Pleased with a recent supercharger experience at Paramus

[Galve2000]

So I finally got my S85D back from 2 months at the body shop and had trouble getting the garage where I park my car to charge up my car and the rated miles were dwindling. (destination charger congestion is real!!) So I figured I would take matters into my own hands and take my baby out for a proper spin to have her stretch her legs after 2 months being confined to the body shop. ($26,000 and change in repair costs paid for by the Valet company who was driving my car at the time of the accident, if anyone is interested in THAT story)

For the bulk of 2017 I have been having sub-par supercharging experiences at various SCers in the North East. Namely, when plugging in even with the battery at a low state of charge, my car only reaches >110 kW for only several seconds before dropping down rather quickly to <90 kW!!

We have discussed in many threads that the reduced SCing speeds do not effect road trips in a meaningful way (and I can attest that on the big road trips I have done the car was almost always done SCing before we were ready to get moving.

About my most recent SCing experience in Paramus:

I arrived at Paramus at 10:51 am with 115 rated miles "in the tank" and plugged into stall 2A and left 21 minutes later with 227 rated miles. Most pleasing was that my car reached 114 kW charge rate and maintained this for several minutes.

According to teslafi I added 112.43 rated miles or 32.5 kWh and my max Vots and Amps were:

377 V x 313.19 Amps or 118 kW!! Which I didn’t even notice on my center screen!!

The average Volts and amps for the charging session were:

364.55 V x 257.29 Amps or 93.795 kW which I think is very telling. Admittedly I started w\ the battery at 6% SOC and unplugged at 47% SOC according to Teslafi, so things would have tapered more once I had gone over 50% SOC, but my goal was to get to 200 Rated Miles so I would have some range until I could be plugged into a destination charger at some point.

Most interestingly, I was fidgeting with my cell phone and when I looked up I was at 205 rated miles, so I said I would wait to get to 220 and when I looked up a minute or two later I had already reached 227 rated miles. Now THAT is what I call a good supercharging session!

Thank you Tesla!! It is nice to know that decent SCer speeds ares still possible. I will say I was the only car charging at the SC for much of this session tho another Model S did plug in to a stall further away from me at some point (we were not paired AFAIK) and was still there when I left. This was was the “emptiest” I have ever seen Paramus SC in my (more than) 2 years of Model S ownership and that may explain the pleasing SCer experience.

 

[MP3Mike]

($26,000 and change in repair costs paid for by the Valet company who was driving my car at the time of the accident, if anyone is interested in THAT story)

I am interested in that story...

 

[TaoJones]

Do tell re the valet saga, congrats for prevailing, was dashcam video involved, and did they also compensate you for any car payments or rental car/alt transport costs?

 

[Galve2000]

I belong to a Valet service that picks up my car anywhere in Manhattan (as well as LIC, williamsburg, and Downtown Brooklyn) and stores it at various garages around NYC -- their main garage is in the Bronx next to yankees stadium which is roughly 11 miles from my office. But the service is generally evry efficient and it basically allows me to have a garage at home, and at work, for roughly what the garage in my building at home would cost for a monthly spot.

on 10,16.17 the valet collided with an "uber driver" and there was mostly front end damage to my poor 2015 S85D. The valet driving my car was a little bit shell shocked and gave the other driver my insurance card even though when he called me looking for my insurance card ("how do I open the glove compartment, sir?") I asked him to call his employer. The Valet company, DropCar, (allegedly) has $5 Million in liability coverage so aside from eyeballing the damage as what I would call "one step up from a fender-bender" I wasn't worried about getting my car repaired as much as how long said repair would take.

In hindsight it was actually better that my insurance company was allerted b/c I got a lot more information about the claim through my insurance (Geico) than I did though the Valet company insurance.

in broad strokes:

There were roughly $12,000 in parts and $12,000 in labor costs + $2000 in state and local taxes for a grand total of USD 26,063.61 of which roughly $23,500.00 was paid for by DropCar's insurance and the $2,500 deductible was by DropCar. I will try to post a few pictures if I can find them but the car was returned to me on 12.13.17 nearly 2 months after the accident occured.

the big hold up was -- you guessed it -- waiting on parts, 70% of which were "backordered" and would take at least a month to arrive. things were set to arrive by Monday, 11.13.17 but of course certain things didn't come in until after Thanksgiving.

The car is fine although the trip to Paramus SC i took a few day after getting the car back is the longest trip I have taken so far. so I haven't really had a chance to "stretch her legs" -- i am just happy she is "home". The car was returned to me with a faulty rear door handle so she is currently at Tesla service and I hope to have her back this week. (fingers crossed.. i'm in a Tesla loaner so it's not too bad)

I was particularly worried about the battery getting damaged (and the car totalled) but agin from eyeballing the pics the damaged looked "minor" -- I called AAA and had them send a flatbed as the accident (airbags deployed) caused a fuse to blow that disengages the battery and renders the car undrivable (except in neutral maybe?) once the car was towed to the shop and the fuse replaced the car was driven into the repair bay on it's own power which went REALLY far in assuaging my worse fears about the car getting totalled or being damaged beyond repair. I knew from reading this forum that the damage would be at least $25,000 -- even though the cost of parts has dropped in recent years.

I found out from Geico (who was Secondary insurance in this instance) that the Uber driver's car was Totalled and that Geico had made their assessment that my driver was 50% at fault and that the Uber driver was 50% at fault. My driver did end up going to the emergency room but was "fine" although he is undergoing physical therapy for whiplash or something like that. (thank god for that $5 Million DropCar policy) -- allegedly my driver blew a yellow light when making a left turn although the police report I saw is missing a portion of my driver's statement. I found out that the Uber Driver's car was Totalled and valued at $33,000.00 -- to make things even more interesting, many of these drivers only carry $10,000 in liability insurance which is less than half of the cost of the damage to my car -- and I believe this is also the case with this Uber driver, but so far it sounds like I am covered by the DropCar policy.

In general the claim has gone rather smoothly. it sounds like these valet companies pay usually these damage claims "out of pocket" and only file through their insurance if someone is (God forbid) seriously injured or killed. and when my Valet ended up in the emergency room I made it clear I absolutely needed to see a copy of their policy so I could see the limits of same. -- I have not seen a copy of their policy but so far I have been "made hole" save from a bit of anxiety regarding this whole mess.

besides being a little inexperienced with the claims procedure DropCar have been pretty great.

for one thing, they set me up with a Chevy Cruz for the entire time my car was in the shop and they did so seamlessly. The Valet picked up my Model S at 10 am on the day of the accident and a the chevy cruze rental car was returned to me at 5:30 pm -- the same time my Model S was due back to me. So I spent no time without a vehicle. Yes, its not a Tesla but they did also cover gas (they take care of my Destination Charging needs as part of their service) so this is oddly fitting.

for my part I did not know that the company that did the "adjusting" was going to be writing the check for my repairs so I spent a handful of unhappy weeks "worried" about who was going to pay for all this damage because I got one story from DropCar, a slightly different story from the body shop (Precision Autoworks in LIC who does great work, but who I am sad to say has done more work on my Model S than I care to think about) -- in early December when the repairs were wrapping up it was still unclear to me who would be writing the check so I was pressing DropCar to do so and just get reimbursed by their insurance.

Finally, I called the adjuster kind of exacerbated and was told that "they had been meaning to get in touch with me" so I could sign a release and they could cut me a check for the agreed cost of repair less the deductible. I did consider filing a diminished value claim but honestly I hope to drive my car until the wheels fall off (i'm still enamored with her, even after 2 and a half years, like the day she came into my life -- i also have that that I can no longer get a model S in midnight blue which remains my fave color even today) so it hardly seems worth the trouble. If I had known that the adjusters were writing the check I would have hounded them for the paperwork well before picking up the car. and gotten my check maybe a week sooner than I did. It only dawned on me the day I was set to have the car returned to me to reach out to the adjuster and ended up being "out of pocket" on the repair costs for about a week which is not the end of the world. The payment on my credit card isn't due for another 10-12 days so i'm pretty set in any case.

I refused to allow the DropCar insurance to hold my car hostage while they duked it out with the Uber Driver's insurance so I paid for the repairs with my AmEx card -- which the body shop typically doesn't like to accept, although they agreed in this case and I am getting roughly 26,000 Delta SkyMiles from this, which is pretty valuable to me. In the past they would accept Visa or Mastercard only and loved getting a check from the insurance company the most. Although they did always tout the points I would be getting by putting their payment on my credit card.

I was also pleasantly surprised that dropcar carried such a low deductible. I assumed at the very beginning that they had a deductible of $25,000 (or more) and that they would be going out of pocket on everything. even the body shop mentioned that they believe the deductible is $5,000 -- which is not a huge amount of money, but not just a minor amount either. That it ended up being only $2,500 was really great. as of this writing I have collected the money from the insurance and expect the $2,500 from DropCar by the end of this week.

All in all it was rather painless although having made 2 payments to TD autofinacne for my Model S while driving a Chevy Cruz was not exactly a happy experience. The Body Shop likes to be kind of pushy about having me "go through my insurance" to get the repairs covered when they work on my car and I always refuse to do so if I am not at fault. they work well with Geico and they like it to be cut and dry but I don't think my insurance should "take a hit" when I am not at fault. Geico was so helpful that I did briefly consider going through them but I would have been out a deductible and my insurance would have taken a big hit.

I also learned not to keep a copy of my insurance in the car. I have my insurance card in my wallet and a scanned copy on my cell phone that I can provide to family members on the rare occasions that they borrow my car. one I finish posting this I will call geico to tell them I got the car back from the body shop and to see if they can give me an update on where things stand from their side.


Thanks for reading...