Hi, I am thinking of getting a 85D to use for taxi/chauffeur work. I am based in Leicestershire and am a little worried as we have no Superchargers around us at the moment. It is if I stay local that I am worried as I know if I head towards London I will find plenty. How do you find it in this area? Also how fast do they charge at home with single phase electricity? Also any suggestions for options and any adaptors that are worth getting? Thanks
Charging at home (32A single phase) gets you about 20 miles of driving per hour of charging. So assuming you sleep at night, you don't really need to worry about local charging unless you do more than about 200 miles/day of local driving.
The key adaptor you will need is the CHAdeMO one - this unlocks usefully-fast charging in lots of places, particularly motorway service areas. They are a good complement to the Supercharger network - if you need to pick up a full charge during the day, then Supercharger is the only thing that makes sense, but if you need a 'top off' to do a round trip (or a leg to a Supercharger) that's just a bit too far to do on a single charge, then 20-30 minutes on a CHAdeMO while you have a coffee gets you 40-60 miles. They are unreliable, and the free ones can get crowded with Leafs/Outlanders, but the luxury with the range of the Model S is that you almost certainly pass several on your journey and can just stop at the 2nd one if the first is broken/occupied.
You probably ought to have a Type2 cable also to access slow public charging - potentially useful if you end up parked somewhere for a few hours.
If buying the car now (who knows if the policy might change again), you get the "mobile connector" (known here at the 'UMC'), which gives you a 13A plug adaptor - useless for middle-of-the-working-day charging, but sometimes useful for overnights away from home.
