Steinbuch

Three Years of Driving a Model S

This year we crossed the 100000 km limit with our own Model S P85+ (see here for the Dutch blogpost about it) and the car is still doing great! Now, at the end of 2016, we have 129000 km driven since Sept 13, 2013. In 2016 itself we even drove more than 52000 km, including several times to the South of France using the Supercharger network (Arlon is also open now!). Our battery is also doing fine, a full charge is still approximately 380 km, so we lost about 5 or 6 %. See here the blogpost about battery degradation.

Here are our main findings over the last three years:

• in total we drove 129000 km, and we went 10 times to Italy and France, once to Linz (Austria) and about 6 times to Brussels, 12 times to Germany, together about 35000 km using the Superchargers,
• our average energy usage has been 210 Wh/km, so with inclusion of approximately 15% losses with loading, I estimate 129000 * 210 *1.15 /1000 = 31154 kWh energy. We charged at home 73% of the total, for 0.162 €/kWh. This gives as energy cost estimate 31154*0.73*0.162=3684 €, i.e. 3684/129000 = 0.029 €/km,
• we did not have any service costs other than tires,
• with our previous Renault Kangoo our average gasoline usage was 1:11, so that would be 129000/11 = 11272 liter gasoline at appr. 1.70 €/l is 19936 €. So with our Tesla we saved in about three years 19936-3684 = 16252 €, or about 5000 €/year,
• we saved 21.5 hours of time: getting gasoline in your tank takes with our car approximately 4 minutes (35l  Renault Kangoo, I measured this!). For this amount of km, we would have needed to tank 322 times (11272/35), hence 1288 minutes, so 21.5 hours. With charging, it takes only 10 s per charge: you connect the car and walk away…
• the driving itself is every time joyful: no noise, no smell, no gears, direct respons; we never want to go back to an old ICE vehicle!

Model 3

The other big news this summer was the presentation of the Model 3, as well as the opening in the autumn of the Gigafactory. In a few weeks time about 400000 Model 3’s were pre-ordered.  In combination with the Diesel gate, this really gave a boost to electric driving worldwide, with all manufacturers scaling up right now. We also did order (2) Model 3’s, and we look forward to 2018 to see if indeed the Model 3 will arrive in Europe.

Autopilot

One of the things I miss is the autopilot. I look forward to the Model 3 also for this reason. At the end of 2016 a very impressive video became viral, showing the working principle of the new autopilot in practice (thanks to Hans Noordsij). The autopilot systems of the Tesla of Frank van Hoesel is warning and acting accordingly, for a slow car driving before the car which is directly visible. Look to the impressive video shown below from the accident on the A2 in the Netherlands. No large injuries for the people involved by the way, fortunately.

We look forward to all the things 2017 will bring us, and wish you all a great and healthy 2017!

Let’s hope 2017 will become known as the year of transition to full electric driving for mainstream buyers!