A Year As an EV Owner
This entry is a bit different. If you are expecting Salesforce content then come back for the next entry! In this entry I thought I’d take a look back at the last nearly 12 months of owning a Tesla. Whilst there is little more to be said about the Model Y some real world, long term thoughts might be interesting.
We bought BlueY, our blue Model Y, to replace a PHEV VW Passat. We used the PHEV on electric power as much as possible so moving to a full EV was not as big a jump as coming out of a pure ICE car. We already had a home 7kW charger to take advantage of a government grant so we were good to go.
We got the car in September last year so the figures below are for nearly a full year. Before I talk about the car itself let’s get the efficiency and cost figures out of the way! Since we got the car it’s travelled 7,638 miles and we’ve charged it with 2,766kWh of electricity. If we ignore the charge left in the car that means our current efficiency is 2.7m/kWh. Pretty shocking! Most things you read would have you expecting high 3s or even 4. Until recently the car did mostly short journeys. Over winter this meant spending a lot of power to heat the car up only to travel a handful of miles and then cool down. Now that it’s getting more longer runs this number should climb.
However in terms of cost per mile we are still doing well! Since we go the car we’ve been on Octopus time of use tariffs. So we can charge at 7.5p/kWh overnight. Had we done all our charging at that cost we’d have spend £207.45. If we assume a fairly generous £1.40/l price for petrol this would have bought a little under 149l of petrol. Or about 32 gallons. So a petrol car would have to do an unbelievable 238mpg to be as cheap!
In reality our charging has not been all at home. I can charge for free at work. And the car has been on long enough journeys to use some very expensive Superchargers. We have charged 45% at home, 43% at my office and 12% at superchargers. For a real-world cost of £312 according to the Tesla app. This brings the petrol car to only needing to achieve 156mpg!
So it’s cheap to run but what’s it like to live with. Well first of all range is not a problem. We have not run out of electricity once. Or even come close. We’ve also never had to change plans or not do something because of the car. A little planning ahead maybe to ensure it’s charged but that’s not really all that hard.
The Tesla build quality has also been good. This is a Chinese manufactured car which are generally better than the US manufactured ones (and probably very similar to the Berlin ones). The lack of physical controls has also not really been a problem. The combination of stalks and steering wheel controls are enough for most critical functions. However I am going to add a S3XY Knob when they become available.
The performance is fantastic. This is the fastest 0-60 car I’ve ever owned. Faster than my XK8. Faster than the Elise. Faster than the Boxster S. But it’s no sports car! It does hide the mass and height pretty well but I’d not throw it into corners like an Elise. The AWD does mean it almost never spins a wheel and the grip levels are high in general. When pushed it will understeer a bit.
The electric drivetrain means there is 100% of the torque all the time with no delay. You push the accelerator and it takes off. At any legal speed in the UK. To me this makes driving safer. If you need to make some room on the motorway a slight increase in throttle and you are out of the way. Instantly. I can’t imagine ever wanting to go back to an ICE car.
As a family car it’s great. Everyone has plenty of space. It’s light and airy. And the luggage capacity is fantastic (4 full sized cases easily fit in the boot leaving the frunk and under boot for other bags). If you do need to stop the ability to watch Disney+ on the screen is great.
We did not pay for FSD: there is no point in the UK at the moment. However I do like Autopilot and find it makes longer journeys much more relaxing. Hopefully we’ll see the updated software stack that they get in the US at some point.
All in all it’s a fantastic car and I can’t see us changing it for some time.