Xavier

I did read about it. It's nothing to worry about. What I do find alarming is that as soon as there's anything to do with a Tesla, it seems to spread like wildfire (pun intended) when it happens many times more with other vehicles and it never even makes local news... If ever there was to be a massive failure causing a lithium cell fire, then at least it's not explosive. She comments about how fortunate her daughters weren't in the car. Well, if they were, she'd have had ample time to get them out. Cells might burn ferociously once started, but unlike petrol cars, won't cause an unpredictable explosion causing much more damage and potential injury. There's quite a lot going on with Tesla at the moment, and the media seems to have them in their sights, predominantly on the negative angle. Here's an interesting article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/29/1767826/-The-War-on-Tesla-Musk-and-the-Fight-for-the-Future

I'll pop along in my brisk milkfloat. Organ displacement demonstrations will be available

@vectra1, I do love robins. I have a frequent visitor to my back garden too Lunch!

Another small project I'm working on - OpenEVSE. My car's now being used as a test car for the charger. All pretty cool stuff. and:

I might pop along with the car which should be charged if someone wants a ride out :-)

One does what one can with the resources available and the experience at hand. They needed to put a small load, why not try to make it a bit of a media stunt. It's a double-edged sword. It could have gone horrible wrong. A media tart chancer? Well, he's singlehandedly giving our kids and our kids' kids a chance to breathe, so it's not all bad. For all the potential negative views one can have on what he's achieving (or not), he's also demonstrating ambition, drive and I honestly believe he is inspiring so many people. Had someone tested an o-ring a little more at lower than expected temperatures, an awful lot of money and the lives of 7 amazing people would have been saved just over 22 years ago... The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success

I'll be coming along in my electric milkfloat. See you there

It's become very popular for companies to jump on the EV bandwagon as a quick, good "Green PR" stunt. If they limit it to certain criteria, it will quite easily backfire. As people become more knowledgeable on the whole EV thing, people aren't being duped so easily. Well, that's my belief. Having an open platform is the only way forward. They could however partner with the charging station network and offer discounted rates via redemption or something. So anyone can charge there, but customers will get the benefit of a discounted / free charge session. That would the way I'd do it if I were in it for the money as much as the PR

Sadly, it is a rather fragmented thing with everyone "doing their own thing". There are standards - now, the EU dictates Type 2 and CCS as the physical charge port types and charging methods, but that's just for the electricity bit. When it comes to authentication, usage, etc, everyone's screaming for a simple, clear way. Like contactless / credit / debit cards. No faffing around with the correct card for the correct network. Fortunately, there are some groups trying to help this by having agreements with different charging networks so you only need one card. Chargemap and The New Motion are just a couple. Then, the even simpler way is to do without cards entirely. Any form of identification is done through the car electronically. This is how the Tesla Superchargers work. Whilst my car has free unlimited supercharging, new cars only have a yearly quota free then pay on top for extra (unless they buy their car through me or some other referred owner). Billing then happens when you get your car serviced, etc. Since the very beginning, Tesla has offered their Supercharger network to other car manufacturers providing they help fund the deployment and pay towards the running costs. To this day, no one else has signed up, and despite many rumours of Jaguar doing so to give the Ipace a massive headstart, that's apparently not the case. The government is IMO is doing what it can, but it can't be expected to do everything. The future diesel bans / green zones, etc, should be enough to incite manufacturers to get in gear, but divering decades of ICE investmend and development isn't a desired option. But, I'd argue, there's sufficient traction on the EV side for it to be an "adopt or die" approach.

Haha, OK, so you're another Tesla stalker! I'm in touch with You Xie doing the worldwide tour in his M3. I might be helping out with some charging problems - certainly should see him at some point (and the car!) Regarding tyres, I'm sure the smooth driving and regen braking all help to minimise wear. My brake pads are probably still in good condition too, despite being a 2.4 ton car. Although the track day will have had the biggest impact on both, I'm sure. Still was fun though even with the OEM "economy" tyres.

Oh @Ryeman, you'll be surprised to hear that I'm still on the first set of tyres at 35k miles! I'm almost a joke on the Tesla FB group - people saying I must have something wrong with my car as that amount of power and still on the frist set of tyres after 35k miles, something must be wrong! They will need changing though, down to a couple of mm.

Exactly! We really are spoilt and I cannot thank Tesla enough for the efforts they've put in to the Supercharger network. It really is the biggest element out there and what convinced me to share their road / vision as I wanted to be able to do long trips like this and not have to suffer from charger anxiety! As a side-note, I really want Jaguar to succeed with the Ipace, but the non existant rapid charging network means it's not really viable IMO for long trips yet with nothing better than the relatively "slow" (for a rapid), insufficient and unreliable Electric Highway network. You're welcome to have a look at mine, but I guess you've already had your nose in a Tesla?

Ahh, well, a load of us Tesla folk are organising a "Monte Carlo or Bust" rally this summer, driving all the way down in a convoy of some kind to Monaco. It will be a fun adventure for sure

Dakar you say? One day as if it's something that might happen in the future you say? Sorry to disappoint you old chap, it's already been done! https://electrek.co/2017/01/16/all-electric-car-dakar-rally-acciona/

To a certain extent, yes. As a rule of thumb, charging speed is a lot higher than driving, so total time for "drive faster + charge longer" is less than "drive slower + charge faster". There are a few conditions though for that to be met: you arrive with a 10-20% state of charge and don't need to charge to more than 60% to have enough to reach your next charge as charge speed beyond 60% slows down quite a bit. Also, the battery can only accept the fast charge when it's warm, which won't be the case in the middle of winter when you've only been driving for less than 30 minutes and didn't start off with a warm battery. Say for example you have a 250 mile stint to do. You can just about do the 250 miles on a single charge. But the time taken to recharge that much will be quite long as you'll be charging the battery to, say, over 90%. On a Tesla Supercharger, the batteries can take around 100kW of power when empty. That power will decrease as they fill up. The amount of time to do 90-100% is almost the same time it takes to do 70-90% which is also the same amount of time to do 10-70% (I'm making these values up for illustration, it might not be exactly that). So in the time it takes to do a >90% charge, you could do two lots of 10-60% which of course gives you a lot real energy added, so you can drive faster as you'll have the extra energy available for the higher speeds The above only really applies to Tesla for now thanks to the fast Supercharging network. On a lesser charger, the charge times become longer, so there's no overall time benefit as the time you save in speeding up is easily wiped out by the longer time required on the charger. As an illustration, here's the logging of a charging session. Look at the blue line which shows the state of charge. You can see how it tapers and really slows down. The charge started with my battery at about 5%. After 50 minutes charge, I was at 83%. I stayed on the charger till it stopped charging once the batteries were full. That took over another 50 minutes! Or, 40 minutes charge got me from 5% to 73%, in other words about 68% worth of battery charge added. If I needed to do another really long stint, I would leave at that point, do another sprint and charge again in 125 miles (assuming charger was available there). Remember though that whilst you can get very geeky and technical about it, you don't have to. You can just let the car plan the route for you - it will work out where you need to stop en-route and also tell you approximately how long each charge will be before you have enough energy to make the next leg of your journey:

Update Mike, I don't think so, it's just too much money for me to tie up in it right now. I don't have a couple of hundred grand lying around the back of the sofa last time I checked! The few issues I had recently with mine have been addressed - front light unit replaced as the sidelight LED element was starting to fail. I also had a problem with the boot mysteriously locking and not opening. Fortunately, Tesla were able to sort it out within a few days as I drove back to Paris before Christmas. Since then, I've been back down to spend some time with my mum. Had to plan the long journey accordingly. Used https://abetterrouteplanner.com this time. Here's what it came up with: I was also doing some blablacar again - just one passenger from Saintes to Rouen. I left a little later than I wanted to and it did put me under a bit or pressure as I couldn't afford to miss my Channel Tunnel crossing in the evening as they were all fully booked. So I had to put my foot down a bit more than I had initially planned. It resulted in a shorter drive, at the cost of a slightly longer recharging time overall. The final journey was pretty accurate in total time. Here's what I ended up actually doing (telemetry data via Teslalog) As I was at Rouen, it's a longer stint back to Calais and as I was short of time, I decided to stop half way and top up as it meant I wouldn't do two shorter charging sessions rather than one longer one. It also meant I was able to put my foot down a bit more towards Calais and have some fun once I'd checked no speed traps and helicopters above :p I should be going to the West Meon on Tuesday so might see some of you there - welcome to have a look at the Tesla if you haven't seen one yet

Any indication when the next one will be? I'd make an effort to turn up this time, especially since there's now a charger just around the corner

Yes, problem is that I still need to get home at the end, and FE plans it so the batteries are just about depleted at the end of the race. Alternatively, I just need to swap my Model S for a Model X then I can tow the FE back home

If you do another one, I'll try to come along. Work in Paris prevented me :( But from my only venture out in Xavjet in Llandow, I'd like to do another, preferably with stickier rubber this time! Snetterton is good as fast chargers not too far away. Geeky question: but I presume the paddocks also had three-phase power available?

I have no plans to get rid of my current one - hanging on to it, at least for another few years. Not sure what I'll do with the Model 3 reservation (had it for some time). I initially got it either for my mum or as an investment thingy as existing Tesla owners are apparetnyl having priority over others, so if the market demanded it, I would probably sell it on with just deliver mileage.

Bit of an update. If anyone's interested, drop me a PM with your name and email address and I'll put you forward. I'll post a few more things soon... Oh and if you followed the "semi" announcement, I went a bit mad...

Saw a few Skodas there. What a cracking day though. Missed out on JKM's RR day to go to this instead. A bit of a frustrating time queueing for 2.5 hours following a coolant leak and oil spill on the strip. But my final run with some big V8 drag muscle car made up for it. I was slow reacting, but glad I did otherwise I wouldn't have captured the wheelie! Then, there were some jet-powered cars. Now that's something else. Loud enough to wake up the dead. Seriously! Just amazing!

Argh, I think I won't be making it, I've been invited to Santapod's Flame & Thunder day instead. There will be a few of us milkfloats going up against various other cars. Should be fun.

That's kilometreage as I was in Paris. At 44,045km now, back in Paris, parked in the same spot. Amazing how it just seems to creep up I really don't worry about battery capacity. I might have lost a few percent, but you can't really notice it at all. Until you reach 10% loss which is a VERY long way away, it's not even worth thinking about. And I've supercharged mine a hell of a lot more than other people as I couldn't initially charge at home when I bought it. So 90% of my charging has been at super high speeds which arguably is not as good. Now, I have three-phase power at my business unit so charge there at a nice and steady 11kW whilst making my cables. What I have noticed is that the charging profile on Superchargers has changed - the battery management system is now modifying the charging profile to optimise speed and battery life. I don't get quite the same insanely high 110kW+ power, but a steadier 90kW which seems to hold on longer, so doesn't really make in-journey charging stops much longer.

Now, now! That's pushing it a bit! :p But yes, I'm a hell of a lot less stressed when stuck on the M25 (unless I'm going to miss my Eurotunnel slot which has happened on a few occasions)