Going Electric: 1500 Miles Later (Premium)

Earlier this year, I made the switch from a gasoline-powered SUV to a Tesla Model Y, and after about 1500 miles (1728 to be exact) here are a few updates and things to contemplate before dumping oil for electrons.

Before going any further, this is not a post to get you to buy a Tesla, I get accused of this every time I mention my car, but to help you understand what I have learned about driving a battery on wheels for the past three months. And while you may not want a Tesla, and I don’t blame you, there are many other electric cars coming online soon like the poorly named (but decent looking) Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Rivian R1T, VW has several ID models arriving soon too and every other manufacturing is bringing some to market if these aren’t for you.

The point is that while we wait for a potential hydrogen future, I do firmly believe that electric vehicles will be the future for many, but certainly not all, drivers. I tend to think of it as for most of us, a laptop is fine but there will always be the crowd that needs the high-powered gaming (combustion engine) rigs for certain tasks. The electric future will not arrive fully for several more years or even a decade but the barrier to entry is far lower today than it was even two years ago.

The biggest challenge that anyone buying an electric vehicle needs to know is that it is fundamentally different than an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. Meaning, you have to re-think how you drive and while range-anxiety is a real thing, it’s not nearly as prohibitive as you may think – especially if you are driving a Tesla as the SuperCharger network is becoming robust in the US.

But what I mean is that regen, braking, temperature, and many other factors influence how you drive. For example, I rarely use the brake pedal as the car uses your momentum + resistance of the electrical motors to add electrons back into the battery rather than creating heat with the brake pads to slow the vehicle. This is commonly known as ‘one-pedal driving’ and it’s fantastic once you adopt the practice and makes driving even easier.

Other habit-changing challenges include torque and transmission. It’s well known that battery-powered cars have an intoxicating amount of acceleration but what you may not realize is that there is, at least in my car, no transmission either. You do not realize how you have become accustomed to the shift points where your ICE-vehicle shifts and you lose power momentarily, before locking into a new gear. In an electric car, it’s smooth acceleration and deceleration.

The biggest challenge of all, though, is that your range is significantly impacted by temperature. If you live in a cold climate, your car will not drive as far on cold days, or regen may not be operational until the battery has warmed up, and for some, this will be an issue if you have a lengthy commute. For myself, I have a charger in my garage that, while not actively heated/cooled, is connected to the house and rarely drops below 35F.

That’s cold enough to impact my range but I have yet to run into any scenarios where this is a problem. Thankfully, an update this week enables my car to pre-heat the battery before leaving which reduces the regen challenge noted above.

Speaking of updates, the one trend that I hope we see, and I believe this will be the case, is that my car is actively updated and is a better vehicle than when I bought it. One update added 10 miles of range to my car: I bought it with a range of 316 miles and now it can theoretically go 326 miles thanks to a software update that improved efficiency.

The latest update that arrived this week added more functionality including having complete control over the horn and PWS (Pedestrian Warning System, a speaker on the outside of the car) that allows you to change them to play music or as my daughter likes to say “Dad’s car can fart”.

One other thing to be aware of is the charging tax. No matter what vehicle you end up with, you are going to want to find a way to charge at home – it is convenient that I have a full charge (note, only charge your vehicle to 80% daily unless going on a road trip) every morning. But for many homes, you will need to have a charger/outlet installed.

And this is not a standard wall outlet, you need a 240v receptacle (your AMPs will depend on your preference but higher will always be better) and most garages do not have this outlet unless specifically requested by the owner when it was built. This means you need to pay an electrician to install one and those costs vary significantly. My cost was only about $300 but if your panel is full or on the other side of your house, you could be looking at a significant expense.

One thing I heard often before buying my car was that “once you go electric, you won’t ever go back to ICE” and I was a skeptic. After all, I love the noise of a high-end V8 ripping through the gears and nearing the redline but having lived with a battery-on-wheels for a few months, I get it.

You really do forget what an ICE vehicle feels like and what I mean is the noise, the vibrations, and the shifting. Going from my car to my wife’s ICE vehicle feels like going from the digital world back to analog. That being said, I will still sell my soul for a 911R

Roughly since taking ownership, my car has received 4 updates that improved Spotify integration, updated the visuals of the traffic display, range update, and many other items. It’s an odd sensation for your car to ‘upgrade’ each month but it reminds me of the early days of the Windows Insider program.

And I think that’s a good analogy for the state of electric vehicles right now. The entire market, Tesla included, feels more like Windows Insider than Windows production.

What I mean is that my Model Y is well-connected and Autopilot is absolutely fantastic on the highway; I have not, and probably won’t for some time pay for ‘Full Self Driving’.  But other things, like the blind-spot monitoring, while it does work, is far behind the industry-standard benchmark of lights in the mirror for usability. And my car has rain-sensing wipers that are about as useful as the My People app that was included in Windows a few years ago. This is a Tesla-specific issue but for other brands, charging will be a significant challenge, as well as understanding if the ‘traditional auto-manufacturies’ batteries are as good as what Tesla is currently selling.

But overall, I am really happy about going electric so far. Especially as we dropped my wife’s car off today for a $500 50k mile service that I will not have to do on my car as the parts being serviced do not exist in an electric vehicle. The only maintenance I have on the horizon for my car is to rotate the tires and change the air filter.

There are certainly challenges today, especially if the charging infrastructure in your region is lacking and if towing anything is in your future as it kills efficiency; it doesn’t make sense to go electric right now. But for many, it has become a viable option and I am in the camp that electric cars will be the future, eventually.