Now I am DEFINITELY intrigued!
For those of us not (yet) in the EV club, could someone explain the abbreviations? What is a PHEV? What is a FSD and why should it apparently be avoided? Help!
concur with the sub-panel, if your box will allow it. We did that in our garage which was much cheaper than redoing the whole electrical panel.
If you are going to do the work, aim for a 60 amp circuit, or at a minimum put in a 60 amp cable for future expansion. The additional cost is only a few bucks as the labor is the same. Tesla maintains a list of ‘authorized’ electricians, but they tend to be expensive. Any licensed and bonded electrician can do the work, as adding a circuit is a simple job. Your city may require a permit.
Tesla Wall Charger is cool but not necessary. (I have one, but many do not.) The mobile connector that comes with the car is what many use at home.
FSD is “full service drive”…this is a $10K option and seems ridiculously dangerous. It’s basically the car driving itself. It’s cool (I guess). I might use it to “summon” my car from a far away parking lot. But there is NO way that I will let a robot drive my car. I simply do not believe that I (or all other drivers, dogs, trees, buses, etc on the roads) are ready for this yet!
PHEV is “plug-in hybrid electric vehicle”. My current car is a PHEV. I can charge it to run all electric for around 20 miles or so and then the gas kicks in and runs it as hybrid (both gas and electric). It’s sorta’ in between a fossil fuel car and an EV.
Thanks! My daughter had the option of purchasing a plug-in hybrid but lives in an apartment where she would have no way to plug in, so she went with the “regular” hybrid.
100% agree about the FSD—unless a transport is on a track, I would not ride a FSD-type vehicle. I’ve probably been on airport trams that drove themselves.
One thing about many PHEVs: you DON’T need to charge them. Ever. Right now, I only charge when I am at free charger or when I take it for service.
If I do charge, I get substantially better mileage. But, I am sorry to say that I am too lazy to plug in and unplug when I have gas power as my main option. That would obviously change if we switched to an EV. The EV you have to charge.
So why did I get a PHEV? It qualified for an HOV sticker in California and at the time I got the car the only EV that had the range I needed was the Tesla. It was too expensive at the time.
Absolutely spot on. I will be content to be in a driverless car if it is on a track OR if there is something like air-traffic control that all vehicles abide by. I see neither of those happening in my lifetime!
Frunks are not new, even though the term may be. They were once almost as common as air cooled Volkswagens.
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PHEV is “plug in hybrid electric vehicle”, basically a short range electric vehicle with a liquid fuel engine as well that is used when going beyond electric range.
FSD is a Tesla option of (future) “full self driving” capability. But many are skeptical of whether future software upgrades will be able to deliver that.
Note that this has additional features beyond what Tesla calls “autopilot”, which is a highly featured advanced cruise control (where the operator must still pay attention to be able take control at any time, like an airplane autopilot).
If @mynameiswhatever is considering using the mobile connector, note that the most commonly installed version of the 220V, 50AMP plug does not support frequent plugging and unplugging. They are meant to be plugged and unplugged rarely, as would happen with an electric dryer. You need to tell the electrician that this will be plugged and unplugged often, and they will put in a different version of the connector. The cost difference is miniscule, but it’s the difference between a safe and unsafe hookup.
Correct. Once you tell the electrician the receptacle is for an EV, s/he should know that a lightweight $10 NEMA 14-50 receptacle from Home Depot will not be safe; such a use requires a heavy duty receptacle (~$90). It’s not only the plug in-unplug, but also the heat build up from hours of 240v streaming thru to the car. (Again, this is really basic stuff for a licensed electrician.)
That said, most folks using the mobile connector for daily charging leave it plugged into the wall (nearly) permanently. They only unplug it to take it on a trip. In other words, for daily driver usage, no real need to take the mobile connector in the car.
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Definitely knew about them on the Beetle. I just didn’t know it was called a “frunk”, which is clever.
I also didn’t even think about this extra space. We were thinking about getting another SUV, but the price is the same (or even cheaper) for the Tesla…I am really beginning to warm up to the idea. Now if only my wife will agree! (and I think she will)
Since you mentioned replacing a van, consider who uses the third row seat. Perhaps a dog or small agile child can get in and out of an SUV third row easily, but most adults would be better able to do so in a van’s third row seat.
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i think we’ll look at cars this weekend. Most of the time, we will have 1-3 adults and 1-2 teenagers, and on occasion our dog. If we went with Model Y, the third row seats would almost either only be occupied by our dog or folded down if we needed storage.
Since it sounds like you spent sometime in the Bay Area, you know how hilly it can be in the East Bay and SF. Our minivan’s back tires spin going up some of the hills around here, and that’s another reason we want to change vehicles. I see tons of Teslas doing it easily, and I was also impressed when we went skiing in the winter how many Teslas were going on snow-covered roads quite effortlessly. It’s an AWD, I understand.
Based on the great advice you and the others have given on charging etc, I feel much more comfortable with going all electric. It doesn’t sound like it’s absolutely mandatory to do the panel change, but it would be nice. That means we don’t have to rush things. And I also found out there were a bunch of Supercharging stations in places where we shop. That’s REALLY good to know.
What do you have, a Metris, Aerostar, Astro / Safari, or old Volkswagen with low quality (low traction) tires?
Tires can make a huge difference. Dedicated winter tires would be the best for snow driving, but worse away from the snow (such as much of the drive to Tahoe before reaching the snow areas). Some newer all-season tires have better winter capability than most all-season tires, indicated by the 3-peak-mountain-snowflake symbol in addition to the M+S.
That one made me LOL. It’s an under 5 year old high-end minivan with 2 year old high-end tires. On some of the steep inclines, when starting from a stop, the wheels spin and minivan moves back. On the same hill, under the same conditions, my PHEV doesn’t do this. We’re pretty much ready to move on from this car, and we can sell it for quite a bit more than we thought given the skyrocketing used car prices. We can get $4000 more for it today than we could more than 1.5 years ago and several thousand miles later. As long as we get a good deal on a new car, the current sale value of a very good condition relatively young used car is astronomical. It seems like a good time to get rid of the minivan.
The Model Y is what I guess they call a “crossover utility vehicle”. It’s huge on the inside. We might take a test drive today or over the weekend, but it looks like it can be a sedan if you want it or an SUV if you want it. That’s REALLY appealing to us. And I love the fact that it’s AWD.
My husband bought his Model X about 3 years ago. Although he purchased everything he needed to install a 220 outlet in the garage (have the line apparently intended for a hot tub by the prior owner), he has yet to do this. He found that charging the X from a regular 110 outlet overnight is sufficient to top off the charge for his 30-mile RT commute. Our X came with a free use of Tesla superchargers, so whenever he needs a quick charge, he goes to the nearby charger and just grabs a Starbucks drink while the X is “drinking.” At some point in the next year, we will install solar panels on the garage and a couple of Tesla powerwalls. My husband really wanted to replace our aging roof with Tesla solar shingles, but several recent developments turned him off of that idea, so regular solar panels clipped to a standing seam metal roof are what the current plan calls for.
Speaking of taking the X on longer drives, we have done it several times to visit the eastern part of the state, and locating chargers was not a problem.
The one unexpected “perk” of having an EV for us is less frequent car washing. No exhaust pipe means a cleaner car! 
I do not need to spend a whole lot of time scrubbing the gunk off the rear wheels when I wash the X.
Hmmm, the only recent RWD (that is not AWD) minivan would be the Metris (unless you consider something like a Sprinter or Transit to be a "mini"van).
Or do you really mean that the front tires are spinning, rather than the back tires as you mentioned above?
Sorry, my bad. Front! It’s a front-wheel drive MV
Why on earth would you not plug in your PHEV!? You should do the math on how much money you can save. We just bought our 20 yr old a Ford C-Max. It gets plugged in to the wall outlet every night. It doesn’t take long to charge the 20 miles and almost never uses gas. I think we have filled the gas tank twice in the 4 months we’ve had it and that’s with doing a 300+ mile road trip in it. Our 20 yr old drives it to and from work every day (about 15 miles). That’s just silly and wasteful not to plug it in. You don’t need any special charger. It’s such a small range that it doesn’t take long to charge. It will easily charge overnight. You can even stop at a public charger if you don’t have an outlet handy at your place of residence. My oldest it about ready to move out and realized there’s a Nissan dealership next to work with a charger that will do the job super fast.
For our Chevy Bolt EV, we do have a dedicated charger in the garage. Cost about $500. It just uses 220v like your stove or clothes dryer. Easily charges the car’s 250ish mile range up overnight. We use this car all the time. We take it on road trips (been from NC to Florida in it). It is a great car and super fun to drive. I just drove it to Richmond and back from Chapel Hill for a day trip (165 miles each way, so 330 total). Plugged it in when we got there and walked around the city to look at VCU, then drove it home. Great car.
Go EV and you won’t ever go back. And plug in that PHEV!!