Hi everyone,
Here's an update of my so far successful Roadster adventures!
I took delivery of the car on Saturday noon in LA after a quick early flight from SFO to LAX. Car was fully charged at the dealership and showed 184 miles of ideal range. Good!
I did a late lunch stop in Santa Barbara, where I plugged the car into a Tesla Destination Charger at the Californian Hotel's public lot. At first I freaked out because the light inside the little door was blinking yellow, which looked very much like a failure mode to me (I expected green). Later Henry explained to me that that was the expected color when charging.
The charge was very slow though: barely 20 miles of range in 1,5 hours.
Then hit the road again towards Pismo Beach where I arrived just in time for the sunset with around 25 miles left on the gauge. The Shore Cliff Hotel has 2 charging stations, a Tesla one which was taken by a Tesla S which was already fully charged as I arrived (and remained so the whole time I was there – charging etiquette anyone?), and an available J1772 charger which delivered nicely (in 25 minutes by the time I was fully checked-in at the hotel, it already charged 20 miles of range).
Next (late) morning, I was a bit surprised to see the "Charge complete" message on the display, but a gauge that showed only about 90% charge. There was also a "Top up?" button on the touch screen. Is it so that by default the battery doesn't get to 100% by itself and you need to request that specifically? If so, that's unpractical. Any technical reasons?
Continuing the trip to the North, Big Sur and another late lunch at the beautiful Ventana resort (too bad the weather was cloudy). The restaurant's parking lot has a Tesla Destination Charger which was out of order, and a J1772 working fine. Clueless restaurant staff ("oh yeah, one of the charging stations is acting up") was just helpful enough to let me unplug the resort's golf cart from the J1772 and use it on my car.
Charged about 50 miles of range in 2 hours.
Doing a nice detour onto the 17 Mile Drive, I randomly met another Roadster! Friendly owner who was as happy as I was to make pictures of the 2 cars (attached!).
Arrived on Sunday night around 8pm in Monterey , with about 25 miles left at the gauge. The Monterey Plaza Hotel's lot has a number of J1772 charging stations and you can self park (and self plug).
Those 2 days I drove like a grandpa (except, I confess, on the very fun, small, narrow Nacimiento-Fergusson Road) and switched off everything (no radio, no heating etc.) to save power. Once I discovered the "Range mode" the second day, I switched to that mode, too.
Monday morning 5:45am, hitting the road again towards SF, headlights, seat heater, heating and fast pace on SR 17 North of Santa Cruz – no power saving mood anymore. Arrived in SF at 8 sharp with only about 25 miles remaining and very happy about my trip and my new car! The only slightly negative comment that I'd have is that the steering is very heavy on small curvy roads, even at a pretty fast pace. My Renault Spider is way more maneuvrable in hairpin turns. But it's also way lighter.
Other than that, the car is a lot of fun for sure.
Nevertheless I think I'll do the 3.0 battery upgrade at some point. The current 180 miles range (in the best case) is a bit too short for stress-free day trips.
hcsharp: those 2 adapters are the best investment a Roadster owner can make. You can't venture to open roads without them. Thanks again!
gregd: thank you for the tip re. the EV Trip Optimizer for Tesla app. I just installed the app (didn't see your message before my trip) but it doesn't seem to support the Roadster Sport (I get a "not supported" message every time I try to configure it – apparently the app supports only the standard Roadsters). I sent a message to their support email address, we'll see what they say. And yes, Plugshare is excellent – already entered my first check-ins, pictures and comments.
Roadster: thank you! Yes that's #696 indeed! What is an "exterior CF pkg"? Do you know that car? Didn't it have a good home previously? Now it certainly does.
Regarding Tesla dealership: I live in San Francisco, so will probably use their local dealer on Van Ness Avenue. So you recommend I go there and request all the prior service records and car logs? What is the "CAC"? What do you mean with "transferring the car's ownership into my name"? (The used car dealer in LA takes care of my DMV registration in my name and of my new license plates, so I think I'm all set on that front.) The annual service check sounds like a good idea to me – in case it hasn't been done recently by the previous owner (and then I guess that's where the car's service records can help finding out). But (sorry for the dumb question) why would the Tesla workshop be willing to do it for free? It's a pretty old car now...
Wow that was a long post. Thanks everyone again for your welcome in the Roadster community. I'm looking forward to the spring and summer.
PF
