Phase 3 of the trip was attending the Tesla Annual Meeting in Mountain View on Tuesday, June 6, 2017. (Phase 1 is here, and Phase 2 is here.)
Phase 3 – Tesla Annual Meeting 2017
We attended our first Tesla annual shareholders meeting last year (Day One, Day Two). This year, since we were already in the area right before, we decided to attend the Tesla Annual Meeting again two weeks ago.
The previous Annual Meeting trip in 2016 was the central focus of those two days. However, this year’s (2017’s) attendance was the afterthought to other activities that brought us to the area.
The Tesla Annual Meeting is a great place to spot Teslas and other EVs…
As well as cars that hope to be EVs soon.
Some one was part of Luke Skywalker’s squadron.
We figured to boost our charge for the drive home. We want to get home at a decent hour after today’s Annual Meeting.
Tesla spotting in the row that we parked our cars in.
On the way to the line-up, I forgot to get a close up of the Blue S with its trunk open on the right side of the photo above. That’s TMC’s Papa Fox headed out on another Mainland Roadtrip (from Hawaii)
We waited in the shade of the trees before security let us into the event.
Better half gets a better picture of me with Linda and Bill.
And finally, the queue to get into the building opens and security lets us through…
The guy ahead of us must have been made of metal, ’cause he should’ve brought a purse with all the stuff he had to empty from his pockets.
The Annual Meeting was held in the same room as last year.
We did get a better seat.
The agenda was relatively brief.
And lots of familiar faces.
And hanging with the Hawaiians
This guy had looked familiar too…
Better view this trip, but not better pictures. Unlike last year when Elon and JB really went “off-book” and kept us entertained at the meeting for several hours. Elon was pretty structured. A lot of it had to do with IR taking and filtering questions the day before via Twitter submissions. There was no in-room queuing for live questions. So, though the IR department let some less serious questions come through, it was all pretty well managed.
No “earth shattering” revelations and even the Model Y tease wasn’t really much. Still, it was a good way to cap the past few days of Tesla and Active E EV activities and we had a good time. When we headed out, and finally caught a photo with the Model S with the Hawaii plate.
Great shot of the Roadster getting its 3rd party netting top. We need to find one of those for the better half’s Roadster.
Our route is plotted into the NAV…
and we’re headed home.
We spot a Zero Motorcycle on our way out of the Annual Meeting.
The Annual Meeting this year let out in the middle of Silicon Valley Rush Hour Traffic… So, that just means more chances to play #EVBingo. Only drawback was I found out about thirty minutes later that some of my friends caught a Model 3 at the Mountain View Supercharger. As usual, it takes the Belgians on a trip to California to get great pictures of the Model 3. 😜 (Thanks again for the DM Martin and for not “rubbing it in”)
— Tesla Owners Club BE (@TeslaClubBE) June 7, 2017
And what cars did we get to catch on camera? Well, unfortunately, we were only able to catch a couple of #EVBingo cars on this Rush Hour Traffic drive.
This Audi E-Tron was blurry on the camera, but you can make out the outline of the green HOV sticker on the car. It’s the green discoloration on the rear bumper’s right side. (I spotted the car fine with my eyes, but we were fighting traffic here.)
And the other EV Bingo car we captured on camera was the Ford Focus Electric that was a few cars ahead of me in the carpool lane.
So, how did we do around the Bay Area/Silicon Valley (not counting the time waiting for the Annual Meeting, or right after…
Bay Area
Total – 6/6
Bay Area
On Car Carriers
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
29
2
31
1
31
Chevy Volt
26
26
1
26
BMW i3
11
11
3
33
Tesla Model X
12
8
20
5
100
Mercedes Benz B250e
1
1
15
15
Ford Fusion PlugIn
7
7
2
14
Ford Focus Electric
1
1
12
12
Ford C-Max PlugIn
3
3
3
9
Nissan LEAF
22
22
1
22
Fiat 500e
0
7
0
Kia Soul EV
1
1
15
15
Volkswagen E-Golf
0
8
0
Toyota Prius PlugIn
4
4
3
12
Sonata
1
1
15
15
Chevy Bolt EV
3
3
15
45
Audi E-Tron
1
1
12
12
Zero Motorcycle
1
?
Totals
361
Tried to get a ruling on Zero Motorcycle, but we didn’t have points. So, that’s 361 before the California Handicap, and 180.5 after the 50% discount for the Bay Area spotting.
Just at the Annual Meeting parking lot and adjacent, supercharger.
Annual Meeting
Total – 6/6
Bay Area
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
53
1
53
Chevy Volt
2
1
2
BMW i3
1
3
3
Tesla Model X
37
5
185
Tesla Roadster
1
25
25
Mercedes Benz B250e
1
15
15
Totals
283
The total of 283 points, pre-California 50% handicap of 141.5 points. Which means that we have 644 total points (322 post handicap) before we leave the Bay Area/Silicon Valley area. I like to use the Gilroy Supercharger for the spot that we delineate these areas, so past that is between Metro Areas count.
So, we head through, still mesmerized by the progress one really wet year has done for the state’s water levels.
We pass that duck pond again.
Furthermore, driving on the Southbound/Westbound side of this drive gives us better views of the reservoir to see how close to its capacity its been since the wet Winter that we’ve had.
And it wasn’t long until we’re back on Interstate 5 again.
We stopped off at Harris Ranch for a big boost and had a Red, White, and Blue shot… Too bad we drive an S, and not an X, otherwise it would have been a cool Model X Red, White, and Blue shot.
After leaving Harris Ranch, my better half played around with her camera with these great sunset shots.
We were traveling in darkness for quite a bit of that drive back. Not as late as last year’s Annual Meeting, but still a quiet Tuesday evening drive.
In Between Metro Areas
Total – 6/6
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
4
1
4
Chevy Volt
2
1
2
Tesla Model X
5
5
25
Ford Fusion PlugIn
1
2
2
Ford C-Max PlugIn
2
3
6
Totals
39
Even though Model S and Model X lights are easy to spot in the dark, we did a decent EV Bingo total of 39 points for inter-Metro travel. We even beat the total for the LA Metro.
Granted, it was really late and we got home just after midnight. But we scored a pathetic 1 Model S spotted on the drive. That’s HALF a POINT after the California discount.
At least we got home at a fairly decent hour.
Lots of bugs gave up its life in this drive… And we’re glad that water restrictions have been eased. ’cause it felt good to clean this car.
After completing Phase 1 (click here to start at Phase 1) of this trip. We had an overnight pause before the start of Phase 2. The second phase of the trip was a trip to Morro Bay for the 4th BMW Active E North-South Meetup in Morro Bay. This was on June 4, 2017. Long-time readers remember when we had our last one that culminated in the Active E Wake.
Phase 2 – Active E Reunion – WxNS4
June 4, 2017
In previous years we had done this drive from home to Morro Bay. Morro Bay was chosen several years ago because it was nearly halfway for all the Active E populations from Northern and Southern California. The other three times that we drove for this meetup, we drove North to Morro Bay, but this time around, we were staying in Silicon Valley and drove South to Morro Bay.
Before our first stop in Gilroy (more a “human” maintenance stop than anything else…)
We spot someone taking off at the airstrip by the freeway.
And here’s the route planned for us.
That’s not a route we normally take for this drive, but thought it looked easy enough.
If you remember from Day 1 drive up from the previous post. This is a pretty big location and it is interesting to see so much empty space. We were the only one in Gilroy.
F
It was a quick stop, but glad to have the boost. It looks like the winds were blowing hard today.
Even Atascadero was relatively empty in the early morning. We caught up with one of our fellow ActiveE alumnus, Jack Brown, the proprietor for the Take Charge And Go EV Hang Tags that I use to notify folks of my charging intent. He was ahead of us, so he took off a few minutes before we were done with our charge.
Our first view of the Rock at Morro Bay.
Lots of EVs and one hydrogen in the mix. We met at the Grill Hut in Morro Bay for our brunch.
I even took the opportunity to tease my #EVBingo competitors on Twitter.
Lots of friendly faces waiting to be served at The Grill Hut.
Here’s a better shot of that side of the table, George wasn’t moving…
And a shot of the other side of the table.
My good friend, Tom Moloughney made the trip out from New Jersey to hang with us for this meetup, he’s to the right of my empty chair.
We parked our S on the other side of the street, there were enough Tesla Model S represented, besides the car is so large that it sticks out of the lines. You can spot me in the picre below in the Orange. I’m between the White and Blue i3s.
It is a BMW Reunion, so we take a close up of the brave souls that stuck with them.
I suppose the groupcould have spread out a bit more, but we’re a friendly bunch.
A candid shot of us chatting away in the sunny Morro Bay day (it was appropriately cloudy during the Active E Wake.)
The other two Teslas that made this trip today.
The classic Tom and Dennis shot.
And with Todd Crook joining us. Todd’s just replaced his 2nd Gen RAV4EV with a Honda Clarity Hydrogen.
George brought his yearbook.
and we signed it.
And after our reminiscing and conversations, we head back North to some great California scenery on our drive.
And some not so great scenery… That’s a lot of oil wells.
But it changed back to great sights soon enough.
We were thinking of making the turn-off to get some points to plug into Monterey Supercharger, but saw how full the stalls were and with all the traffic, decided to head back and skip it.
We stop again at Gilroy. The Gilroy Supercharger on a Summer Sunday afternoon doesn’t look as empty as Sunday morning.
And then we were back in Fremont for our last night at the Marriott Fremont. If you squint, you can spot the EVs and chargers at the office building across the street of our hotel.
We head back to the re-opened Marriott Fremont Executive Lounge to get a great sunset shot of the Tesla Factory.
We also noticed that this destination had ANOTHER set of chargers in addition to the two that were outside. We figure to use those tomorrow morning.
Before turning in, we figure that our #EVBingo totals would be interesting to tally up on a long drive day.
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
38
1
38
Chevy Volt
14
1
14
BMW i3
5
3
15
Tesla Model X
10
5
50
Mercedes Benz B250e
0
15
0
Ford Fusion PlugIn
1
2
2
Ford C-Max PlugIn
0
3
0
Nissan LEAF
4
1
4
Fiat 500e
0
7
0
Kia Soul EV
1
15
15
Volkswagen E-Golf
1
8
8
Toyota Prius PlugIn
5
3
15
Sonata
0
15
0
Chevy Bolt EV
4
15
60
Chevy Spark
1
15
15
Honda Fit EV
0
50
0
Honda Accord PHEV
0
50
0
BMW i8
1
15
15
RAV4EV 2nd Gen
0
30
0
Mitsubishi iMiEV
0
50
0
Audi E-Tron
0
12
0
Golf Cart
0
1
0
Total
251
So, that’s 251 Total US points, or 125.5 California handicapped points.
June 5, 2017
We had a free day in-between phases on June 5, 2017.
Since we were re-positioning to a non destination charger hotel without ready access to a supercharger, we moved the car to one of the destination chargers in the morning and range charged it for our drive around the Bay Area. Here we are using the Take Charge And Go EV Hang Tags to notify anyone who drives up that we will be done by check-out time.
Even took the opportunity to check in on the TeslaratiApp and make a PSA Tweet from the OC Tesla Club account.
Looks like the max for the car is at 252. That’s one less mile than last year’s trips, and 13 miles less than when we first picked it up from the factory. Additionally, there were several firmware changes, so not sure if that affected calculations as well.
On our drive to our new hotel for the night, we spotted a full car carrier full of EVs… Unfortunately golf carts are controversial for the #EVBingo points. There were at least 18 of them in that carrier.
We drove by Oracle Arena, jealous of the Golden State Warriors opportunity to win the NBA Championship for the second time in three years.
And enjoyed our night at the Hyatt House in Emeryville. It was less expensive than most hotels that we looked at that was located near the Tesla Annual Meeting. Besides, we used the re-positioning to have dinner and visit a friend that live on this side of the Bay.
So, the second phase of our three phase trip was complete and we have an extra day before the Tesla Annual Meeting and our drive down home. Click here for Phase 3 of the trip.
The beginning of June has been a jam-packed time for our EV life. We packed three differing EV related events into six days on a trip to the Bay Area. Thus, this series of a trip in three phases.
A few weeks prior to this trip, I’ve been playing #EVBingo with a bunch of fellow EV enthusiasts on Twitter. Derek Osborne, from Glasgow, Scotland sent the following Tweet and I became addicted playing this game with them since the last week of May. (We decided on Twitter to handicap California scoring from the US system that they came up with by 50%).
The game is played by tallying up the points for all the vehicles that is spotted on the road and adding the point totals. There’s a lot of EVs in California, so this particular game had to be handicapped for us at 50% the total value.
So, the first phase of the trip (June 1-June 3, 2017) was focused on meeting with the leadership of the official Tesla Owners Clubs and working with Tesla on the relationship between the clubs as well as the relationships between the club and Tesla.
Phase 1 – Tesla Owners Club Leadership Conference
June 1, The Drive and Reception
The drive on June 1st targeted arriving at the Marriott, Fremont (which is across the freeway from the Tesla Factory) in time for the evening reception for all the participating Tesla Owners clubs at the hotel. We left home and proceeded North through the I-405 traffic in West Los Angeles because of the #EVBingo addiction. I figured to spot more EVs in the heavier, more direct West LA traffic than going the longer, but less populated route through the foothills.
Even with my more direct, but heavier traffic route, the in-car Trip Planner only required us to make two stops to make our destination.
Before leaving the LA Metro area, we spot a very positive sight. The California Aqueduct is flowing with lots of water again.
Additionally, in the interest of figuring out how many #EVBingo points I would spot on the drive within the LA area vs. between metro areas vs. Silicon Valley/Bay Area totals. So, as we pass the California Aqueduct in the northern parts of LA County, we ran through our totals for the drive through traffic.
So, before we headed into the parts of California in between the LA Metro Area and Silicon Valley/Bay Area, we did a quick total count.
Total – 6/1
In LA Metro Area
On Car Carriers
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
55
55
1
55
Chevy Volt
43
43
1
43
BMW i3
16
16
3
48
Tesla Model X
8
6
14
5
70
Mercedes Benz B250e
3
3
15
45
Ford Fusion PlugIn
1
1
2
2
Ford C-Max PlugIn
1
1
3
3
Nissan LEAF
5
6
11
1
11
Fiat 500e
6
6
7
42
Kia Soul EV
1
1
15
15
Volkswagen E-Golf
2
2
8
16
Toyota Prius PlugIn
6
6
3
18
Sonata
0
15
0
Chevy Bolt EV
8
8
15
120
Chevy Spark
0
15
0
Honda Fit EV
0
50
0
Honda Accord PHEV
0
50
0
BMW i8
1
1
15
15
RAV4EV 2nd Gen
2
2
30
60
Mitsubishi iMiEV
2
2
50
100
Audi E-Tron
1
1
12
12
Golf Cart
0
0
0
0
Total
675
Which means that with the California 50% handicap, we’re at 337.5 points.
And we’re reminded of why California is called the Golden State. Dry Brush sure looks like gold.
#EVBingo was not the only game that I was playing on the road. I was also helping beta-test TezLabApp (iTunes or Android) from HappyFunCorp. And one of the categories in this Tesla Social/gamifcation app is number of superchargers visited for the week, either for all the folks on the app, or your “friends.” So, I made a deal with my better half that we would stop in as many supercharger locations and plug in as long as we got to the conference in “decent” time.
Besides, there were several added new superchargers along the route (as well as some expansions to existing capacity.) We stopped at all these superchargers, but charged for a very short time at each one as the time required to charge in the one stop only required fifteen minutes. We did stop at the Tejon Ranch supercharger for about ten minutes (Supercharger D in the image below), but that had a lot more to do with the coffee I drank in the morning, than really needing to stop and charge. If you look at the map below, it was directing us to the Bakersfield Supercharger (which is the end of the BLUE highlighted GPS route, before it turns GREY.)
If you look above, the Tejon Ranch supercharger has four more supercharger stalls deployed. Granted, they are of the “mobile” supercharger variety, but this is usually an indication that further, more permanent stalls will be placed at this location in the future.
Our first new, to us, supercharger stop was at the Bakersfield Supercharger. This location is interesting in that it is one exit South of the Buttonwillow Supercharger on I-5. Having stopped at Buttonwillow late night/early morning in the past, we can attest that this location with its placement at a gas station location (and IHOP, as well as being located a block away from the California Highway Patrol) makes it ideal for any late night supercharging that we may have to do on this route in the future.
Our view while supercharging at the stall perpendicular to the rest of the installation has a nice view of the current gasoline prices on this route.
What it looked like behind me, before someone else was by to join us at the supercharger. The Trip Planner had us originally scheduled to stop and charge here for fifteen minutes before we headed to Harris Ranch. However, I was pining for some coffee and we knew that Buttonwillow (which is the next exit North of us) was collocated by a Subway and Starbucks. So, we unplugged and headed North.
Moments later, this white Model X took the spot behind us.
So, we headed to Buttonwillow, one exit North of the Bakersfield Supercharger. (approximately 3 miles, I believe.) As I previously mentioned, this stop had a lot more to do with the collocated Starbucks than anything else (that and getting the TezLabApp (iTunes or Android) points. We were joined by a Signature Red Model X with some interesting rims. Getting our Starbucks order completed took longer than the recommended supercharging stop for our next stop at Harris Ranch.
On the drive along the I-5, we’re reminded that as long as the grid has a connection, we’re sure to find a way to recharge any EV.
It’s just great that Tesla provides the supercharger network to do it in a quicker way than most other EVs.
We continued on to Harris Ranch, an Oasis on I-5 for its great steaks, but also for its industry leadership in supporting clean fueling. From its original Roadster charging station to its Hydrogen station. (note the Hyd sign on the exit.) The only thing missing is standard J1772, CHAdeMO or CCS at this stop (I’m not sure if CNG is available here as well, I don’t normally check for that.)
This site has expanded again for the third time and is now up to 20 supercharger stalls. It originally had six charger stalls, then 13 charger stalls, and now 20 supercharger stalls. The last two are reserved to be used last for handicap access. I made a mistake on this stop and charged there. I read the sign for the one I was using when we LEFT Harris Ranch, so I was charging at one of those two chargers that were reserved to be used last on this trip. To be fair, the last one was the extra-wide that is common for handicap access.
We’ve been spotting a ton of Tesla vehicles on car carriers on this trip, and we finally caught one on film. Luckily, the #EVBingo folks said that we can count EVs on car carriers that are NOT found in a dealership or Tesla Gallery.
It seems that most of the Teslas on the transporters on this day are predominantly Model X.
Though the better half caught this one carrier with a lot of S on it.
Before making the turn-off for Gilroy, we pass 77,000 miles.
Now, the navigation didn’t require us to stop anywhere else, but it’s common practice for us to supercharge to near maximum at Gilroy so that we’re not so reliant on supercharging or destination charging while visiting hotels in the Silicon Valley/Bay Area. So, the warning below was for our destination for the evening.
However, instead of going to Gilroy directly, we noticed that there is a new, to us, Supercharger at Gustline that was about a six mile detour from our route. So, we decided to go ahead and get the points for the TezLabApp (iTunes or Android) contest.
Have to be careful of the dip in the charging stalls. So, if one has air suspension, remember to use it before backing into the stalls.
This is the view from our charging stall.
We didn’t really need to stop, and after a few minutes of photo taking and documentation and obtaining TezLabApp (iTunes or Android) points, we headed to Gilroy.
The drive to Gilroy we’re greeted with a welcome sight. The reservoir that has looked rather parched in the past few years and previous trips looks like it’s almost at capacity.
Even the little duck pond that we’ve passed has water in it again.
The Gilroy supercharger location is another of the original locations in the Supercharger network.
We noticed that this was yet another location that had been expanded for a third time or so. Originally, when we picked up our Model S in 2013, this location had six stalls. It’s expanded to twelve last year and now to sixteen stalls. (Not to mention the CHAdeMO and CCS stations at this location as well.)
We decided to check out the newest four stalls and charged at one of them.
Spotted another EV (Golf Cart, which unfortunately has mixed consideration for #EVBingo).
Did spot a JdeMO powered 2nd Gen RAV4EV pull up to the CHAdeMO/CCS station at Gilroy.
Spoke with the owner for a few minutes before heading onward to the conference. The JdeMO from QuickChargePower is a device that adds CHAdeMO DC Fast Charge capability originally for the 2nd Gen RAV 4 and now the Roadster.
We figured that this location was a good one to delineate as “in-between Metro Area spotting” so, quickly tallied our #EVBingo points
in Between Metro Areas
Total – 6/1
in Between Metro Areas
On Car Carriers
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
26
8
34
1
34
Chevy Volt
8
8
1
8
BMW i3
0
3
0
Tesla Model X
12
16
28
5
140
Mercedes Benz B250e
0
15
0
Ford Fusion PlugIn
1
1
2
2
Ford C-Max PlugIn
1
1
3
3
Nissan LEAF
9
9
1
9
Fiat 500e
1
1
7
7
Kia Soul EV
0
15
0
Volkswagen E-Golf
0
8
0
Toyota Prius PlugIn
0
3
0
Sonata
1
1
15
15
Chevy Bolt EV
0
15
0
Chevy Spark
0
15
0
Honda Fit EV
0
50
0
Honda Accord PHEV
0
50
0
BMW i8
1
1
15
15
RAV4EV 2nd Gen
1
1
30
30
Mitsubishi iMiEV
0
50
0
Audi E-Tron
0
12
0
Golf Cart
1
1
0
0
Totals
263
Which means that with the California 50% handicap, we’re at 181.5 points. Or 938 total points without the handicap or 469 points after the 50% handicap, for today’s drive, so far. We headed from Gilroy to the Fremont Marriott and for more metro-area #EVBingo, in the middle of Silicon Valley Rush Hour traffic. And another Tesla filled Car carrier on the other side of the freeway.
It wasn’t just Teslas in this part of the drive. There seemed to be an inordinate number of LEAFs in traffic with us. It was not uncommon on this part of the drive to catch a few LEAFs at the same time. It was like a flashback to 2012 or 2013 when it seems that every other EV was a LEAF.
Here’s an interesting shot that my better half and co-pilot captured with the former Solar City location sporting Tesla signage and one of many LEAFs that we spotted for #EVBingo in the Silicon Valley area.
Before heading down to the Tesla Owners Club Leadership Conference Thursday Reception, we do a quick #EVBingo tally.
Silicon Valley
Total – 6/1
Silicon Valley
On Car Carriers
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
7
6
13
1
13
Chevy Volt
22
22
1
22
BMW i3
2
2
3
6
Tesla Model X
2
6
8
5
40
Mercedes Benz B250e
4
4
15
60
Ford Fusion PlugIn
1
1
2
2
Ford C-Max PlugIn
1
1
3
3
Nissan LEAF
35
35
1
35
Fiat 500e
2
2
7
14
Kia Soul EV
1
1
15
15
Volkswagen E-Golf
1
1
8
8
Toyota Prius PlugIn
7
7
3
21
Sonata
0
15
0
Chevy Bolt EV
5
5
15
75
Chevy Spark
1
1
15
15
Honda Fit EV
1
1
50
50
Honda Accord PHEV
0
50
0
BMW i8
2
2
15
30
RAV4EV 2nd Gen
0
30
0
Mitsubishi iMiEV
0
50
0
Audi E-Tron
0
12
0
Golf Cart
0
0
0
Totals
409
Which means that with the California 50% handicap, we’re at 204.5 points for Silicon Valley. Interesting to spot a lot more LEAF and Volt than S and X this close to the Fremont Factory. Still didn’t spot any Model 3 on this drive.
And adding all the legs of this one day, gives us the totals for this Thursday.
Day Total
Total – 6/1
Total Spotted
Points Per Car
Total Points
Tesla Model S
102
1
102
Chevy Volt
73
1
73
BMW i3
18
3
54
Tesla Model X
50
5
250
Mercedes Benz B250e
7
15
105
Ford Fusion PlugIn
3
2
6
Ford C-Max PlugIn
3
3
9
Nissan LEAF
55
1
55
Fiat 500e
9
7
63
Kia Soul EV
2
15
30
Volkswagen E-Golf
3
8
24
Toyota Prius PlugIn
13
3
39
Sonata
1
15
15
Chevy Bolt EV
13
15
195
Chevy Spark
1
15
15
Honda Fit EV
1
50
50
Honda Accord PHEV
0
50
0
BMW i8
4
15
60
RAV4EV 2nd Gen
3
30
90
Mitsubishi iMiEV
2
50
100
Audi E-Tron
1
12
12
Golf Cart
1
0
0
Totals
1347
Or 1347 total points without the handicap or 673.5 points after the 50% handicap, for today’s drive.
I’m not even sure if that counts the points for the Teslas that we can spot from outside our window from our room today.
I know it didn’t include the ones across the freeway at Tesla’s Factory from the Marriott’s Executive Lounge.
Our Belgian friends, who would later capture some great Model 3 shots on this trip at the reception were all wearing their club polos.
And here I am speaking with some of the Europeans again.
Before turning in for the night, went back up to the Executive Lounge to get a nice shot of the Tesla Factory across the street.
June 2, Conference at Tesla Fremont Factory
Day 2 of the Conference starts off with a bunch of us that drove to the conference providing Zero emission transport from the hotel to the Tesla Factory. Tesla provided the clubs with a room and the time with quite a few employees and executives to spend the day with us as we brainstormed how to make the Tesla Owners Club Program a bigger success.
At the hotel driveway, before we took off… Here’s the panoramic I took after a few of the cars took off…
Here are four shots of the driveway before those cars took off.
A hotel driveway full of Teslas mean that either I’m in Heaven, in California, Norway, or Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport… One of those four things is accurate.
Our event with Tesla was occurring during the same time as the Model 3 VIP Event/Factory Tour for folks from the Referral program, so I’m not sure whether they had us park for our event or the other one, but we parked by the supercharger/delivery center at the Fremont Factory.
We headed through security into the training room set aside for the TOC Leadership were meeting.
We were asked some ice breaker questions.
and waited for the start.
It was a long, productive day and we got a break in the middle to do an updated factory tour.
We saw 100,000 Model 3s produced and ready to go…
…JUST KIDDING…
…We saw the production line and the factory itself seems to be “more full” than I’ve ever seen it before. This was the third time that I’ve visited the factory and it seems like they’re now fully utilizing the building.
But we had NDAs and couldn’t take any pictures whatsoever.
It wasn’t all serious work. In between sessions, the tables were provided some pipe cleaners and folks got creative with what was provided for them.
Here was a rendering of a Model 3 supercharging.
Either a Rocket Ship to Mars or La Tour Eiffel from Stephen Pace as well as some chocolate covered macadamia nuts from the Hawaii Club.
And the better half was not immune from the pipe cleaner fun…
Doing a Tesla logo and the notebook that we used at the conference.
Here are the selection of pipe cleaner fun that the folks put together.
Aside from the goodies that Tesla fed us with, our friends from Hawaii brought some chocolate macadamia nuts that were in bite size packages on our tables, the Belgians brought Godiva.
After a long day of brainstorming and working with our Tesla hosts, we had some dinner and drinks at the Factory.
and some special Tesla cookies for dessert.
We had some further interesting happenings that I won’t be sharing with you here… But, let’s just say that I got a good idea of the differences in size between the Model 3 and Model S.
And then we were back at the Marriott. When we got back to the hotel, we found out that Robert R and our friends from Belgium were busy taking pictures of the Model 3, both in the wild and on the Test Track near the Factory.
This was what they first spotted that first evening of #Model3 spotting.
— Tesla Owners Club BE (@TeslaClubBE) June 3, 2017
Had a good time with some late night discussions at the hotel lobby with fellow club leaders, but decided to turn in.
June 3, Club de-brief, hanging at the Computer History Museum, and Model 3 Spotting
The next morning, we had a half day session left for the conference. But before the start of the conference, I thought to see if I can clean the windshield on the car.
Want to spot Teslas from the hotel window? Our S is parked beside the traffic cones on the bottom right corner of the picture.
Here are some of the Teslas that I could spot from above.
Lot of other folks did this drive in their Model X. Zeb from North Carolina had already headed back at this time. I was trying to find his car to show the guy with the farthest drive from this group.
And our friends from Belgium were up to their tricks again…
— Tesla Owners Club BE (@TeslaClubBE) June 3, 2017
But eventually, we all met back for our clubs debrief and we had a productive session amongst the Tesla Clubs.
It was good to get a grasp of what other clubs are up to, what sort of response they get and strategies on how to work within the community and with Tesla. We strengthened our bonds and said goodbye to old friends and new. With the full expectation to spot some of these folks on Tuesday for the Tesla Annual Meeting, which is Phase 3 of our trip.
Besides, we were provided with the last gift from the event planning committee.
The chocolate was enclosed in this puzzle box adorned with all four Tesla vehicles produced or about to be produced, so that was cool.
The rest of Saturday, the 3rd was hanging out with Trevor Page of Model3OwnersClub. We were in contact with each other because he was flying in for the Referral Program VIP Tour and Q&A Session that was held during the same weekend as the TOC event. We were trying to find a time to hang and I volunteered to take him to the airport, so we hung out for a while before his flight.
He hasn’t visited the area before and I didn’t know what traffic in the area was like, so figured to take him to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The museum is a short drive, even in traffic, from San Jose Airport. Additionally, the museum is the same location as the Tesla Annual Meeting and figured that he would enjoy that.
We’ve been in the building last year for the Annual Meeting, but never really visited the museum.
Needless to say, it was a blast.
We saw some really old computers.
Here’s Trev taking a photo.
And a lot of very important historical computers. Like this Enigma Machine.
Or this really old memory tube that was 2560 bits of RAM.
Trev in front of some old military computer installation.
A couple of old Cray computers.
Of course, video games…
They even had some kids playing PONG.
and finally an old Apple 1.
Before we took Trev to the airport for his flight, we take a picture in front of the Google/Waymo Pod Car.
He had a little fun with his Twitter followers with this car…
— Model 3 Owners Club (@Model3Owners) June 3, 2017
After dropping Trev off at the airport, we decided to charge up at the supercharger at the Tesla Factory. Though our hotel is a host to in the destination charger program, one of the L2 was broken, and it was easy enough to catch a charge there. Besides, I had to get another drink of the Tesla Blend drip coffee that Tesla was serving us during our conference the other day.
I was trying to do some lazy Model 3 spotting at the factory.
And actually caught the Alpha being loaded back in the truck.
After being emboldened by our spotting of the Alpha car… I figured to take the long way back to the hotel, and drive close to the track that our Belgian friends spotted the Silver and Red cars being speed tested. And sure enough, we spot two of them.
There are definitely better pictures, but these are the ones that I spotted. We even captured their drives on video… Have to zoom in though! 😉
Either way, we had some fun on #EVBingo with that…
So, the first phase of our three phase trip was complete and we had a night to recover before our drive down to Morro Bay for the ActiveE West Coast North-South Reunion 4. (or WxNS4 as they’ve abbreviated it.) Click here for the next phase on this trip.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a new rebate available to Southern California Edison customers that drive a Plug-In vehicle. I had thought that the program was limited to BEVs, but apparently it is also available to Plug-In Hybrids as well.
To give some update regarding the status of the three applications that we’ve done in our family I would like to provide the following status.
Our Roadster application was accepted and confirmed as received on May 22, 2017 at 4:09 PM. Our Model S application was accepted and confirmed on May 22, 2017 at 4:26 PM.
However, the Model S rebate was approved on June 5, 2017 at 3:28 PM (as can be seen on the screenshot above.) Even though the Roadster rebate application was completed about 17 minutes earlier than the Model S application, the rebate was approved about 20 hours later on June 6, 2017 at 11:16 AM.
Additionally, my mother’s Leaf was approved on June 7 at 5:55 PM and her application was about a day after our two applications. Her application is numbered between 1100 and 1200.
So, hope that helps others figure out when they should get the email confirming their rebate request.
In 2012, shortly after moving to electric with our BMW Active E, it became apparent to us that installing a solar array on our roof was going to be beneficial for us to lower the cost of our transportation fuel as well as our consumption of energy at home. Producing our own fuel coupled with net metering and time of use would provide us with efficiency that would provide for a rather quick payback.
As I understand it, Net Metering allows utility customers with the ability to export the power generated by their devices (in our case, our solar panels) to the utility at the retail rate of energy as a credit against our overall consumption. Time of Use is a program that provides differing pricing for electricity depending on the time of day and week that energy is consumed by a utility customer. When we first started on this program, our peak times for energy mapped perfectly with the hours of sunlight. That is to say, the peak energy times were from Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm. This meant that during the the times that we were not at home, our solar panels would produce enough credit to be offset during our primary usage, which is after 6pm and before 10am (in SCE territory, since we installed our panels, this peak time has changed and shifted to 2pm to 8pm). Under our original assumptions, and armed with a single EV that was capable of an 80-100 mile range, we figured our break-even for this project to be in the approximately six to seven years. As many long-time readers have found out, it was soon after getting into our BMW Active E that we dedicated ourselves to a primarily EV existence that we went from one EV to three EVs and back down to two EVs. With the amount of driving that both my wife and I did, this break-even point was reached sometime last year (around the three and a half to four year mark.)
When we first bid out our homes’ solar PV, we shopped it around and ended up with Solar City. As I’ve documented before, because there was a snag in the age of our roof, we had the opportunity to re-open this to others and ended up with Real Goods Solar (RGS Energy). We documented all this in some articles on this blog. I did a follow up that covered the installation. Because of how things worked out for us, we opted to pre-pay our power purchase agreement with Real Goods Solar for the 20 years of service that we signed up for, if we do this again now, we would buy the system instead, but I didn’t want to have to worry about maintenance and the like.
Which brings us to the subject of inverters. As I understand it, the inverter is the device that converts the Direct Current (DC) produced by our solar panels into AC (Alternating Current) energy that our appliances and other domestic household devices uses. Every solar company that I spoke to during the bid process basically said that the main thing that would break in a solar installation is the inverter. Under original solar installation designs, solar installations would have ONE or TWO inverters that connect the whole system to the home and electrical grid. This means that if the inverter failed, the energy produced by the solar panels would not be converted to AC power and be effectively out of service for the whole system until it gets repaired. We picked Real Goods Solar primarily for financial reasons. However, at the time, they pitched an interesting system using micro-inverters. Instead of one (or a primary and backup) inverter situation for the house, each solar panel has its own inverter that converts the energy produced by each panel to AC. This configuration spread the risk of outage from the whole system to just a single panel at a time. Being a systems guy and understanding single points of failure versus minimizing this, I appreciated the pitch, but money savings really drove the decision.
One of the technical benefits we got from having the micro-inverter solution is we are able to see the production of our solar system down to the panel level.
So, on a normal day, we can see the panel production on either the website on a browser:
Or on the mobile app.
A few months ago, we experienced our first repair under this program. On the weeks prior to failure, I started receiving alerts regarding AC voltage being out of range and on March 8, I noticed that one of the panels had a hard failure.
This is a screenshot of the email that I received to show the errors in one of the micro-inverters that started to occur.
It looked minor at first, but as you can see in the graphic of our system, one of the panels is grey. And this is a good indication of the failure AND the location of the failure in our system.
I reported this to Real Goods Energy and received a trouble ticket on March 9th. They remotely diagnosed the problem and required me to contact the owners of the system. Since I am on a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), I don’t actually own the system on my roof, I effectively buy power from those that do at a predetermined rate when I signed my contract. Traditional PPA purchasers do this on a monthly basis that have riders that increase the cost per kWh over the years, but we decided to prepay the entire contract at the time that we finalized our deal and therefore fixed our cost per kWh soon after the installation was complete. Therefore, technically, we don’t own the system on top of our roof. The owner to the system provided approval and we waited for the repair to be completed.
It took about a month for the full repair to be completed and I estimate that we lost about 40kWh of production from having one panel out that entire month. To put this into perspective, the whole system produces 40kWh on a Summer day, so even though the panels were missing one of the 28 panels on the roof from producing, my outage was only equivalent to one day’s outage with a more traditional set up.
So, what does a micro-inverter look like? Well. Here are a few photos.
Here is the broken one getting put back in the box.
Here it is on the roof.
And here it is installed and in-place.
In writing this article, I was looking for pictures of larger inverters and came across this picture of a commercial solar installation from Brightergy.com.
Why would I not want to use micro-inverters. In moderate climate, like California, it works great. However, someone in Arizona has mentioned to me that it is too hot in their climate. I don’t know if this is true, but it has been reported by one person to me.