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Features we didn't know we wanted?

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The main thing I'd appreciate, apart from a few other things mentioned here already, would be a much more intuitive and easy to use way of doing the things you need to do regularly, like turning the wipers, fog lights etc on and off. The touch screen is great, but you need to look at it to use it, and at times when you need to quickly turn some things on the last thing you really need is to take your eyes off the road. I've had to pull over a few times when driving on my own, just to turn things on. Having the option to map commonly used functions to either the scroll wheel/buttons, or the left hand stalk, would be exceptionally useful. Much as I love the clean look from having no switches, there are times when switches with decent tactile feedback, that can be operated purely by feel, are a real advantage.
 
The main thing I'd appreciate, apart from a few other things mentioned here already, would be a much more intuitive and easy to use way of doing the things you need to do regularly, like turning the wipers, fog lights etc on and off. The touch screen is great, but you need to look at it to use it, and at times when you need to quickly turn some things on the last thing you really need is to take your eyes off the road. I've had to pull over a few times when driving on my own, just to turn things on. Having the option to map commonly used functions to either the scroll wheel/buttons, or the left hand stalk, would be exceptionally useful. Much as I love the clean look from having no switches, there are times when switches with decent tactile feedback, that can be operated purely by feel, are a real advantage.

I keep thinking of the massive amount of space the map takes up which most of the time driving I'm not interested in. That space could be better used for some of these functions and make the map a pop up app much like the music player. Next nav instruction could fit inside the right hand 1/3 section where most of the time it's just an overhead view of the car which whilst pretty, doesn't actually add much value. I guess we see what comes with the next big refresh, then we'll have more stuff to moan about!
 
You have to remember that they said that the subscription option would cost more than buying FSD outright, or including it in your lease. So if you look at how much adding FSD increases your loan/lease payment that is a set point for the minimum cost of the subscription.


Well they would. If they said it would be more cost effective to subscribe there would be a big drop in sales of FSD. For a long time when it was unprofitable every penny counted and cash in, even if booked as profit, made a huge difference.

Anyway, I’m not saying they will sell a subscription at that price, just that is what I’d like to see because it’s about as much as I can justify paying.
 
So fed up with heading out to the car to manually change charge rate when I'm topping up with solar on a variably cloudy day... and more than once I've forgotten I've left it on 5A and therefore not got enough charge from E7 rate mains overnight.

I don't know if you already know this, but you can get wall chargers with this functionality. They turn the charge current up and down so the car absorbs the power, which you would otherwise have sent out on the grid.

This is an example:
Solar Box - Solar Box - E-Mobility - Products
 
Sorry to be pedantic, the SR+ is $38k before sales taxes

The SR was $35k, but was never sold here.

The main reason the car appears so expensive here compared with the US is predominantly local sales taxes, which also apply to the software, and are included in our advertised prices, unlike the US where all prices are shown before tax.

My bad, I forgot about that.

Still about $46,000 before tax in our case, so around $7,000 for shipping and import charges.

Doesn't change my personal position that £7,000 for FSD is not a good value proposition to me. £2,000? Yes. £4,000? Maybe.

If I could decide to keep it when I change cars then I might lean more towards a purchase, but I know that they won't increase their trade-in price for a car that has it - even though Elon says it will become more valuable over time - and there's nothing to stop them taking it off a second hand car to sell to the next owner.

Maybe I'm just very cynical, but it feels more like a money making opportunity for them at the moment.
 
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Doesn't change my personal position that £7,000 for FSD is not a good value proposition to me. £2,000? Yes. £4,000? Maybe.

If your (anyones) car had cost £6000 more, but came with FSD as standard, would you still have bought it? ie not having FSD was not an option as it was part of standard spec. But the cars base price would be more expensive and you didn't know the car in any other way other than having FSD as standard spec.

This is a bit like early UK Model 3's and Autopilot. At the time UK orders were first being accepted, Tesla had just made Autopilot part of the standard spec car, but had put the price up by a little less than the original Autopilot option. Most people are probably blissfully unaware that their car was once $3k (?exact) cheaper but didn't come with Autopilot as t was a $4k (?exact) option.

Conversely, would anyone have preferred a £3k discount and not had Autopilot and TACC but regular non adaptive cruise? This is basically part of the reduced spec of the SR vs SR+.
 
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Did you place the second order with a different account?

Would you get double the referral miles if referring yourself?

Once you place your first order you have a referral code/url you can start giving out, and you are able to use it for yourself.
Both vehicles are under one account, just use the same email address when placing the 2nd order.
In theory our first car will have 2000 free SC miles and the 2nd ordered will have 1000 free SC miles, although I am going to assume they will all get lumped together since everything is in one account.
 
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Not an elegant solution but given the climate control can be set to auto, I wonder if setting the passenger temperature to the current cabin temperature would deactivate the fans?

A small digital thermometer placed near the cars cabin temperature sensor (under the cars display) then the passenger temperature could be adjusted to match the readout on the digital thermometer?

Granted, not ideal as you'd have to change the passenger temp during the journey but if it's that uncomfortable for her it may be worth a shot.

EDIT: Or use duct tape (presumably on the vents) as @OttoR suggests :)
You can split the air flow on the passenger side (by doing a 2 finger spread) and point them upwards...they should blow either side of her!
IMG_20200828_204001816.jpg
 
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I don't know if you already know this, but you can get wall chargers with this functionality. They turn the charge current up and down so the car absorbs the power, which you would otherwise have sent out on the grid.

This is an example:
Solar Box - Solar Box - E-Mobility - Products

Just to clarify how this works, there is no ability for a charge point (i.e. the AC outlet that supplies the car) to turn the charge current up and down. This is physically impossible, as all charge points only contain a contactor to turn power on and off to the AC charger(s)* that are built in to the car, they do not contain any current modulation capability.

What a charge point can do is signal to the car what the maximum AC current availability is, by varying the duty cycle of the Control Pilot signal. The charger(s) in the car then have to modulate the charge current drawn so that it is always within the maximum current that's been signalled. All charge current modulation is done by the charger(s) in the car, not the charge point.

My old home made charge point used the same principle to modulate charge current, based on measurements of excess solar generation, and it sort of worked, but because of the time lag between the change in the Control Pilot duty cycle and the change in charge current drawn by the charger(s) in the car, it wasn't as effective as I would have hoped. The Tesla charger(s) seem to take several seconds to respond to a change in the maximum available current signal, so for days where excess solar generation fluctuates a bit, from passing clouds or variations in demand in the house, I found that the charger(s) weren't doing a great job of tracking.

I changed to a system where the Control Pilot only changes to a different maximum available current duty cycle when the power drawn by the charger(s) either exceeded the night time off-peak cost for more than five minutes, or when the excess generated power exceeded that being drawn by the charger(s) for five minutes. This works somewhat better, but in practice there is virtually no cost difference between modulating charge power this way and just setting a fixed low charge current. My latest home made charge point just has three low current settings, 8 A, 10 A and 12 A, in addition to both a 32 A and off-peak timed 32 A setting. I find that leaving the car charging at around 10 A when there is some excess solar generation works every bit as well as the old system of changing the max available current according to the level of excess solar generation.


* "charger(s) because the Model 3 has three chargers, contained in a module located under the rear seat. Each charger is capable of running at a maximum current of 16 A. Two of these chargers are connected together in parallel when the car is connected to a single phase charge point, giving a maximum current of 32 A, or about 7.36 kW from 230 VAC. All three chargers are used when the car is connected to a three phase charge point, giving a maximum current of 16 A per phase, or about 11.04 kW. All three chargers can modulate the charge current below the maximum, if signalled to do so from the charge point CP signal, if the BMS in the battery pack requests a reduced charge current or if the car systems request a reduced charge current.
 
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If your (anyones) car had cost £6000 more, but came with FSD as standard, would you still have bought it? ie not having FSD was not an option as it was part of standard spec. But the cars base price would be more expensive and you didn't know the car in any other way other than having FSD as standard spec.

No way of telling, I tend to look at the overall finance package (how much deposit I have to put in, monthly payments, etc.) rather than the "sticker" price, so it would very much depend on what Tesla offer.

I found the buying experience kind of weird, normally I go to a dealer and then negotiate with the sales people to get myself a deal that I'm happy with, but there's none of that with Tesla.

When I bought my current car it was towards the end of their financial year and they had some build slots they wanted to use to meet quotas, so I managed to get an £18k discount on a higher specification than I wanted and reduced interest on the finance because I didn't need to change my car, which gave me the advantage.

When I went for my Tesla test drive back in August I told the sales people that I like the car, but that their finance deals are rubbish - I have no idea if those things are fed back, but I do know that when I asked for a trade-in price it was almost £5k more than I had been offered in January this year and in the end that was what tipped the balance for me to change now.

Taking all of that into consideration I think that if the car was £6k more only with FSD then I probably wouldn't have bothered. FSD is very much not a "must have" feature for me; in fact TACC is only a "nice to have", but as I say it would depend on the overall finance package.

I expect my position to change in the next 5-10 years as things develop with FSD; I'd love to be able to just have a nap on a long journey instead of driving mile after boring mile.