Just a series of random thoughts
1. Tire pressure is affected by temperature more than I expected. I'm normally at around 40 because the tires seem to slowly lose air. However, when I was in Brownsville, I saw that the pressure of each tire was at 45psi! They're back down to 39psi now that I'm back in the (cool) DC area again. I haven't noticed a change in handling throughout, but the consumption data coming from the car says that I'm losing a fraction of a percent of my battery power due to low pressure. I don't recall any comments while they were overpressure.
2. Unsurprisingly, superchargers away from heavy traffic areas (e.g. middle of South Texas) weren't very busy, but there was almost always at least one other car at any charger that I visited. Twice a woman was the only person at the charger when it was dark outside and left as soon as I arrived. Not feeling safe must be horrible.
3. I don't understand what the route planner is trying to do with supercharger selection. At the beginning of the trip (in more rural states), it seemed to be sending me about 2 hours between charging sessions, which I quite liked. By the end, when I had reached more populous areas, it was doing weird things like picking a charger that was 1.5 hours away, then one 3 hours away. More than once, I had to look up available chargers along the path to pick ones that were better suited to my two hour preference. Tesla may have spaced things out by 2 hours in the rural areas so the planner was forced to use that spacing, and the planner has bugs (or is considering things I don't care about) when planning near many chargers. I did change my maximum charge percentage at some point from 80 to 97 so that my maximum wouldn't interfere with a needed charge. But I may have inadvertently told the planner that I wanted longer trip legs. Dunno.
4. In all, the trip covered about 4400 miles, and I had only two clear reactions to the car. One was in Arkansas when a couple 20-somethings in a brown sedan (maybe a Subaru) passed me. The passenger was clearly yelling something at me. He was rolling up the window when I first noticed him coming even with me. That's when he started rolling it down again so he could continue his tirade as the car receded into the distance. I have no idea what he said. The other reaction was in Texas when a car was again passing me. I'm doing a very modest 70 and this guy blew past me at around 85-90 with the passenger sitting on the sill of the window, giving me the "cool" sign. When they got past, he just dropped back into the car. I can only assume that they do that to Teslas to see if they can get on one of those Tesla dashcam YouTube channels.
Oh, I have to add that I did have a nice older gentleman approach me when he saw the car at the Starship facility. He started out by asking about getting in and out of the car when the battery dies. I have to assume that one of his doubting friends took him to task about that.
5. I got 265 Wh/mi for the trip overall. Bizarrely, I had a 7-10 mph wind that was either coming straight at my front or from the side. No tailwinds during the entire loop. I rarely exceeded 70 mph, but certainly that was the bulk of my driving.
6. You cannot get a tour of Tesla's Austin Gigafactory. The guy at the gate said that it was a "live construction site" and would remain so for another 3-4 years.
7. A SpaceX contractor said that SpaceX is now aiming for an April 20 launch of Starship.
8. The trip planner in the car doesn't show time zone changes on your route. The times are always expressed in the local time zone, so they only update once you cross into the next time zone. This caused me to misunderstand my arrival time in Titusville, Florida, where I wanted to watch the CRS-27 launch. I was 40 minutes late (instead of my planned 20 minutes early), so I stopped at Flagler Beach (65 miles up the coast) and watched there. I was surprised to find that launches are a thing for the locals. They go down to the beach for each launch. It was a pretty good spot to see the launch, as it turned out. I just wish CRS-27 had involved the booster returning to the launch site. We could see the entry burn for the booster, but nothing of the landing burn on the barge.
Anyway, I'd like to see the times in the location's time zone. So show
City A Supercharger 2 3:27pm
--- Time Zone Change Mountain to Pacific ---
City B Supercharger 4 3:27pm
or some such thing. Just make clear what's happening.
9. Speaking of time zones, I think that NoA wigged out as I passed from Central to Eastern time. NoA braked hard and wouldn't resume normal travel until I disabled and reenabled it.
10. I was constantly battling the speed setting, especially in Texas. Their speed limits are at least 10 mph higher than the equivalent roadway here in the DC area. Texas is big, of course, so they need high speeds, but it seemed like a speed limit 55 or higher was a statement that you should do 75. Anyway, the limit seemed to be changing all the time, and many of the changes (but not always) would trigger the autopilot to reset the car's maximum speed. Sometimes up and sometimes down.
11. The introduction of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping is a huge win for road trips. Adding the ability to change lanes just by using the turn signal was really nice. That stuff, combined with voice GPS made navigating so straightforward for me. I don't let NoA make lane changes on its own, so I can't speak to that experience.
12. My right foot hurt. The normal position for the right leg is mostly-outstretched with the foot on the accelerator pedal. When I have NoA running, I get my foot away from the pedals. But there's nowhere comfortable to rest my foot and position my leg for 4400 miles of driving. My left leg was fine, but my right foot/ankle/leg definitely ended up sore no matter how I positioned myself. I could only do so much because I had to be able to quickly move my foot to the pedals. I'm wondering if a hump to the right of the pedals would work in the same way that the hump works on the left side.
13. I never used FSDb on the trip. After driving for hundreds of miles with NoA, FSDb is far too jerky in comparison. Not that NoA is perfect. There were times when I tried to trigger a lane change and it would start it, then snap back to the starting lane. I also found it frustratingly-slow in accelerating once a lane change into a faster lane was completed. In contrast, FSDb accelerates as it is making the lane change, which I like.
14. Random observation: the road into the SpaceX Starship facility has been beaten and broken pretty badly. But the return lanes are in pretty good shape. The contrast confused me until I realized that everything at Starbase went in via that road, but empty trucks travelled out. It was a c;lear illustration of how the weight of a vehicle can damage a road - even if it's a rather extreme example. I guess I saw the same thing on the highways where trucks were banned from the left lane. At least there was one intact lane.
15. The entire US road system appears to be under construction. I guess that's that federal money from "The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" showing its influence.
16. Superchargers are in their infancy for conveniences. Most seem to be near a hotel or a fast food place, but even simple things like covers to keep the rain off, or squeegies to clean a windshield are generally not available. This area has a long way to go.
17. For reasons I won't go into, I drove 21 hours straight at one point - well, with charging breaks, of course. The car didn't bat an eye at the treatment. I may have been kinda loopy by the end, so I'm only mostly sure that it performed well in the later stages.
18. Texas is a barbarous state. I couldn't find peppermint patties anywhere.
19. The screen should have a matte finish straight from the factory.
20. The automation nag for hands-on-the-steering-wheel has got to go. That, or I want the ability to nag the developers in real time each time the car screws up. ping boop beep
"Electric car Tesla Model 3 parks in the shade, in front of Supercharger stations" by verchmarco is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail
1. Tire pressure is affected by temperature more than I expected. I'm normally at around 40 because the tires seem to slowly lose air. However, when I was in Brownsville, I saw that the pressure of each tire was at 45psi! They're back down to 39psi now that I'm back in the (cool) DC area again. I haven't noticed a change in handling throughout, but the consumption data coming from the car says that I'm losing a fraction of a percent of my battery power due to low pressure. I don't recall any comments while they were overpressure.
2. Unsurprisingly, superchargers away from heavy traffic areas (e.g. middle of South Texas) weren't very busy, but there was almost always at least one other car at any charger that I visited. Twice a woman was the only person at the charger when it was dark outside and left as soon as I arrived. Not feeling safe must be horrible.
3. I don't understand what the route planner is trying to do with supercharger selection. At the beginning of the trip (in more rural states), it seemed to be sending me about 2 hours between charging sessions, which I quite liked. By the end, when I had reached more populous areas, it was doing weird things like picking a charger that was 1.5 hours away, then one 3 hours away. More than once, I had to look up available chargers along the path to pick ones that were better suited to my two hour preference. Tesla may have spaced things out by 2 hours in the rural areas so the planner was forced to use that spacing, and the planner has bugs (or is considering things I don't care about) when planning near many chargers. I did change my maximum charge percentage at some point from 80 to 97 so that my maximum wouldn't interfere with a needed charge. But I may have inadvertently told the planner that I wanted longer trip legs. Dunno.
4. In all, the trip covered about 4400 miles, and I had only two clear reactions to the car. One was in Arkansas when a couple 20-somethings in a brown sedan (maybe a Subaru) passed me. The passenger was clearly yelling something at me. He was rolling up the window when I first noticed him coming even with me. That's when he started rolling it down again so he could continue his tirade as the car receded into the distance. I have no idea what he said. The other reaction was in Texas when a car was again passing me. I'm doing a very modest 70 and this guy blew past me at around 85-90 with the passenger sitting on the sill of the window, giving me the "cool" sign. When they got past, he just dropped back into the car. I can only assume that they do that to Teslas to see if they can get on one of those Tesla dashcam YouTube channels.
Oh, I have to add that I did have a nice older gentleman approach me when he saw the car at the Starship facility. He started out by asking about getting in and out of the car when the battery dies. I have to assume that one of his doubting friends took him to task about that.
5. I got 265 Wh/mi for the trip overall. Bizarrely, I had a 7-10 mph wind that was either coming straight at my front or from the side. No tailwinds during the entire loop. I rarely exceeded 70 mph, but certainly that was the bulk of my driving.
6. You cannot get a tour of Tesla's Austin Gigafactory. The guy at the gate said that it was a "live construction site" and would remain so for another 3-4 years.
7. A SpaceX contractor said that SpaceX is now aiming for an April 20 launch of Starship.
8. The trip planner in the car doesn't show time zone changes on your route. The times are always expressed in the local time zone, so they only update once you cross into the next time zone. This caused me to misunderstand my arrival time in Titusville, Florida, where I wanted to watch the CRS-27 launch. I was 40 minutes late (instead of my planned 20 minutes early), so I stopped at Flagler Beach (65 miles up the coast) and watched there. I was surprised to find that launches are a thing for the locals. They go down to the beach for each launch. It was a pretty good spot to see the launch, as it turned out. I just wish CRS-27 had involved the booster returning to the launch site. We could see the entry burn for the booster, but nothing of the landing burn on the barge.
Anyway, I'd like to see the times in the location's time zone. So show
City A Supercharger 2 3:27pm
--- Time Zone Change Mountain to Pacific ---
City B Supercharger 4 3:27pm
or some such thing. Just make clear what's happening.
9. Speaking of time zones, I think that NoA wigged out as I passed from Central to Eastern time. NoA braked hard and wouldn't resume normal travel until I disabled and reenabled it.
10. I was constantly battling the speed setting, especially in Texas. Their speed limits are at least 10 mph higher than the equivalent roadway here in the DC area. Texas is big, of course, so they need high speeds, but it seemed like a speed limit 55 or higher was a statement that you should do 75. Anyway, the limit seemed to be changing all the time, and many of the changes (but not always) would trigger the autopilot to reset the car's maximum speed. Sometimes up and sometimes down.
11. The introduction of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping is a huge win for road trips. Adding the ability to change lanes just by using the turn signal was really nice. That stuff, combined with voice GPS made navigating so straightforward for me. I don't let NoA make lane changes on its own, so I can't speak to that experience.
12. My right foot hurt. The normal position for the right leg is mostly-outstretched with the foot on the accelerator pedal. When I have NoA running, I get my foot away from the pedals. But there's nowhere comfortable to rest my foot and position my leg for 4400 miles of driving. My left leg was fine, but my right foot/ankle/leg definitely ended up sore no matter how I positioned myself. I could only do so much because I had to be able to quickly move my foot to the pedals. I'm wondering if a hump to the right of the pedals would work in the same way that the hump works on the left side.
13. I never used FSDb on the trip. After driving for hundreds of miles with NoA, FSDb is far too jerky in comparison. Not that NoA is perfect. There were times when I tried to trigger a lane change and it would start it, then snap back to the starting lane. I also found it frustratingly-slow in accelerating once a lane change into a faster lane was completed. In contrast, FSDb accelerates as it is making the lane change, which I like.
14. Random observation: the road into the SpaceX Starship facility has been beaten and broken pretty badly. But the return lanes are in pretty good shape. The contrast confused me until I realized that everything at Starbase went in via that road, but empty trucks travelled out. It was a c;lear illustration of how the weight of a vehicle can damage a road - even if it's a rather extreme example. I guess I saw the same thing on the highways where trucks were banned from the left lane. At least there was one intact lane.
15. The entire US road system appears to be under construction. I guess that's that federal money from "The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" showing its influence.
16. Superchargers are in their infancy for conveniences. Most seem to be near a hotel or a fast food place, but even simple things like covers to keep the rain off, or squeegies to clean a windshield are generally not available. This area has a long way to go.
17. For reasons I won't go into, I drove 21 hours straight at one point - well, with charging breaks, of course. The car didn't bat an eye at the treatment. I may have been kinda loopy by the end, so I'm only mostly sure that it performed well in the later stages.
18. Texas is a barbarous state. I couldn't find peppermint patties anywhere.
19. The screen should have a matte finish straight from the factory.
20. The automation nag for hands-on-the-steering-wheel has got to go. That, or I want the ability to nag the developers in real time each time the car screws up. ping boop beep
"Electric car Tesla Model 3 parks in the shade, in front of Supercharger stations" by verchmarco is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail
