I do 27,000 miles a year, 10-12% of that is at Supercharger, I have home charging. I have a number of rambling thoughts (sorry about that ...)
Can I charge at home? If not, probably stick to a Hybrid for now.
Absolutely agree with that.
I am looking at a S for company car, I own the business so can control the budget and possible offset for tax reasons
I'm the same. I charge at work (no Benefit-in-Kind on that) [works out 50:50 in practice], and Supercharger use is about 10% of my overall; yours may well be higher if you are on the road a lot. Either way, the saving is significant - EV is 2-3p per mile for Leccy, so even if you have to pay for home-juice its not significant - 20K miles might be as little as £400 a year for "fuel"
BIK on the car is some stupid aberration (16%?) for the current period, it was lower before, and is going to drop back to a tiny amount for EVs
100% first year tax writeoff is handy if you can use the money for something, during ownership, but you will then pay tax on the sale price at the end (or sell the vehicle to yourself at cheapest price you can find ... etc.)
I reckon you currently spend 8 hours a year standing pumping on smelly forecourts, and queuing to pay ...once you have EV you will HATE doing that in ICE cars
You might need a means of allocating EV-charging electricity cost to the business. There are 3rd party logging tools, e.g.
TeslaFi, that log how much Juice you use (at each location) and where you go, so may help with sorting out "Business Mileage and Charging"
The nearest supercharger is around 45 mins away from my home
You don't need any local charging, you will travel 150 miles before you need a charge. However, well placed Supercharger(s) on your common routes back to home are handy. Your best Supercharger, on a journey, is the one furthest away from you (which you have range enough to reach, Natch!)
If a Supercharger is available on route then the journey is shorter if you drive faster and charge longer (up to about 90 MPH, but I presume you don't drive faster than that
).
Car charges fastest when empty, and slowly for the top 10%, agonisingly so for the last 5% - so refill when nearly empty is best.
In UK chances are high you get held up in traffic / roadworks, which will use less energy. So if you stop at Supercharger 100 to 50 miles from destination, then by that time your battery will be low, for fastest charging, and also you will have a much better prediction of energy required to get to destination ... so if traffic has been bad you will just need a splash-and-go.
After you put Destination into SatNav you can view the Energy Graph. That is a line (usually straight, unless significant mountains) from your start energy level to the predicted arrival energy, as you drive an ACTUAL line is added so you can see the difference. For me the two are usually very close. I like to aim to arrive with 10%+ (20+ miles) for detours etc. so if the ACTUAL line dips below that I slow down. Driving at 50 MPH makes a HUGE difference to consumption. As I approach my destination then if I have energy to spare I bump up the cruise control from 75 MPH
I am aware of the home chargers and would look to invest in one
yes, you need that. On the days when you drive less than, say, 200 miles you will leave with a "full tank", no range concern, and you can just drive it like you stole it. Also, home Leccy will be the cheapest (well ... unless "free at work"). Assuming you have Economy-7 tariff, or similar Off-Peak, the car can be scheduled to charge during that time, so you will pay around 50% less than peak Rate for Leccy.
£500-ish to install though, but if your "fuse box" is on the other side of the house (from where you park) that will bump the cost up. Consider having Sparky install a Commando (backup) socket too - useful for other EV visitors - maybe an outdoor 13 AMP socket to Hoover the car etc. I recommend a tethered wall charger - so you don't have to get the supplied cable out every time you charge. Same if you have it inside a garage instead of outside parking.
If you have PV on roof and IF you are parked at home during daylight/sun hours then a Zappi charger may be best - it will divert spare PV energy to car, instead of exporting it.
My morning commute can be 100+ miles, stay away for a few days and then 100+ miles back home
Worth getting a high quality extension (13AMP) lead [in any case, e.g when visiting friends, their frayed lawn mower extension lead is not a good choice]. I am not shy about plugging into any outside socket I can find at a hotel; someone recently said that they have dangled a cable out of hotel window .. "
I'd like a room overlooking the car park please" might be the new reservation requirement
13AMP plug 5-6 MPH - 10-12 hours overnight at the hotel, maybe?
7kW (e.g. home wall charger and typical "EV Destination charger") and much of the Type-2 that I have used = 22-23 MPH
Supercharger 10% - 70% = 30 minutes (i.e. 10% [
irrespective of battery size] every 5 minutes)
CHAdeMO is about 10% per 15 minutes, but can maintain that rate to higher %age.
CCS adaptor "coming soon", dunno about performance of that.
Note that 13AMP is less efficient than 7kW, so not a good choice for regular home usage
Note 2 Supercharging a cold battery in Winter is slow (so night before arrival better than cold morning-after)
When visiting a client I only want to charge on Return leg. Charging on outbound means that I may encounter all-stalls-occupied which adds an unpredictable amount of time to my arrival time. Even if 50% of the stalls are occupied, and you have to "pair share", you get a reduced charge (until the other car leaves). These things are rare; since 2015 all bar one site that Tesla has opened have been 8 stalls or more. So a buying criteria, for me, is "has range to reach client AND back to Supercharger"
Can you do Emails whilst charging? That will make the stop time-neutral - you won't have to do those emails when you get to destination. My Starbucks / Costa spend has increased significantly though!
For your hotel overnight-stop there is a stop-resume energy penalty. If you park overnight you will lose some range; part of that is parasitic loss (the electronics chatting to HQ, and will be MUCH worse if you use badly behaved APPs to monitor the vehicle; something else to learn to grapple with), part is setting off with a cold battery / cabin. This is mostly a winter problem. Leaving with a cold battery has a significant energy penalty to get cabin and battery warmed up. If you are a travelling salesman, with multiple stops in the day with a 1+ hour stop, your battery will be cold (in Winter) by the time you leave
That will need more charge (bit hard to guess, but at least 20% less range in Winter than Summer). If plugged in then Pre-conditioning before departure [using Shore Power] reduces that, but cold battery is still an issue in Winter.
Other thoughts occurring to me:
My advice would be to buy the biggest battery / longest range. The difference in capital cost between 75 and 100kWh is huge, and if you divide that by the additional miles range the £/mile is terrifying ... but ... the calculation I suggest you need to do is how much it will reduce your need to road-charge. I'm pleased I bought the bigger battery, even though I only rely on it a couple of times a month. On some journeys I can reach destination without charging, avoid having to detour on others (because I can reach the further charger, which is on-route), and I already started out with more range so charge less at Supercharger, and bigger battery charges faster and overall the hours-saved is worth the cost of bigger battery. Might be some Man Maths involved!
Trying your common journeys in A Better Route Planner will allow you to get a good estimate for each model, and you can also set e.g. 20% "penalty" to re-test those same journeys in Winter. The new Long Range model (more efficient motors) looks very promising - 15% more range I think. ABRP already has that in the available models (as beta)
Note that you will not get 20% loss on a single winter journey (unless it is Arctic that day, but in that case its not a good day to be driving 200 miles from home ...), it is the "park for an hour in winter" scenario which is worst case for EVs
Have you considered a Model-3? The M3 has a CCS charger socket instead, this is the new standard (introduced since MS/MX was launched). Tesla have converted 2 or 4 stalls at each Supercharger to also have CCS cables, ready for M3, so they can still charge there, and they can use any 3rd party CCS charger. There are loads already, although they are slow, and 3rd party is dreadful (compared to Supercharger experience). However, Fast CCS is coming, so likely in 3-year ownership of the car that you will have loads more charging choices with CCS. Not sure on M3 delivery timescale, but provided you want a high-end model I reckon they'll start shipping in July, and even being last in the queue I reckon it will only add a month or two before you got one.
Model-3 CCS charging is capable of faster charging than MS/MX, and the car is more efficient so already goes more miles per kWh than MS / MX.
If buying knew get a Referral code off someone - its get you (and them) some free Supercharging.