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Legend of Lightning Green

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Just came back from a driving session. Driving at 22pm with the top off is fresh and funny. I'm a fan of dance music. Now I can finally follow the instructions when they sing to "Put your hands up in the air!"
The headlights fogged up again, not as bad as yesterday, but today it wasn't even raining.

I tried to charge on a free charging station (max. 16 Ampere) a few km from here and got a "extension cord detected" error, the car showed it received only max. 6-7 Ampere. I had a 3 € Schuko adapter plugged on my standard charging cable and thought that may be the problem. Then at home I tried using two adapters in a row, the car charged without problem. I guess something is wrong with that charging station. Great. Well, it could be possible I was the first one who tried to charge there after months. It's very hidden, you won't find it if you don't know the exact location.

The car is fun and really easy to drive. If it weren't for the hard steering (I feel like I'll build up some muscles because of that) even an 8 years old child could drive it.
 
Hi Dragon,

the car drags the amount of current its set for, but the voltage may drop quite a lot. The bad quality of the pins of the plug may heat up the pins. copper is a good carrier of heat and the cable will get very hot.
 
@daniel, Charging in Ellensburg, and Riverstone Resort in Vantage, if you can't quite make it to Ellensburg. Then, it's an easy hop over the Cascades to the Seattle Tesla Store. C'mon, you know you want to do a cross-country trip in that new car of yours. :wink:
Actually, I don't. I LOVE the car. It's SO much fun to drive! But after about an hour and a half, my left foot becomes uncomfortable because it's so cramped in there. A 4-hour trip does not sound like fun. And the two-hour (?) charging stop would be very dull. And I do not like driving in a city like Seattle. For that matter, I hate long driving trips if I don't have company. The only time I do it (in the Prius, which is more comfortable) is for my hiking trips to Canada, because hiking is my favorite thing ever, and driving is the only way to get there. If I have to go to Seattle, I'll fly.

I recall stories of opening up an access port and blowing dry air in with a hair-dryer. Might only be a temporary fix, but at least it is portable.
Mine clear up pretty fast once the car is off.

Yes, then they "plug" the access port / hole with a Gortex patch (lets moisture out, but not in)...a smart fix, but I understand that they are out of these patches and are looking for a new supplier...
In my experience with clothing, Goretex does not really breathe very much.

I tried to charge on a free charging station (max. 16 Ampere) a few km from here...
Hardly worth it, so close to home, when an hour's charging is probably only going to get you about 18 km of range.

The car is fun and really easy to drive. If it weren't for the hard steering (I feel like I'll build up some muscles because of that) even an 8 years old child could drive it.
It's MUCH easier to turn the wheel if you are moving even just a little bit.
 
Mine clear up pretty fast once the car is off.

Mine are always fogging up and staying like that for hours. It's the humid summer weather we are having lately.

Hardly worth it, so close to home, when an hour's charging is probably only going to get you about 18 km of range.

Sure, but if it's there, why not try? The same charging system is in some other places in my region. Aaand you never know if you're going to approach home with only a few km's left and such a charging for an half hour could save your battery from going to zero.

It's MUCH easier to turn the wheel if you are moving even just a little bit.

I know that, have driven cars without steering support before.
 
Hi Dragon,

the car drags the amount of current its set for, but the voltage may drop quite a lot. The bad quality of the pins of the plug may heat up the pins. copper is a good carrier of heat and the cable will get very hot.

Charged with the same Schuko-plug at home and didn't have a problem. There's definitely something wrong with that charging station. The Roadster showed me a stabil voltage of 220 V, it was the Ampere reading which was under 10A.
 
Quick sum up of my first free day with the Roadster:
In the morning I drove to a grocery store and buyed quite a lot of things. I had to put the soft top up, so everything fitted fine in the back. There's plenty of space there.

I recharged the car and went off in the afternoon with 266 km ideal range. I did drive for 175 km and at the end I had 85 km ideal range left.
There were plenty of cars to outrun in the curvy roads. I drove behind a really nice looking green and pimped up Ford Focus with two tailpipes you could shove a tennis ball in. He accelerated with a loud rumbling noise and I went after him. I had no problem to keep up. Well, consider that Ford Focus will cost probably around 40.000 to 50.000 €, but you get the idea how crazy fast the Roadster is. It seemed the Focus didn't even try to accelerate, but his engine sound told something else.

I was in a dangerous situation too. On our roads in the summer there are many motorbikes. They underestimate the power of the Roadster. I wanted to overtake a slow car and there were some bikes behind me. They wanted to overtake me even though I had the signal blinker (you know what I mean...) going, probably thinking they would already have passed me before I could even touch the other lane. The bike after me had to break hard and fortunately I was going fast enough to not have him hit me. After that he passed me with what had to be almost 180 kmh (110 miles). The lesson I learned was that there exist vehicles on the street that are faster than me (and driving even crazier) for which I have to pay extra attention.
 
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and was getting really tired of people saying, 'Nice car ... did you know about the fogging?'.

Yeah, this happens to me too. :frown:

Today I noticed, for the second time, that the PEM at the right side of the car was really dirty, while the left almost clean. Is this a coincidence or what?

After 4 days of driving I'm always more convinced that this has to be the best car in the world.
Today i went driving on the mountain roads with street inclines of ca. 20%. The Roadster managed them without problem. I was surprised when one of the mountain people approached me and said "First thought it's a Lotus, but then I didn't hear the motor. Nice Tesla Roadster!"
The moment was seriously disturbed by his friend which, after I spoke about the regeneration, was convinced Tesla had invented the perpetuum mobile. Needed some time to tell him that this won't work.
Ah and they told me that time ago a Ferrari tried to climb up to this nice village. It failed, damaging the front spoiler.

I'm sorry I had no camera with me. Would have been some nice pictures with the mountain scenario and my green love.
 
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Animals... dogs, cats, birds... they seem all very relaxed when I approach with the Roadster. They won't bother to go out of the way until the very last moment. I found this pretty irritating today with a group of birds which were on the street. At first they didn't see and hear me, then when they did, they didn't care.

Maybe the green color is helping too... they even poop on the car. How respectless!
If they get more confident with it they're gonna use it as ride!

birds_cars_gallery_3.jpg
 
Thanks! But are you mocking me?...

I think they were serious.
Your conversation writing style is fun to read. We can sense the enthusiasm, frustrations and triumphs as you start your Roadster adventure.
You write like you are making a mini-novel.

Your English "mistakes" tend to be amusing and endearing.
(They may seem odd at times, but we know what you are saying.)
 
Dragon, your English is excellent and completely understandable. One thing that makes your writing very fun to read is that you use a lot of syntactically correct phrases that a native speaker would not (and could not) normally come up with. Hard to believe English is your third language. You are obviously a very talented and funny guy! The 'Legend of Lightning Green' is one of the more interesting and amusing threads to read on this forum and you verify that by the amazing number of posts. 18+ pages already!!! Great job and I'm very happy to hear that you love your car. Looking forward to reading about more of your adventures.
 
Heck no! :eek: Your command of written English is probably better than 80% of native speakers and your narrative ability is even better! I don't want you to get a swelled head, but I just wanted you to know how much I (we) enjoy your stories with the hope of reading more of the adventures (trials?) of Lightning Green! :smile:

Hey, I wasn't really serious with my reply. My english is so bad I couldn't make clear I'm joking. :wink: I was surprised to get a compliment like that.
I should've used some smilies to make it understandable.
 
Let me add to the chorus: Dragon, while you make mistakes in your English, you have a knack for relating a story, and your mistakes are never such as would change the meaning of what you say. You express yourself well even when your choice of words is not what a native speaker would use. The purpose of language is communication, and you communicate well even with an imperfect knowledge of the language. What's your other language? French, perhaps, since France and Italy share a border? (And I imagine French would be easier for an Italian to learn than German.)

I'm not surprised that you speak three languages. Only in America are people who speak only one language permitted to call themselves educated.
 
German, italian, english and spanish in this order. :wink:
I don't like the french language, it doesn't sound good in my ears.

Came home just a half hour ago. Have to go out now. I have the urge to drive something... something green maybe.