Bar had a lot more EV conversions. This year, I spotted only one EV conversion (parked by the Chevy Volt.)

The owner of the BMW i3 put his car in what he called “presentation mode.”

Some crazy Smart ED owner put a different kind of Range Extender (wind up version…)

Lots of Fiat 500es.

One of the OC Tesla Club member’s Model X participated at this EVent.

We had hoped to bring my wife’s Roadster to the event, but we found a puddle of coolant in the garage and didn’t want to risk it. Glad to see a couple of Roadsters here.

More of the pictures from this event are on the Flickr album.

Since one of the many questions that the public often ask at these events is “how far can you go with your EV.” Last year we went from Southern California to Maine, this summer, we went to the Tesla Gigafactory Party, The Long Way Round via Vancouver, BC.

Our fourth year of Solar usage.

This is our fourth year update. Click here for the Last Year’s (3rd Year) Summary.

It’s been four years since our PTO our solar array was approved, we originally estimated our savings on driving the Active E or a vehicle like the Active E. Since then, we moved from driving one EV to two EVs to three EVs and finally back to two EVs. We’ve also driven around a lot and our mileage has grown significantly since then. Our original estimation of a break-even was calculated with a one EV household. Since then, we believe that we’ve achieved our break-even mileage for our EVs and home use of electricity between last year’s update and this year..

In our first year of Solar use, we had a credit. Which, as we found out, we could not claim. Because, it turns out, Net Metering means that though we’re credited for the production at a specific $ rate, customers are paid out on OVERPRODUCTION of power and not on the CREDITS earned. What this means is the system produced greater kWh of energy than consumed by the end user. If this is the case, the customer is PAID OUT the power times the wholesale rate of production. As long-time readers are aware, on our second year, we paid over $200 to SCE. For our third year, coupled with our nearly a month of travel to Maine and back in our Here, There, and EVerywhere roadtrip, we were out of the house for about three weeks that year, and a little over a month for that year. So, that created about a month of overproduction. As a result, Year 3’s bill was approximately $40. This fourth year that just ended, we had about the same number of weeks away from home, but our annual net metering statement is about HALF of last year’s total with a nearly $20 bill for Year 4.

This full fourth year of solar production is firmly with the Model S and Roadster with a about the same number of weeks on trips as Year 3. Our 2016 Road trip to the Pacific Northwest, which we will be publishing on Monday, 9/12/2016 at 10:00 AM Pacific/18:00 BST/19:00 CET (UTC), was for only two weeks, however we’ve had a lot of other trips so that our total time away from home has been about the same as Year 3.

I considered the third year as a monumental year for having the $40 annual bill, I am just flabbergasted at the $20 year that we’ve had for the fourth year. Considering our average electric bill prior to going EV and solar was closer to $200 a month, it is incredible to get most of our transportation and home energy use at so little. Additionally, I focused on the change in tariff from TOU-D-EV to TOU-D-A in last year’s summary.

Logic tells me that I SHOULD have been paying more for electricity in Year 4 vs. Year 3. And we didn’t even travel any more than we did in Year 3. Our Summer roadtrip in 2016 (about our Long Way Round to the Tesla Gigafactory Party) was several days shorter than our 2015 Roadtrip. I guess we’ve gotten better at shifting our energy use.

I wonder what we’ll be spending on energy next year? I predicted an upward trend from Year 3 to Year 4 and was flat out wrong. So, let me see if an upward trend will finally hit from Year 4 to Year 5. After all, solar panels degrade and our guaranteed production on our solar agreements always step down year over year.

Interested in going solar? Get a quote from my solar vendor – Real Goods Solar.

Saving Water on our Lawn?!?!

[edited links 1/1/2017 to product for Amazon Affiliate program, I was NOT an affiliate when I originally reviewed the product, links provided now are through the Amazon Affiliate program]

We live in drought-stricken California. We try our best to merge green solutions while also saving money. We’re not the “best” of the environmentally-enlightened, but we do try. Some have taken more aggressive stances when it comes to dealing with the drought. We were not willing to rip up our lawn and put in indigenous desert plants for the arid Southern California climate, nor were we willing to rip up our lawn and replace with an artificial one. So, we figured to do something “drought” friendlier and more convenient than scrambling to turn off our sprinkler the few instances that it does rain.

On March 9, 2016 we decided to pick up a woot.com deal for a refurbished Rachio 8ZULW 8 Zone Wi-Fi Sprinkler. After shipping and taxes the whole thing ended up costing us $136.24. This device has been on woot.com several time before (and since we bought it) but what really clinched the deal for us was there was a $119.99 rebate that was offered by local agencies. (As of this latest edit on 1/1/2017, The Rachio 8 Zone Irrigation Controller is now only sold via third parties, the Rachio 16 Zone Smart Sprinkler Controller or the Updated Rachio 8 Zone 2nd Generation are still available directly from Amazon.)

This particular smart sprinkler controller is designed to optimize watering of the end user’s lawn and save the user water on this use. It adjusts the watering times based on the season as well as shut down the scheduled watering when there is scheduled precipitation based on weather reports. I’m not the most handy of guys, but thought to tackle this upgrade of our lawn watering by replacing our traditional timer with the Rachio 8ZULW. We only had five zones wired at home, so I thought that this was the ideal size.

So, how did we go about replacing our sprinkler controller with this smart sprinkler controller? Since we were replacing an existing set-up, it was pretty easy.

Step One – Identify what we have

Identify how many zones. (size controller for set-up). As mentioned before, we have five zones, so an eight zone system works great.

Step Two – Deinstall existing

De-install existing controller and identify where each zone is on the lawn.

This was our old controller:

Step Three- Install new Hardware

Install each zone to the relevant spot on the new controller.

Mount it on the wall.

Plug it in.

Turned out our wi-fi network won’t reach the garage, so we had to get that taken care of.

Step Four – Make sure wi-fi reaches device

Install our wi-fi extender. (Had an extra one already, had to re-position it to reach the garage.) This is important not just for the sprinkler head, but also for the Model S. It’s helpful to have it over Wi-Fi while in the garage rather than rely solely on the LTE connection.

Here is our wi-fi extender un-synced.

and now synced

Step Five – Connect Device to Wi-Fi

Continue the software setup of the controller to get it operational. Download the Rachio app (I use iOS devices, so I downloaded that version. I believe there is also an Android one.)

I set up a Rachio Generation 1 controller (that’s what we got refurbished) and followed the set-up from the App.

It starts a five second count down to allow the user to place the face of the iphone device on the optical sensor on the controller to allow it to configure itself to the wi-fi network.

When done the app will look for the controller via the Internet connection.

Step Six – Configure software

The rest of the configuration is completed in the app. I forgot to take the screenshots of each section, but it asked for the type of foliage and soil conditions for each zone. I initially configured it this way, but reverted to a timed base one… For now, I wanted to get comfortable and there is a watering limit in my neighborhood and didn’t want the zones to overflow.

Step Seven – Just run it.

This is what the controller looks when it is ready to go.

Step Eight – Review the screens and reports available.

Configuring the controller was easy.

Here is the Home page, it let’s us know the status of the controller and the local weather.

Give us a look ahead to what the local weather looks like. (This is Southern California, after all, and rain is not so common, but when it does, we have laws on the books to prevent us from running our sprinklers.)

Furthermore, during the non-Summer months, we’re limited to two days of watering per week. In the Summer months, Thursday is added on. However, the screenshot was of April and we only water Saturday and Tuesday.

The next screen shows the status of which zones were watered and when the next one will be watered.

Finally, an estimate of how many gallons of water were used to water our yard.

Reports of how long the sprinklers ran in previous events.

As well as when rain happens and the sprinklers are shut down.

There are some interesting community stats as well as individual stats.

And then estimated charts of water use. This is important to note that it is not actually measuring the water flow, it is just estimating it based upon when valves are opened and closed and the average flow of water in average households.

So, did it work? It’s been several months since we’ve added the controller to our system and though we expected more precipitation this year due to the El Nino effect, we’ve had very few instances of rain to initiate a skip of a scheduled watering event.

One of the things that we did see during the summer is the Smart Cycle that split some watering sessions to minimize run-off by splitting the session in half.

Step Nine – Receive Rebate Check and deposit.

On the financial side, however, we received a rebate check for $119.99 on May 16, 2016, so after all this, we picked up the sprinkler controller for $16.25. Considering sprinkler controllers for five zones that are NOT intelligent are at least $50, still a great deal.

One thing that the controller does is report status via in app notifications to my connected iOS devices. I often get notifications from the Rachio application when the controller starts the watering cycle and when it ends. Additionally, I have created a second schedule to accommodate the additional day allowed by the city to water during the Summer months. Furthermore, in the instances when the controller is knocked off-line, it reports this error as well. I’ve found this to be helpful feedback.

Hopefully the device will “earn its keep”. I think that it’s good to be aware of what we’re using, but not quite sure if we’ve really saved much water… Yet. Perhaps with the Smart Cycle, but I’m not sure.

[Update 1/1/2017, I have successfully integrated this product with Amazon’s Alexa and it is definitely “earning its keep”. The smart skip feature alone helps save water as it checks for rain and the wet 2016-2017 Early-Winter has been good. I’ll probably have a follow up post on using it with Alexa.]

Trip to our first Tesla Annual Meeting – Southbound (Day Two)

Missed Day One? Here’s a link.
Looking for my thoughts and theories on the point to the long history lesson covered at the meeting. Here’s a link.

So, after a longer than normal drive with several hours in bumper to bumper traffic, we awoke from the second day of our trip refreshed and eager to get to the Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) annual meeting. As we’ve normally virtually attended these meetings in the past (here’s a link to the 2016 meeting,) we didn’t know what the processes and procedures were to attend. The meeting was scheduled on May 31, 2016, 2:00 PM Pacific, at the Computer History Museum located at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043.

When we went checked in to the hotel on Day One, we had 202 miles of range left. More than enough to travel the few miles between our hotel and the meeting.

Based on our start of day statistics, it looks like we only lost two miles overnight and the distance between Gilroy and our hotel was fairly close.

We wanted to give ourselves the option of skipping Gilroy on the drive home. So we knew that we wanted to be “near maximum” when we leave on our drive back to Atascadero or to Harris Ranch as we haven’t decided our Southbound route yet. If we were to leave the Annual Meeting fairly early in the day, we contemplated the same route that we drove Northbound. However, at this point in our journey, we didn’t know what we were in for at the annual meeting.

We had originally planned on getting to the Computer History Museum for the meeting by 1pm. However, our fellow Tesla Owners Club of Orange County (OC Tesla (meetup group and our group page on TMC) members that we caught up with at Gilroy the previous day provided us with some hints as they’ve been driving to the meetings for years. We had planned to meet up with them in line for the meeting, and sit with them inside. They were planning on charging and then having an early lunch at an Italian place nearby, the same restaurant that folks at TMC planned on having a meetup after the meeting.

We played it by ear and arrived at a fairly empty Mountain View Supercharger at the Computer History Museum, so we plugged in to give us maximum options on our route after the meeting.

Mountain View Supercharger – Computer History Museum

We visited the Mountain View Supercharger for the first time during our insane round trip 22 hour drive to Silicon Valley and back. This same supercharger was launched at the 2015 Annual Meeting and what made it significant was this was the first liquid cooled supercharger and had the thinner cables.

Here are the pictures that I took last year to show the difference in cables:

The first two pictures are of the supercharger at Mountain View.

and these are the standard ones at Harris Ranch that I used to compare them to.

I took pictures of our statistics from the hotel to Mountain View Supercharger.

And figured to fill it up so that we can be close to 90% when we roll off. I wanted to charge the car enough to run the preconditioning intermittently as it was a hot day and the car was unplugged. The stalls were relatively empty for the area (meaning there were at least two stalls available at all times.)

We went to line up for the meeting and joined our friends from the OC Tesla Club around 12:15 PM for the 2:00 PM meeting. I estimated our place in line to be 30-40. Since our wait for the Model 3 was in the slowest line ever and took five hours, waiting almost two hours for the start of the annual meeting would be a piece of cake.

We had good company and we spent the time chatting about Tesla and other things with our friends.

In the parking lot directly in front of the line were two Teslas with the current design aesthetic. I was hoping for a Model 3 to be at the meeting, but none were there.

Still, the new fascia on the Model S does grow on me.

I don’t remember what time they had us go into the building, but I suspect it was around 1:00 PM, if not 1:15 PM. I took the photo of the display with the welcome to Tesla Annual Meeting around 1:25 PM and that’s after we’ve been in for a little while.

The process of checking in was quite orderly.

The Tesla employees checking in attendees required proof of Stock ownership for the relevant period, so if one had the proxy to vote their shares with them and/or holdings statement for the shares for the relevant period then they let you in.

There were two stamps that they used to identify people. One for shareholders (which got you into the room for the meeting) and another for guests (which got you to a different room that looked like it had a closed circuit feed of the shareholder room.)

We both had stamps to get into the shareholder room and proceeded there. We took a seat on the left side four rows from the front. The “best seats” up front and center was reserved for the board members, but the rest of the room was pretty much “first come first serve”. We were glad to get there with early with our friends because the room filled up quickly and we had a great view of the meeting.

Here’s what it looked like when it was still relatively early:

I grabbed a physical copy of the Annual Report and ballots so that we can vote our holdings. One of the things I don’t normally carry with me is a pen. Luckily my wife carries one in her purse because voting at the Annual Meeting actually requires a pen to fill out the ballot. I know, so wasteful with all the paper, but give us a break. It’s how it’s done.

I was a little “shy” to take pictures of the early parts of the meeting because the procedures to the meeting emphasized a “no recordings” line and the like. However, everyone else was snapping away. So, I ended up taking pictures at the meeting with my phone. (Yes, I know, peer pressure! 😉 If my friends jumped off the cliff, I might just follow them. 🙂 )

Here is Elon and JB talking about AC Propulsion:

Covering Daimler’s investment and life raft to Tesla.

Tesla Energy and the Power Wall

Model 3

Getting all the long term talent to join them on stage.

I have a few more in my theories on the history lesson post or on my flickr stream. I stopped taking pictures during the Q&A period.

It was a long meeting and that really provided us with clarity on our route and plan. We originally skipped lunch because we had breakfast at the hotel and were not ready for an early lunch. We were tempted to try to join the TMC group, but we weren’t done with the meeting until early dinner time and we needed to head South. So, we ended up just going on the road and determined to take the I-5 route.

Before we exited the building, we did stop by to check out a display on the Google Autonomous Car.

Here’s a quick shot on the inside:

Looking down.

Looking forward.

So, we decided to roll-out and see if we can make it to Harris Ranch for dinner.

Gilroy Supercharger

However, we hit a lot of traffic and I couldn’t make it all the way to Harris Ranch and proposed we stop off at one of at In-N-Out instead. Luckily enough, there’s one just around the corner from the Gilroy Supercharger. Even though we could’ve skipped Gilroy to make it to Harris Ranch, we decided to plug in while we had dinner.

The thing about traffic is it’s very efficient for the consumption of energy as we averaged 279 Wh/mile, lately it’s been the passenger’s needs that ends up motivating usto stop on these drives. This time, it was for hunger.

It was interesting to do this drive between Gilroy and Harris Ranch after finally getting some rains this past year. However, the effects of the drought are still evident.

This little duck pond by the side of the road in Gilroy showed up on the GPS last year and was dry. And it looks like it’s back now.

I wonder if that pond will be there throughout the summer, or whether it will evaporate again.

We left a lot later than we thought so much of the drive for day two will be in darkness, but we’ll at least have light for some of the more interesting parts of the I-5 route.

We got to the area of the reservoir between Gilroy and I-5 at dusk, so my wife tried to take as many pictures as she can so we can see if it received strong relief from the rains this past winter or not.

I think it looks better, but not much relief.

And just before we reached Interstate 5, we descend upon darkness.

Since we filled up at Gilroy, we had enough charge to drive all the way to Tejon Ranch and skip Harris Ranch and Buttonwillow to make it all the way home. However, we’ve never been to the Buttonwillow Supercharger and I wanted to check those out.

Harris Ranch Supercharger
Remember what I said about having enough charge…

That’s what the navigation is saying when you end up at a supercharger that you can skip.

We had to stop, ’cause of other needs, and it’s not because the car needed a charge.

The temporary superchargers have been removed and replaced by augmented by more superchargers. Interestingly enough, there are 13 superchargers at Harris Ranch. Which means, folks should try to grab 7A as it is not paired with any other stall. It was pretty empty when we got there, so I skipped that choice.

I was able to capture a pretty cool dark red glow of Tesla Superchargers in the darkness. If you couldn’t tell from the panoramic, stall 7A (#13) is at the far right of the picture, and we’re parked at stall 6A (#11).

With the travelers needs taken care off, we took our leave and proceeded toward Buttonwillow supercharger. Granted we had enough energy to skip that and get to Tejon Ranch (40 miles further) comfortably, I wanted to see Buttonwillow and “add a supercharger” to my visited list.

Buttonwillow Supercharger

The last time we stopped off at Buttonwillow, we were actually there to use the truck stop across from where Tesla eventually added the Buttonwillow supercharger. It was also at this stop where we noticed a trailer full of Teslas being sent from the factory.

This time, we were across the street by the Starbucks.

I think the official sponsor for the parking lot might be the hotel next door, otherwise it’s a big, empty parking lot. What is disconcerting regarding this supercharger location is one has to park with your back to the street. This is normally not a problem, but when one stops at 11:00 PM, one can get paranoid. Granted, the location was well lit, but the lighting made one feel like a spotlight was on one’s self.

As previously mentioned, we didn’t have to stop here, the trip planner was recommending that we stop at Tejon Ranch, so we had to estimate our own “fill up” at the location. We stopped for about thirty minutes before we proceeded to drive straight home. Since we were at the location after 11:00 PM, none of the nearby businesses were open. The truck stop across the street was open 24 hours a day seven days a week, if one needed to use any facilities while charging here. This is a situation similar to the Tejon Ranch stop, so if traversing through the area during “off-hours” and facilities are a consideration, I would suggest the Buttonwillow one anyway. The truck stop is closer to the Buttonwillow one than the ones at Tejon Ranch.

Purposely skipping the Tejon Ranch location can “play with one’s head” because the toughest incline of the drive (aka the “Grapevine”) starts just South of Tejon Ranch and there was always something comforting starting that incline with a “full” tank. We’ve often measured a 40 mile loss in the ten mile ascension in that drive. (Granted the next twenty miles barely consume any mileage at highway speeds, but it’s that initial climb that throws me off.) Working off previous experience and mental note taking that we had from Tejon Ranch, we saw that “starting off with momentum” for the climb, i.e. from driving from highway speeds for 40 miles before making that climb up the “Grapevine”, means that what used to cost us 40 miles in range only cost 35 miles based until we hit the summit and had the downhill and regeneration for the remaining 20 mile descent into the Los Angeles area.

Home

Interestingly, the longest part between stops on today’s drive was the one between Buttonwillow and home. Additionally, I drove at my vehicle average in consumption during that portion of the drive 308 Wh/mile.

The great thing about the drive was that it gave my wife and I time to digest the presentation that we attended and discuss some of our theories. These discussions yielded the previous post.

Looking for Day One of the Drive, click here.

Trip to our first Tesla Annual Meeting – Northbound (Day One)

Go ahead to Day Two. Here’s a link.
Looking for my thoughts and theories on the point to the long history lesson covered at the meeting. Here’s a link.

For as long as we’ve owned stock in Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) we’ve always submitted our votes via the Internet and virtually “attended” the annual meeting via a live video stream over the Internet.

Last week we decided to attend the Tesla Annual Meeting in person. The meeting was scheduled on May 31, 2016, 2:00 PM Pacific, at the Computer History Museum located at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043. Tesla’s annual meeting is also available online. I felt that Tesla’s point to their meeting was important enough for its own post. Day two of this drive is here.

Now, those not familiar with California geography might think that this is a quick drive down the corner, but Mountain View is in Silicon Valley and we live in Southern California, so, it’s the opportunity for another Tesla Roadtrip.

As with other Roadtrips, we start with tracking the miles and energy use of our drive. We started the trip at 57,372 miles on the odometer and a 90% charge at 228 miles.

Not quite the energy use at ZERO, we used a little bit of energy to stage our car in our driveway.

It was worth it… Considering this will be the cleanest our Model S will look after this drive.

Now, in contrast with our trip last year which took us up to the Bay Area in one day, we’ve decided to split this trip into two days. This post will cover the first day’s drive and activities. Day two’s activities will be posted at 10AM Pacific Daylight Time/6PM BST, June 9, 2016.

One of the big challenges is the annual meeting is held at 2:00 PM and we would have to leave very early on the 31st to make that drive versus the drive last year where the event we were attending was later in the day. Besides, it was the opportunity for us to take the “longer and more scenic” route to the Bay Area, the US 101 drive. The last time that we took our car through that route was on our Factory Pickup weekend in 2013.

Since it was a Holiday, the traffic around town was relatively light.

A lot of the traffic was on the other side of us, and this is the part of the 405 where we have to make our final decision on staying on going on US 101 or go to I-5. We opted to stay with the plan.

One of the reasons we decided to take the US 101 route is because we’re driving up to Silicon Valley on the Monday day of the Memorial Day weekend. We anticipated a lot more traffic on I-5 and figure that the route will be a wash. Not sure whether or not this ended up being the case, but that was my internal justification for taking this route.

The great part of taking a different route is you get different views for this long drive.

When we did this drive in 2013, the only supercharger in the Los Angeles area was the one at the Hawthorne Design Center. As mentioned earlier, we rolled out of home with a 90% daily charge at 228 miles of range, more than enough to make it to the superchargers at Buelton. However, we rolled off without grabbing any coffee, so we opted to stop off at the Oxnard Supercharger.

Oxnard Supercharger

This was not our first time at the Oxnard Supercharger. The in-car Tesla trip planner had us originally skipping this supercharger, but we’ve been in the car for an hour and a half when we got to the area and I wanted to stretch my legs and grab coffee. So, we stopped.

Figured to go grab some coffee at Starbucks and get some electrons and stretch my legs. The Starbucks for this charging station is not directly beside the location (It’s at the corner of Portico Way and Town Center Drive.) It’s a short five minute walk from the charging station, but we figured to get enough of a charge to skip the Buelton Supercharger instead by stopping at Oxnard.

This particular charging station was relatively free when we got there, but it seems that many that needed to use it started arriving as we rolled off. As we were preparing to leave, I noticed that one of the vehicles that pulled up had Indiana plates that I figured to strike a conversation with the “out of towner.” It turned out that the owner of the Indiana plate Model S just moved to the area over a month ago and was on his way to Santa Barbara Wine Country. With the the driver and passenger fueled up, we headed North.

The next supercharger was Buelton and we had enough to skip that supercharger and head to Atascadero instead. The Buelton supercharger is the first supercharger North of Santa Barbara and on a holiday weekend, we expected traffic to hit us in Santa Barbara.

Normally we would expect to see some nice sunny beach pictures off to the side of the drive, but we were pretty much overcast on the beginning part of the drive, so here’s a beach shot.

Not much to brag about.

And that traffic that we expected in Santa Barbara, we were not disappointed.

We were pleasantly surprised because they were headed back to the Los Angeles area and not joining us on our drive North.

And, sure enough as we clear the beach portion of this part of the drive, the sun decided to show.

Buelton Supercharger

So, we were planning on skipping the Buelton Supercharger, but I really should have just ordered a Tall Latte at Starbucks and not a Grande. Though we had plenty of charge left to make it to Atascadero, I figured to do a quick pit-stop at Buelton.

We only traveled about 80 miles from Oxnard, and the car can outlast me, but I always figure if I need to stop, I might as well make it a multi-purpose stop.

The Buelton Supercharger is located at a Marriott and they are in the middle of renovations at this location that is expected to last a few months in 2016. Buelton is right beside the Santa Barbara County wine region and as such we get treated to some nice views of grapes that are growing.

Though, I was teasing the better half at this point and discussing with her whether these were the “raisin” farms. Come to think of it, if someone can plant grapes to make wine, why would you plant grapes to make raisins? Or sell grapes for food instead? The thoughts that pop up on a drive.

When we drove this on our Factory pickup weekend, we were nearing the end of our journey and it was very early in the morning. It was nice to be able to see the scenery on this drive. However, we had some strong flashbacks of our time in Vermont and New Hampshire.

At least in California, our BEAR signs are a LOT more cute.

And another 80 miles later, we’re at Atascadero.

Atascadero Supercharger

The Atascadero Supercharger stop is another legacy stop for Roadster owners. When one walks from the Supercharger to the Rabobank there is an EVSE there (now converted to J1772) that was originally configured for Roadsters.

When we were there charging, a Honda Fit EV was there charging at full 6.6kW speed. The Roadster is capable of charging at 70A (not sure if that means 16.8kW or 17.5kW) and many of the Roadster owners donated HPWCs to form the precursor to the Supercharging network. There are still some of these chargers out in the wild (the one in Harris Ranch, for example is still there and set up for Roadster charging) though many have been converted to J1772.

This particular location was the busiest of the ones on the drive North so far.

And we decided to stop here because there was a very imposing string of red on our route ahead. I contend that this is the holiday traffic headed home and wanted to ensure that we topped up to be able to drive in comfort and maximize cooling. The temperatures outside were in the 90s and sunny now that our drive was more inland. Go figure.

As long as this drive has been relative to our usual I-5 route, it was a little refreshing because there were lots to see.

Even things that we are hopefully shutting down as we move to a more EV centric transportation network.

Such orderly plants.

Of course, more and more fellow Tesla travelers on this route.

It’s not all solar either. Wind is there too.

At first, I had designs on “going off-route” and checking out the supercharger in Monterey Bay, but the traffic on this Holiday weekend had something to do with changing my mind.

We spent a lot of time in traffic because I did not want to follow the GPS which kept trying to re-route us around the traffic and onto “less traveled” routes. We spent the time entertaining ourselves with interesting visual clues.

Like the multi-colored “cow”.

Or the “Cell tower Trees”

The traffic was relentless and accompanied us through the trees…

and open spaces

It wasn’t until we were near Gilroy when traffic lightened up.

Gilroy Supercharger

We could have skipped Gilroy and checked into our hotel, but I wanted to take a break because of all the time we spent in bumper to bumper traffic. Besides, a strategy that we often use for visiting the Bay Area is to supercharge enough “driving around” charge once we hit Gilroy, so we decided to do that.

Because of the elevation differences and the heat, our consumption on the Atascadero to Gilroy stage of the drive was pretty wasteful. I have averaged between 307 to 309 Wh per mile for as long as we’ve owned the Model S and the leg between Atascadero and Gilroy we used 346 Wh per mile. I wonder what the readings would have been if we were rolling along rather than stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. I would surmise that it would be even worse consumption figures.

Gilroy was packed.

If in a pinch, however, there are two NRG EVgo CHAdeMO/CCS combo chargers across from the Superchargers.

or one just waits.

Either way, we waited and charged up. As packed as the location was, no one had to wait. As we were nearing time for us to go, we actually ran into a couple of Tesla Owners Club of Orange County (OC Tesla (meetup group and our group page on TMC) members who were also headed to the annual meeting. We spent a few minutes catching up and making plans to meet the next day. Before it got dark, we rolled off to our hotel.

We grabbed some dinner and then headed to our hotel.

So after 438 miles of driving, we checked in for the night.

What wonders will we see tomorrow at the Annual Meeting Day?

We didn’t know at that time and went to bed.

Day two of this drive is here. For my theories on the point and meeting content, click here.

What was the point to the Tesla History Lesson during 2016 Annual Meeting

Looking for the Drive Report/short roadtrip?. Here’s Day One – Northbound and Day Two – Southbound.

We attended the Tesla Annual Meeting in person on May 31, 2016, 2:00 PM Pacific. The meeting was held at the Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043 as well as provide the annual meeting is also available online. Needless to say, we’ll provide a drive report follow up soon (Day one of the drive released now. Day two of the drive scheduled 6/10/2016 at 10AM PDT/6 PM BST.)

Having only attended the Tesla Annual Meeting online, we didn’t really know what to expect on this trip.

The formal part of the meeting was short (a little under seven minutes) There were only three things to vote on and that part was very quick. Nothing against the meeting that Todd Maron ran, but we drove up to the meeting for the second part of the meeting – the part of the meeting that Elon Musk leads.

So, Elon, accompanied by JB Straubel, decided to give the attendees (and those that watched online) an approximately three hour recap of Tesla history as they recall it. As the saying goes, “History is written by the victors.” I won’t be analyzing the recollection of those there, I wasn’t, but those long-time Tesla customers that were there seem to remember different stories throughout the years.

What I wanted to focus on is “what was the point of recapping Tesla History” for the Annual Meeting. I think a few of Elon’s statements at the start of his portion of the meeting holds a big clue on what the whole point was. Elon’s statements that I would like to focus on are: “The decisions of the past inform the decisions and motivations of the future.” as well as a few minutes later “…made with the right motivations… We say the things that we believe, even when sometimes those things that we believe are delusional.”

So, why the three hour history lesson? I have a few theories and I’d like to go through these theories.

My first theory is this is Tesla’s first annual meeting to introduce future owners, i.e. the hundreds of thousands of Model 3 reservation holders, to Tesla. They want to start to manage the expectations of future Model 3 owners and let them know what they’re getting themselves into.

The second theory is to show the significance of the pending launch of the Tesla Model 3 to the mission of Tesla. Time and time again, the Tesla “Secret Plan” has been brought up to show the plan and method that to bring about Tesla’s goal to electrify transport and lead the industry to move off fossil fuels. This goal is integral to their DNA and though they had done this first by building the Roadster, followed by the S and X, the 3 is the goal. Providing a mass-market, affordable electric vehicle (EV) that surpasses its internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts is what they want to achieve. The history lesson provided that directly in their talk and actions. The significance of providing the Tesla patents for use by their competitors speaks of how much they believe in that mission. It’s been almost two years since the publication of that policy and the fact that none of their competitors have taken them up on any of it is not Tesla’s fault, it’s on their competitors.

The third theory has to do with what has happened a few weeks earlier, in the midst of the departure of a couple of key production executives (article on Bloomberg and Fortune (though a little over a week later, Tesla hired an experienced Audi executive (Peter Hochholdinger) to lead the production efforts,) Elon announced the movement of the production targets from 500,000 units from 2020 to 2018. This move shocked the public and reverberated throughout many of the discussions on Tesla stock since. There was a lot of skepticism held by many (including this author prior to the history lesson on May 31st) that this change to the target of 500,000 units from the 2020 deadline to the 2018 deadline is an improbable, if not an impossible one. There were many automotive analysts and other smart people in the automotive industry that let the public know that this was simply impossible.

I bring this up because, I believe that one of Elon’s points in describing Tesla’s history is to show the many times that the company faced seemingly insurmountable challenges and what they did to overcome such challenges. Throughout the approximately three hours of the discussion, Elon and JB discussed the times when Tesla faced challenges that were more dire for Tesla and how they prevailed. They also discussed times that Tesla’s momentum of growth, (as I see it, the percentage year over year of vehicle production) has been greater than the 500% required to grow production from 100,000 vehicles to 500,000 vehicles.

For example the differences between 2012 and 2013 production is a factor over 5x the previous year’s production (4,846 vehicles in 2012 and 27,644 vehicles in 2013). Furthermore, throughout the presentation, Elon and JB introduce us to several members of Tesla that have been with them “since the beginning” and show the creativity that these personnel exhibited to show how they solved problems that occurred in the past.

They showed that a lot of these folks have been with Tesla over a decade and that these are the same people that spent their time focusing on enhancing and fixing issues that were in the product.

Throughout the history lesson, Elon and JB showed that Tesla’s talented technical folks solved seemingly insurmountable problems by focusing and coming up with creative solutions.

In discussing “physics-first principles” and using the term “building the machines that build the machine”, Elon is telling us that he and his talented team will focus on fine-tuning the factories (both the Tesla Fremont Factory and the Gigafactory.) In discussing the future he wanted us to think of the factory as a product. He mentions his belief that “the potential for improvement in the machine that makes the machine is a factor of ten greater than the potential on the car side. Maybe more than a factor of ten…” Later on, Elon discussed the exit velocity of production at the “advanced car factories in the world” to be close to making a car at every 25 seconds, but that means that 0.2 meters per second, and that this not much faster than a tortoise, and he is looking to get Tesla’s “machines that build the machine” have an exit velocity equal to walking speed or a meter a second of production. Considering that the “advanced car factories” build more ICE cars that are inherently more complex than the electric cars that Tesla builds it is not inconceivable to see that there are production gains and performance gains to be made by fine-tuning the factory. In addition JB mentions that by shifting design resources that have been focused on improving the car to focus on improving the factory they are finding tens to hundreds of a percent of efficiency gain that are both phenomenal and close at hand.

Needless to say, we were duly impressed with the extended length Annual Meeting last week. I think that Tesla did a great job of communicating the three points that I thought was the goals for this meeting. I truly hope that Tesla’s talented employees are able to improve on the factory (i.e. the machine that builds the machines) to the factor that Elon and JB had communicated. As for the drive to Mountain View and back for this trip, I have published Day One of the drive here. I published Day Two of the drive here.

[EDITED 2016-06-07 2:52 PM Pacific Daylight]

A day after publishing my post, Tesla stock soared $11.66 (5.28%) during the trading day. Some would say perhaps it was my comments that drove it up, alas, it wasn’t my article. Ron Baron of Baron Capital was extremely bullish about the company, and echoed comments similar to theory #3 of my post.

Looking for the Drive Report/short roadtrip?. Here’s Day One – Northbound and Day Two – Southbound.

Tracking an interesting Tesla Motors powered roadtrips from afar

It’s another year that we’re committed to things around Southern California, so, we’re missing the East Coast festivities for the Tesla Roadtrip (2016 theme is “Future Meets the Past”.) Typically, as the weather warms up, many of my Twitter friends start driving around.

The Tesla Roadtrip guys started out as the group from DC to disprove the John Broder, New York Times “review” that painted the “horrors” of supercharging in the early days. These Tesla aficionados set out with a few cars to show that John Broder was “less than accurate” in his depiction. Subsequently, they also had a big caravan that headed out to TMC Connect 2014, I forget which year, and were the guys that served as the inspiration to our coast to cast drive last year. (Here’s Day 1…)

When we’re unable to make a nice long drive in our Tesla, I like to use Twitter and the forums to read about folks who are taking nice long drives in their cars. I’ve tracked @EnduranceDriver and @p85ddeena set some records last year. Not the sort of coast to coast driving that I’m accustomed on doing. But it was entertaining to see this team break the Cannonball Baker or Cannonball Run using Autopilot in a P85D Model S followed with another drive that went from LA to NY to LA. Similar to this new one that caught my eye recently.

6 days 6 hr 22min NEW LA2NYC2LA EV RECORD!@P85dDeena @elonmusk #madeinusa #reliable #tesla #autopilot #our5threcord pic.twitter.com/uu3RqUBwXT

— Carl Reese (@EnduranceDriver) October 25, 2015

A more reasonable pace of driving is often done by Mark (@mgmbeatle). He is often seen around Twitter adding to his miles. (180k+ miles last time I read on Twitter.) He’s DC based, though one wouldn’t know with recent tweets placing him in Seattle, California, Texas, and the like (on two separate trips.)

@WaitingForTesla congrats! You will love the Model 3. We have over 180k miles model s and still feels new. Delivery 12/2012

— Mark (@mgmbeatle) April 15, 2016

Which brings us back to the latest trip to catch my eye. On May 1 in the United States, an interesting Twitter account popped up on my timeline.

I’m ready for my #ElectricRoadTrip #NullisArborUnumTesla pic.twitter.com/6osZcPUWy6

— Trans-Oz Tesla (@TransOzTesla) April 20, 2016

I was intrigued… A Tesla Model S owner in Perth, Australia has just started a trip cross-country (in Australia) from Perth to Brisbane. To put that into perspective to my fellow Americans and those geographically challenged, that’s like going from San Diego, CA (I picked that on purpose, ’cause Perth, AU reminds me a lot of Southern California and San Diego in particular) to Baltimore, MD (or thereabouts) It’s basically 100 miles or so shorter than the Cannonball Run (from the Red Ball Garage, Manhattan, NY to the Portofino Inn, Redondo Beach, CA (the same one that @endurancedriver and @p85ddeena hold EV records in.)

One BIG thing to note with these guys trip is that the Superchargers in Australia are only currently between Melbourne and just North of Sydney. That distance is approximately the distance between driving from the Tesla Supercharger in Redondo Beach, CA to the Tesla Supercharger in Grants Pass, OR plus an additional 40 or so miles. This means that the majority of the drive for this team will NOT be on Superchargers. They won’t experience the joy and speed of supercharging their car until they reach Melbourne and the one at the other end of their journey in Brisbane is “in permit status” according to supercharge.info.

And so it begins. The Indian Ocean is behind me; Pacific Ocean here I come! #ElectricRoadTrip #NullisArborUnumTesla pic.twitter.com/Hf839dph0g

— Trans-Oz Tesla (@TransOzTesla) May 1, 2016

In doing further research into this trip, I notice that Nullis Arbor, Unum Tesla was hashtagged on the second tweet for these adventurers, and being a Latin Scholar (2 years of high school) I translated this to be no trees, one Tesla. This interesting hashtag is how I found out that the team doing this drive is also posting their adventures on teslamotorsclub.com from the account MDK.

Here are a few of the first few Tweets from the @TransOzTesla account.

Arrived in Kalgoorlie. Now charging at 32A 3phase, parked on the local netball court pic.twitter.com/dDco31FwZv

— Trans-Oz Tesla (@TransOzTesla) May 2, 2016

Enjoying a quick top up in Norseman while we have breakfast pic.twitter.com/0u0PteS7n7

— Trans-Oz Tesla (@TransOzTesla) May 3, 2016

Threaded the needle @ Balladonia to reach the 3phase socket. 10m lead recommended pic.twitter.com/UIVvN3rMmH

— Trans-Oz Tesla (@TransOzTesla) May 3, 2016

Like a good EV Citizen, the guys are also adding in to some of the user contributed EV charging network apps by verifying and inserting available charging plugs for future drivers to know about.

As I write this, I assume they’re sleeping (Perth is GMT+8 and I’m located PDT=GMT-7/BST-8) and recharging the driver(s) and the car (it was at 70%) when I looked using the Visible Tesla link that he provides on his tracking website.

Either way, here’s the link to the trip announcement and some initial details. And the first day’s drive report is posted here. Until we head out on a few of our long distance drives, I’ll have to just enjoy reading and tracking other Tesla drivers doing the same. Good luck to MDK and his driving companion and looking forward to reading more on this multiple monthlong journey to Brisbane and back to Perth (dare I propose that this route be called “Cannonball Australia” unfortunately, it looks like that’s already claimed.) (MDK’s drive is definitely not the same kind of trip that @EnduranceDriver and @p85ddeena do)

Long-term Tesla Motors Battery Study from Plug in America

One of the things to consider when making the switch to an Electric Vehicle (EV) is the combination of the battery and electricity IS the fuel that is consumed to power an EV. As such, batteries and range degrade and may eventually need to be replaced. Therefore, one of the questions that these new Model 3 reservation holders ask is “how resilient is the Tesla battery?” or phrased another way, “how long will the battery last?”

The Model 3 announcement did not really cover how different or similar the battery technology in the Model 3 will be from predecessor vehicles from them. The Roadster has a different pack than the Model S and Model X. So, how does one get the comfort of knowing that “Tesla knows what they’re doing with batteries.” I suppose we can just trust them.

Fortunately, that is not our only option. Over the past few years, long-time Electric Vehicle advocate, Plug in America Chief Science Officer, and Tesla Motors Roadster owner Tom Saxton has been conducting several long-term battery studies hosted on the Plug in America site.

For those unfamiliar with Plug in America, they’re the folks that formed out of the advocates that tried to stop the “murder” of the GM EV1 and other Electric Vehicles of that era that was documented in the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Or, as they describe themselves in their webpage:

Our Mission

Plug In America drives change to accelerate the shift to plug-in vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce our nation’s dependence on petroleum, improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Our History

Plug In America is a coalition of early adopters. We’re the EV trailblazers – RAV4‐EV drivers, former lessees of Honda EV+, GM EV1, Ford Ranger and Ford Th!nk City electric cars – that passionately advocate for energy independence and clean air. Before 2008, we functioned as a loose network of individuals organized around various websites like dontcrush.com and saveEV1.com. We then coalesced into a chapter of the Electric Auto Association. On January 2, 2008, Plug In America became a separate California non‐profit corporation. On August 18, 2008, we became an official 501(c)(3) public charity!

The battery studies that Tom Saxton have been running for years rely on nearly semi-annual updates from respondents that drive Tesla Roadsters and Tesla Model S as well as the Nissan Leaf and the first generation Toyota RAV4 EV. In email correspondence with Tom, he has indicated that he is looking to expand the study in the near future to include the Model X as well.

Tom’s long-term battery study has been invaluable not only to the greater EV community but specifically to Tesla fans as well. The take rate for participants for the Tesla Roadster study is close to a 7% sample, from what I gather and the Tesla Model S one had a healthy start, but could use more participants.

With the new range numbers from the redesigned front fascia of the vehicle, I am sure I’m not the only one to wonder what the long-term differences would be between a 90D classic fascia vs a 90D new fascia.

Providing a third party study of the effects of long-term battery health enables all concerned with a greater understanding and comfort to know “that Tesla knows what they’re doing.” Furthermore, it gives current non EV drivers a sense of comfort when making the switch to electrically fueled car ownership.

So, if you own a Tesla Roadster and haven’t participated in the study. Or perhaps you’re one of the lucky few to have upgraded to the new 3.0 battery from Tesla, please fill out the Tesla Roadster battery survey.

Perhaps you’re a Model S owner and you’d like to help add to the number of respondents to this study, fill out for the Tesla Model S battery survey.

What has Tom been able to share with the public so far.

Well, for the Roadster, he’s published an entire study three years ago including a paper entitled “Plug in America’s Tesla Roadster Battery Study.” The advent of the 3.0 battery upgrade may require a new study and the addition of almost another three years since the publication of that study might give more information to the study, but that’s entirely up to Tom and his cohorts at PiA.

The Model S Results page is more dynamic than the Roadster results publication.

I have taken screenshots as of April 27, 2016 of a few of the dynamic charts that are provided on the results charts page.

The first chart that caught my eye is the chart on the battery capacity vs. the miles that particular Model S iterations. With new EPA numbers with the launch of the new fascia should further complicate this chart.

This same chart can be used to also track how a particular respondent’s vehicle matches with the universe of respondents. The Vehicle in black on the chart below shows the performance of my vehicle in relation to other respondents’ cars.

The third chart that was of interest is the reliability of certain components, namely the Drive Unit, battery, and chargers on the Model S. I wonder if the increased reported failures on chargers for 2014 vehicles resulted in the movement from the old chargers to the new 48A charger.

Lastly, the inspiration to my exhorting fellow owners to participate in this survey was the chart of participant vehicles.

For as many Model S are on the road now, I wonder as to the ability of this study, in its current count, to fully report on the vehicle with a small sample size. The Model S battery survey form is fairly straight forward and serves our common purpose. Tesla has been great, but it’s also good to have interested third parties run a check against what they claim and provide.

Tesla Weekend Social

This past Sunday, April 17, 2016, my wife and I attended the Tesla Weekend Social at the Costa Mesa (California) Sales and Service Center.

We were sent this invite a few days ahead of the first ones on April 14, 2016.

Tesla Social Invite

Tesla Weekend Social

We are excited to invite you to the launch of the Tesla Weekend Social series at your nearest Tesla location.

This new event series was designed exclusively for owners. Over a light breakfast, you’ll have the opportunity to engage with Tesla product experts, learn more about latest product features and speak with fellow owner enthusiasts. We look forward to seeing you this month as we take a closer look at Summon.

To find the event nearest you, select a date below.

We were intrigued to attend this Weekend Social and though the invitation from Tesla was to feature the Summon beta that has been deployed to Auto Pilot (AP) enabled newer Model S. Our current Tesla Model S version of AP is “yours truly” pulling the car in and out of the garage to let the better half in and out of the car. After all, with the S and Roadster in our garage, it’s a tight fit.

Why would we join a Tesla Store event focused on a feature that we don’t and can’t use?

As investors in TSLA, we wanted to see what sort of response this sort of activity does (it looks like good demand generators for S and X, or the very least solidify customer loyalty.)
- Many people own older non-Auto Pilot Model S. Demonstrating the features of newer Model S might be the motivation to push one over the edge to upgrade a car.
- There is always a feeling of “what’s next” with Tesla, besides with the announcement of the new “nose” and design refresh for the Model S, I wanted to see if we would catch one “in-person”. (spoiler, we didn’t)
We wanted to see what sort of thing Tesla would cover
- It mentioned Summon, but this “Tesla Social” thing looks to be the start of something bigger, so we wanted to see what it was about.
- I never know if there’s something new that I would pick up from others.
We really like to be social with other Tesla folks. So, thought, why not?
- Besides, the OC Tesla Club (Orange County, California) that we help organize with our good friends Mark L (and his wife Anna) and the group’s founder Tan just registered as an official Tesla Club with Tesla Motors and wanted to “lend a hand” and see if anyone else would want to join the group.
- We expected there to be questions from new Tesla owners and thought that we can help cover anything else and free up the Tesla employees for other things.

Apparently we weren’t the only ones interested in this weekend’s activities, here is a thread on TMC on the same thing.

So, what was it like?

We arrived at the store at 9:58 AM and proceeded to enter the facility.

There was already a crowd of folks that were asking questions of the Tesla Costa Mesa store manager, Gavin Torres, with questions.

As you can see in the pictures, there were a bunch of folks there for this Social. I would estimate that there were 50 people that showed up to the Tesla Social. Not all were there on time, but on a rolling basis, I would guess that many.

The Summon feature, as with many Tesla features, has been demonstrated by many others in videos on Youtube and those videos were more dramatic than the Tesla Social event.

Here’s the one with the guy using it to pick him up from the rain.

Here’s one where the owner is getting the car out of its garage.

and the official video from Tesla.

The store manager at Costa Mesa had the forethought to staff for success and each group had a Tesla employee demonstrating Summon (and answering a ton of Tesla questions that had nothing to do with Summon.)

The group we were with was interesting in that he used a pole that was in the parking lot to show how sensitive the sensors were in the car to understand the existence of the pole and route around it.

The car he used to demonstrate the feature had to be parked closer because he had used it a few minutes prior to show the basics of Summon, and it was already parked pretty efficiently. Having seen this feature in action before, I was interested to see if there was anything else that I could learn about it, and there was an interesting way that the instructor discussed initiating Summon from within the driver seat and the front panel without using the fob or app.

As with many places that reported on their Tesla Weekend Social activities, after the official demonstration, many were treated to a “show and tell” by those in attendance with Model X. The Costa Mesa location was not an exception to this.

There were three Model X owners there and one did just that.

In all, we stuck around to talk with other owners and answer questions about Tesla. the owners ranged from folks who just picked up their cars to others, like us, who’ve had their cars for years.

Was Tesla successful in getting us to upgrade our S? Not exactly… It did reaffirm our desire to have these features on our Model 3, when that gets delivered.

Since we arrived so close to the start and it seemed like they started early, I found out that the first 30 minutes prior to the start of the demonstration was spent fielding all sorts of questions from the owners that were present. This speaks of a need for Tesla to perhaps be more thorough in their delivery process in showing folks what they need to know during the pick up. Granted, the over the air updates change the look, feel, and behavior of the car that being trained on a feature that suddenly shows up is a challenge for Tesla. However, taking the steps to add these Tesla Social series will allow those that suddenly have new features show up in their car with a forum to ask Tesla how to properly use these features.

It is commendable to see Tesla start to do ownership outreach in this manner throughout its Sales Centers. In the meantime, hopefully, resources from the ownership community, such as our OC Tesla Club, Tesla Motors Club forums, Teslarati, and others can all be there to provide much needed assistance. I’ve asked fellow OC Tesla Club members to make new owners aware of our club’s existence so we can alleviate the crush on Tesla’s employees on questions that can be easily answered and demonstrated by the owner members.

What’s the big deal with the Model 3 trunk (boot)?

I was surprised to hear about all the turmoil regarding the PROTOTYPE Model 3 trunk (boot.) One of the first places I heard about this complaint was on Jalopnik’s article This is the Tesla Model 3’s Biggest Design Fail.

In the article, Jalopnik’s Jason Torchinsky showed the following photographs:

Tesla Model 3 Trunk picture 1 - Jalopnik 4/1/2016 article

Tesla Model 3 Trunk picture 2 - Jalopnik 4/1/2016 article
Model3Ownersclub.com‘s owner/administrator TrevP (also on Twitter at @model3owners.)

Posted on the thread – The Trunk the following photo:

Wider Trunk photo from Model3Ownersclub.com

Electrek also talked about the Model 3’s Frunk titled “Opinion: Tesla’s Model 3 AWD ‘frunk’, as shown in prototypes, is just a glorified glovebox”.

Tesla Model 3 Frunk picture - Electrek 4/3/2016 article

As previously mentioned, the Model 3 designs that everyone has been discussing are prototypes. As such, I expect them to be close to what will be released, but don’t expect the cars to be exact. Remember, the Model X prototypes had cameras rather than side mirrors. Additionally, the Model X prototypes also had the same front nose as the now classic Model S design. (black nosecone).

The prototype for the Model 3 shows a smaller car than the Model S and Model X.

Long-time readers will remember that I preferred the Active E to the Model S. It was all about the size of the car. I have since gotten used to the size of the Model S and it doesn’t bother me anymore. However, I still prefer a smaller format vehicle. My wife’s Roadster is great, but it’s her car, and it is smaller than I’m comfortable driving regularly (should she even let me borrow it to drive.) Though I haven’t seen the Model 3 in person, I surmise based on the pictures and information that this Tesla will be closer to the BMW Active E size and definitely outperform my old, beloved BMW Active E.

So, is the trunk and frunk too small for me? Well… Let’s see.

I drove the BMW Active E for two years. It was a great little car, full battery electric and a range between 80-100 miles. As for the trunk, there was a reason that I used to drive the car to do our Costco Wholesale shopping.

Here is a picture of the BMW Active E Trunk. The Active E labeled portion of the trunk is the motor for the car. Beside the motor is a full laptop/briefcase and that was pretty much it for space. So, when I shop at Costco, I saved money.

The trunk had a little more space and there are two shelves under the floor. One fits several tools and the like and below that is space for the emergency Level One EVSE (110V.)

Here’s the one for the Level 1 EVSE.

Though the car seems to have minimal space, I proved that back in 2012… Looks can be deceiving. So, a “small” Model 3 trunk, probably not an issue for me.

Just to remind folks, the Model 3 isn’t the only Tesla with a small trunk. Check out the Tesla Roadster trunk below, it’s big enough to carry a set of golf clubs… For the driver OR the passenger.

Folks are disappointed in the Model 3 trunk size because they have the Model S to compare it to.

Here’s a loaner we had during our charging disaster with the Roadster.

Here is the Model S from Quicksilver Car Service that we used when we picked up our Model S at the factory.

It had plenty of room for luggage.

With the classic Model S with a single motor that we have, the frunk has a LOT of room as well. So much so that we now carry a spare tire in it when we do our roadtrips.

For a comparison, the Dual Drive Frunk on a Model S 70D loaner that I used in September 2015 is markedly smaller than the frunk on our classic Model S.

Since we didn’t opt for the Premium Sound package, we get side storage on both sides of the trunk. I’ve always found it the best place to bring home some flowers for the better half.

So, yes. I can see both sides of this. Tesla knows how to make a hatchback, but should they make the Model 3 a hatchback? Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. At the end of the day, it’s a PROTOTYPE, so Tesla can still change things. Personally, I’m fine with the trunk space. It’s not what attracted me to the car anyway. Besides, if they keep the trunk as is. I would probably save a lot of money at Costco. 😉

Now, if they can make the Model 3 a Coupe… Or better yet, a hardtop convertible… That’s an option I would love.