TL;DR: hang in there folks! It's worth the wait and frustration.
Life is fine. I'm loving the new car. When people ask me how I like it I tell them "
all cars should be like this". I'm still adding mods. Yesterday I added a screen protector for the touchscreen and magnets to keep the roof sunshade from flapping in the breeze (when the window is open for my dog). The best mod was the swivel mount for the touchscreen.
I haven't gone camping yet but I did take a nap in the back for a few hours on a tri-fold mattress. Instead of blocking all the windows I'm planning to use a wrap-around sleep mask to keep the light out of my eyes. I need to figure out how to get music from my phone to work while in camping mode. I suspect I just need to set it up when I'm still in front with access to the screen.
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I got a "Foam King" for washing the car using a normal garden hose. This, combined with Meguiar's Hybrid Ceramic Wax and a large microfiber towel has made washing a breeze and nearly effortless. I'm still working on getting a carport installed. I've got a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in my driveway for charging. In going from 50% to 80% charge it adds roughly 10% per hour.
The problem with logging into YouTube was magically fixed without a software update. So according to a previous post my life should be complete now.
Basic autopilot does about 80% of the driving for me, YMMVG. I'm looking forward to some of the FSD beta 9 improvements trickling down to AP. If the car does a better job of detecting the edge of the road/lane then I think my AP usage will go up to 90%.
One strange thing is on the small 30 MPH road I take to go home, the Tesla slows down on the same little hill that my old Volvo slows down on. The old Volvo slows down because it has very little power at 6,000 feet elevation and cruise control does not put a lot of force on the accelerator. I don't know why the Tesla slows down. Maybe it's concerned about a lack of visibility. It's always spooky when it happens.
To make a right turn off the divided highway to the 30 MPH road I usually go into the breakdown lane and there is even a break in the painted lane marker that seems designed for this. I can slow down in the breakdown lane without causing cars behind me to have to slow down. The Tesla is unhappy with this maneuver. It thinks driving in the breakdown lane is bad bad bad. IMO the real solution is for them to add some paint and mark a pull off lane for that turn. Also, after I make that turn, the Tesla thinks the speed limit on the small road is 45 MPH so I have to wait until we get to a 30 MPH sign before I engage autopilot because AFAIK you can't adjust the autopilot speed when autopilot is not engaged. I wish there was a way to tell it the speed limit on that stretch before the sign is 30 MPH. Putting a speed limit sign close to the intersection would also fix this.
I'm slowly learning how to get the most out of the car. One important trick is to almost always use the stalk to disengage autopilot instead of the brake. This way I can have my foot on the accelerator to control the speed instead of bouncing from the brake to the accelerator when regen braking kicks in. Also, like my old Volvo, you can use the accelerator without disengaging autopilot/cruise-control. So with both cars I put my foot on the accelerator in the same spot on the road at that little hill. I'm very impressed with the human-machine interface but it takes some learning, at least for me it did.
I want to drive more!