Mario Kadastik
Active Member
Ok, for those claiming that you couldn't own this car as the sole car in a region that is cold or doesn't have plenty of superchargers, then I'm a counter example. I'm in Estonia with a Model S that has a single charger pre-fix i.e. limited to about 9kW charging. The CHAdeMO adapter is now finally starting to ship so maybe I can start charging at 30-40kW once it arrives some time this year. But ... I've owned the car now for 15 months (almost perfectly spot on as I took ownership on 3rd of December 2013) and the closest supercharger is either 2000km by land or an overnight ferry to another country + 100km. Last January there were weeks of -20C and so on.
Yet it's my only car... I've driven 30 000km with it and I charge at a public charging point maybe once a month (though bound to be more now that I took a teaching assignment in a city 200km away). 330-380km (winter-summer) of real world range is without any real planning or worry. Anything above that for a round trip and I do indeed just need to think how the charging will be done, but it's not necessarily a showstopper. I've driven 1500km in a weekend (dog show in southern Lithuania) and it wasn't a big hurdle, just stayed overnight in Latvia in both directions and was nice and fresh every day. I've not had to cancel any trips or rent a car or anything. At worst I've had to look up the closest charger and plan for some extra time because of lack of CHAdeMO and dual chargers (difference of 40km/h charging vs 110km/h vs 200km/h). So buying the car now with the CHAdeMO adapter basically available it's not really an issue having the car as a sole use car unless you really take very long roadtrips at random and often. If you do, then indeed might want to wait until superchargers are around, but I'm planning to go visit Tilburg with friends as they pick up their P85D's later this month. That'll be a 3500km return journey nicely covered by superchargers (taking the ferry to Stockholm). The times they are moving fast as I think there were 0 superchargers in EU when I bought the car and next year there is supposed to already be one even in Estonia...
Yet it's my only car... I've driven 30 000km with it and I charge at a public charging point maybe once a month (though bound to be more now that I took a teaching assignment in a city 200km away). 330-380km (winter-summer) of real world range is without any real planning or worry. Anything above that for a round trip and I do indeed just need to think how the charging will be done, but it's not necessarily a showstopper. I've driven 1500km in a weekend (dog show in southern Lithuania) and it wasn't a big hurdle, just stayed overnight in Latvia in both directions and was nice and fresh every day. I've not had to cancel any trips or rent a car or anything. At worst I've had to look up the closest charger and plan for some extra time because of lack of CHAdeMO and dual chargers (difference of 40km/h charging vs 110km/h vs 200km/h). So buying the car now with the CHAdeMO adapter basically available it's not really an issue having the car as a sole use car unless you really take very long roadtrips at random and often. If you do, then indeed might want to wait until superchargers are around, but I'm planning to go visit Tilburg with friends as they pick up their P85D's later this month. That'll be a 3500km return journey nicely covered by superchargers (taking the ferry to Stockholm). The times they are moving fast as I think there were 0 superchargers in EU when I bought the car and next year there is supposed to already be one even in Estonia...