Thinking about becoming a two-Tesla family but have some Q's

[OCJoe]

Loving my M3 and considering pre-ordering a Y or just getting another M3 now.

Curious about implications for usability. Probably these are non-issues but appreciate insights from anybody with experience.

1. I'm assuming one phone can act as a "phone key" for more than one car. Assuming this is true, how do you tell the mobile which car you want to monitor and/or adjust settings on? do you switch between them somehow? I don't see any obvious way to do this but I only have one car mapped to my phone... maybe after the 2nd car is added it's obvious?

2. Can I use supercharger miles from my "loot box" on either car are they locked to the car whose referral code earned them?

3. I have a wall charger. Is there a way to add a second connector and charge both cars simultaneously? Or some other solution more elegant that plugging into car #2 after car #1 reaches desired SoC?

4. Any other benefits or gotchas I should know about becoming a two-Tesla household?

 

[iamnid]

You can swipe the photo of your car in the app to switch between cars on the account.

 

[Msjulie]

4. Any other benefits or gotchas I should know about becoming a two-Tesla household?

More smiles per mile?

 

[OCR1]

I believe the bonus miles are tied to a user account but I’ve never heard of anyone sharing bonus miles across two different VINs on the same account. That’s a good question.

We have two Model 3’s and one wall charger. Unless you are both driving hundreds of miles every day I think you will find that charging your cars every other night is plenty. When we do need to charge both we just charge one at night and one in the morning, but it’s rare that we ever really need to do that.

You could daisy chain a second wall connector and it will split the load between the two cars. But I would just wait and see if you really need it before spending the money.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Loving my M3 and considering pre-ordering a Y or just getting another M3 now.

Curious about implications for usability. Probably these are non-issues but appreciate insights from anybody with experience.

1. I'm assuming one phone can act as a "phone key" for more than one car. Assuming this is true, how do you tell the mobile which car you want to monitor and/or adjust settings on? do you switch between them somehow? I don't see any obvious way to do this but I only have one car mapped to my phone... maybe after the 2nd car is added it's obvious?

2. Can I use supercharger miles from my "loot box" on either car are they locked to the car whose referral code earned them?

3. I have a wall charger. Is there a way to add a second connector and charge both cars simultaneously? Or some other solution more elegant that plugging into car #2 after car #1 reaches desired SoC?

4. Any other benefits or gotchas I should know about becoming a two-Tesla household?

1. The app allows you to swipe between cars. There's even a search function if you have a lot of cars and don't want to swipe between them all. If you have multiple accounts, you can easily share the car with other accounts so they all have app access.
2. Yes, the free Supercharger miles are shared by all cars on one account, assuming the other cars don't already have free supercharging. If you are using multiple accounts with different referral code then they are not shared.
3. If you have a gen 2 wall connector then you probably want to get another gen 2 wall connector as load balancing isn't currently supported with gen 3 wall connectors. We have three load balanced wall connectors but you can have up to four connected. I believe gen 3 will eventually support up to 16 wall connectors. Gen 1 wall connectors can't be load balanced.
4. Hopefully you'll never need to but gas again!

 

[Jax 3]

Good for OCJoe. Our second Tesla arrived 6 months after the first, clearly 'unplanned', as they say. My wife liked my M3 very much but it was too small for her needs. So, she got MS.

Yes, you figured out your #1: answers become obvious when you link second car to your phone app. Can't answer your loot box question, but for #3 you simply have to scope out with an electrician the area where you installed your existing charger. My solution was to install a second 220V line in my garage, not elegant (lack of planning clearly evident) but functional is what worked. Other benefits? Twice the fun!

 

[SoCalMom]

I believe the bonus miles are tied to a user account but I’ve never heard of anyone sharing bonus miles across two different VINs on the same account. That’s a good question.

We have two Model 3’s and one wall charger. Unless you are both driving hundreds of miles every day I think you will find that charging your cars every other night is plenty. When we do need to charge both we just charge one at night and one in the morning, but it’s rare that we ever really need to do that.

You could daisy chain a second wall connector and it will split the load between the two cars. But I would just wait and see if you really need it before spending the money.

We do the same. We have a LR and a MR, each of our commutes is about 40-60 miles a day. Haven't had any issues with switching parking spots every other day. We also have both cars on the same Tesla account so we swipe back and forth between the two. I find it easiest to hit "Settings" and "Switch to Second_Car_Name".

 

[SMAlset]

My husband and I each have our own account for our own car (MS and Model 3) but gave permission to Tesla to share our online app with each other. Our accounts online are still kept separately so our documents etc stay with the account and car. I recently referred a friend and got my 1K miles posted to my account. It only appears in my personal loot box so I’m assuming since I earned it and we have separate accounts I’m the only one that can use the miles even if my husband drives my car and supercharges it. Never tried to see what happens though. I pretty much only charge at home so it hasn’t been something that has come up. Next time we’re out I’ll have him drive and see what happens. Tied to car or to owner’s account? Maybe someone else is in our situation with two accounts and shared access and can say?

 

[ltfiend]

You can swipe the photo of your car in the app to switch between cars on the account.

Even better, hold the phone against the external card reader and NFC will automatically switch between cars. Sometimes I need to load the Tesla app for it to work but it does make it easier when moving them both around.

 

[RoBoRaT]

Loving my M3 and considering pre-ordering a Y or just getting another M3 now.

Curious about implications for usability. Probably these are non-issues but appreciate insights from anybody with experience.

4. Any other benefits or gotchas I should know about becoming a two-Tesla household?

Beware if you have another Tesla with Auto open/close of garage door enabled. My Model 3 triggered to open our garage door as I approached, not knowing that my wife (driving another Tesla) was about 1 minute away from our house, auto triggered the garage door at 80 ft away....to close (since last action was open) the opened garage door. Luckily I was almost done in slowly parking inside our tight fit garage. Did not hit anything. Could cause $$$ damage to car and garage.

There were several post like this in this forum...including what I said above.

 

[OCJoe]

You can swipe the photo of your car in the app to switch between cars on the account.

Thanks iamnid. When I swipe now, I only get the Tesla wall power commercial, but I can imagine how it would work with two cars. This is helpful!

 

[OCJoe]

1. The app allows you to swipe between cars. There's even a search function if you have a lot of cars and don't want to swipe between them all. If you have multiple accounts, you can easily share the car with other accounts so they all have app access.
2. Yes, the free Supercharger miles are shared by all cars on one account, assuming the other cars don't already have free supercharging. If you are using multiple accounts with different referral code then they are not shared.
3. If you have a gen 2 wall connector then you probably want to get another gen 2 wall connector as load balancing isn't currently supported with gen 3 wall connectors. We have three load balanced wall connectors but you can have up to four connected. I believe gen 3 will eventually support up to 16 wall connectors. Gen 1 wall connectors can't be load balanced.
4. Hopefully you'll never need to but gas again!

1. Helpful, thanks!
2. Seems like the lesson here is use the same account for Tesla #2.
3. A little confused here - I am hoping for a load balancing solution but not clear on how you accomplished it.
4. 100% yes

 

[ElectricIAC]

I believe the bonus miles are tied to a user account but I’ve never heard of anyone sharing bonus miles across two different VINs on the same account. That’s a good question.

We have two Model 3’s and one wall charger. Unless you are both driving hundreds of miles every day I think you will find that charging your cars every other night is plenty. When we do need to charge both we just charge one at night and one in the morning, but it’s rare that we ever really need to do that.

You could daisy chain a second wall connector and it will split the load between the two cars. But I would just wait and see if you really need it before spending the money.

We shared bonus miles on two different vins on a self-referral before we sold the Mrs’ 3MR to order her a Y.

 

[OCJoe]

Beware if you have another Tesla with Auto open/close of garage door enabled. My Model 3 triggered to open our garage door as I approached, not knowing that my wife (driving another Tesla) was about 1 minute away from our house, auto triggered the garage door at 80 ft away....to close (since last action was open) the opened garage door. Luckily I was almost done in slowly parking inside our tight fit garage. Did not hit anything. Could cause $$$ damage to car and garage.

There were several post like this in this forum...including what I said above.

Good advice... I do have Auto open/close enabled so will be cognizant of this!

 

[LGA737]

A useful tidbit for multi Tesla owners, a keycard can be enabled on more than one car at a time. Means you only have to carry around one key card as a backup for both cars.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

3. A little confused here - I am hoping for a load balancing solution but not clear on how you accomplished it.

Basically with the gen 2 wall connectors there is a communications wire that runs between them and balances the load. This way each car can get the maximum amps if it is the only car charging. If other cars are charging, the load is automatically shared. As cars stop charging, remaining cars get the available amps. With this type of load balancing, you could have 80 amps (or 64 or 60, etc.) shared and wouldn't need each car to have a separate 80 amp circuit.

Here's a video showing 80 amps shared between three cars. (It was later updated to 100 amps.) Since all of the cars in the video have 48 amp chargers, they can charge at 48 amps individually, 32 amps if two are charging or 21 amps if all three are charging at once. Once things were upgraded to a 100 amp circuit, an individual car could change at 48 amps, two cars could each charge at 40 amps or three cars could charge at about 26 amps simultaneously.

In your case, if you only have two cars and you put in a 60 amp line, one car could charge at up to 48 amps. If you plugged in a second car, each would get 24 amps. If you put in a 100 amp line, one car could get to to 48 amps or two cars could get up to 40 amps when charging simultaneously.

The new white gen 3 wall connectors that Tesla recently released should support load balancing wirelessly, meaning you don't need to run the tiny signal wire between them. Unfortunately, Tesla seems to have released them before the software was ready so you can't load balance with gen 3 wall connectors yet.

 

[focher]

We have a 3P and X with a single Wall Charger. It all works fine. We just switch days when we charge. The app allows easy switching between vehicles.

 

[OCJoe]

Basically with the gen 2 wall connectors there is a communications wire that runs between them and balances the load. This way each car can get the maximum amps if it is the only car charging. If other cars are charging, the load is automatically shared. As cars stop charging, remaining cars get the available amps. With this type of load balancing, you could have 80 amps (or 64 or 60, etc.) shared and wouldn't need each car to have a separate 80 amp circuit.

Here's a video showing 80 amps shared between three cars. (It was later updated to 100 amps.) Since all of the cars in the video have 48 amp chargers, they can charge at 48 amps individually, 32 amps if two are charging or 21 amps if all three are charging at once. Once things were upgraded to a 100 amp circuit, an individual car could change at 48 amps, two cars could each charge at 40 amps or three cars could charge at about 26 amps simultaneously.

In your case, if you only have two cars and you put in a 60 amp line, one car could charge at up to 48 amps. If you plugged in a second car, each would get 24 amps. If you put in a 100 amp line, one car could get to to 48 amps or two cars could get up to 40 amps when charging simultaneously.

The new white gen 3 wall connectors that Tesla recently released should support load balancing wirelessly, meaning you don't need to run the tiny signal wire between them. Unfortunately, Tesla seems to have released them before the software was ready so you can't load balance with gen 3 wall connectors yet.

Super helpful, this is the info I was looking for. THANKS!!

 

[OCJoe]

A useful tidbit for multi Tesla owners, a keycard can be enabled on more than one car at a time. Means you only have to carry around one key card as a backup for both cars.

I wouldn't have thought of this, good callout. How do you accomplish this?

 

[OCR1]

I wouldn't have thought of this, good callout. How do you accomplish this?

Nothing special. Just program the key card as your normally would for each car. It will store each car’s information on the card without deleting the prior car’s information.