First long trip on first EV. Few issues to report

[JCtx]

Hey gang. Just wanted to report on the few issues we've had with the car, and improvements suggested after our first long trip. Car is 1,700 miles/3 weeks old. I got the hang of it fairly well already thanks to this forum.
1. Only real issue we had is screen froze after finishing charging on one of the superchargers. I didn't close the charging screen when it reported 'charging complete', but probably not a fix. Removed cable with no issues, but screen froze after that, while making a semi-loud constant electronic noise. Didn't try driving away, just to see if the car allowed that or not (should have tried that). After a second try resetting the screen, it finally worked... but it took a loooooong time to reboot. Is that normal? But after the reboot, everything was back to normal, and it didn't happen again.
2. When connecting the cable at home yesterday, the car started making a lot of 'clicking' loud noises it didn't do before. Didn't know what it was until I saw the screen and car wasn't charging. Upon close inspection, there was a red triangle that said cable didn't latch. So removed it, shoved it solidly all the way, and it worked fine after that. From now on, I'll make sure cable is all the way in until I feel the plug hit the end of the port, to avoid a repeat of that.
3. Got an AP warning several times (and it was OFF), which also disabled lane-departure warning, and all other driver aid features listed on the AP menu. Minimized the warning swiping it to the left, but an annoyingly large green/black circle remained (is there a way to clear warnings?). The first 2 times it happened with super strong winds, which were whipping the car side to side. But the third happened when I let the car wander by itself to see if lane departure warning would keep the car on its lane (like if you fall asleep). Well, it didn't, and I got the damn warning again, even with AP off. Geez. Anyway, it resets itself after a stop, so not the end of the world. BUT it should happen. And if it does, only disable AP, not everything else. Hope Tesla fixes that at some point.
4. On the suggestion list, the 'sound when locking' feature is pathetic. Can barely hear the damn thing even with zero noises around. It should be louder, with a more pleasing sound, and with a double 'beep', like Audis. It could be easily done at least on cars with the external speaker, since Tesla can even play 'La Cucaracha' on it.

All in all, due to extensive research and reading, and accepting the idiosyncrasies of Teslas, we're very happy with the car. I scheduled my stops with 30% range, to play it safe, and be able to have extra range in miles, or time with HVAC on, in case of any unforeseen circumstances, like re-routings, stopped traffic, etc. Even in winter, and traveling at high speeds in TX highways (80 mph speed limit), I was able to make it to each supercharger with 60% charge or less, so the highest I had to charge was 90%. And in 3 out of the 4 cases, we didn't have to wait for the car when we were ready, so it worked out great. We used to travel making minimal stops, so we did like an hour more, but it was a blessing in disguise. We're almost 60, so it's nice to stop more anyway. Thank you all for contributing to this forum, which gives us newbies the opportunity to learn everything we need to know about our cars .
JC

 

[JCtx]

Forgot to add one annoyance of ours: You cannot turn the headlights OFF like on any other car. They revert back to AUTO every time, and the worst thing is they sometimes don't turn off in daylight, like they're supposed to. And the light green color on the screen is hard to see in broad daylight. I've found myself driving in the middle of the day with the freaking headlights on... and they're in auto. Is there a way to either leave them OFF until we want to, or make them turn off immediately upon engaging P? And how about making them turn off on daylight every time? I didn't see any way to adjust sensitivity to the auto headlight feature, delay to turn them on, or headlight off delay adjustment (which I'd set to zero, so they turn off immediately), but please let me know if I missed something. Otherwise, we'd have to get used to turn them off when we arrive home, AND before leaving.

Finally, just updated to software version 35.5, and looks identical to the prior version. Does anybody know what was the purpose of today's software update? Just curious. Thank you.

 

[TMThree]

The car clicks when it turns on because its connecting to the main battery (instead of just using the 12v)

 

[Cybr.Myk]

Forgot to add one annoyance of ours: You cannot turn the headlights OFF like on any other car. They revert back to AUTO every time, and the worst thing is they sometimes don't turn off in daylight, like they're supposed to. And the light green color on the screen is hard to see in broad daylight. I've found myself driving in the middle of the day with the freaking headlights on... and they're in auto. Is there a way to either leave them OFF until we want to, or make them turn off immediately upon engaging P? And how about making them turn off on daylight every time? I didn't see any way to adjust sensitivity to the auto headlight feature, delay to turn them on, or headlight off delay adjustment (which I'd set to zero, so they turn off immediately), but please let me know if I missed something. Otherwise, we'd have to get used to turn them off when we arrive home, AND before leaving.

Finally, just updated to software version 35.5, and looks identical to the prior version. Does anybody know what was the purpose of today's software update? Just curious. Thank you.

Why do you want them off? I don’t think they use much battery and statistics show having them on prevents many accidents.

We can’t turn our headlights off in Canada (while the car is in motion) since 1989.

 

[Gasaraki]

I don't understand point 3 and 4.

When the car locks, the horn sounds. Maybe you're saying the horn is not loud enough. It is not super loud but I also don't want the whole parking lot to hear a loud horn going off.

 

[flyingowl]

he end of the world. BUT it should happen. And if it does, only disable AP, not everything else. Hope Tesla fixes that at some point.
4. On the suggestion list, the 'sound when locking' feature is pathetic. Can barely hear the damn thing even with zero noises around. It should be louder, with a more pleasing sound, and with a double 'beep', like Audis. It could be easily done at least on cars with the external speaker, since Tesla can even play 'La Cucaracha' on it.

Yes, I enjoy listing to that crap all day/night long in apartment complex. It does one beep, that enough.

 

[boiler81]

Sounds like you may not be optimizing your trip time if your charging to 80-90% at each stop on your road trips. Remember you can probably get by with arriving with 10-15% charge at the next Supercharger and you will get both faster charge rates, and shorter charge times if you only charge to the needed level to make the next Supercharger stop.
This concept is foreign to folks coming from ICE cars, but if you want to optimize your EV use, don't fully charge unless needed to reach next charge station.

 

[holmgang]

Why do you want them off? I don’t think they use much battery and statistics show having them on prevents many accidents.

We can’t turn our headlights off in Canada (while the car is in motion) since 1989.

Yup. DRL is mandated in most of Europe as well.

Also I can't understand the objection? I remember lots of chatter about it in the US in the 2000s, but I've actually never ever ever been bothered by the headlamp output of other motorists during the day. At best it helps with visibility. At worse it does nothing.

 

[stonelance]

Too often I see clueless people on the road at dusk with their headlights off... Coming from Canada it does indeed seem safer to just always leave them on. Although I think DRL are typically not as bright as full headlights?

As for lane departure warning/collision avoidance, I have only ever noticed the steering wheel vibrate when crossing a line. The collision avoidance doesn't kick in unless it thinks you are actually about to hit something while going over a line.

I haven't had a problem hearing the honk after the doors lock. Maybe compare with someone else's tesla to make sure it isn't something wrong with your car. Also (not trying to be rude!), Might be a good time to check for minor hearing imparement? Do you find other things difficult to hear as well?

 

[rincewind]

I haven't had a problem hearing the honk after the doors lock. Maybe compare with someone else's tesla to make sure it isn't something wrong with your car. Also (not trying to be rude!), Might be a good time to check for minor hearing imparement? Do you find other things difficult to hear as well?

My hearing is not what it once was, and I can easily hear the 'honk' on lock - perhaps a faulty honk

 

[Heynow999]

I have leared that I can trust the navigation system with regards to making it to the next charger. We aim to arrive at the next charger with 10%. The software is conservative I find, plus you can always drive slower if you find you will not make the next charger. The car charges sooo much faster at 10%! When we are supercharging we will set the next destination and we will leave as soon as the software shows that we will make it with 10% charge, but what usually happens is because it charges so fast that by the time we have gone to the washroom and gotten a coffee the car is ready to go. We have done several trips to Florida and Georgia from Toronto , in the winter, with no issuses.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

scheduled my stops with 30% range, to play it safe, and be able to have extra range in miles, or time with HVAC on, in case of any unforeseen circumstances, like re-routings, stopped traffic, etc.

Next time do 10% target, assuming all Superchargers look to be in good shape, and there is not significant weather uncertainty. It’ll be a lot better and faster. Obviously, give yourself additional margin, if it is a special case, and conditions dictate you must have some safety buffer.

Unless it is cold or very hot, unexpected traffic will help you, not hurt you. About 20mph is the optimal speed for maximum range.

 

[JCtx]

Why do you want them off? I don’t think they use much battery and statistics show having them on prevents many accidents.

I'm talking about the HEADLIGHTS people, not the DRLs, which are plenty bright even in broad daylight. The main headlights stay on during the day sometimes, and they're a waste of energy. I haven't seen a single other Tesla with the headlights on during the day, except my car. So it's obviously not needed, and not normal. And I'm not stupid to drive without headlights when appropriate. No useful answers there, so will just keep turning them off manually.

I don't understand point 3 and 4.

The horn beep is barely audible, and none of my family members can hear it either, so it's not my hearing. Will test another Tesla one of these days, to compare. I'm not asking for anything loud; just audible enough, without bothering anybody. Plus our car doesn't lock at home, so we're talking about making a little beep at grocery stores, etc., so hardly bothering anybody with a short beep.

Sounds like you may not be optimizing your trip time if your charging to 80-90% at each stop on your road trips.

Yeah, I know. But we weren't looking to optimize, since this was out first long trip. And it was cold, and ultra windy, so more dangerous than usual. And if stuck for whatever reason, wanted to make sure we could use the heater. By the way, you can also minimize fueling time on an ICE car by just filling up what's needed to arrive with the reserve on. I know you'd only save maybe 1/2-minute, but nobody does that because it's not fun having to hyper-mile, or get stranded, due to an unforeseen event. So nobody does that, since you're taking a much bigger risk. Fortunately, we didn't waste hardly any time, so it worked great for us.

Next time do 10% target, assuming all Superchargers look to be in good shape, and there is not significant weather uncertainty. It’ll be a lot better and faster. Obviously, give yourself additional margin, if it is a special case, and conditions dictate you must have some safety buffer.
Unless it is cold or very hot, unexpected traffic will help you, not hurt you. About 20mph is the optimal speed for maximum range.

Thank you for that info. I didn't know the optimal speed is only 20 mph; good to know, and the more reason not to risk having to hyper-mile (ha ha). And no way we'll ever do 10%. There's always uncertainty on a trip, plus you have to reportedly slow down at that charge level. And when it's super cold or super hot, you need HVAC if you get stuck or stranded, so will continue to shoot for 30% under those conditions. In early spring or late fall, when temps are mild, 20% would be fine. By the way, did the comparison between 20 and 30% on ABRP for this 600+ trip, and the difference was 10 minutes. Not worth the extra risk IMO. I know perfectly by now how EVs work, but I can't justify that difference. If I needed 100, then I'd probably do 20% on that leg, since it does take longer the higher you go with the charge. Or if somebody parked next to our supercharger (cutting charge current in half), maybe for that leg too. But I actually liked the stops we made, so no need to charge charging time, at least for this trip, which we used to make often before COVID.

 

[smartypnz]

About 20mph is the optimal speed for maximum range.

All these years I thought it was around 40 mph.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

There's always uncertainty on a trip, plus you have to reportedly slow down at that charge level

Be sure to use the navigation estimation screen. I typically charge enough to ensure it says more than 10% on arrival. Note you must go above 5% to get an accurate read on the estimate. I’m disappointed if I pull into a Supercharger with more than 10% charge.

It will hassle you about arrival charge at some point in that vicinity, but generally it’s not an issue. Obviously you should compare how you have been doing vs. the original predictions and adjust accordingly.

But I actually liked the stops we made, so no need to charge charging time, at least for this trip,

True. There is no reason to change your charging strategy at all, if you were not waiting on the car. If you find yourself waiting on the car, then you can adjust your strategy.

I did a 1075-mile trip in a day over the summer in very hot temps, and I was basically never waiting on the car, when arriving at 10% charge. Only had to wait on two of the 8 charging stops. There were other trip-related activities (eating, etc.) that I took care of at the other stops.

 

[TMThree]

I'm talking about the HEADLIGHTS people, not the DRLs, which are plenty bright even in broad daylight. The main headlights stay on during the day sometimes, and they're a waste of energy. I haven't seen a single other Tesla with the headlights on during the day, except my car. So it's obviously not needed, and not normal. And I'm not stupid to drive without headlights when appropriate. No useful answers there, so will just keep turning them off manually.

Since you're so worried about the headlight consumption, I assume you have calculated your energy losses from them and have a dollar amount of loss ready to share with the rest of us?

That's the only thing that will tell us if you are spewing nonsense or have a valid concern that you have researched before complaining about it here.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

All these years I thought it was around 40 mph.

It’s in this 20-25mph ballpark. You can look at the average speed the guys who did 600+ miles on a charge in an LR RWD did. I think it was about 19mph. With higher rolling losses in the AWD I’d expect the optimum to be a slightly higher speed for the AWD.

If you are running the heat or other accessories, that will push the optimum speed to a somewhat higher speed.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The main headlights stay on during the day sometimes, and they're a waste of energy.

Just to put this in perspective, they’re probably on the order of 50W for both lights (I don’t know the exact number.).

Compare to 280Wh/mi at 70mph (just a rough estimate) which is 19,600W.

So about 0.25% impact. Maybe as high as 1% if I am off on the headlight wattage. Obviously this is something they will optimize for.

I have never paid attention to how to control the headlights or running lights and whether or not your situation is unexpected.

The good news is that if you run the headlights it pushes your optimum speed to a higher speed so you’ll get there faster if you hit the optimum.

You could think of those pesky headlights as adding 1Wh/mi at 50mph but 5Wh/mi at 10mph. (Again, ballpark numbers.)

 

[LV1972]

Hey gang. Just wanted to report on the few issues we've had with the car, and improvements suggested after our first long trip. Car is 1,700 miles/3 weeks old. I got the hang of it fairly well already thanks to this forum.
1. Only real issue we had is screen froze after finishing charging on one of the superchargers. I didn't close the charging screen when it reported 'charging complete', but probably not a fix. Removed cable with no issues, but screen froze after that, while making a semi-loud constant electronic noise. Didn't try driving away, just to see if the car allowed that or not (should have tried that). After a second try resetting the screen, it finally worked... but it took a loooooong time to reboot. Is that normal? But after the reboot, everything was back to normal, and it didn't happen again.
2. When connecting the cable at home yesterday, the car started making a lot of 'clicking' loud noises it didn't do before. Didn't know what it was until I saw the screen and car wasn't charging. Upon close inspection, there was a red triangle that said cable didn't latch. So removed it, shoved it solidly all the way, and it worked fine after that. From now on, I'll make sure cable is all the way in until I feel the plug hit the end of the port, to avoid a repeat of that.
3. Got an AP warning several times (and it was OFF), which also disabled lane-departure warning, and all other driver aid features listed on the AP menu. Minimized the warning swiping it to the left, but an annoyingly large green/black circle remained (is there a way to clear warnings?). The first 2 times it happened with super strong winds, which were whipping the car side to side. But the third happened when I let the car wander by itself to see if lane departure warning would keep the car on its lane (like if you fall asleep). Well, it didn't, and I got the damn warning again, even with AP off. Geez. Anyway, it resets itself after a stop, so not the end of the world. BUT it should happen. And if it does, only disable AP, not everything else. Hope Tesla fixes that at some point.
4. On the suggestion list, the 'sound when locking' feature is pathetic. Can barely hear the damn thing even with zero noises around. It should be louder, with a more pleasing sound, and with a double 'beep', like Audis. It could be easily done at least on cars with the external speaker, since Tesla can even play 'La Cucaracha' on it.

All in all, due to extensive research and reading, and accepting the idiosyncrasies of Teslas, we're very happy with the car. I scheduled my stops with 30% range, to play it safe, and be able to have extra range in miles, or time with HVAC on, in case of any unforeseen circumstances, like re-routings, stopped traffic, etc. Even in winter, and traveling at high speeds in TX highways (80 mph speed limit), I was able to make it to each supercharger with 60% charge or less, so the highest I had to charge was 90%. And in 3 out of the 4 cases, we didn't have to wait for the car when we were ready, so it worked out great. We used to travel making minimal stops, so we did like an hour more, but it was a blessing in disguise. We're almost 60, so it's nice to stop more anyway. Thank you all for contributing to this forum, which gives us newbies the opportunity to learn everything we need to know about our cars .
JC

You should not have ANY issues with brand new car for that price after first trip.

People are buying Audis,Lexus,Acuras... And after first couple of long trips they are happy how car is driving.

There is NO need to make list of issues .

Im saying this in general, after reading people trip stories on FB, all of them have issues from something minor to big (including towing).

Tesla owners are very forgiving, they actually are not mad at Tesla, just reporting those issues.

I could only imagine what would happen if those number of issues are happening with other manufacturers

 

[Candleflame]

Why do you want them off? I don’t think they use much battery and statistics show having them on prevents many accidents.

We can’t turn our headlights off in Canada (while the car is in motion) since 1989.

are you talking about headlights or DRL? If you drive your 3 in canada does it keep the headlights on all the time?