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Charging the Tesla
allen griggs
Member Posts: 35,609 ✭✭✭✭
Yesterday I drove down to Atlanta, from the NC mountains, with my brother in his Tesla, for the family Christmas party. It is 205 miles. That's the magic number, because the Tesla will only go 170 miles when running the heater. We had to stop at Gainesville for a recharge.
This is a brand new charging station with 15 chargers. This station just opened 3 days ago. The recharge took 30 minutes.
Comments
We stopped again on the way back for a 35 minute recharge. Eight hours total of driving, and an hour and five minutes of recharging.
The Tesla is a great car for short trips. For long trips, no good.
Next year I will drive my Nissan Frontier to Atlanta.
My old Chevy pickup will run nearly 400 miles on one tank of gas and takes 10 minutes to 'recharge'. I'll just stick with that.😎
May I ask how much a charge cost?
There is no meter visible at the charging station. You don't use your credit card. So I didn't see how much the recharge cost. The Tesla computer reads your car when you plug in, and once a month you get a bill from Tesla.
My brother says that the electricity costs about one half of what gasoline would cost. No oil changes, there is no oil. No sparkplug changes, no antifreeze to add. It is an economical car to operate.
That differs from what a lot of experts say. Based on home electricity costs, EVs cost a lot more than gas cars to drive. That doesn't count maintenance costs, which can be eye-popping.
I hear a new battery is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Built a house for a lady in LInville. She lives in Charlotte. Her meter said she had plenty of juice to get from Charlotte to Linville, about 70 miles. Nope, drained out about half way up 181. Griggs might know about 181, steep and winding. She even drove with the heater off. Could you please send someone to get me and call a rollback.
Also, don’t forget the tires. I was talking to a guy at work that has a Tesla. He said due to the batteries, his little sedan weighs over 8,000 lbs. Requires 10-ply proprietary tires that you can only buy from Tesla, and they are VERY expensive.
I get 400-450 miles on a tank of gas. Takes 10 minutes for me to fill up. No Tesla can even come close to those numbers.
I'll never own an electric vehicle. The range is ridiculous, the people driving them ignore the atrocities needed to build the cars, the maintenance costs are eye-popping as @Rocky Raab said, and repair costs are higher than one of Elon's satellites if you can even find a shop that will work on a damaged Tesla.
Plus...they're just ugly. I might own an ugly gun or two but I am never owning an ugly car.
🇺🇲 "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson 🇺🇲
Dam, that is more than an F-350
My brother has had the Tesla for 3 years and his maintenance costs have, so far been negligible. Although the car is rough on tires, he only gets about 30,000 miles to a set.
My brother has a degree from Georgia Tech so I'm pretty sure he can figure out the electricity cost per mile, and he says it is about half the cost of gasoline. The car has huge disc brakes, I think he did have to have the rotors turned.
"Fuel" cost per mile is only a fraction of the total cost to own. EVs run as much as double the cost of a gas car when everything is factored in.
But it doesn’t put out any greenhouse gas…
So after you got to Atlanta did he recharge there as well, or did the charge hold long enough to return to Gainesville again? The biggest problem with batteries I see, is they don’t hold a charge as long as they get older.
The biggest problem I see with this green energy, is people refuse to give up on this pipe dream that it will work. It’s not cost effective to store energy, where it’s more cost effective and easier to store matter/material, gasoline, and convert it to energy.
"But it doesn’t put out any greenhouse gas…"................WELL, MOST ELECTRICITY IN THIS COUNTRY IS PRODUCED BY.....COAL........ JUST SAYIN
"My brother has a degree from Georgia Tech"
OK, he is used to overpaying for things! Don
Dude! You just said the quiet part out loud!
The biggest issue with electric vehicles is that some of them spontaneously combust. And you don't want to be near them when that happens.
Joe
And you put the fire out with....wait for it....carbon dioxide.🤣
Charging stations seems like the perfect place for bad guys to hang out, easy pickings for robbery.
I don't have an EV or see one in my future,but I am not against them.The technology for EV is in its infancy now and will improve greatly in the future. What I am hearing now about EV is almost the same thing my grand dad told me people said about cars around the turn of the last century.He talked about laughing at T model Fords while his team of plow horses pulled them out of muddy roads.This is the same grand dad that brought home a brand new Corvette in 1958 and grand ma made him take it back.
"Charging stations seems like the perfect place for bad guys to hang out, easy pickings for robbery."
This charging station is in the back lot behind a giant Kroger store, and it is mostly dark there. I was thinking the same thing, this is a perfect place for a bad guy with a gun to hide in the bushes about 10 pm. Usually Tesla charging stations are at small truck stops, such as the Sheetz station on I 40 in Hickory, or all night gas stations, where it is pretty safe to stop for that half hour.
The battery held the charge just fine for the four hours of the party. Brother has not complained about the battery losing charge, when the vehicle sets for a day. This Tesla is 3 years old.
This Tesla is not charged by burning coal, the Asheville power station runs on natural gas. Yes, the power plant it cranks out tons of carbon dioxide, and then, the power has to be transmitted 45 miles over the power lines. My brother is not a greenie and he thinks Climate Change is a bunch of BS. He calls the Climate Change gang a religious cult.
We did look into buying solar cells so he could charge it from sunshine, 4 solar cells each the size of a sheet of plywood, and the batteries etc. would cost about $23K. Brother said "no thanks." I wired him up a 240 charging station in his garage for $150. We used a $17 dryer receptacle from Lowes.
I'll wait to buy an EV after POTUS is flying in an electric plane.
My 1995 Jeep YJ with a 2.5 4 cylinder and manual trans got 15 MPG.My wifes 2000 Jeep TJ 4.0 6 cylinder,auto trans,A/C,bone stock, gets 15 MPG.The Jeeps were toys.Thank goodness we also have real vehicles.(Toyotas)
Back during the second Arab oil embargo, gas guzzlers sold cheap. I bought a 1973 Lincoln Mark IV for $600.
It got 6 miles per gallon, but it got it in STYLE!
You say:
Plus...they're just ugly. I might own an ugly gun or two but I am never owning an ugly car.
Life is too short to hunt with a ugly gun or be seen in a ugly vehicle.
and I agree with this one.
https://forums.gunbroker.com/discussion/1914089/i-like-this-shirt#latest
Since their inception over a century ago, electric cars have always been "town" cars. They fill that bill well, but are not and have never been suitable for cross country driving. Or any other heavy duty use like towing or hauling, for that matter. Office workers and grocery getters only.
Electric cars remind me of air rifles. They SEEM like they could be a game-changer, but they just might have a natural limit (batteries/range) that’s tough to overcome for a long time, if ever.
Lewis and Clark had an air rifle on their Corps of Discovery journey in 1804, and killed big game with it. Here we are 220 years later. We have fancier air rifles that can still kill big game, but they ain’t doing it at 500 yards.
Just like the air rifle is unlikely to replace powder-based cartridges for long-range hunting/shooting any time soon……electric cars are unlikely to replace combustion engine vehicles for long-range driving anytime soon.
I love how the greenies never mention, or want to know, just exactly where the electricity comes from, or how it is actually made.😖
To be sure.......they do NOT want it made offshore of their Nantucket vacation mansion......by an overgrown/overdollared windmill.😱
They want the windmill in YOUR backyard.😡
And if they are not convertible to dual exhaust with glass pack mufflers that rattle windows, raised and lowered, convertible to big wide low profile tires and rims that cost more than the vec they are going to be a hard sell for the in car crowd.
The electricity comes from trees that produce big leaves and little leaves that we can all shoot at.
.
I don't know why this is not more widely thought of and known.
Every time I see a charging station I think of an ATM and look for lurkers.
I LEFT OUT "NOT">
I left out "NOT".
One of the uglier sides of EV's that many ignore.
Great article Susie, thanks for posting.
My parents had a 1976 Mark IV in the early 1990s, black with plush red interior and a 460ci. That was a smooth ride.
It is too cold in SD for an electric car unless you keep it within a few miles of charging station. Friend has one and he was surprised when he got 70 miles to a charge.
It pains me to say this since I am a big fan of Henry Ford and his products but I was my local small town Ford dealer and they had a new Mustang Mach E in the showroom. Very small place with only room for one car inside. I made a remark to the owner of the place I would like to take it for a drive just to check it out. He says it isn't going anywhere and he is trying to get Ford to take it back. It is dead and won't wake up/recharge. Just a giant block of plastic and battery garbage stuck in the middle of his showroom.
I went up to Ely Minnesota one January. The high was five and the low 25 below. I was talking to my brother about that, and wondering how far you could get at those temps. I told him he wouldn't get 70 miles.
The tires on a Tesla are nothing special. Owners can buy tires just about anywhere for one. You can buy a $100 Vercelli or a $500+ Michelin to fit one.