Recent content by wcalvin

Every time that I settle in following another Tesla on I-5, I breathe a little easier. If most of the vehicles ahead of me are electrics, it is that much less pollution to inhale. I happily set the adaptive cruise control to whatever speed they are traveling. I can't wait for Tesla to provide...

TACC is the most useful part as it allows one to look around without the worry of the guy in front suddenly braking. That's important for safety as well as scenery. The Auto-steering is OK for uncomplicated freeway driving, but not much more. One can swivel around without the worry of...

An ability to supercharge between I-90 and the ferries across Puget Sound would at least open up the northern Olympic Peninsula. Since the Tesla Seattle Service Center is right at the I-90 terminus, its southern parking lot would be an obvious choice.

Squeezing battery and electric drivetrain into a vacated engine compartment of a handy donor vehicle sounds familiar. Isn't that what Tesla did eight years ago with 2500 Lotus cars with emptied engine compartments? While they did the EV the right way by 2012 with all the weight low and the...

If the problem develops gradually, suspect contacts or screws not tightened. If it always cuts out before reaching 40A, the extra resistance that is dropping the voltage at the car below about 190V may be a long run of too-small wire. I've encountered that twice with 120V outlets; they were...

Depends on your comfort zone. Last night I charged to 100% (240 miles in 70D), drove 60 mles on I-5 on TACC and Autosteer, with no stop-and-go, but found the tank 100 miles down. And by then I didn't have time to stop at the nearby supercharger. So I was glad that I had max charged overnight.

Tesla's method of detecting hand-on-wheel is presumably the slight drag when the Autosteering makes a small change in wheel angle. But if you are on a straight stretch of road, it may not make any little moves for you to resist in the timeout interval. So I make the habit of manually...

For the Burlington WA charger off I-5, seldom more than two others. But usually one, not none.

Manufacturers need to identify failure modes of the APs and tell us about them. Updates could then announce the elimination of a failure mode as well as new features (and their known failure modes).

So far as I can tell, the hands-on-the-wheel warning must operate on resisting the autosteering by a small amount. But what if you are on a long straight road where the autosteering doesn't move the wheel for long periods? Anyone know better?

People seem to think that the Tesla “autopilot,” better called Driver Assistance, gives a driver freedom to ignore their surroundings. In my experience, it allows the driver to keep looking around at the traffic in the way pilots are trained to do, scanning for approaching hazards such as...

This crash illustrates a virtue of proper freeways over those 55mph divided roads with left- and U-turn hazards which are so common in Florida.

Autopilot in planes and trains means following a specified course and speed, automatically making corrections for wind etc.; this does not include braking for sudden obstacles Tesla's AutoPilot (a combination of AutoSteering and TACC, not the same thing) includes braking for common obstacles...

NYTimes article today mentions that the Chevy Bolt will be getting a mirror that can be switched to a display for a rear-top mounted videocam. Looks to me that, instead of a fisheye lens, it uses a wide sensor or pieces together three square views, so it gets passing lanes. http://nyti.ms/253PFDQ

I have a similar Faraday cage problem with the parking gate at my condo. My solution was to reveal the transponder (a thick credit-card-sized package) via the sun roof. I have the mesh-netting shade insert that filters overhead sunlight, so I simply stuck the transponder to the middle of the...