Another family outing to a charging point
Clever as the Model S may be, it can’t make up for the gaps in the network of chargers. By Tim Pollard
ONE MONTH of Tesla ownership under our belts, and the education process continues. We’ve met many other owners hovering around charging points and been struck how evangelical they are, eagerly sharing tips, apps and advice. Finding charging points en route is becoming second nature. And we’re now living the life electric – learning to minimise range anxiety with a little bit of advance planning and careful driving.
A recent over-the-air software upgrade introduced Chill mode, which is a slick rebranding of what BMW would call Eco Pro. It softens throttle responses and sets energy-draining services (heating and suchlike) to more energy-efficient settings. As it’s been a cold winter, we’ve welcomed the less savage acceleration and left the Model S to Chill out, while we’ve been learning about the car’s range.
Ours is a two-year-old approved-used 85D, remember, and all the indications are that the claimed battery performance is where it should be. Tesla quotes a 270-mile range for our battery spec and even in the clutches of the deep freeze that has never dropped below 250 miles. It’s more typically showing an indicated 260-265 miles when fully charged, and we hope that may climb further as the year warms up.
Does it actually drive 250+ miles on a single charge, though? No, it does not. This is disappointing on some levels (surely it’s not beyond the wit of Silicon Valley to design an algorithm to reflect real-world conditions, driving styles and temperatures?) and yet it’s a problem that afflicts all electric cars. And old-school combustion engines, come to think of it. When’s the last time a diesel exec really went 600-plus miles on a brimmed tank?
We’re lucky in that we have a fast Podpoint charger at the CAR offices, as well as two painfully slow three-point plugs. The former will return the Model S to full every day in around five hours, whereas a domestic socket is quite hopeless; so capacious is the Tesla’s battery that it will take a day and a half to top up by three-point plug.
This is where the Supercharger network comes in to play. Although nationwide, Tesla’s own high-speed charging infrastructure is concentrated around large conurbations and major transport corridors – meaning that our nearest one is in fact 30 miles away in Grantham. We’ve only been there twice as a result.
We have used Superchargers on the M40 regularly during forays to the south coast, and the ability to zap in 260 miles in less than an hour is a revelation. Even a 30-minute topup while we have a coffee is enough to decimate range anxiety. We like the Tesla’s sat-nav feature confirming how many bays are in use, too.
If only there were more Superchargers to make fast-charging a universal reality: they give a taste of how much more viable EV ownership is becoming. One month in, and Tesla life in winter is proving easier than expected…