Last week, I noticed that my wife’s Roadster reached 24,000 total miles on the odometer on May 4.
A few days later, on May 7, we reached 75,000 total miles on the Model S Odometer as well.
My wife is the second owner of her Roadster and it had 2,200 miles when we picked it up and the Model S had 22 miles on the odometer. In the three years and eight months of Tesla ownership, it was a bit of a shock when I realized this morning that the total of these two mileages was 99,000 and that we were very close to having a 100,000 Tesla miles on our own vehicles.
Considering that we turned in the Active E with 54,321 miles on the odometer in February 2014 after two years. That means that our total EV mileage driven on vehicles that we’ve owned or leased now totals greater than 150,000 miles on electricity. As impressive as this is, it is even more interesting to note that our actual totals are much greater than this.
During periods when we’ve had our cars in for service, I’ve been tracking our EV vs ICE miles and we’ve done about 80,000 miles on loaners and rental EVs. So, our actual total is about 235,000 miles of electric driving. In the meantime, we’ve done about 24,000 miles of ICE driving on our 2001 BMW X5 (both our driving, and when we lend the car out to visitors) as well as the times that we’ve rented ICE cars when we travel.
When I reached 74,000 miles of the Model S earlier in April, @Brian_Henderson (FYI: 75k is 3 orbits of Earth 🌏 driving pole over pole. ⚡🚘😃) reminded me that a circumnavigation of the Earth is approximately 25,000 miles and this is also cool to hing that all the vehicles that we’ve owned or leased means that we’ve travelled 6 orbits of the Earth. So, that’s cool.
So, are we going to reach 75,000 miles on the Model S this month? I’m pretty sure that we’ll get there before the end of this month. If not on our beginning of June trip.
Concept Tesla Supercharging station from 2017-04-24 Blog Post
In the first couple of sentences of this latest blog, Tesla reaffirms its commitment to charging for its customers.
As Tesla prepares for our first mass-market vehicle and continues to increase our Model S and Model X fleet, we’re making charging an even greater priority. It is extremely important to us and our mission that charging is convenient, abundant, and reliable for all owners, current and future.
Well, supercharging does that for almost ALL the models of cars that Tesla has sold. Just not ALL the cars that they have sold.
The Roadster and Model S 40 both do not have access to supercharging, but have ample range to make it the distances that are set up between MOST of the North American Supercharger network. I have not traveled on any of the other Tesla Supercharger networks, so I am unsure of the distances between their sites, but would presume that this statement also holds true for those distances.
We have been blessed to have our Model S available for us to travel these distances, but we know of several Roadster owners who would prefer to travel these distances and I would like to try to do that, one of these days.
To that end, if Tesla’s blog-post is any indication, it would seem that Tesla’s next iteration of supercharging might indicate a LOT more space and dedicated Tesla lounges in the locations that would be dedicated to this activity. If this is what Tesla is planning to do, why not provide a couple of stalls with Tesla dedicated Level 2 for those that are not in need of a supercharge. They can even fit these devices with a credit card or other payment system so that those opting for the slower charge can pay for the energy and/or stall that they are using for this travel. This allocation will then provide for Tesla to follow through on the statements that introduced this latest blog post.
Besides, in terms of costs, it would seem such a high density supercharging location would be more vulnerable to higher utility costs than current density supercharger locations. Things like demand charges and the like will definitely be a challenge toward the execution of this vision, therefore the costs associated with a couple High Power Wall Chargers (HPWCs) is really quite negligible.
Concept Tesla Supercharging station from 2017-04-24 Blog Post
The other thought I had with this concept release was a feeling of “deja vu…” and I realized as I was writing this article that it reminded me of the Rocklin, CA Sales, Service, Delivery, and Supercharger location from Day 11 of 2016’s Long Way Round Trip to the Gigafactory.
Which actually is a further case for this proposal to add High Power Wall Charger (for Roadsters, Dual Charger, or High Amp charger Teslas) at these new conceptual Supercharger locations. At this stop in 2016, we met with a couple who were also taking their Roadster up I-80 to Reno for the Gigafactory and TMC event.
The direct costs for a stall or two of High Power Level 2 (keep it on Tesla proprietary plug if they must) covers all Teslas built. Most of the Roadster owners that I know have already purchased my recommended accessories for the Roadster, i.e. Henry Sharp’s The CAN SR/JR, etc. and can therefore work with the Model S/X North American Proprietary plug.
The more analytical may counter that the opportunity cost for two stalls on HPWC vs another pair of Supercharging stalls outweighs the benefits of covering ALL Tesla vehicles, but I say that the goodwill created by such a program is more important than that. Tesla should execute on its statement today, but for ALL Teslas, not just the ones that can supercharge.
It was an unexpected honor to find myself featured in an article in last week’s New York Times. When I was being interviewed for the article, I did not expect to be featured, but felt the need to represent my opinions as both an owner, EV advocate, and investor in Tesla. There is a fear among some early Tesla fans that the media will give us the “Broder” treatment. I won’t be re-hashing the controversy here, but I feel that it would be foolish to approach this without considering this years old controversy.
I’m glad to confirm that the New York Times coverage was fair and all quotes attributed to me are accurate. However, I did spend a lot more time with the writer and the nuances of my conversation with him, didn’t show.
I’ve excerpted the portion where Neal Boudette covered my comments:
Among the skeptics are some of Tesla’s biggest fans.
Take Dennis Pascual, a tech industry consultant in Long Beach, Calif., and owner of two Teslas — a Model S sedan and a two-seat Roadster, the first car Tesla put on the road. He is such a fan, in fact, that he has put down deposits to buy two Model 3 compacts once Tesla starts making the car later this year.
He also owns some Tesla stock, but is not about to buy more.
“It’s a little pricey for me to jump back in,” he said, speaking by phone from his Model S. “Right now, I think we’re in a hold.”
Moreover, he worries about Tesla’s ability to carry out the bold expansion plans it has for this year and next. Tesla’s high-profile chief executive, Elon Musk, has said the company expects to begin production this summer on its first mass-market offering, the Model 3, ramping up to 5,000 cars a month by the end of the year and driving output to several hundred thousand cars over the course of 2018.
“They really need to deliver, and that has me concerned,” Mr. Pascual said, who has worked at start-up companies and has years of experience in the technology business. “I’m bullish long term, but yes, I’m worried. I’m always worried about companies executing.”
Part of where the nuances didn’t show is my discussion with him that indicated my willingness to trade options on Tesla at the current levels, and that though this is different from additional ownership in the stock, still shows my bullishness. So, the quotes make me look less bullish, but that’s also a function of the impressive rise in recent months.
The last quote attributed to me about being worried about companies executing is verbatim. It’s also how I tend to balance ANY company that I invest or work for. At the end of the day, it’s always the execution that I worry about. Whether it’s Tesla or any other company that I am rooting for. Missing expectations have a nasty way of biting folks in the … rear end..
It’s not everyday that I find myself in a prestigious newspaper like the New York Times, so I did what anyone would do and we went around town to buy several copies of the actual hard-copy of the paper.
In preparation for the article, I spent a couple of hours taking pictures with Andrew Cullen and I am sure that he had a lot of great shots with my smile on it. The best shot from Andrew was in the original link to the online version of the article that featured me in the Model S looking out. This was what accompanied the first round of the article when it went online on April 11, 2017.
I had a smile and looked happy in that one.
However, later photos replaced that for the print and online versions on April 12, 2017. Andrew did a great job taking photos and I have to thank him for being patient with me. In keeping with the tone of the article, the photo editors of the paper picked some shots that made it look like I was worried. I was far from worried, I did have the sun in my eyes for these next shots that were selected for the article, so let’s just chalk that up to great editing.
Those that know me well, know that this particular pose and introspection is not how I usually am. So, it’s rather humorous for people to see me with such a “serious” look.
Either way, I was pleasantly surprised to make it onto the New York Times. My mother is a huge fan of theirs and I’m sure it thrilled her to no end and a week after its publication, I thoroughly enjoyed the attention it has gathered with family and friends.
My favorite story came from my de-facto aunt and uncle (some of my mom’s closest friends) in New York City who reached out to my mother to convey their surprise at having my picture in the paper during their breakfast ritual. Paraphrasing my uncle to my aunt, “you would never guess who made it to the front page of the New York Times…” Beats the heck out of being on the wall in the Post Office. 😜
February 23 is a special day for me. It’s the day that we took delivery of our first EV in 2012. This means that five years ago, today, I joined the rEVolution and picked up my BMW Active E from Long Beach BMW.
I didn’t even have Level 2 charging installed in the garage on that day and had to plug in the car on 110V.
In fact, it wasn’t until several weeks have passed until I got our Level 2 charger installed under a grant that covered the charger, but not the installation. It’s a 30A J1772 charger from Chargepoint (CT-500) that is still going strong today (I use this for the Model S predominantly). It’s lost it’s networked feature as the modem in the device is no longer supported.
What this also means is that February 23 is also a bittersweet day for me as well… As that same Active E was taken from me quite unceremoniously on this same day in 2014.
Time does heal old wounds and I don’t pout when I say Active E anymore.
Then again, we did add the Roadster and Model S to our garage as we wait for our Model 3 and whatEVer else will take our EV future.
It helps that I can borrow the Roadster when my wife feels generous in letting me use it.
These next two pictures are from when we first picked the Roadster up…
and how it looks a week ago.
Here’s the Model S when we picked it up at the Tesla Factory
at its first Level 2 charge on our delivery weekend first roadtrip (in Sonoma for this shot).
And this recent shot when I was using the CHAdeMO charger near the Fountain Valley Supercharger from almost two weeks ago.
And a little nostalgia for those few months that we had more EVs than drivers in 2013-2014.
That was all three cars scheduled to charge at various times throughout the night on their own chargers.
Unfortunately, didn’t have a better shot of all three cars… Here’s a classic shot of the Model S and Roadster on the Model S first day home.
In fact, for the past five years since we picked up the Active E With all three cars (and various loaners and the few EV rentals we’ve done), we’ve added approximately 204,000 electric miles vs. 24,000 gasoline miles (both our own use, and when we lend our lone ICE car to visitors, as well as our use of ICE rental cars). What’s funny is how much fanfare I had when I first hit 100,000 electric miles, and 200,000 went by and I didn’t even pay attention to it.
I’ve documented the challenges that we’ve had with all three cars and they’ve all pretty much “behaved.” In fact our Model S just replaced its first 12V battery earlier this week. We’ve actually just replaced all four tires on the Model S a few weeks prior (still around 69,000 miles on the Model S).
To be fair, we did replace ONE of the four tires about 30,000 miles or so ago for a tire failure from driving over a road hazard. But the wear was pretty even, and we replaced all four tires when the tread was around 4/32 for two of the tires, and kept the other two (at 5/32) as “back-up”. The tires are “special order” and I would hate to have a failure and not have a pair ready to swap out (at the same tread.)
I guess what’s really special with driving EV is how “normal” it is for us now. In the beginning everything felt like it was going to be a challenge. How we managed to get 54,321 miles in the Active E in the two years that we had it depended a lot on available Level 2 charging. The infrastructure was there and we planned our trips so that we can recover miles when we got to our destinations. With the Roadster, we didn’t need to plan as much. We often had enough range to get back home. Now with the Model S, it’s even more interesting. We went Here, There, and EVerywhere as well as the Long Way Round to the Gigafactory Party. But the fact of the matter is, we picked up the Model S at the Fremont Factory. Went to Sonoma for wine and then back down to Southern California in November 2013, without much planning. That’s what EV ownership should be like. Pick up and go.
Are we there yet? To me, I’m there. But to the rest of the world, perhaps we’re getting there. It’s been a great 5 years and 200,000 miles of EV driving, and I’m looking for more and more EV adventures. Stay with us and see where electricity will take us.
I am drafting this post around 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern on November 8, 2016 as the pundits and media discuss the initial returns of the current Presidential Election Cycle. Everywhere else in the country folks are talking about Election Night 2016. As I write this, we didn’t know who has won the race. The polls in California are not even closed. It’s been a very challenging election season and I thought that it would be good to step away from all that and focus on something I really like to do.
…and that’s write about EVs and my experiences on this blog.
It so happens that November 8 is a significant day in our family. It’s the day that we flew up to Fremont to pick up our Model S from the factory and started our ownership of the Model S. This is one of the big benefits of Tesla, they’re an American company with a factory that actually builds its cars in California.
I did a bunch of “near real-time” posts on the blog that probably would have been best served by Twitter three years ago. But if you’re interested in following that, just click above and follow the subsequent posts.
I decided to publish this post on November 10 to separate my car’s three year anniversary from Election Day and post-Election Day coverage and to emphasize that US produced electrons from the Sun has done its part to save me money and to ensure that we don’t create more veterans of wars for oil. Energy independence means less need to go and fight wars, but I digress.
On November 7, 2016, we brought the Model S in for its annual service. It was originally scheduled for the previous month, but the Roadster has been in for an extended period, so we tried to time it when the Roadster was going to be ready. We brought the car in with slightly above 66,500 miles and picked up the car and brought it home with 66,569 miles on the odometer.
So, what do they do for the three year service? Well, apparently they match it against the mileage of the car. Our car got service as if it was a five year old car at 62,500 mile service.
We had prepaid our first four years of Model S service and were charged accordingly.
Ironically, when we were exiting the freeway to drive to the service center, the TPMS warning light went yellow and rather than stop and check it out ourselves, I figured to go ahead and drive to the service center directly and just report the notice to Tesla. I’m glad to report that even though the tire had a nail in it, and Tesla’s previous policies were to replace the tire, the service center are now patching tires under certain conditions (in a nutshell as long as the sidewall is not compromised.) We are still on our original set of four tires. We even added a fifth one (that is usually in the frunk) and that one is at 8/32. We’ll need to replace those four tires soon (Tesla recommends replacement at 3/32)
The other thing that we reported to Tesla (and had reported it earlier in the year as well) is the continuing and increasing level of milling noise coming from the motor. Our previous request to repair this noise resulted in Tesla notifying us that the noise was within parameters. The last time this occurred was around 25,000 miles and it resulted in the motor being replaced. The noise is a constant whir that occurs between 20-35 mph (32-56 kph) and gradually lessens (though still existent) as the car approaches 55 mph (88 kph) and then is imperceptible to my ears. The error was not as bad as the drivetrain failure on the loaner P85D but is quite irritating and I don’t know if it’s a symptom prior to a bigger failure.
This time around, apparently the noise has gotten to the point that Tesla Engineering has approved the replacement and we are waiting for the replacement part to arrive to re-schedule the repair. Since we just got the car back today, there has not been an estimate on when the service center expects to receive the replacement motor.
In all, the car spent less than 24 hours at the service center and we were able to pick it up “good as new.”
So, how does our three year old car look? Let’s compare to previous pictures at pickup at the factory.
Three Years Ago
Today
Three Years Ago
Today
Three Years Ago
Today
Three Years Ago
Today
So, our car still looks pretty close to how it looked when we picked it up three years ago. Not bad. In fact, if Tesla had not modified the fascia of 2016 Model S, I would dare say that our car would still look brand new.
With the service that we receive from Tesla, we can hopefully say the same for the car many years to come.
With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the thirteenth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.
Many readers know that we took the long way round because we got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party. Rather than just go from Southern California to Reno, we wanted to combine that trip with a trip to the the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) and attend the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visit family who was attending camp in Seattle, WA and visit family living in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.
So how did this trip look on the map?
It looks like we went pretty far to go someplace a lot closer. That’s the “fun” of driving a Tesla powered EV. The Tesla Supercharger network enables travelers to go, wherever they want to go.
So, how did we do? Well, as is the goal for any long road trip. We arrived home still happily married. So, that’s always Goal #1.
After 13 Days on the road, we’ve made it to all our intermediate goals on this trip.
Even got to ride the BYD e6 and write a quick review of it.
2) We made it to Seattle and had spent a day with our niece as she spent time away from home in a camp.
3) We visited our relatives in Vancouver and got to hang out with them.
Had great dinner at Ask for Luigi.
And got to visit Electra Meccanica…
And pondered why they didn’t just make an EV version of this little car.
4) Met with friends that we made on the Internet who are EVangelists in real life some for the first time, and others as a catch up.
In Washington State…
In Oregon…
In Reno at TMC Connect 2016
And in Reno at the Gigafactory
5) And we attended the Tesla Gigafactory Grand Opening Party.
Throughout the journey, we ended up with two other mini-obsessions…
1) Look for that darn PASTA Truck…
After all we saw the Garlic Truck…
and the Tomato Truck
We felt incomplete and left “hanging” looking around for the pasta truck to complete the set.
AND
2) We looked at the “logging industry” life-cycle…
Starting with those darn bald spots in the mountains…
Then followed the raw logs
cut and shaped wood
and finished products.
So, what are some key takeaways with this journey?
1) It’s good to get food recommendations from a Chef. The restaurants that we experienced from the recommendations were superb.
1A) It’s also good to listen to locals for their recommendations for such things. We enjoyed the Dutch Bros. coffee and didn’t know about them before we were introduced (especially the Iced Caramelizer.)
1B) This one is not always reliable, but give it a try anyway, our sushi in Vancouver area this trip was good, but not spectacular. Considering the spectacular Dim Sum we had at brunch, we’d forgive this.
2) Budget lots of time when crossing International Borders. Try not to schedule anything too tight from when you assume to cross the border. Or at least take the commercial crossing instead.
3) Continue to be fearless with taking off highway routes, you never know what you’ll see and experience
Considering that the travel is its own reward.
4) Continue to have backup charging identified. Even when picking hotels that are destination chargers, sometimes it won’t work as expected. When you have a backup, it’s no big deal to go to the alternate.
5) Read up on notes that others have made on the various charging apps, i.e. Plugshare or Teslarati or others.
6) There might be a benefit to reserving your hotel ahead of time (i.e. Our Day 13 plans was extended by our “winging it.”
For example this map on Day 13 should have been a lot shorter…
We ended up home at least a day, if not two days sooner than we had hoped.
That being said, what was our final statistics. 3,388 miles driven and 1021.3 kWh consumed and a direct energy cost of $16.82 from one overnight charging session in Bellevue, WA.
Looking at our statistics, the trip average is around 301 Wh per mile (or approximately 3.32 miles per kWh). That’s below my normal driving of 308 Wh per mile since we bought the car. The Model S is definitely an EV energy hog compared to some of the other EVs (i3, for example.)
Additionally, the $16.82 that we spent on energy for the trip means that our direct cost was $0.005 per mile directly spent on fueling our car for this trip. It was cheaper for us to fuel our car on the road than it’s been on the computed $0.008 per mile that we fuel at home on our Solar power.
Thanks for joining us on 2016’s Tesla Roadtrip, The Long Way Round…
…I wonder where next year’s “big” trip will take us. (Perhaps we’ll spot the pasta truck that’s been missing since Day 1!)
…I still have two National Drive Electric Week stops that I attended in the past month…
…Just got to ride the Bolt EV this weekend, I might have my impressions on that car sometime soon…
…Spoiler Alert… …It’s not a Tesla.
It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.
With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the twelfth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.
So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.
So, what do we have in store today? It’s the Tesla Gigafactory Party day!
Day 12 – Reno, NV – Tesla Gigafactory Party – Sparks, NV.. July 29, 2016
We picked the Harrah’s Reno location because we had friends that were staying here and the shuttle bus for the Gigafactory party and the pre-party for those of us with four or more referrals were leaving from the hotel across the street (Whitney Peak Hotel).
We had breakfast with our friends at the Hash House A Go Go. I haven’t had my coffee yet, so everything was still blurry.
The meals at the Hash House are filling and tasty. The portions definitely rival the size of the Cheesecake Factory.
The waffles were huge.
As were the pancakes.
We had a great breakfast with our friends, but had to hurry off to the first face to face meetings with the Presidents of the various official Tesla Owners Clubs. Many of these folks flew in for the Gigafactory party and though some were going to TMC Connect, others were not, so we had a lunch with them at a restaurant close to the Atlantis Hotel. We found two Model S and decided to take the third spot beside them. The one in the middle is Greg (ggr) from San Diego’s custom painted Signature Model S. He had carpooled up to the event with a few of our friends from the TesLA Club (Los Angeles).
The lunch meeting was well attended, and there were members there from Australia, Canada, and Europe, (as well as many from all over the US.) It was more about meeting the folks than lunch for us (you DID see the size of our breakfast portions, right?)
We gathered around outside to take a picture, and look at all the pretty cars.
And on the way back to get ready for the Gigafactory party, we stopped off at the TMC Connect hotel, Atlantis, to drop off our new friends from The Owners Club of Australia (who needed a ride) and to see if we can take better pictures of the cars from last night.
Definitely better looking in the sunlight than the dark parking lot from the previous evening.
The supercharger station still had availability.
And that’s one SweetEV (with the new R80 badge to denote the 3.0 battery giving approximately 340 miles of range.)
On the way to drop the Aussies off at the Atlantis, I spotted Rob N.’s Electronaut inspired Model S striping at the Convention Center, where TMC Connect was being held during the day and I felt compelled to track it down and take photographs.
California DCPPOWR meet Massachusetts ACPOWR
After taking all the ActiveE like Model S, we headed back to the hotel. We’re not planning on driving further today, so we park at the hotel and take note of the mileage and range left.
After getting ready for the party, we cross the street to the Whitney Peak Hotel for the pre-party and shuttle buses to the event.
The ore-party for the Gigafactory was at the bar in Whitney Peak Hotel. They served not only drinks, but Ice Cream as well…
So, the pre-party was also full. Lots of folks to catch up with.
I even get my few seconds on Youtube (via Bjorn’s channel)! (around the 27:10 mark if I didn’t embed this right) 😉
I suppose I should check to see if KMan has me on his channel too.
A few of the folks drove here to get in the pre-party and some are using the shuttles to the Gigafactory.
The drive to the factory from downtown Reno took about 20 minutes.
There was a line to get into the parking area.
The factory was hidden until one gets into Tesla’s property.
And once you catch a glimpse, it just keeps getting bigger.
It was a pretty orderly line to get in.
And Tesla had a cadre of valet attendants. I suppose when the cars are fully autonomous these guys will have to do something else.
The queue to get into the party was pretty orderly.
All smiles as we wait in line to get in.
Someone just got their party badge!
And that someone is pretty happy.
We get into the party tent and it’s nice and cool.
Here’s a model of the factory on the desert background.
Looks like we’ll get a peek inside the factory before many people do.
The line to get to the tour.
Tesla needs to hurry up and have electric buses for us to use.
No, that’s not our tour guide. That’s one of the Tesla executives welcoming us to the Gigafactory.
These kind folks are the employees who will be taking us on the tour. They have other jobs at the Gigafactory, but for the tour, they’re our tour guides.
We drive around the building and into some uncompleted sections and end up at the start of the tour.
The hallways are nice, cool, and clean.
We were shown a Tesla battery… Lots of discussion whether we can tell the difference in mm from the Roadster/Model S/Model X (18650) format to the new Model 3 (20700) cells. Some could swear that they can tell the difference… I lied and said that I could, I’m just NOT THAT GOOD at telling the differences in battery cylinder sizes.
Here’s a comparison against an iPhone 5. (with a backup battery case hard at work.)
Part of me was wondering, what’s the worst that Tesla will do if I make a break for it… Then again… I decided to continue on with the tour! 😉
Yeah, I don’t know what I’m looking at here. It’s lots of wires and empty walls. However, I do remember them saying something about Inputs and Outputs and the ability to drop a wall and continue to expand the building. Apparently only 12% or so of the factory is complete. Though it seems to me like a lot of the inside still needs to be filled in.
It’s good to hang out with friends from faraway and our particular group has Jeffrey Cadman who had a bear of a time flying cross country from the Mid Atlantic States to get to Reno, his airline cancelled the leg from the Bay Area to Reno and had to share a rental car to get here.
As you can see, even with the misadventures of airline travel, he’s happy now. But what a mess, unfortunately he reached out to us when we were already on our way to Reno from Sacramento and had to split an ICE rental with two other attendees for TMC Connect and/or Gigafactory who were on the same flight.
I could try to lie outright and say what the heck this device is… But, another thing that I remember is many parts of the Gigafactory is actually Panasonic’s section. The cooperation between Tesla and its suppliers is amazing in that the factory is really demarcated between Tesla and its suppliers from where the raw goods are brought in, processed, and provided to Tesla for its assembly into battery packs.
The gentlemen presenting were giving a good detailed explanation of what this part of the process is, but I continued to be distracted and just enjoyed “taking it all in.”
Some of the machinery is covered up in tarps whereas others are in plain sight. One can only imagine at what state the production really is at this point that the general public was allowed the opportunity to photograph the factory. Understanding the umpteen NDAs and warnings against any photography of Tesla’s Fremont Factory, let’s consider what we see with a “grain of salt.” It’s impressive what Tesla and its partners have done, but if it was producing things that are proprietary, we would not have been able to photograph things.
It was still pretty cool to walk through. For crying out loud, there were parts of the Ben and Jerry’s Factory Tour where we were NOT allowed to photograph as well.
More impressive machinery…
I seem to recall something about storing some of the finished products in these racks, but as you can see, nothing is stored, yet.
One of the things pointed out to us is the use of automation and robots in the plant and the markings on the ground are the pathways that the robots use to follow and move material from one point to another in the factory.
Here is a stationary robot that we pass.
And still lots of space to be filled up.
At this junction, I believe that we were nearing the division between Panasonic’s part of the factory with the Tesla assembly portion of it.
So, should I make a break for it?
Move along buddy!
Off to the Cell Aging Room. Why we need to age the cells, I don’t know.
This should give you a good idea at how tight this room is.
Here I am with a robot behind me.
And here it is photobombing me.
It’s a pretty friendly looking industrial robot. Don’t think we have to worry about Skynet…
…yet. Though if Elon and Tesla keep fine tuning the “machine that builds the machine.” His term for the factories that Tesla uses to get products out there, who knows at what point the machines will decide to skip humans altogether.
These trays are where the completed battery cylinders are placed when done being made into the battery format before it is combined to make the battery sheets for vehicles and/or power walls.
You can see some batteries above standing up waiting to be put into packs.
Once again I don’t remember if these cylinders are for the Roadster/Model S/Model X (18650) size or Model 3 (20700) size.
Apparently I mis-wrote earlier. This is the demarcation between the Tesla side and the Panasonic side. Either way, the point remains, on one side of a wall is Panasonic and Tesla’s suppliers and on the other side is Tesla.
Walking into Tesla’s side, the same cylindrical batteries take the shape that we are familiar with. The battery packs that go in our cars and the ones that will be put on people’s walls and utility and commercial locations
These red robots look familiar as the X-Men inspired ones in Fremont that help build the cars.
It must be tempting to hop on a robot, otherwise, why the sign?
Once again, lots of visible assembly line areas and the whole floor looks “clean.”
We pause and take a picture of us at the Tesla side of the factory.
That looks like a Model X chassis. Those shock absorbers on the back look much bigger than a Model S.
Some information on the products from Tesla Energy.
And it looks like wood pallets of Tesla Powerwalls are all ready to ship. I presume these are Australia and Germany bound as those markets are more mature than the US for the delivery of home battery storage for power.
We pass more battery packs in various states of construction.
It’s interesting how such a small cylinder can be combined together to give the capacities of storage that we need for our mobility or home or utility electrical storage needs.
Didn’t get the time to count all the completed boxes, but I’m sure now that a BIG commercial account was announced recently, these guys are busier than they were two months ago when we were there for this launch party.
Ok, pallets are for Tesla Powerwall (Residential installs)
and these refrigerator looking boxes are for commercial PowerPack installs.
We figured to get someone to take our picture with the big Tesla sign behind us.
It was cool to see the “battery lifecycle” input/output factory tour, but it looks like a lot of work still to get it fully functioning. Tesla originally were offering a ride to a lookout with a great picture opportunity for the factory. However, a quick moving thunderstorm entered the area as we completed our tour and we were ushered back to the party quickly.
Summer weather in the desert can be quite interesting.
They offered to possibly restart the overlook process, but muddy feet was not part of the plan for today.
We had hoped to ride in the Model 3 on Gigafactory party day, but the rides that they were offering were solely for Model S and Model X. So, I wasn’t really interested.
We did pass the Model 3 in the VIP section of the party as we quickly went back to the party tent.
It looks bigger in person.
And we had to use zoom lenses to capture shots of it from afar.
One had to be Elon’s guests to get closer to the red Model 3. However, as many have pointed out this red one is actually a full size mockup without any working innards, so there’s that.
It still looks pretty and we would still have enjoyed a chance to look at it.
I took a panoramic from the party tent of the 12% of the building that has been completed. This party tent and parking lot will be demolished as the factory is expanded.
On the other side of those lights are Model S and Model X that are being used for the Test Rides. It’s not even a Test Drive, and since we did drive thousands of miles to get here, a place about 500 miles away from home, I think we’ll let someone else drive and ride while we enjoy the company and the party.
Some folks had great spots to see and hear Elon and JB welcome us and talk about the Gigafactory. As with many Tesla events, it was quite full and crowded by the stage, so my better half and I enjoyed hanging out with EV friends and listen to Elon and JB talk in the same room and have the comfort of the AV professionals view.
We took the opportunity while Elon and JB were speaking to take a few shots of the models of the Gigafactory and surrounding location.
It’s incredible what the vision is for the site, once built. And it is important to note that this Gigafactory is the first of a plan to build more of these worldwide so as to deliver vehicles and energy storage closer to where the demand is. I’m assuming that means an Asian and European Gigafactory along with future Tesla auto factories at those locations as well.
No detail was missed in the model with a pair of Model S supercharging factory side.
We stuck around pretty late to see if we can make it to the Model 3. We tried different avenues to get an invite to go across to see it. Alas, here’s a great shot of it via zoom lens later in the evening.
The test rides have wound down and many have left the party.
As we exit, we figure to take a picture of the sign welcoming us to this party.
And we head back in our shuttle. We check into our room at the Harrah’s Reno and take a picture of the little city of Reno. It was great to see the building and Gigafactory in the state that it is in. It would be better to see it in greater operation.
It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.
With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the fifth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.
So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.
So, what do we have in store today? We’ve achieved our intermediate goal and attended EV Roadmap 9 conference at Portland’s World Trade Center. So, we’re now on our way to the Gigafactory… After we visit family in the Seattle area and Vancouver, BC area.
Day 5 – Portland to Seattle, WA area. July 21, 2016
Interestingly enough, it looks like we had no vampire drain last night. We rolled in with 195 miles of range and rolled out with 195 miles of range. We had a little bit of a late start for our drive to Seattle. The distance between the two cities is rather short compared to our other drives that we figured that we should be fine even with the late start.
For those unfamiliar, Portland, OR is actually very close to the border with Washington State. So, when we headed North from our hotel toward Seattle, it wasn’t long until we saw the following sign on our bridge crossing.
And we were greeted with signs for Vancouver… Washington.
You know that the border crossing occurs often when the state sign is pretty understated.
Not quite at the border, there was a better state sign.
But the border was where the understated sign was.
We actually encountered some rain on this part of the drive and were quite happy about that. My expectations for a trip to the Pacific Northwest is to have some rain. As it was, we’ve had nothing but perfect weather. Apparently the rest of the country was suffering from a terrible heat wave.
We were being chased down by a Red Leaf in Vancouver, WA.
And then we were passed Vancouver, WA
Still driving along the Columbia River, I think..
Thanks to MelindaV, we had some good local provisions to hold us in place during this drive.
And we hit weather again.
We did have some interesting sights on the drive…
On the way to Centralia, spotted these interesting sculpture. Not sure whether it’s just aesthetic or functional, but looked cool.
Logging trucks are not one of the things that we often see around Southern California.
My better half made it her goal to try to follow the “logging industry” life-cycle on what we spot on the road. So, let’s consider this truck of cut trees as step one on this life-cycle plan. Our goal is to follow the wood through its process.
In the meantime, though we had some provisions from MelindaV, we were nearing one of the places that Chef Jenn Louis recommended. It was a Mexican restaurant in Centralia, WA that was about a mile from the superchargers.
As we got closer to Centralia, we saw some strangely colored Washington cows…
Downtown Centralia, WA
As I wrote about yesterday, Chef’s usually know good places to eat, so we took her suggestion and headed to Downtown Centralia, WA. The exit was one before the Tesla Supercharger in the same town.
La Tarasca is apparently an institution in Centralia (1001 W Main St, Centralia, WA 98531.) They’ve been open since 1997 and only a little over a mile away from the supercharger, a must stop. Some may supercharge and take local transportation to the restaurant and back. I would suggest to just stop, enjoy the meal, and then head over to the supercharger.
Here are the hours of operation for La Tarasca. It was good that we decided to have lunch here on Friday rather than try to squeeze them into the return drive. We plan on leaving Vancouver and head South on or around Tuesday and expect to pass Centralia on that day. It’s also important to note the sign that lets customers know that they do not serve “chips”.
We parked at the restaurant to eat lunch with plenty of range left on the battery.
So, we ordered our meal.
I was going to be a smart aleck, and ask for chips, but my shins hurt too much from my wife’s subtle reminder NOT to be a smart aleck. 😉
Instead of chips, they brought out these pickled vegetables. I tried one, it was ok, but it gets a big thumbs up from the better half.
The meal was a good authentic Mexican Food from Michoacan. We ordered the Chile Verde and
the Carnitas.
These are provided with freshly made corn tortillas, and not flour ones. Another “house rule”, no flour tortillas.
It was a filling meal and after fueling ourselves, we headed to the superchargers at Centralia (located at the outlet mall).
Centralia Supercharger
We took local roads to the Centralia Supercharger as it was about a mile away from where La Tarasca was located.
We had enough charge to get to our next stop, which was our hotel for the night. But not enough to do our driving around the Seattle area. We had a schedule to keep and wanted to have enough time to check in to our hotel in Bellevue, pick up our niece from Summer Camp in Seattle, and then drive up to Everett to see Billy Elliot, the Musical. We chose our hotel in Bellevue, the Hyatt Regency Bellevue, for the evening because it had some J1772 chargers according to Plugshare. The difference in cost for the hotel stay versus hotels on Tesla’s destination charger network made it worth it to pick our hotel, even though we would have to pay fees to charge on the J1772 at that location.
Since this was the start of a Summer Weekend, We noticed that this was a busy supercharger and we were joined briefly by a fellow Californian in a Signature Red Model X.
To minimize the Level 2 charging and to ensure that we have enough “driving around town” charge when we got to the Seattle area, we range charged at this supercharger. As we mentioned earlier, we need to travel between Bellevue, Seattle, and Everett for our evening plans.
We did a little outlet shopping at Centralia while the car charged. We were going to be hanging out with our niece for a few days and picked up a present for her and a few things for us.
So, with our battery near capacity, we rolled out of the supercharger to Bellevue.
We meet up with traffic in Olympia, Washington.
Spot a California Jedi of presumably Hispanic origin.
The good thing about traffic is we get to enjoy the sights around us without blowing right past them, like this cool helicopter overhead
And this beautiful church on the other side of the freeway.
We pass the Tacoma Dome, the now departed Seattle Supersonics (now the Oklahoma City Thunder), had played there for a season while the Key Arena was renovated or built, I don’t remember my Sonics’ history.
Looks like there’s a cool museum that we’re skipping.
Another lumber truck for the “logging industry” life-cycle project.
We were lucky because it looked like a lot of the traffic was headed South and not North.
We did hit some traffic, but luckily Washington also use HOV lanes with a 2+ person count like California, so I used those lanes.
We made it to Bellevue. Seems like a nice looking city. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been here before, but now I can say that I have.
We arrived at our hotel in Bellevue with enough time to check in and get our room assigned. But we were nearing the time we needed to depart to pick up our niece from her dorm. We headed to her camp which was using a dorm from Seattle Pacific University.
First we had to traverse Bellevue and it’s interesting to see so many trees interspersed with the city. Considering all the building off the freeway, I didn’t expect this much foliage.
Original estimates had the drive at a leisurely 30 minutes or so, but the estimates changed drastically when we were getting on the bridge connecting Everett with Seattle, we ended up taking about an hour longer to traverse the distance because of an accident on the bridge.
Additionally, this was a toll bridge, now there was a way to sign up as a visitor in the area to at least pay for the tolls like a resident before getting a fine. So I made a mental note to fill that out. The system was called GoodToGo and one should consider signing up for a visitor account before heading in, that minimizes your toll costs.
Seattle traffic was pretty bad.
Spotted traditional electric trolley buses with the constant power connected overhead rather than full EV buses with its own battery pack like the BYD ones at the conference the other day.
We pass through some interesting parts of Seattle to get to our niece’s dorms.
And some Portland area coffee has made in-roads into the Seattle Coffee scene. (quick alert Starbucks!)
And after the traffic filled journey, we make it to her dorm.
Our plans for the Seattle area for this evening is to catch a musical, Billy Elliot at Everett Washington. Still a little bit of a drive from her dorm, but we can make it.
We’re not proud of it, but we fed her (and ourselves) burgers and fries. I’m a big fan of the spicy fries that Five Guys Burgers produces and am glad to see the quality is the same all over the country.
At the parking structure for the play, we found our WA state twin for our Model S and parked beside it.
Crossed the street in Downtown Everett to the Village Theater and found our seats with ten minutes to spare.
We figured to take our niece out for a nice musical on her night of freedom from her summer camp.
I was impressed with the production in Everett. It wasn’t Broadway, but it was a high quality traveling production. The acting and direction was entertaining and the singing and dancing were superb.
We were going to take our niece for Ice Cream after the show, but she was tired and it was time to take her back to the hotel.
After all the driving for the day, we parked at the hotel with 78 miles of range. Had to do a little driving around the hotel parking lot, but figured a 200V/30A feed would be fine for an overnight charge.
We’re not going to charge it up to full, but at least have enough to do our driving around Seattle area day on Saturday.
The charge rate improved a little when I checked on the App and we went to bed.
It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.
With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the fourth day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.
So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.
So, what do we have in store today? We’re still in Portland attending the second day of EV Roadmap 9 conference at Portland’s World Trade Center. So, we have the intermediate goal to complete.
Day 4 – EV Roadmap 9, Portland OR. July 21, 2016
Though we have In and Out privileges for our car at the hotel for the conference, I opted to use other means to get from our hotel to the EV Roadmap 2016 conference. I still had a few Lyft credits left, but felt it wasteful to use this because all the cars that came out to help us in Portland have all been ICE. As cool as it was to have someone else drive us around and as cheap as it was because of the credits from T-Mobile, I figured to do something different.
So, for day two of the conference (or day three, depending on how you look at the agenda, considering the previous day was “by invitation only”, I’m counting that as zero.) I decided to forego the high cost of downtown Portland parking AND gasoline. I decided to take the Trimet Trolley system. This method of transport was actually $1 more for me than Lyft because of the credits and the $2.00 tip versus $2.50 each way pass, but I thought why not.
The Trimet station was just across the street from my hotel and a few blocks away from the conference.
The first tram to stop was going the other way, so I took a photo and waited for the one toward City Center.
It wasn’t a long wait.
The Trimet tram is similar to the Blue Line/Red Line in Los Angeles, but had the additional cool factor of crossing over water on the bridge.
The few times I took the Metro in LA, none of my trains did that.
So, for a little longer than what the Lyft ride took me, but a lot cleaner transport, I found myself back at the conference.
One of the drawbacks with commuting to the conference is missing some of the earlier parts, I missed some of the earlier sessions, but I was able to make the session from the auto manufacturers.
I then continued to the sessions on deploying Fast Charging networks.
It is interesting to note that many other charging network providers have learned from the lead that Tesla has provided and folks are now ensuring that future deployments should consider a redundant deployment of fast chargers rather than a “ready” state in addition to a single DCFC as has been deployed in the past. The industry is looking to design for future success rather than have single points of failure along the charging corridors that are being deployed. (Common Sense rules!)
At lunch, I ended up with a table full of many of the same folks that I have had the pleasure of talking with the previous day. There was an award presentation for employers regarding Workplace Charging. Even though EV Roadmap is one of the premiere North American conferences for the EV industry, it is still focused on Oregon and I believe all the awards were for local businesses.
After lunch there were several more sessions that I attended. The most interesting one was the one for Electric Vehicles in the Media. I had hoped to meet Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield of Transport Evolved as she was originally scheduled to be in that session, but had to bow out for personal reasons. Nevertheless, the three presenters and moderator did a good job being one of the more entertaining sessions.
I walked by a full Electric Avenue charging location on my way back to the Trimet Trolley.
I caught the train across from the Apple Store in Downtown Portland.
And the ridership for the particular train I was on was “quite healthy”
Not as packed as a London or New York train in the middle of Rush Hour, but definitely a good sign of a well received public transport system. Besides, it’s an EV.
Another crossing of the bridge.
One of the interesting things that launched in Portland during the conference was a Bike Sharing system that looks to have had a good uptake in ridership as well. The Portland system is called Biketown and is sponsored by local employer Nike. (Similar ones have been launched in other cities, such as the Boris Bikes in London and Citi Bikes in New York.)
Biketown actually sponsored the conference and could have been an option to try for my commute back to the hotel, but decided to have someone else drive. Though I know how to ride a bike, I haven’t done so in a while, and riding a bike in a busy downtown area may not be the best way to re-introduce myself to the pleasures of cycling.
We had plans to return to Lincoln Restaurant for our last dinner in Portland on this leg of the trip and took our Model S back out for the drive.
It looks like we started the drive to the restaurant at 208 miles, so that’s another seven miles of vampire loss from sitting in the parking lot all day.
Lincoln is a wonderful restaurant owned and operated by Chef Jenn Louis. This dinner would be the second time for us to visit this restaurant. The Chef is actually the sister of a high school classmate of mine and we originally dropped in a few years ago to check out the restaurant. We were impressed by the entirety of our restaurant experience, from the meal to the service to the dessert, that we have added her restaurant to our list of places we “must visit” everytime we’re in her town.
Started off with the Octopus on the Plancha
and the Baked Hen Eggs
Grilled Dates and Marcona Almonds
Since Jenn’s first cookbook was called Pasta by Hand, have to try her pasta (besides, I prefer to have someone else’s hands make and cook the pasta for me ;-),) and decided on the Bucatini with herb pesto, oil-cured olives, and walnut.
and a nice NY Steak with prosciutto, blackberries, blue cheese, and panzanella.
The desserts were also awesome
We had the Popcorn Panna Cotta to share…
…and each had a bon bon. White chocolate.
and Dark chocolate.
After a great meal, here’s a picture of us with Jenn.
It’s good to get to know chefs because they’re a great source of information for places to eat when one travels. We talked about our plan to go to Vancouver on the way to Reno and Jenn had a few places to recommend in Washington and a restaurant to go to in Vancouver. She recommended a great hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Willamette Valley a few years back that had great food, so we took notes on the restaurants to visit on our Pacific Northwest trip.
We headed back to the hotel and parked the car with a 198 miles of range overnight.
We had more than enough range to make it to our next supercharger stop at Centralia, WA tomorrow and headed back to our hotel room to rest for the drive to the Seattle, WA part of our trip.
The next day of this series, Day 5, will be published on September 16, 2016 at 10:00 AM Pacific (/1:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM British Summer Time/September 17, 2016 at 1:00AM Hong Kong Time/3:00 AM Sydney Time)
It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.
With a hat-tip to the 2004 TV mini-series from Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. This is the third day in a series of posts written about our 2016 EV Roadtrip written in the same manner as our 2015 trip. Here, There, and EVerywhere Trip – Day 01, i.e. summaries written for each day of the trip, published each day, this time two months from the day of the trip. It may seem funny to some to have a summer trip published at the start of the Fall, think of it as some daily entertainment for those that are back in their offices thinking about their past summer trips that could have been or thinking about their next trip.
So, why the long way round? Well… We got four referrals on the Fourth Tesla Referral Program (May 30, 2016 to July 15, 2016) and we expected to get an invite to the Gigafactory Party, so we thought to start our trip and go to Reno (a nearly 500 mile direct drive from home) via the Pacific Northwest (about a 1600 mile detour) with the intermediate goal of attending the EV Roadmap 9 Conference in Portland, visiting family who were spending time in Seattle, WA and family in Vancouver, BC before turning back for the party.
So, what do we have in store today? We’re in Portland attending the EV Roadmap 9 conference at Portland’s World Trade Center. So, intermediate goal started.
Day 3 – EV Roadmap 9, Portland OR. July 20, 2016
Though we have In and Out privileges for our car at the hotel for the conference, I opted to use other means to get from our hotel to the EV Roadmap 9 conference. As with many cities, downtown areas parking costs can get expensive and thanks to T-Mobile and its various T-Mobile Tuesday promotions, I had a few $15 Lyft credits on my account to use. So, I opted to do that instead.
So, for day one of the conference (or day two, depending on how you look at the agenda, considering the previous day was “by invitation only”, I’m counting that as zero.) I ordered a Lyft at my hotel and waited to be driven over to the World Trade Center complex in Portland. In a ironic twist, the Lyft driver that took to the premiere North American EV conference drove up in a Cadillac Escalade. A very non-EV, gas burning ICE SUV. At least I was “rolling in style” (if it were a decade earlier or so…)
The Lyft would have cost about $10.00, but with the credit from T-Mobile, the cost was a $2.00 tip for the ride. (as well as some guilt over burning dead dinosaurs for the transport, but it’s only 2 miles attributable to MY use of Lyft.) The driver dropped me on the other side of the street and I passed an almost full Electric Avenue on my way to join the conference.
As this conference was for the EV industry, there were several auto manufacturers with their EVs on display and some even provided a Drive event during the first day.
Not the bus, however,
that was going to serve as the transport for the activity through the Willamette Valley wine tasting for day three that we’re opting to skip.
The conference itself was very informative with a focus on the current state of the industry as well as what is coming up next. There were discussions and presentations on what the best practices are as well as what the leaders in the industry are doing.
I focused on areas of interest and attended sessions on public charging network deployment and regulatory challenges and solutions.
It would seem that many of the sessions I attended were filled up and some were standing room only for some.
At lunch, there was a demonstration of Vehicle to Grid using a Leaf to power an Ice Machine and Ice Shaver to make Hawaiian Shaved Ice.
I expected cold and rain in Portland, but apparently they get nice sunny summers up there too. Aside from the vehicles available to drive, there were some that were just sitting around.
Here’s a nice red Chevy Bolt EV that looks like it’s ready for release.
Additionally, there was also a plug-in mini-van (PHEV) (a Chrysler Pacifica, I believe)
Nice to see these improvements by a couple of the manufacturers for their offerings.
I got the pleasure of having lunch with John Voelcker (Editor in Chief of Green Car Reports) and Bengt Halvorson (of Car and Driver). We were also joined by Chelsea Sexton. In conversation, I was alerted by Bengt of an opportunity to actually drive a car that has so far eluded me: the BYD e6.
BYD e6
On the side of the car is some marketing of what makes the e6 an attractive car (to some). Of course, a lot of these items can also be found in other manufacturers that we know.
The BYD e6 is not a pretty car, nor would it ever be a car that would appeal to us I am intrigued about it because part of the strategy implemented by BYD is a lot like the one that Elon espouses with Master Plan #2. BYD is further along on the mass-transit portion of that plan than Elon (as is evidenced by the EV Bus that will be taking folks from Portland to the Willamette Valley for wine-tasting on Friday.) Not to say that BYD is Tesla or that Tesla is BYD only to say that they are playing in each others’ space. BYD is only providing the e6 in for fleet use in the US. As such, they aren’t even equipping the cars with J1772.
I believe that is a Mennekes connection or something that looks like it. The BYD representative basically said that fleets that deploy the car will install BYD chargers because it is a fleet application, they expect users to go back to a central depot to charge. The car itself did have an adapter on it to use J1772, but this was for the demonstration vehicle only and not provided to North American fleets.
A strange decision, if I say so myself.
That being said, how does it drive? I would sum it up in one word: Sluggish. The plan for the test drive included being in the first of two modes, Eco Plus, which is the mode with the most range and slowest acceleration (if you could call it that.) I drove first and Bengt joined me as a passenger in the back. We did a loop around Downtown Portland and I was unimpressed with the acceleration. I’ve been in ICE vehicles that accelerated better. Even when the representative took the car off Eco Plus mode to the Eco mode, it was still a lumbering beast. I tried to change lanes ahead of another car and was shocked at how slow the e6 was in accelerating. I felt like an iMiEV would have been quicker.
After completing my circuit, I got to go to the back and took some interior pictures.
The controls, fit, and finish of the vehicle was acceptable. What I really did not like was the lack of “Zip” that one typically gets in an EV. This car did not have any of that.
I did not get pricing information or the like, but it does seem like a car with a lot of heavy batteries and an unmatched motor is how this car gets its range. Not being able to take it too far may not give it justice on how serious a threat they can be, but I can honestly say that I can check off BYD e6 from my list of cars that I’ve “driven.”
Back to the conference.
Here’s a picture from above to show the expo area.
(And yes, there was a BMW i8, new Chevy Volt, and Prius Plug-In (or whatever they’re calling those nowadays) there too.)
After several more sessions in the afternoon, including a very interesting live look in to a focus group of Portland public to discuss electric cars, it was time for the conference’s cocktail hour. Met a few more folks throughout the day like writer (and some would say outspoken Tesla critic) Ed Niedermeyer of the Daily Kanban and Matt Teske of Drive, known for his Chevy Jolt EV fan site.
Rather than have my better half putting about town, we bought tickets for her to join the cocktail hour for the conference. There were several firms at the expo during the cocktail hour and the illustration below hearkened back to some illustrations that I was familiar with during Active E days about four years ago. At the time BMW were postulating using lamp posts for EV charging and lo and behold, Eluminocity was at the expo.
A demonstration unit was shown mounted on a pole.
We spent the time at the cocktail hour exchanging information, and getting to know some of the folks that we met that day. It is fascinating to speak to some of these writers whose work I have followed over the years of getting into the rEVolution and hearing their thoughts and hopes for the industry and society. It was interesting to hear varied opinions on the challenges facing EV adoption and appreciated the candid and respectful exchange of ideas.
Though some finger food was provided at the cocktail hour, I’ve always found it difficult to fill up when I go to these things that I find that I often have to go to a restaurant to have a proper meal. The sushi from the night before was fine, but was not quite the quality that I expected, so we opted to go to another sushi bar for dinner that evening. We took Lyft back to the hotel and took our car out to go to Bamboo Sushi in Portland.
Dinner at Bamboo Sushi
When I don’t know what to get at a sushi bar, I often will start with the Chirashi. A Chirashi is basically sashimi on a bed of sushi rice. It’s a good way to have a sample of how good a sushi restaurant is in its product.
I then supplement with individual orders, if I am still hungry.
The sushi at Bamboo Sushi was very good quality. It hit the spot and I was glad to find hiqh quality sushi. The drive from our hotel to the restaurant and back was a very short 3 miles and we parked the Model S with 215 miles left on the range.
We lost more from vampire drain than we did for the 2.2 miles of driving. (226 was the range when we parked it the previous night.)
I guess it’s a sign of EV maturation when you don’t sweat the small stuff. We’re only a few miles from the Electric Avenue DCFC and we have a CHAdeMO adapter, should we need it.
Either way, went back to bed looking forward to the second day of the EV Roadmap 9 conference.
It’s important to note that our Gigafactory invite would not have been possible had folks not used our referral code. So, I have to thank those that were convinced to pick up a Tesla Model S or Model X and decided to save some money by using our referral code. So, if you’re as inclined as those that took us up on the offer, and in the market for a Tesla Model S or Model X, you can save $1,000 USD/$1,200 CAD/£750 GBP (and whatever the equivalent is in your market) if you use our referral code – http://ts.la/dennis5317.
