35 minutes ago, john999boy said:

It's just as easy to get 3ph to a new build as single phase. Future proofing.......

 

SPEN are famously difficult about these things though

 

 

@ColinD  do you think it would wind up Tesla fanboys if I put a Briskoda stiker on the model 3?   :-)

 

 

4 hours ago, domhnall said:

@ColinD  do you think it would wind up Tesla fanboys if I put a Briskoda stiker on the model 3?   :-)

 

 

i had a brisky sticker on the back window of my Insignia ;)

not quite the same as a tesla in terms of fanbois but still, may have confused a few people

 

 

15 hours ago, domhnall said:

do you think it would wind up Tesla fanboys if I put a Briskoda sticker on the model 3?   :-)

They've been spotted on an Aston Martin and a Peugeot Seadrive previously and they're an even more exclusive club!

 

On 04/09/2020 at 12:43, domhnall said:

 

they tend to all be the same but the power will be determined by your supply, 7 kW for single phase 22 for three phase. Other than the zoe though no other cars can currently draw 22. The Tesla can do 11, leaf 6. 

The advantage of the 22Kw three phase supply might show if you have one of the EV friendly energy tariffs which give ultra low cost per Kw/h from about 1am-5am.  I think a few of the coming EV's can do 11KW also.  So whilst you might not benefit from the full 22KW you might benefit from the extra few KW at the cheaper rate.  Then of course there's the powerwall option and buying power cheap and selling back to the grid when it's dear, plus powering your home on the cheap stuff pulled in overnight.

 

So to me if the differential cost to install 3 phase to the property is negligible it could give you better options longer term

On 04/09/2020 at 12:42, domhnall said:

 

no, you can't do anything like that, this is the coolant for the battery, so normally a sealed system that should not need to be topped up. 

I'd keep hold of any correspondence about that particular delivery defect with the coolant level.  I believe Tesla have recently reduced the warranty on their battery packs, but having the "Well you damaged it early in it's life by not putting coolant in it" argument might prove useful if you start to lose range just outside the warranty period.

 

Plus it makes you wonder how many others Tesla has shipped with insufficient coolant that people have either a) never noticed because it had slightly more than yours so not making the same amount of noise, or b) they've never had an EV before and thought that the noise was normal for an EV.

On 04/09/2020 at 18:42, domhnall said:

@ColinD  do you think it would wind up Tesla fanboys if I put a Briskoda stiker on the model 3?   :-)

 

 

If you really want to wind them up how about adding another small modification to it. https://www.chevrolet.com/performance-parts/crate-engines/lt/lt4-wet-sump

 

650hp 6.2Litre small block V8, stuffed into a Tesla should have Fanboi Fatwa's  issued against you. 

On 06/09/2020 at 14:25, widdershins said:

I'd keep hold of any correspondence about that particular delivery defect with the coolant level.  I believe Tesla have recently reduced the warranty on their battery packs, but having the "Well you damaged it early in it's life by not putting coolant in it" argument might prove useful if you start to lose range just outside the warranty period.

 

Plus it makes you wonder how many others Tesla has shipped with insufficient coolant that people have either a) never noticed because it had slightly more than yours so not making the same amount of noise, or b) they've never had an EV before and thought that the noise was normal for an EV.

 

 

it's not been an issue for me as 1) this Summer hasn't been hot enough to make the battery too hot 2) I haven't been using the Tesla superchargers so again the battery's not got hot 3) only long trip was over to Northern Ireland and their infrastructure is so die I was only charging at 11 kW so again heat not an issue. 

Yea, but you don't need to tell them that. 

 

All that matters is that due to a QC issue in manufacturing your vehicle was delivered with insufficient battery coolant, and they have a record of that, and of having to do an "urgent" repair on it.  So if you have any battery problems bring it up, like most companies they will try to avoid doing free repairs unless you have them over a barrel.

Apologies to @domhnall for this ever so slightly OT post but I was visiting the council tip recycling centre at the weekend and a Tesla pulled up nearby.

Two people got out of the car and I had a double look as I thought the lad had got a familiar face. It didn't click until after I'd left but it is this guy who (amongst other things) happens to vlog about Teslas and actually lives in the same town - something which I wasn't aware of!

 

Edited 10 September, 20205 yr by john999boy
Grammar

On 07/09/2020 at 19:30, widdershins said:

Yea, but you don't need to tell them that. 

 

All that matters is that due to a QC issue in manufacturing your vehicle was delivered with insufficient battery coolant, and they have a record of that, and of having to do an "urgent" repair on it.  So if you have any battery problems bring it up, like most companies they will try to avoid doing free repairs unless you have them over a barrel.

 

Trust me, I'm a lawyer, it's all on record ;-)

20 hours ago, john999boy said:

Apologies to @domhnall for this ever so slightly OT post but I was visiting the council tip recycling centre at the weekend and a Tesla pulled up nearby.

Two people got out of the car and I had a double look as I thought the lad had got a familiar face. It didn't click until after I'd left but it is this guy who (amongst other things) happens to vlog about Teslas and lives actually in the same town - something which I wasn't aware of!

 

 

from memory he's paying for the tesla with his youtube earnings or something like that. Nice work if you can get it

 

One update on the Tesla with a couple of things I hadn't realised / forgot to mention. There is no spare tyre and the puncture repair kit is an £80 optional extra. Breakdown cover only covers you if you are within 50 miles of a tesla service centre so it is recommended that you also pay for your own breakdown cover. Neither is major but when you're paying a minimum of £40k for a car it just feels a bit....cheap.

 

Edited 14 September, 20205 yr by domhnall

14 minutes ago, domhnall said:

There is no spare tyre and the puncture repair kit is an £80 optional extra.

I was looking at one today and it had Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres (which I am led to believe are quite good) - does yours?

2 minutes ago, john999boy said:

I was looking at one today and it had Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tyres (which I am led to believe are quite good) - does yours?

 

just had to go check, yes it does. Only driven 2800 miles so far though. Wwas tempted to fit cross climates but honestly don't know how long I will keep this once the Enyaq is out

 

So an update on the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range plus experience. Several software updates later they have fixed some niggles, broken a few things along the way and then fixed the things they broke. The fix they applied was (among lots of minor things) to finally make spotify sort music in alphabetical order so you can find it and they added playlist functionality, standard stuff on your phone but not in a Tesla until now. Unfortunately the update also disabled all audio output, radio, USB music, streaming you name it none of them worked. That lasted a week until they rushed out another patch. This is the joy of over the air updates.

 

The other thing to report is my first proper long distance trip, Edinburgh to Northampton and back, around 700 miles. And this was easily done. The car is very efficient, much more so than my Nissan Leaf ever was. I set off around 3pm, stopped 2 hours later for some food at Tebay. The car was around 35% charged when I arrived. I plugged in and headed in to the services for food and by the time I had garbbed a delicious lasagna the car was back to 80% and I headed off. By the time I got to Birmingham I was desperate for the loo so again I stopped at a service area with a tesla charger and while I emptied my tank the car refilled itself. I spent 10 minutes watching some netflix wjile it finished and then headed to Northampton.  There was a charger at my hotel in Northampton so I refuelled back to around 70% before hitting the sack.

The next day there was a charger at our Northampton office so the car refuelled to 90% while I was at work. That afternoon I headed North again. After a couple of hours I had to stop for the loo at Charnock Richard so I put some juice into the car while I was at the loo and picking up a coffee. Then it was back to Tebay, this time for steak pie and chips while the car refuelled just enough to get me back home.

 

So refuelling wise and range wise it was dead easy. In both directions the driver had to stop before the car had to. Bladder range / fatigue range is shorter (in my case at least) than this shortest range tesla. But what about the famed Tesla auto pilot? It has been very erratic in use, I've had quite a few cases where it tries to auto steer "for safety" and veer into the outside lane so for thsi trip I ojnly used adaptive cruise. Tesla owners often report a phenomenon known as phantom braking, typically this is described as the car hesitating as it overtakes trucks, or gets spoked by bridge shadows. I experienced nothing worse than a gentle slowing down as I passed trucks, easily overriden by pressing the accelarator. Bu then it got dark. Once night fell the car freaked out for no obvious reason - on 6 separate occasions it jammed the brakes on, a full on emergency stop would have happened if I'd not stamped on the power. Not a very comfortable driving experience so I switched off cruise and just drove manually. 

I raised this as a fault with tesla but after they scanned the car they said thwere was nothing wrong and this behaviour is a "feature" of the current software and they say it will get better as they develop it over time. 

 

So much as with my previous report, it's a bafflimg mix of the brilliant (range, power and efficiency) and the downright lousy (auto headlights  and wipers seem to have a mind of their own and the cruise control is quite possibly possessed). 

One of these days they will have it up to the standard of my old 2015 Octavia in terms of the tech, but as before there is still no way I would go back to a fossil fuelled car.

 

i like your honesty about it. 

it is very easy to only report on how brilliant a thing as expensive and allegedly fantastic as a Tesla is day to day, and gloss over the quality problems.

3 minutes ago, mac11irl said:

i like your honesty about it. 

it is very easy to only report on how brilliant a thing as expensive and allegedly fantastic as a Tesla is day to day, and gloss over the quality problems.

it's easily the most powerful and efficient EV on the market, but the rest of the tech is way behind most other cars. The cruise apparently doesn't use radar like every other car, instead it uses cameras and the camera tries to interpret what it is seeing - it's just not as good yet

8 minutes ago, domhnall said:

it's easily the most powerful and efficient EV on the market, but the rest of the tech is way behind most other cars. The cruise apparently doesn't use radar like every other car, instead it uses cameras and the camera tries to interpret what it is seeing - it's just not as good yet

mmm wonder is that from people getting the traffic related captchas wrong...

 

People say Tesla are around 5 years ahead of any competition with its powertrain. But why doesn't other company just license the tech? A Mercedes C-class car with Model 3 powertrain would be excellent. 

 

Thanks for the update. Reads like even if you didn't stay overnight, you can still get around without any hindrance due to driving an EV beyond its home range. 

10 hours ago, domhnall said:

Tesla owners often report a phenomenon known as phantom braking, typically this is described as the car hesitating as it overtakes trucks, or gets spoked by bridge shadows. I experienced nothing worse than a gentle slowing down as I passed trucks, easily overriden by pressing the accelarator. Bu then it got dark. Once night fell the car freaked out for no obvious reason - on 6 separate occasions it jammed the brakes on, a full on emergency stop would have happened if I'd not stamped on the power. Not a very comfortable driving experience so I switched off cruise and just drove manually. 

This would concern me with a Tesla very much. The adaptive cruise on my Karoq is brilliant on the motorway but does do the phantom braking if a car is turning left into a side road on a normal road. Having seen videos of the next level predictive cruise control  VAG is using, that looks even better on non-motorway roads.

 

Thank you for your honest 'normal bloke' view of the Tesla, it is putting its capabilities into perspective.

TeslaBjorn has also identified a fairly repeatable case of phantom braking in Tesla vehicles.  On narrower single carriageway roads it get's scared if a large truck is coming the other way.  The extra width means the lorry rides closer to the dividing line than a normal oncoming car would, so the tesla gets scared and brakes thinking it's about to get  hit.

 

Perhaps this is partly due to the software having been developed & mainly trained on wider US roads, and may improve when they focus more on narrower European roads.

On 30/11/2020 at 16:46, widdershins said:

TeslaBjorn has also identified a fairly repeatable case of phantom braking in Tesla vehicles.  On narrower single carriageway roads it get's scared if a large truck is coming the other way.  The extra width means the lorry rides closer to the dividing line than a normal oncoming car would, so the tesla gets scared and brakes thinking it's about to get  hit.

 

Perhaps this is partly due to the software having been developed & mainly trained on wider US roads, and may improve when they focus more on narrower European roads.

 

tesla make clear that the cruise and autopilot are only to be used on motorway or dual carriageway so no way it should be in use on the roads Bjorn video shows :-)

 

Mine did it again on the M6 last week, I was driving in lane 2 at 70mph and then bam, I was at 40 mph and a Mercedes Sprinter van had to swerve to avoid me. He was obviously a Tesla fan though as he was waving in a very excited manner as he went past me. 

5 minutes ago, domhnall said:

He was obviously a Tesla fan though as he was waving in a very excited manner as he went past me. 

19 minutes ago, domhnall said:

tesla make clear that the cruise and autopilot are only to be used on motorway or dual carriageway so no way it should be in use on the roads Bjorn video shows :-)

Do you have the full/expensive self driving abilities or the free ones?

On 25/11/2020 at 21:40, domhnall said:

 Tesla owners often report a phenomenon known as phantom braking, typically this is described as the car hesitating as it overtakes trucks, or gets spoked by bridge shadows. I experienced nothing worse than a gentle slowing down as I passed trucks, easily overriden by pressing the accelarator. Bu then it got dark. Once night fell the car freaked out for no obvious reason - on 6 separate occasions it jammed the brakes on, a full on emergency stop would have happened if I'd not stamped on the power. Not a very comfortable driving experience so I switched off cruise and just drove manually. 

I raised this as a fault with tesla but after they scanned the car they said thwere was nothing wrong and this behaviour is a "feature" of the current software and they say it will get better as they develop it over time. 

 

So much as with my previous report, it's a bafflimg mix of the brilliant (range, power and efficiency) and the downright lousy (auto headlights  and wipers seem to have a mind of their own and the cruise control is quite possibly possessed). 
 

 

Our Countryman has on a few occasion thrown a total wobbler in town thinking we were about to hit a stationary car (can't remember the name of the feature). I'm not sure if it hit the brakes or me coz of the flashing red light and loud alarm but there was nothing, absolutely nothing in front of the car.

 

Auto wipers are universally crap, I've never had a car that could do it well. the best was my hated 2003 Renault Clio. It had full manual options for wipers as well as auto. And tbh the auto was probably the best of any car I've had.

 

autolight have always worked ok, but the principle falls down in rain and fog and people are lazy idiots. You need to swicth to manual then. I had to explain this to my SO who is not daft at all, but she still trusted that "auto lights " meant auto lights , in all circumstances. The RR auto lights are probably the best and clverest I've ever seen. They do partial full beam and you can see the bean tracking around cars in front of you.

 

It's interesting to hear how well you are getting on with it.