Free supercharging unexpectedly available again ? (and other questions!)

[SKing]

Hello, please forgive the range of questions on my first post.

I’ve read all the forums here but still have a few gaps in my understanding. I’m excitedly about to make a purchase ;

Background: several colleagues and friends have model S and X, all enthuse over the car ...and are very critical of the service/company elements. One collected a brand new car from Digbeth that was utterly filthy, it took him 2 days of effort to clean the marks from it) Quality control is still poor apparently.

I came close to buying a new S a few months ago, (I cant get excited about the three, and like hatchbacks for Costco runs!) but when I realised that my referral code wouldn’t provide free supercharging I was disappointed and postponed. (Besides my faithful BMW 520D is a lovely drive and approaches 50 mpg !)

Now I see, we have the Raven models with improved ride and free supercharging.
I’d be very grateful if any of you could “straighten me out here “ !

(i) Does the free supercharging apply overseas? ( I’m in my late 50’s will be retiring soon, my GF and I would love the idea of touring Italy and other long distance trips !)

(ii) Forgive me for being “tight”, but after spending 78K on a car I’m not excited about extras such as “home charging points” and leads extending all over the drive! .... so my question is , if supercharging is fast, and there is one en-route to work, why would I every need a home charger?

(iii) Colours and trims ... the choice is dreadful isn’t it ? ( I like the cream seats , but see that they come with a light colour carpet ( whereas the white seats have a more-sensible black carpet) Can anyone report on the cream/white seat “longevity” ? Will they look shocking in 5 years ? Is black the only real choice ? ( I won’t be able to afford a new car when I’m retired ! )

(iv) My drive in Portugal has a 22 degree angle. (Maybe more at the bottom !) The ability to raise the car and avoid scraping the spoilers (chin?) on the ground is important to me. May I ask whether any “Raven” owners can confirm that the “lift “ ability is identical to last years model?

(v) The wait for a new one is clearly unpredictable and Tesla seem to lie about dates. i noticed a few “already configured “ new cars ( with mileages listed from 10 to 30 miles) on the website. These are typically about a thousand pounds less than the “new configuration”. Are they “customer rejects” ? Demonstrators ? Showroom models ?
Can I be assured that they are current ( Raven ) models ? Does anyone have any experience of buying a pre-configured car>?

Thanks in anticipation

 

[Rooster6655]

(i) Does the free supercharging apply overseas? ( I’m in my late 50’s will be retiring soon, my GF and I would love the idea of touring Italy and other long distance trips !)

Yes applies in abroad based on previous users with free superchargering

(ii) Forgive me for being “tight”, but after spending 78K on a car I’m not excited about extras such as “home charging points” and leads extending all over the drive! .... so my question is , if supercharging is fast, and there is one en-route to work, why would I every need a home charger?

Not necessarily need one but the time saved charging at home may mean your'd be better off unless of course you will have things to do while charging to negate this fact.

(iv) My drive in Portugal has a 22 degree angle. (Maybe more at the bottom !) The ability to raise the car and avoid scraping the spoilers (chin?) on the ground is important to me. May I ask whether any “Raven” owners can confirm that the “lift “ ability is identical to last years model?

I don't see why you couldn't adjust the suspension as with previous versions, if you are really concerned you can actually rent one to test.

(v) The wait for a new one is clearly unpredictable and Tesla seem to lie about dates. i noticed a few “already configured “ new cars ( with mileages listed from 10 to 30 miles) on the website. These are typically about a thousand pounds less than the “new configuration”. Are they “customer rejects” ? Demonstrators ? Showroom models ?
Can I be assured that they are current ( Raven ) models ? Does anyone have any experience of buying a pre-configured car>?

Usually these cars are just excess inventory unless they have a few thousand miles on which may indicate a demo model

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

(ii) Forgive me for being “tight”, but after spending 78K on a car I’m not excited about extras such as “home charging points” and leads extending all over the drive! .... so my question is , if supercharging is fast, and there is one en-route to work, why would I every need a home charger?

Home charging is much faster where it counts: your time. You just add 15 seconds of plugging in and unplugging to your normal routine and the car charges while parked. It's always going to more convenient if the car can refuel while you do something you'd do anyway, rather than you diverting somewhere and finding something to do while you refuel.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Now I see, we have the Raven models with improved ride and free supercharging.

I think??? it is currently: 2 years Supercharging ("End of Quarter Sales push") on Inventory sales. Lifetime (of owner) for new purchase (Model-S/X only]

Its not worth a great deal, particularly if you would normally charge at home - home Off Peak electricity may be as low as £30 / 1,000 miles [for Model-S]

if supercharging is fast, and there is one en-route to work, why would I every need a home charger?

Each Rapid Charge (i.e. some flavour of Fast AND DC charging) is "counted", and there comes a point where the charge rate is throttled for long term battery preservation. It isn't much, and ramps up (to still not a great deal) over a very significant number of charges. I don't have exact figures,m sorry, but it might be a reason not to Rapid charge unnecessarily, particularly if you plan to keep the car a long time - range is likely to suffer sooner for frequent rapid charging owners. Lower-power charging is kinder to the battery-chemistry.

For Model-S : 13 AMP plug = 5-6 MPH (miles charged per hour). 7kW dedicated wall-charger is 22-23 MPH. So 1,000 miles is around £30 of Off Peak electricity.

Assume you used Supercharger and only charged in sweet-spot 10% - 70% that's around 55 kWH in about 30 minutes ... plus the time to get there, park, plug-in, etc. and the loss of "energy" for the trip each way (assuming you weren't going past anyway ...) ... that's about 165 miles of range, so that 1,000 miles is going to mean sitting at Superchargers for [total of] 3 hours

Decent home charging (assuming you have off-road parking) means:

• leave home every day with a full tank / max range
• If come home (empty-ish) and need to go back out after a few hours
• Easily re-charge overnight in the Off Peak window

But, yeah, its going to be circa £500 to install a wall charger. If money is tight for that you could get a Commando socket fitted and use the UMC cable that comes with the car (for 22 MPH charging) ... but you are adding wear-and-tear to the UMC cable (it aint cheap) and if you charge outside and need to take the cable with you there will be days when it is raining and mucky ... or you will wind up somewhere and wish you had the UMC with you ...

May I ask whether any “Raven” owners can confirm that the “lift “ ability is identical to last years model?

Supposedly the Raven uses active suspension with a very fast reaction time ... salesman told me that I could take speed bumps flat out ... haven't tried it though! ... but you might be able to take your Portugal ramp flat out? That would certainly be impressive

Sorry, no help with your actual question.

Are they “customer rejects” ? Demonstrators ? Showroom models ?

Yes ... presumably not Demonstrators as they will be higher mileage, but good deals to be had on ex-demo models at end of each quarter.

 

[SKing]

Many thanks for your replies ! Appreciated, Stuart

 

[arg]

(i) Does the free supercharging apply overseas? ( I’m in my late 50’s will be retiring soon, my GF and I would love the idea of touring Italy and other long distance trips !)

Yes, but the amount of money it saves really isn't significant. People get hung up on the idea of free supercharging and it drives them to do things that don't make sense.

If you keep the car for 50,000 miles, then your TOTAL cost of all charging during that time if you do it at the most expensive commonly available public charging would be £6000. If you did it all at home at peak-rate electric prices it would cost you £2500. If you did it all at home at cheap rate overnight it would cost you maybe £1000. You will probably spend more than that on tyres.

So the overall cost of charging isn't huge. The variations in the price of the car from month to month are greater than you are likely to spend on charging it in the whole time you own it.

More specifically, home electricity is somewhere between 6p (best off-peak) to 15p (reasonable day rate) so 2p/mile to 5p/mile. So free supercharging rather than charging overnight at home offers to save you 2p/mile, maybe £3 for a typical supercharger visit - you'd probably spend more at Starbucks while waiting for the charge than you'd have paid for electricity at home, never mind what your time is worth.

Free supercharging vs paid for supercharging is obviously a bigger difference, but paid supercharging is 24p/kWh*, about 8p/mile. So if you drive 1000 miles down to italy it will cost £80 - not to be sniffed at maybe, but you will be spending more on road tolls and in any case doing that a few times is still trivial in comparison to the cost of the car.

*(UK price - other countries in Europe are slightly higher or lower but not materially different).

(ii) Forgive me for being “tight”, but after spending 78K on a car I’m not excited about extras such as “home charging points” and leads extending all over the drive! .... so my question is , if supercharging is fast, and there is one en-route to work, why would I every need a home charger?

Because home charging is one of the greatest luxuries of owning an EV. Always leave home with a full tank, never have to fill up at all on all your normal routine driving or find you have to stop when you are in a hurry because you happen to be running low. Compared to a petrol car, this is a huge win (slightly counterbalanced by inconvenience on trips where you do need to charge away from home, but those are more predictable. Also, ability pre-heat the car before setting off in winter without concern about the loss of range.

Supercharging is fast but not that fast - and even if it were infinitely fast there's still the time taken to deviate from your route to the supercharger and park there (just like going to a petrol station).

I wouldn't give up my home charging even if they paid me to supercharge.

(v) The wait for a new one is clearly unpredictable and Tesla seem to lie about dates. i noticed a few “already configured “ new cars ( with mileages listed from 10 to 30 miles) on the website. These are typically about a thousand pounds less than the “new configuration”. Are they “customer rejects” ? Demonstrators ? Showroom models ?
Can I be assured that they are current ( Raven ) models ? Does anyone have any experience of buying a pre-configured car>?

You will need to check carefully the spec on things like the Raven upgrade. Many of these cars are simply built randomly to create stock; some are customer rejects in the sense that the customer cancelled or changed their order after it was committed to build but before delivery (ie. nothing wrong with such cars), a few may be genuine customer rejects in the sense of rejected for some defect. Demonstrators and showroom models should be distinct from these "inventory" cars, but again it pays to check. If you can find an inventory car that meets your spec then it's a sensible way to buy.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I wouldn't give up my home charging even if they paid me to supercharge.

 

[tess19]

Just been reading autoexpress and they say you get "400kWh free every year". Is that correct?
Tesla Model 3 vs BMW 3 Series: electric car vs diesel showdown

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Nope, sloppy journalism. That was an old deal for S/X owners. ended Nov 2018

The bonus for each referral is about the same (1,000 miles ~400kWh) but that's not an annual allowance, it's per referral.

 

[SKing]

Arg , Wannabe, Tess, Norfolk ...appreciated , thanks . Stuart

 

[LukeT]

(iv) My drive in Portugal has a 22 degree angle. (Maybe more at the bottom !) The ability to raise the car and avoid scraping the spoilers (chin?) on the ground is important to me. May I ask whether any “Raven” owners can confirm that the “lift “ ability is identical to last years model?

Our Raven S has four height settings, which I'm pretty sure is as per the pre-Raven car we demoed. With location-based memory. I don't think that function has changed.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Model S and Model X get unlimited supercharging for the first owner at the moment. The 2 year thing is an incentive to shift inventory M3 stock which has no value int he UK as there aren't any UK M3 inventory.

There's quite a lot of UK new MS and MX new inventory knocking around at the moment so the wait shouldn't be too long, all seem to be listed at full price or at least sites like tesla-info and tedslainventory don't think there is a discount applied. Discounts are most often seen when old spec cars need to be got rid off (e.g the pre raven cars). Anything with less than 50 miles is effectively new, anything over that Tesla will still sell as New even if its been a demo or loan car.