Report: taking Model S to the drive-in (and energy usage there)
The car is quite nice at the drive-in, though it requires a mess of settings adjustments.
- At the entry gate, set the suspension to 'very high' to get over the grass and bumps.
- After parking, put the car in NEUTRAL and then turn the parking brake on. Do NOT put the car in "park". This is important.
- Turn the night-time screen brightness down to 0%.
- Turn the headlights OFF. (The car needs to be in "neutral", not "park" in order to remember this. If it's in park, the lights will keep going on whenever you open the door, and everyone else at the drive-in will yell at you.)
- Turn the Daytime Running Lights off. (If you're driving a Canadian model, I guess you can't go to the drive-in -- sorry.)
- Set the radio to the appropriate frequency, adjust volume and tone.
- Set the climate control to get fresh air and to blow on the front windshield to avoid fogging.
- Go get concessions and enjoy the movie...
- Remembering that your sound will turn off temporarily every time you open the driver's door. (Sigh.)
This is at the Finger Lakes Drive-in in Auburn, one of the last drive-ins to still have the window speakers:
It was a nice day at Auburn.
At Auburn, I parked at 7:39 PM, with 218 rated miles, and left at 10:58 PM, with 203 rated miles. That's 15 rated miles of charge in a little over 3 hours, for radio and climate control.
We did not enjoy the movie ("Iron Man 3") much, though (it was too incoherent for my tastes). So we went out to another movie later that week...
This is a much worse picture at the Elmira Drive-In:
It was raining a lot. The windshield wipers are slower than they should be, even on high. It was still possible to watch the movie despite the rain, though. ("Oz: the Great and Powerful" -- we liked it a lot)
At Elmira, I parked at 7:58 PM with 195 rated miles, and left at 10:58 with 167 rated miles. That's 28 rated miles used in 3 hours sitting still, just for radio, climate control, and wipers.
Heat was probably the determining factor in the higher usage here, I'm guessing.
When you leave, there's another checklist:
- Reset the climate control.
- Turn the night-time screen brightness back up to your preferred level.
- Reset the radio to your favored listening; adjust volume and tone (for some reason, drive-ins often have much quieter volumes on their radio signals than regular stations, so your volume may be way too loud).
- Turn the headlights and Daytime Running Lights back on.
- Shift into reverse (parking brake will unset automatically) and drive away. (Suspension will reset itself.)
Downsides of the car for a drive-in:
- Finicky things to remember to do
- No way to prevent sound volume from dropping when you open driver's side door.
- Windshield wipers too slow
- Bizarrely, the windshield wipers make the car shake when set on high speed.
The upsides are much larger:
- Most valuable: you can defog the windshield without turning on a loud rumbly gasoline engine. (Though I can hear the heat pump compressor running, it's still pretty quiet.)
- The car is large and has plenty of space to sprawl out and eat drive-in food, even with four people in the car (which we did in Auburn). The popcorn bucket fits neatly on the "armrest", while drinks and food fit in the center cubby...
- No worries about draining the car battery. :wink:
- And of course, no worries about gas.
Am I the first person to take my Model S to a drive-in cinema? :biggrin:
