Home on the range?
Tesla Model S P90D Ludicrous £111,900 OTR/£78,400 (s/h)
This month we sufered extreme range anxiety for the frst time during our running of the Model S. Mr Rix, having borrowed the car over the weekend, returned to the TG Garage with 18 miles left. As I was heading down to the local Supercharger at lunch, we left it unplugged, safe in the knowledge that 18 miles range would easily get us there. I duly returned at lunch to discover that the cold weather and background power usage (the Tesla uses some battery when sat still and range is signifcantly afected by the cold) had reduced that to fve miles. Still, with the supercharger just down the road, all would be fne.
Well, it would’ve been if the supercharger hadn’t been out of service for resurfacing, something the onboard nav was trying to tell me, if only I’d looked. So, with two miles remaining, I turned for home hoping that the three miles it had used on the way down would magically turn into two on the return leg and I wouldn’t be left stranded on the side of the A40.
Panicking, I turned everything of and breathed on the throttle. Never has a 10-minute journey been wrought with such anxiety. But I made it back and have never been so pleased to see a three-pin socket. Running out of fuel in a petrol car has consequences, in an EV it requires recovery, not a walk to the petrol station to fll a can. While all of this was caused by our incompetence and a range of 270 miles when fully charged is ample, the battery depletion in the cold is worth noting.