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6th Annual Sound of Silence Rally - Custer SD - May 17-19

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That's only 15% down, I'm not surprised that they're dragging their feet still on a replacement. Wish you luck on wearing them down. How much time do you have left on your warranty? Still about 4 - 5 years, right (IIRC 90D but not a facelift)?

If you manage to convince them that'll take some weight off my mind. I know it's a different gen of tech, but your total miles are just past where my warranty runs out. If I still have better than 85% original capacity when I hit that mark I'll be happy, I expect SC distribution to be even denser by then. If it drops to that point or lower and I'd be able to get warranty that'd be awesome. Win-win.

"only" 15% loss but back when I was a new owner I was under the impression they were replacing them at ~12-13% but that would have been the 60, 75, 85, as the D models weren't old enough or high enough miles at that time. That wasn't an exact value from Tesla Tech but thought I saw on the Forum that it happened around that level.

No worries, it keeps dropping steadily so I don't have much faith that it will plateau and level off anytime soon. I'm at 133,000 miles after 37 months for my 90D pre-facelift (Jan 2016 build). Essentially, it is a 10-1/2 yr old car in "Tesla years" as they estimate 12,500 miles per year for typical use. I have the 90D v1 battery pack (discussion in another thread) and the v2 and v3 battery pack 90D do not have the "capped at 95 kW charging" that I do which is a big issue as I can't even get close to the old 118 kW that I used to. Losing range is one thing but losing supercharging speed when hitting as many as I do really adds salt to the wound.

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I have the 90D v1 battery pack (discussion in another thread) and the v2 and v3 battery pack 90D do not have the "capped at 95 kW charging" that I do which is a big issue as I can't even get close to the old 118 kW that I used to. Losing range is one thing but losing supercharging speed when hitting as many as I do really adds salt to the wound.
Yeah, that sucks. I just got a patch installed overnight and read the notes this morning. 2019.16.2! Leap frogged me forward to having 150kW capability w/pre-condition (even though it is listed in the "prior" features, I hadn't had those patches). A week late, Musk! :p
 
Yeah, that sucks. I just got a patch installed overnight and read the notes this morning. 2019.16.2! Leap frogged me forward to having 150kW capability w/pre-condition (even though it is listed in the "prior" features, I hadn't had those patches). A week late, Musk! :p

Yep, I just got that update last night as well but the Release Notes on the screen this morning were completely blank. I'll go look again at it but alas I am STILL capped at 95 kW so that makes the gap even more painful since I can't take advantage of the new upgrade.

Edit: it was blank an hour later and after moving the car but I exited out and went to the Software tab and the Release notes showed up.

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Gotcha. That wasn't showboating ... it was research. My 90D used to have 296 or 297 miles of max range and ~81.0 kWh of usable battery. It now has 255 miles and 69.0 to 69.5 kWh of usable battery. I'm trying to see if / when / how Tesla will replace my battery but they are being a bit resistant at this point claiming it is "still within the expected range."

On a previous drive on this trip I was able to extract 69.5 kWh so I know 69.0 kWh is a safe max to use for my calculations. Here was the max charge at Spearfish, SD and then the end result of driving 283.1 miles at 244 Wh/mi and using 69.1 kWh. I knew that I needed to go ~272 miles so I knew weeks ahead of time that I needed to average ~254 Wh/mi if I had any hope of making it which meant pretty much a max of 55 mph for the entire stretch.

I maintained that discipline and it ended up at 46.5 mph average speed (towns, traffic, slower speeds on side roads, etc.) but I knew what I was doing so in my mind it wasn't showboating but confirming what the max battery available is for me -- so that I can report that back to Tesla and show them my range is definitely not increasing. This is why I have to choose a 75D in the various Trip planning apps / sites so it doesn't think I can drive 290 miles at highway speeds (and 90% user available of 75 kWh is 67.5 kWh and I have 69.0 kWh so it is a little built-in safety range).

My friends took the direct 215-mile 3.5 hr route from Spearfish to Dickinson and if I did that I'd have to charge up for the night and backtrack 60 miles or 1 hr to get to the MT/ND border and then 60 miles or 1 hr back to Dickinson then charge for 2 hrs to add 60 miles so I could make it to Bismarck 175 miles away. That looks like 7.5 hrs of driving + charging before being able to leave Dickinson at 12 pm the next day (11 am at the earliest) and by going slower I was able to do the drive a different route in 6.0 hrs and left Dickinson at 8 am the next day.

On the route map, there was a large loss of Internet connection from ~90% SOC to ~60% SOC so that is the straight line from the corner of WY to Ekalaka, MT. There were RV Parks in Bowman, ND and Medora, ND so each of those were available but I didn't need to use them so although it might look rather remote and unsupported it was actually a walk in the park and an enjoyable adventure but I am certain nobody in a 75D would most likely never attempt that let alone someone in a 90D or 100D or LR Model 3. I really do miss the 30-40 miles of range I used to have.

Wow! That is really heading off in to “Here there be Dragons” land, very impressive.
 
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Yep, I just got that update last night as well but the Release Notes on the screen this morning were completely blank. I'll go look again at it but alas I am STILL capped at 95 kW so that makes the gap even more painful since I can't take advantage of the new upgrade.
Well maybe Tesla will put it off long enough that they'll only have 100kWh packs available as replacements for you. ;)
 
Well maybe Tesla will put it off long enough that they'll only have 100kWh packs available as replacements for you. ;)

Ha, except I've heard that the 100 kW packs don't fit in the 85/90 kW frame but I don't know if that's accurate. I will take whatever they give me but yes a 100 kW would be sweet.

In the meantime, I have a 250 mile range 90D that can only charge barely faster than a 72 kW Urban supercharger. That hampers things when trying to put in a bunch of miles per day.
 
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I've heard that the 100 kW packs don't fit in the 85/90 kW frame…
It fits, and several people have made the swap without Tesla's help (when you have salvage cars, Tesla won't help anyway). The problem is that the plumbing is different, so you have to do more than just swap out the battery.
 
There are two sides to this story however. I'm sure from the city of Custer's point of view they want us to come prior to Memorial Day. I'm guessing they have no problem attracting tourists on any weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Also the hotels would be more expensive if we did it during that period. If our only concern is weather, perhaps mid-September would be the optimal time. But that doesn't really help the school kids problem.

Good information. Thanks! Having recently retired from teaching I am good with events sans children.
 
I’d put money on it being the weekend before Memorial Day weekend (May 15-17, 2020). Basically, as late as possible in the off-season.
I think this is pretty clearly the best weekend to do it overall, when considering the town's needs and us wanting to keep costs down.

We will get lucky with weather one of these times. Or at least luckier!

To put it in perspective, the average high temperature for Custer in May is 62F and the average low is 38F. May is the wettest month with an average of 13.4 days of precipitation, but only an average of .5 days of snow.
 
One other possibility would be to do a mid-week rally during the summer. This would probably hurt attendance from people who are relatively local to the area (mostly Colorado owners), but would actually help most of the other attendees. With a mid-week rally, attendees from the west coast, Midwest, Canada, etc. could take a week off work and squeeze in their road trip fairly easily. East coasters could maybe squeeze it into a week if they go Cannonball Run style, but really they are going to have to take quite a bit of time off to make it to Custer regardless when it is.

By doing it mid-week, the Chamber of Commerce et al. may be more open to moving it to a summer date. Although I'm not sure how much busier they are on the weekends vs. weekdays during summer. Obviously many of the tourists are on long trips, not short weekend trips. But I still suspect they fill up more on the weekends.

Another possibility would be to move it to September. Say the weekend after Labor Day. Still somewhat "off-season," but the September weather should be much more reliable. Drier and no risk of snow.

I personally don't care when we do it and am not necessarily proposing a change. Just thinking out loud and presenting some other options.
 
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