My work commute is only 5 miles, how does this stack up with battery heating/conditioning, will the battery just be getting there by the time I am ready to switch off?
Basically Yes. What does your ICE do? Still freezing cold when you arrive at work? Sod that !!
Leave at the same time each morning, Mon-Fri? Have a schedule to pre-heat the car for 15 minutes before you get in. Windscreen will be defrosted, and car toasty warm. When you are in a restaurant and the bill arrives then flip the APP on and press HEAT so tis ready for you.
Quite a lot of EV driving is a change form ICE, and Tesla Tech is yet-more-change. Up to you of course, but the New First World Problem Solution is to have the car be ready for you.
Bothered about that being expensive (compared to ICE it isn't ... but ...) or non-Eco? Just buy your juice from a sustainable source. Or fit some Batteries and Solar Panels (admittedly won't contribute much in Winter, but you can buy your Juice from North Sea Wind overnight when it is typically being curtailed)
Can you really only had wash the car or can it be snow-foamed with a pressure washer?
Or you can do it my way if you like? Never wash it ...
Is it possible to extend the warranty as an owner after the initial 4 years is up and if so what is the cost of this?
Yes, its basically [or "was"] just a 3rd party insurance thingie. When my previous car got to end of warranty (mileage came first, in my case) I looked at it and the requirement to have service interval as per manufacturer kicked it into touch for me. Since then Tesla has changed service interval from "same as ICE" to "Pretty much never".
Big big worry is the reports of the Auto-Pilot phantom braking, how prevalent is this and should it be a worry?
I wonder about that too. I've read plenty of posts here saying "
I don't use AP because of phantom braking" and I scratch my head. I've done over 100K miles in Teslae, much of that back on AP1 although I don't find AP2 much different for things like Phantom Braking, its just differently-different. I do wonder if the people who say it troubles them significantly might need sensor calibration or somesuch. But it might also be down to the driver, and what they are comfortable with; my wife hates AP because of the "not in control" thing.
For me, like for
@Roy W. too, its a minor issue. I'll try to put it into perspective, as I see it.
I pass a Juggernaut. Same as all the others I have passed in the last X-hundred miles. Plenty of gap, its not encroaching into my lane. Car brakes for some reason. I am not expecting it. But I am aware that the car sometimes does this, so my foot is over accelerator and I dab that and all is fine. The downside: I presume my brakelights flash and car behind me may be confused, or just assume I am a Twit. Passenger is confused too - its sudden [but not extreme] braking followed by my acceleration, so a "jerk". Can't remember my wife (as a passenger) remarking on it, so perhaps not even as much of a "jerk" as I imply.
If you took a 17 year out for their first ever drive you would be aware of absolutely 100% of the idiotic things they would do, and be prepared for them. But with AI you, as a human, have absolutely no means of anticipating what it might do, so to my mind that is where the problem is. I go under a bridge on my commute, Same bridge, same time of day, every day. Once in a blue moon AP's AI thinks it is a threat and it brakes. Sun is at a particular angle, cloud cover appropriate, recent software update that has tweaked the settings ... whatever ... car thought there was a risk.
It fired the "Imminent collision" warning [
a shriek-alarm and plenty of red ink on dashboard display] last night when i had a car full of passengers. (Not on AP), Country road, oncoming car but plenty of room, no apparent obstacle ... passengers asked "
What was all that about" so I explained, and I also explained "
I'm very happy for the occasional false alarm because of what it is capable of in a real one"
On one occasion I joined dual carriageway, pulled out into outside lane, engaged AP, some traffic ahead but not significant, looked down to select music or somesuch and car braked. Not emergency-style, but enough to make me look up. Traffic had slowed ahead and was backing up ... no idea if I would have looked up in time and avoided incident on that occasion, I'd rate it as "probably", but that's exactly the sort of Catch that AP will do. Its looking under the car in front to see what the car in front of that is up to. On the other hand you are watching the brakelights of the car in front and relying on that - they might be broken. You might have nudged sideways to see the brakelights of the car in front of that, but you can't always do that. AP is watching around all the time. When incident happens it doesn't have to do the "
Is there anything in the adjacent lane", it already knows 'cause its checking that umpteen times a second, so it just gets on with "avoiding"
My view is that I don't car whether the car, or me, spots the trouble, but for sure the two of us are better than me on my tod. I'm happy to put up with some false alarms once in a while (and, for me, phantom braking is only once in every several hundred miles)
One thing though: I think the biggest risk is complacency. Thousands of Miles and miles of faultless AP driving ... don't ever assume that it will always be like that. People have been killed, sadly, where it was clear from data that they had not been paying attention. I have a strict rule: hand on wheel, eyes on road, no exceptions.
