Your charging at home isn't free with solar unless the solar was free.

@@SafeEffective-ls2plIt's free if it has broken even on installation costs kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o8WFgbp93bTJmIk.html

Don't you include depreciation on bill?

@@patricaomas8750 Someday if I ever sell it then I will know it's depreciation for sure and be able to include that in the total ownership cost. Until then it's just anybody's approximated guess. I purchased it for $39,400 in May of 2019. Maybe in next year's 6-year update I will address that topic and do a general approximation but up to this point I have been just focusing on the mechanical device itself and the cost of ownership and maintenance.

I have a 2018 Model S 100D also if I charge too 100% it show 364 miles

Thanks for your insight on the Model S! I have been thinking about getting a new Model Y, since the discounts are great, but have to believe that the Model S is a more luxurious car.

I'm most surprised that your tires typically last 50k miles! Yes we're holding off on buying the Cybertruck for now due to lack of 6 seats primarily, but I'm also bummed about the minimal range and simultaneous huge price hike. Thanks for taking the time to type up your $0.02! It's helpful to others to get multiple perspectives since my video is just one vehicle.

The S has more luxurious features for sure. However I've been loving driving our Model Y and for the price it's hard to beat the value of the Y. I prefer to drive our Y a little bit more because it has better visibility, blended regen braking to friction brakes, blind spot camera, and it's a nimbler ride. But both vehicles are infinitely better to drive than any non-Teslas I've ever driven.

I suppose it matters how people drive a car? People complain about tyres on EVs, but those EVs have great 0-60 times so could it be that people use (or abuse) this function much more than on regular cars and so the tyres are wrecked faster?

Thanks, you're very kind. I appreciate the support to continue sharing our adventures and technology tips. It's a lot of work to make the videos and would be easier to just go on the trips enjoying the technology, but I love to share how it's working for us!

Thanks for sharing your experience and the video with your friend!

I could...but someone else already made this one that is about as good as I could make. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sKxiZLx12NS0f6c.htmlsi=84tyM3tOjAxmyavk

That's probably a good idea to try spraying CRC contact cleaner into certain parts of the charge port both from the outside and inside the vehicle. I hadn't considered doing so, but I'll try that. Thanks for your positive feedback and yes I agree I will miss these days and thus why I spend a lot of time, effort and money on doing things with my family and our favorite thing to do is go on trips which are great to do in a Tesla. There have been a few times already when for whatever reason I'll show an older video to the girls and they already exclaim at how young they were and it's fun to see them grow up in the videos that are edited and easy to watch. I of course have plenty of other casual video, but since it's unedited it's harder/more boring to watch.

😂

Good to know, thanks for the info!

Will you be driving through the Salt Lake City area on I-15 on your trip? If so let me know when and perhaps we can meet up somewhere.

Most def will be lol we as in the family would love that we will be in august or september

In my experience and subjective opinion the comfort of the ride is about the same between the two vehicles. The steering feel of the Y is more nimble and the visibility is better forwards, and about the same backwards. There are obviously other features to compare between them as part of your consideration, but in general I'd probably purchase the Y. I'm factoring in the long term functionality vs maintenance costs. I obviously don't have first hand knowledge about maintenance costs on the Y, but from what I've heard from others I think there's less stuff that breaks on the Y. The coil suspension feels great and it's simpler and less likely to have problems in the future, and if there are problems they'll be cheaper to fix I expect.

There isn't a refreshed Model Y at this time. The Model 3 just got refreshed so maybe you're thinking of that? What do you mean by "test everything"? I have upcoming videos of us using the Y on road trips, but I haven't felt like there's a need to make lots of review videos of the functionality since it's already been out for several years and there's a ton of videos from others about the Model Y functionality and features.

The Tesla screens are very responsive and I have no problems with having to touch it multiple times. It's the same sensitivity as a smart phone screen or tablet. Sometimes my phone has issues because it gets contaminants on the phone screen such as when I'm working on my sprinkler system and my hands are all gross and I'm using the sprinkler controller app to turn on the sprinklers. In those situations I have to clean my cell phone screen then it's back to ideal sensitivity. That's never been a problem with my Tesla screens because I don't use those screens in as diverse of situations. There are two Tesla service centers in Utah at this point in time. One is at 1038 S 300 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84101 and thus would be the closest one to you, and the other one is at 2265 W 700 S, Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 farther south. The PG service center was built in 2023, so for the 4 years prior to that we had to drive to the SLC location which is roughly 45 minutes away and it wasn't a problem. Roughly half the time the mobile service came to our house and did the work in the driveway. I know of other Tesla owners who are hours drive away from a service center and it hasn't been a deal breaker for them. Personally I wouldn't worry about it overly much since we don't need service all that often, and mobile service is able to do a lot.

@@ElectricTechAdventures Thanks for taking the time to reply to my question. I guess I need to pay closer attention to how dirty my cell phone screen is! And I somehow thought that the Tesla location in SLC was for selling only, not repairs. I will reconsider the Model Y as I decide which EV to get.

@@ValConB There are two Tesla buildings in the Salt Lake City area and they are near each other but several blocks apart. The address that I provided before is the address to the service center and down the road south a little bit is where the sales showroom is. I wish you the best in your search for your next vehicle!

I know that Tesla's API supports changing the charging amps, but I haven't looked into Victron's API to see what options there are. I would like to into it more, but I'm so busy editing KZfaq videos that I haven't decided to spend any more time on trying to automate it. Also I'm not a computer programmer, so it would take me even more time to figure out how to do it. I don't check the system hourly though. More like 4-5 times per day because I've been doing it long enough I can see what the weather is doing and I generally know if the Tesla is pulling a certain number of amps how quickly that'll effect the charge state of the trailer battery bank vs the solar production. I'd love to automate it someday though and I'm all ears if anyone else figures it out before I spend anymore time on it.

@@ElectricTechAdventures You don't need to be a programer to do any of this. If both systems have APIs then their is a very good chance the Home Assistant community will already have made integrations for them and after that it's just making so rules called automations that say when the system is in certain states take whatever actions.

@@ElectricTechAdventures Home Assistant has Tesla and Victron integrations already which will pull in all the sensor data and control options your system has. And this video will let you see how simple making automations can be kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g614fM9-1Ni4hpc.html You could even make a video on your adventures of getting it set up

@@Pegaroo_ Valid point. I do have work experience with Adobe Fusion which is another API integration platform. It still takes time figuring it out and while it would save me time long term not checking the Tesla and Victron apps as often, I'm still struggling with getting my KZfaq editing caught up. We keep going on new trips that I'm excited to share here on my KZfaq channel and my latest trip I'm about to finish publishing happened 20 months ago...and we just got back from yet another new trip yesterday. My current trip editing backlog is 12, and many of those trips will be a series of multiple videos. I'd love to be able to publish videos 2-3 times per week to get caught up, but alas for years now I've only managed to average editing about 1 video per week with what time I can spare from my family and day job. API integrations are just on my back burner along with building a new garden, washing the cars, fixing our lawns sprinkler system, fixing a gate in my backyard and many other things I could be doing. Adulting can be hard balancing priorities sometimes.

Thanks for the help and encouragement! I'll watch that video and see if I can perhaps setup the automation with less time investment than I've thought it would take to free up my time for more KZfaq video editing!

I just checked TeslaFi and I haven't charged the Model S over 90% since February 22nd 2024 apparently, which I'm just finding out myself. I'm not surprised though since right now I'm exclusively charging the S from our travel trailer's solar panels. The state of charge is all over the place, but generally 40-60%. It did recently get to 90%, but I'm realizing now I should have let it charge to 91% to let TeslaFi get a data point on it's estimated range. On February 22nd 2024 the estimated range at 100% was 245 miles. It's probably still in that general area of range.

Right, but what is the difference between the estimated range you are getting and the actual mileage you get? I know the estimated range is based on more ideal driving circumstances, so the actual real world range will be lower, but how much lower is what I really want to know. My car tells me the estimated range is for 100% state of charge is like 235 miles, but when I take a drive of 23.5 miles the charge drops more like 15% as opposed to the estimate which would be 10%. So my actual range seems way off from the estimated range the car gives me. Just using the miles I drive in a given trip divided by the percent decrease of the state of charge, I am getting between 1.6 and 2.0 miles of driving (a wide range, I know) for every 1% of charge that is lost/used. I figure this means my real range has to translate between 160 and 200 miles. This is not necessarily a concern for me because I can comfortably live with my car as a daily driver getting charged every day at home, but if batteries that drop below 70% of original charge become less stable and prone to failure, then I would like to know. Can you tell me about how close your cars estimated range is to what actually get? Does a 24.5 mile drive drop the state of charge by 10% as estimated, or is it typically a drop closer to15%?

​@@jasonpalmer7511 You raise a good point, and I've been writing a script to make a video about the very subject of actual real world range vs the "rated range" which is well known for being...optimistic. Looking in TeslaFi for my Model S at my top 10 longest drives they vary from 197 (used 92% of the battery at 83.8% efficiency and 89k miles on the odometer) to 175 miles (used 95% of the battery at 70.7% efficiency and 81k miles on the odometer). A more recent example from December 2023 when we drove it down to Las Vegas to pickup our Model Y we drove 95% of the battery driving 174 miles at 73.8% efficiency and 135k miles on the odometer. Keep in mind the speed limit on that route was 80 mph... The longest drive we've ever done was 3 hours and 30 minutes to drive 197.21 miles using 92% of our battery at 83.8% efficiency with 89k miles on the odometer. Generally I drive about 75-85 mph while on road trips so all these numbers reflect that. You can expect about 200 miles of range while on road trips with minimal safety margin, but this number can be higher if you drive slower or are going down in elevation, or there's a tail wind etc... Conversely if you're generally going up in elevation, a head wind, going faster it'll be lower obviously. Regarding the Battery Management System (BMS) and the car stating range that doesn't seem to match with the real world, that will typically get more accurate if you run the battery all the way down, then charge it all the way back up which is only something we do on road trips. If you are just driving around town for months/years then the BMS can get pretty uncalibrated which will likely be fixed by not charging for as long as it takes to run the battery down to say around 10% then charge it all the way back up to 100% (then hopefully drive the car that same day to get it back down to less than 90%). We have a destination we drive to regularly that's 25 miles away (we've driven there over 200 times in just our Model S) and the last 10 times we've driven there in the Model S it consumed 11%, (July) 13%, (June) 15%, (Feb and the rest are all winter months) 14, 13, 14, 14, 13, 14, 14% to get there. That's a variance of 70-90.8% efficiency. Why the variance? All kinds of things. Cabin set temperature, ambient temperature, was the car just parked in the garage prior to the drive or was it in the driveway (Our S and Y take turns in the garage for various reasons), was there wind, what direction was the wind going, traffic conditions etc... In short I've learned to not be concerned about the range at all when we're simply driving around town because we have way more than enough range to drive wherever we want to go. Then on road trips I rely heavily on the navigation in the car to see what the estimated arrival percentage is. When doing rough planning I know we can go about 200 miles max, but the distance we actually drive is less than that dictated by the distance we can drive between the superchargers considering environmental variables that the trip planner takes into account (elevation changes for instance) automatically. I mention this because while I like to dive into the details of the metrics, the average person out in the world likely doesn't want to have to be bothered by efficiencies, distances, Watt hours per mile etc... and I want them to recognize that they can just route the car to their intended destination and let the car take care of the rest if they want.

@@ElectricTechAdventures That is really helpful. Thank you for the detailed response. Just to add a data point for others who are here reading about repair costs on a 2015 Model S 85D, I got mine a few weeks ago and the headlight went out a few days later. The part alone (HID bulb) was $130. There were much cheaper options on Amazon ($30 and up) but I chose the Sylvania D3S because it is warrantied for 12 months and, more importantly, the replacement of the bulb was much more difficult than it should be and I didn't want to have to do it again because a cheap bulb burnt out or failed. I have always changed my own headlight bulbs (Mazdas, Acura), but the Model S required jacking the car up, removing the tire and wheel well just to get access to the bulb. Some say it can be done from the frunk, but it's really tight. After watching numerous videos, I decided to price out having Tesla do it because I lack both the proper tools and the confidence to jack the car and start taking it apart. I really cannot afford to break something else in the process! Tesla service gave me appointment three weeks out for a different issue (cellular connection) and never responded when I messaged them about the headlight (Atlanta area). I found two shops that do work on Teslas and both quoted me over $250 just for the labor. I tried looking on Task Rabbit for a freelance mechanic, but didn't see any who advertised experience with Teslas. I did find a mobile mechanic company (instant car fix.com) that quoted me $250 total for parts and labor. They came next day and the mechanic was pretty good about walking through the procedure so I could do it in the future if I choose. But even he struggled for a few minutes to get the new bulb in place. My hands don't "have eyes" like an experienced mechanic, so I think I would have been really frustrated had I tried it on my own. The mobile mechanic work was warrantied for 12 months (parts and labor) and they used the Sylvania bulb. I kept my Tesla service appointment because I have no cellular connection. They have yet to give me an estimate, but I might not even bother to get it fixed because I can hotspot from my phone if I want internet. I cannot, however, use any Teslas phone app features if the car is not connected to a recognized wifi network--which will be most of the time the car is away from home. So far, I am doing fine without the celluar connection, but lacking the real time traffic (even when hotspotting) might push me to get it fixed.

Thanks for sharing this information! I didn't know the headlight bulbs were so difficult to replace. I haven't run into that yet. Also not having cellular data connection and thus no connection to the car through the app would certainly motivate me to get it fixed most likely. Hopefully that's not overly expensive!

At 15:36 in this video I discuss the battery degradation report. It answers your question of how many miles have been lost since the vehicle was new.

Here's the URL that'll take you directly to that time stamp kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gaxgh5V7p8iXmnU.htmlsi=fNHgiOhrrpPvdxDs&t=936

Thank you for your reply. My 2024 MS has 63,500 miles with 5.66% battery degradation. I think calendar aging is more significant than miles in my case.

@@teachingmaterial2011 do you mean 2014? Or did you put 63,500 miles already on it in half a year?

@@ElectricTechAdventures I meant 2014. It has been a long day.

As long as the suspension components are built for the weight then there should be no problems, so I think you're asking if the suspension components are built robustly enough for the additional weight? I can't speak to the design specifically, but I can speak to our specific Model S and it's maintenance history. It has not had any work done on any suspension components while we've owned it. I did talk to a Tesla service advisor for a while going through the service history prior to us owning the vehicle and in 2016 (1 year after the car was built) the air suspension compressor was replaced. I have no context of the situation and I imagine that was just an early manufacturing defect warranty replacement. I've also been involved with the Tesla community for 7 years and there is NOT a general theme of increased suspension component failure. The one thing that clearly wears faster than ICE vehicles are tires, but as I talked about in this video the mileage warranty offsets that nicely.

The free unlimited supercharging transfer offer is not open ended, and I'm not sure when it will end. It began around Oct 2023 and it has been renewed. We took advantage of the offer which motivated us to buy a new Model Y. You have to first have an older Tesla with free unlimited supercharging which is referred to as sc01, NOT sc05. sc01 transfers with the car if it's sold private party. sc05 only lasts while the original owner owns that vehicle. Then you can only transfer it when you purchase a new S, X, 3, or Y (not Cybertruck).

I published a video about our Model Y purchase here kzfaq.info/get/bejne/prWkZMedsr_XcWw.html if you're interested in more details of how that went.

@@ElectricTechAdventures ah great to know, thank you! I’m indeed looking for a Tesla model s with free supercharge. Definitely gonna check your other video out as well!

I thought about doing that, and I saw others on KZfaq who had done so successfully. There was one channel who decided to switch from Tesla batteries to some off-the-shelf batteries because they just felt like they were doing a science experiment in their RV that if it went wrong could burn their home on wheels to the ground and maybe even kill them. When I did my project there were already a lot of new things I was having to learn and I decided not to DIY build a battery bank from raw cells because using off-the-shelf batteries was simpler and faster.

Yeah i could 100 percent agree with that and great points i own inspired solar and inspired construction so i build batteries and things all day unfortunately but the burn down your house statement jumps out and ive seen it happen with people using the tesla bms i used the overkill one and its friggin amazing

Yep - use LiFePO4 - safer. The batts out of a Tesla would need some serious mods to make them mobile safe after they're removed from the case. Water ingress, friction etc are all problems in a caravan. Plus Victron makes great gear that just works with off the shelf LiFe.

@@mondotv4216 Yep, that's why I went with proven batteries, albeit at a price premium. The trailer's electrical system has been rock solid stable for 2.5 years now with daily use either camping or charging Teslas as I talked about in the video.

Batteries slow down their charge speed over the course of a charge session, and after many charge cycles they develop additional chemical resistance and thus slow down charging more quickly as they age. In our Model S, over time as the battery management system tracks the usage of the battery, Tesla has programmed it so that once you've supercharged it (DC fast charge in general) a certain amount (I have no idea how much, and it might be a gradual adjustment) they lower the amount of time that the car is charging quickly due to internal resistance building up in the battery from age. I believe this slowdown would never occur if you never DC fast charged and only level 2 AC destination charged, but that's kind of pointless since DC fast charging has it's use case and we used it. I believe these 18650 cells in our Model S are perhaps more prone to this slowdown effect vs the 2170 cells in the Model Y and 3 where I've heard of people treating superchargers like gas stations and they rarely or never use the level 2 AC charging and their charging speeds aren't slowing down. Also there's the big difference that when our Model S was made the peak supercharging speed was 120 kW and through a software update was increased to 130 kW, but our Model Y has 250 kW charging. Not only does the Model Y peak at a 52% higher charge rate, it also maintains higher charge rates throughout the charge session so that the average charge speed is roughly double our Model S.

Thanks, you know your stuff 👍

I should have included in the video that the total cost at this point after 5 years of ownership and adding 75,108 miles onto the odometer, the total cost to us has been $4,223.99 to own and operate our 2015 Tesla Model S. Tires alone are $2,024.11 of that price, and the other large ticket item was upgrading to MCU 2 which was $1,876.88. Our supercharging was free throughout this until right at the end when we transferred free supercharging to our Model Y and we had to pay for charging to get home from Las Vegas. Our charging at home has been free with solar and we haven't paid for charging anywhere the entire time we've owned it. This number does not include insurance and registration costs as that's highly variable depending on your own insurance rates and where you live.

Thanks for the Reply, I know you have a lot of straight roads out their in the US, I wonder if it would be different here in the UK

I doubt it would be that much different. We definitely change directions a lot here too.

Yes it would be far more convenient if the whole world was on the metric system.

We purchased ours used for $39,400k. It was still at the time the most expensive vehicle we've ever purchased. Occasionally used Model S' with free supercharging still show up on the used car market. You have to buy private party in order to transfer free supercharging.

@@ElectricTechAdventuresis model s at $40000 still worth it with free supercharging

@@TonyMiguel-ko7cz how many miles does it have on it and what year is it specifically? I think $40,000 is probably too high but I don't have enough details and frankly it's not like I am the authority on this anyway. Keep in mind what we paid was 5 years ago and a lot has happened in the world to effect that price. Initially it held it's value and even went up during the craziness of 2020-2022, but I think our S is now worth less than $30k. Market research in the same timeframe as the desired purchase is important.

I very much agree. Metric is way better. I've added captions many times with the conversion on screen, but it gets time consuming so I don't always do it. I wish the entire world just used metric.

I showed the battery degradation from TeslaFi at 15:36 in the video which shows the battery is sitting at 9.28% battery degredation. If you want more detail I created this video kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nsx2d5mIudjLZps.html recently that shows more detail from the Scan My Tesla app.

@@ElectricTechAdventures my bad

No problem, I recommend watching the video I linked to for a lot more information than what I included in this video.

Do you follow any day to day rules with your charging? Ie only charge to 80% Also what’s the year round temperatures like where you live, I wonder if this has had any effect on your impressive battery health.

@@fenman7277 With my Model Y I am generally charging it up to 80% and then letting it run down to somewhere between 20 to 40% and then charging it back up to 80%. Sometimes it takes a week or two to run through that range so it will spend days in the ideal middle charge point. I don't just plug it in constantly but I know probably most people do. With the Model S right now during this experiment it's charge point is largely dictated by how much we've been driving versus how much solar output the trailer is providing. But I don't run it lower than 20% and once it gets above 80% I try to drive more to keep it lower and if it gets to 90% then I just send the energy to the model Y. If I were constantly just plugging in my electric vehicles at home then I would probably set the charge point to about 70 to 80% unless I needed more range than that on a daily basis like if I had a long commute to work. I live in the Salt Lake City Utah area so we definitely have hot and cold seasons here. Teslas have good active thermal management so the thing that the user affects more is the state of charge since the temperature is automatically managed. I suspect my battery degradation is probably pretty close to average for vehicles like mine.

Longer is relative to how much charge the S has in the battery, but most of our daily life (where vehicles are used) is in about a 7 mile radius, or 15 minutes of driving. I'd define "longer" as for sure 30 minutes and above, then 15-30 minutes is grey area/gradient. Regarding net metering solar credits I strive to use every single kWh, but not more (that is have to pay for). That 0 net metering balance is a zero margin goal that is nearly impossible to achieve, but I try. Generally each year we are within 50 kWh on either side of 0. My main demand levers to adjust our net metering balance is the electric cars, a freeze dryer and a heater I plug into our clothes drier outlet to heat the house with when excess energy needs to be used. Yesterday I saw my 10th Cybertruck in the wild. That's not including the 22 Cybertrucks I saw the day prior at the Tesla showroom. I wish they would offer a 6 seat option!

As I talked about in this video kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o8WFgbp93bTJmIk.html my solar panels have broken even on their installation costs. The total cost of installation (zero maintenance so far) was $9,735.31. As of yesterday the solar panels have produced 97,620.89 kWh. At 11 cents per kWh (average where I live) the panels have produced $10,738 in value. Or multiply by whatever retail rate for electricity you'd like. At this point in time (May 27th 2024) my panels have produced $1,003 more than they cost to install. There is likely going to be some maintenance costs like replacing the inverter once over the lifespan of the solar array (25 year production warranty on panels, 12 year warranty on the inverter), and when the time comes that I need to spend money on replacing components I'll add that to the installation costs. Only when the entire solar array has been removed/replaced will it be possible to calculate the exact price per kWh over the lifespan of the solar array. Saying solar energy is "not free" in the midst of the lifespan of the system is not helpful. What is helpful is adding up the installation/maintenance costs and subtracting the ongoing monetary value of the produced electricity. In my case I've had zero maintenance costs since the installation went online August 2017 so I am truly getting free electricity from the sun. Is it possible that some component fails today or in the near future that costs more than $1,003 to replace? You bet. Maybe I'll even go negative again, but every day I get more energy going towards my "free energy" calculation. Over the expected lifespan of my system (August 2042 is when the solar panels and inverter will be out of warranty) the panels will have paid for themselves 4 times! (I calculated that by dividing 9131.25 which is the number of days over 25 years by 2244 which was the number of days it took my system to break even.) It's likely the system will continue operating past that point, or perhaps not; only time will tell.

Do you have anything to substantiate your claim? I don't even know what you're remotely talking about. 6 years is an arbitrary amount of time and partially meaningless as longevity more depends on the miles driven in that time. Then the matter of totaling a car depends on the repair vs the value of the car and you haven't cited any specifics whatsoever. I'm happy with the car's performance and we'll continue using it and I'm confident it's not going to be "totaled" by a minor repair.

@@ElectricTechAdventures you spoke of your kids driving it in six years. I would be shocked regardless of the mileage that you put on the car that it is still on the road in six years.

@@michaelcharach Based on my research and experience it'll easily still be on the road serving our needs for another 6+ years. It only has 140k miles on it where many others like it have multiple hundreds of thousands of miles on them (I recently saw this KZfaq video from AutoTrader kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aK6crLSqnr22nJc.htmlsi=AsrccBPRyjx--Kow at 430k miles). Time is also a factor in battery degradation and right now our Model S is 9 years old. The battery degradation is sitting at 9.28% according to TeslaFi. My children won't need a lot of range for their teenage driving. If the battery loses another 9% in 6 years they'll still have 221.4 miles of rated range. As with any mechanical thing there's a possibility there will be a catastrophic battery or motor failure. That's the risk anyone accepts when they drive any vehicle, and the risk increases with miles/time.