Bought an ‘18 Model S advice needed

[Ambergold]

Hi

We have a significant wait here in Ireland for the Model 3 (earliest Dec) so I put a deposit on an 18 Model S 75D today from a UK based dealer, will be picking it up next week and will have a bit of a drive ahead of me (London to Holyhead) so will need to charge a few times and was hoping to use Superchargers.

What’s the situation with getting access to these and is there any other service companies I should sign up with.

Thanks,

Con.

 

[WannabeOwner]

will have a bit of a drive ahead of me (London to Holyhead)

Suggest planning using A Better Route Planner. I would aim to arrive at Holyhead with decent state of charge, to make sure you have plenty at the other side

A Better Routeplanner

 

[henleyregatta]

It's well worth checking out the situation with regard to Supercharging on the car. An '18 S should - should - have been delivered with some form of free supercharging but it's probably limited to original owner / life of car and or limited to a number of miles. If it's a "for the life of the car" (which was normal up to late '17) then that should be all you need to worry about, Supercharge away!

You will want to have a Tesla Account (with some form of card payment) setup prior to picking up the car, and you'll want the Dealer to have been through the process of updating Tesla to get the car moved onto that account. Even when buying from Tesla it can take up to a day for a car to appear on your account and until it does you might have trouble using Superchargers.

If you're time-limited I'd consider investigating other charging options to get you back home. Most of the Service Station Supercharger locations have CYC or similar charge points very close by, so perhaps register with them as insurance?

 

[zap fizzle]

Agreed re above - you need in writing that the account is in a state such that supercharging is possible. It's taking many weeks for Tesla to process change of ownership in the UK at present. They need to ACTUALLY TEST THAT IT DOES SUPERCHARGE, not just tell you it's OK.

How far you need to travel on the IE side will matter a lot...but basically you need to plan a long stop at Stoke Northbound to 100% it (or at least 95%) and then go very gently from there.

The ideal situation would be you have a chademo adaptor (or even the new CCS retrofit - though it doesn't yet seem reliable) and the RFID card to use rapids in Ireland before you start - then you have belt+braces - or at least could top up at one of the Ecotricity crapids along the North Wales coast. However, chademo is a bit of a learning curve and I would be pretty worried about a new owner having to rely on it with no prior experience.

 

[Ambergold]

Thanks all, was in the UK last week importing an eGolf for a family member, the ferry crossing on the return was pretty bad so I've decided to use a car transport company.