Tesla Model S 85D
Discussion
The wall charger was installed this week in place of the Rolec one by my local electrician and looking very nice for the princely sum of £20. Installation was very straight forward but you do need a torque spanner to do up the incoming cable terminals correctly – too high you break something, too low you get poor connection and overheating. Also worth having some washers to hand to pack out the back of the mounting plate if the wall is not even, as warping the plate could make it hard to mount the charging unit onto it.
What was slightly alarming was the state of the RCBO (Residual current trip switch inside the 18 month old Rolec Charger) when we opened it up to disconnect and remove it.
Out of curiosity I pulled the dead blue RBCO apart. I drilled out the rivets holding it together:
You can see the RCBO switched the neutral connection and the contacts of the neutral switch contacts seem to have failed, looks like they were just not up to 32amps 5 hours a day for a year and a half! Here is the fixed connection:
And here is the moving contactor.
Some Googling shows this to be a known issue which is rectified by replacing with an updated RCBO. I contacted the installer and after a little email “debate” about invalidating warranty by opening the Charger, they have sent me a new updated “Green” RCBO without charge. I have fitted this and the charger is ready for re-use.
I am not sure what to do with the old charger now, I might look at installing it at the in-laws in Sunderland, or perhaps Ebay it, but one of my friends at work has his eye on an I3 and has asked for 1st refusal.
SW 9 downloaded last night, but all it really gives me is a slightly different UI to learn and the 3 Atari games!
I have also discovered that after the 1st five uses of my referral code referral code phil7565 each additional referral that gets used gives me 2% off the cost of a new Tesla roadster. So come on – would you not like to see one of those in Readers Cars - only 53 more referrals to go?
What was slightly alarming was the state of the RCBO (Residual current trip switch inside the 18 month old Rolec Charger) when we opened it up to disconnect and remove it.
Out of curiosity I pulled the dead blue RBCO apart. I drilled out the rivets holding it together:
You can see the RCBO switched the neutral connection and the contacts of the neutral switch contacts seem to have failed, looks like they were just not up to 32amps 5 hours a day for a year and a half! Here is the fixed connection:
And here is the moving contactor.
Some Googling shows this to be a known issue which is rectified by replacing with an updated RCBO. I contacted the installer and after a little email “debate” about invalidating warranty by opening the Charger, they have sent me a new updated “Green” RCBO without charge. I have fitted this and the charger is ready for re-use.
I am not sure what to do with the old charger now, I might look at installing it at the in-laws in Sunderland, or perhaps Ebay it, but one of my friends at work has his eye on an I3 and has asked for 1st refusal.
SW 9 downloaded last night, but all it really gives me is a slightly different UI to learn and the 3 Atari games!
I have also discovered that after the 1st five uses of my referral code referral code phil7565 each additional referral that gets used gives me 2% off the cost of a new Tesla roadster. So come on – would you not like to see one of those in Readers Cars - only 53 more referrals to go?
Dec 2018
Couple of updates this month, I have just had the 50k service at 49000 miles and an MoT, it has passed the MoT, and it has cost me an eye watering £504.85 all my niggles seem to have been fixed. The feeling was the Autopilot drift was caused by wheel alignment, and to call back with time and location if it does it again and it seemed to be ok on the way home. A tear on the inner wall in one tyre was spotted late in the service which meant it took 4 days in total – it looks much busier than my last visit, but to make up for the delay the tyre was replaced free of charge which was nice.
From now on, unless there is some drivetrain warranty work I will consider looking to take it Matt Cleevely in Cheltenham who seems to be well regarded, not very close but much cheaper and an excuse to go shopping in Cheltenham with Mrs Spunagain, unless a local EV specialist sets up shop nearer to Newbury.
While it was being serviced I got lent this very nice 2017 Model S90D with 18k on the clock.
Biggest noticeable differences while driving were
1) The heated steering wheel and rear seats which I would love to have in mine!
2) It had AP2 HW which was more twitchy than my AP1 but the AP2 binnacle display shows other cars behind and beside you instead of just in front.
3) Leather next gen seats which I found a bit tight and I am under 12 stone!
Also in November I got a CO Zero dashcam it came with all the goodies below:
It was a doddle to fit: slide off the existing mirror cover then fit 2 wires which poke into the auto dimming mirror supply, tape the wires in place and the camera module clicked into place of the original cover (quite firmly). The only difficulty I had was finding out the password for the camera Wifi which I managed to do with some googling as the pdf manual link from a QR-code in the box was broken. The App works fine on my phone (another QR code) and downloading files is easy. The unit stores video on a 16G micro SD card which you can upgrade, and overwrites old files as it fills up. A knock sensor auto locks files of interest as does pressing one of the 2 buttons. The second button allows you to take snapshots.
I chose this one as it looks OEM and the idea of having the car broken into to steal the dashcam worries me and hope this one is a lot less noticeable and desirable than the high end ones which seem to be favoured on the Tesla Facebook groups. It is HD which is good enough for me.
Here it is fitted:
As the mirror supply shuts down when the car is off, the camera runs on its own battery for about half an hour before shutting down. I like the idea of it being monitored all the time so looked for another power solution. Turns out in the microphone pod above the mirror there is a security sensor that has permanent power, I have bought a lead which goes between the loom and the security module and modified it to add some sockets to plug the camera into it, but need to do some more research, the camera has a battery inside which may be Lithium-ion and it is not good to leave them on charge constantly. In my last job we had a load of phones on test which were left permanently on charge and many of them started to get swollen batteries. It may be possible to just disconnect the battery if I am running on a permanent 12V supply.
I have had so few issues that I have decided to forgo the Tesla Allianz warranty
(2 years, 25k miles for £1600 or 4 years, 50k for £3200) and hope for the best!
Wish me luck!
Couple of updates this month, I have just had the 50k service at 49000 miles and an MoT, it has passed the MoT, and it has cost me an eye watering £504.85 all my niggles seem to have been fixed. The feeling was the Autopilot drift was caused by wheel alignment, and to call back with time and location if it does it again and it seemed to be ok on the way home. A tear on the inner wall in one tyre was spotted late in the service which meant it took 4 days in total – it looks much busier than my last visit, but to make up for the delay the tyre was replaced free of charge which was nice.
From now on, unless there is some drivetrain warranty work I will consider looking to take it Matt Cleevely in Cheltenham who seems to be well regarded, not very close but much cheaper and an excuse to go shopping in Cheltenham with Mrs Spunagain, unless a local EV specialist sets up shop nearer to Newbury.
While it was being serviced I got lent this very nice 2017 Model S90D with 18k on the clock.
Biggest noticeable differences while driving were
1) The heated steering wheel and rear seats which I would love to have in mine!
2) It had AP2 HW which was more twitchy than my AP1 but the AP2 binnacle display shows other cars behind and beside you instead of just in front.
3) Leather next gen seats which I found a bit tight and I am under 12 stone!
Also in November I got a CO Zero dashcam it came with all the goodies below:
It was a doddle to fit: slide off the existing mirror cover then fit 2 wires which poke into the auto dimming mirror supply, tape the wires in place and the camera module clicked into place of the original cover (quite firmly). The only difficulty I had was finding out the password for the camera Wifi which I managed to do with some googling as the pdf manual link from a QR-code in the box was broken. The App works fine on my phone (another QR code) and downloading files is easy. The unit stores video on a 16G micro SD card which you can upgrade, and overwrites old files as it fills up. A knock sensor auto locks files of interest as does pressing one of the 2 buttons. The second button allows you to take snapshots.
I chose this one as it looks OEM and the idea of having the car broken into to steal the dashcam worries me and hope this one is a lot less noticeable and desirable than the high end ones which seem to be favoured on the Tesla Facebook groups. It is HD which is good enough for me.
Here it is fitted:
As the mirror supply shuts down when the car is off, the camera runs on its own battery for about half an hour before shutting down. I like the idea of it being monitored all the time so looked for another power solution. Turns out in the microphone pod above the mirror there is a security sensor that has permanent power, I have bought a lead which goes between the loom and the security module and modified it to add some sockets to plug the camera into it, but need to do some more research, the camera has a battery inside which may be Lithium-ion and it is not good to leave them on charge constantly. In my last job we had a load of phones on test which were left permanently on charge and many of them started to get swollen batteries. It may be possible to just disconnect the battery if I am running on a permanent 12V supply.
I have had so few issues that I have decided to forgo the Tesla Allianz warranty
(2 years, 25k miles for £1600 or 4 years, 50k for £3200) and hope for the best!
Wish me luck!
A few small updates this month
March 2019
At the end of March I have had the car for 2 years and at the 2 year mark here were my running costs:
Looking at a AA’s Total of standing charges and running costs (in pence) based on annual mileage
It compares will with 15k miles in a £20-32k new car.
April 2019
At the beginning of April my second Tesla wall charger arrived, that is now stashed away and will be fitted once we get a second electric car. – Thanks Arfusleep!
At the end of April I had the car booked in to Bristol to look at a suspension advisory I had on the MOT, the delay was to get the parts in which were ordered in December – it was not urgent but still a disappointing wait. I arranged to drop the car for the day and when I dropped the car off I got a surprise, they had 2 work sheets – one to look at the rear suspension and one to fit my new referral gift – a set of 21” Arachnid Alloys with their new Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres - if I wanted! I had them fitted along with a new set of wheel nuts and wheel nut covers – all done for free. I headed off in a 2017 P90D loaner, which felt identical to mine apart from the next gen seats.
I picked up the car in the afternoon with nothing to pay for fitting a new rear upper link suspension assembly and bolts. The old 19” wheels were wrapped nicely in polythene and cardboard for easy stacking in the garage:
The new wheels look fab:
Thanks again Kevin!
Sadly 2 weeks before I had just reshod the old 19” wheels for £500 to match the new one fitted in December. When the new 21s are worn out I will decide what to do. Sell one set or keep both – one set for summer and one for winter.
The new wheels have a noticeably firmer and to be honest harsher ride and are also noticeably louder, they briefly introduced a new rattle at motorway speeds – a buzz coming from the gear selector stalk, but a dab of silicone grease has cured that though.
June 2019
Finally after hearing about some prowlers in the neighbourhood, I set about to do some geekery with my dash-cam. I pulled it apart to find out the power supplies inside are not lithium batteries but are supercaps which do not heat up:
This means I have no concerns about running it 24 hours a day. I have done a little Googling on how the 12V supply is managed and I think I should be ok with a few more tens of mA draw. So I made up couple of cables to connect the dash-cam to the permanent supply to the alarm module behind the cabin light pod in the headlining. I have it set up so I can easily switch between the permanent alarm supply or the “ignition on” supply from the rear view mirror. Running the wires was an absolute pig, and I needed to remove the cover over the rear view mirror and camera electronics which is fixed with the most incredibly tight clips, and I was afraid I would break something in the process but thankfully nothing broke.
This is all refitted into the car to give 24 hour coverage with a 32GmicroSD card inside.
We will see what we see!
Finally I am now at 590071 miles which has come up incredibly quickly. Similar age and miles cars seem to be about £45K on the used market now which is only 5k off a new Model3 Dual motor without the Autopilot or performance pack (£50,390). If it was a hatch and not a saloon I would think seriously about swapping the S for a 3. However depending on how family logistics work over the next few months, we are also seriously thinking of selling the Family Volvo as our need for 7 seats is dwindling now and apart from that the Tesla does everything we need from a family car…
March 2019
At the end of March I have had the car for 2 years and at the 2 year mark here were my running costs:
| COSTS | Amount |
|---|---|
| Miles when I picked it up | 21664 |
| Miles 2 years later | 52122 |
| Total miles done by me | 30458 |
| Supercharger miles | 2520 |
| Average Watt hours per mile while I have owned it | 344 |
| Date picked up the car | 18-Mar-17 |
| Today | 25-Feb-19 |
| Home charging kWh | 9610.7 |
| Price/kWh | £ 0.1029 |
| Total cost if I had paid for all charging | £ 1,078.14 |
| Total cost/mile if I paid for all charging | £ 0.035 |
| Total cost to me so far (- supercharging) | £ 988.94 |
| Total cost to me /mile actual | £0.032 |
| COSTS | Amount | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Charger install | £ 319.00 | Apr-17 |
| Insurance 2017-2018 | £ 637.00 | Mar-17 |
| Insurance 2018-2019 | £ 1,100.00 | Mar-18 |
| Insurance 2019-2020 | £ 918.00 | Mar-18 |
| Fit Tesla Charger | £ 20.00 | Nov-18 |
| Service April 2017 | £ 700.00 | Apr-17 |
| Service Dec 2018 | £ 504.85 | Dec-18 |
| Chademo adapter | £ 358.00 | Apr-17 |
| Set of 4 tyres | £ 880.00 | Jul-17 |
| Insurance Excess | £ 850.00 | Mar-18 |
| Electricity | £ 988.94 | to date |
| Dashcam | £ 200.00 | Nov-18 |
| Total | £ 7,475.79 | |
| Cost per mile | £ 0.25 | |
| Price new | £ 57,000.00 | Mar-16 |
| Price at end of March | £ 47,000.00 | Mar-19 |
| Depreciation | £ 10,000.00 | |
| Total | £ 17,475.79 | |
| Cost per mile | £ 0.57 |
Looking at a AA’s Total of standing charges and running costs (in pence) based on annual mileage
| annual mileage of | Car price £20000 to £32000 | Price over £32000 |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000 miles | 121.79 | 226.15 |
| 10,000 miles | 73.07 | 128.81 |
| 15,000 miles | 57.24 | 97.22 |
| 20,000 miles | 49.63 | 82.07 |
| 25,000 miles | 44.58 | 71.95 |
| 30,000 miles | 41.1 | 64.98 |
It compares will with 15k miles in a £20-32k new car.
April 2019
At the beginning of April my second Tesla wall charger arrived, that is now stashed away and will be fitted once we get a second electric car. – Thanks Arfusleep!
At the end of April I had the car booked in to Bristol to look at a suspension advisory I had on the MOT, the delay was to get the parts in which were ordered in December – it was not urgent but still a disappointing wait. I arranged to drop the car for the day and when I dropped the car off I got a surprise, they had 2 work sheets – one to look at the rear suspension and one to fit my new referral gift – a set of 21” Arachnid Alloys with their new Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres - if I wanted! I had them fitted along with a new set of wheel nuts and wheel nut covers – all done for free. I headed off in a 2017 P90D loaner, which felt identical to mine apart from the next gen seats.
I picked up the car in the afternoon with nothing to pay for fitting a new rear upper link suspension assembly and bolts. The old 19” wheels were wrapped nicely in polythene and cardboard for easy stacking in the garage:
The new wheels look fab:
Thanks again Kevin!
Sadly 2 weeks before I had just reshod the old 19” wheels for £500 to match the new one fitted in December. When the new 21s are worn out I will decide what to do. Sell one set or keep both – one set for summer and one for winter.
The new wheels have a noticeably firmer and to be honest harsher ride and are also noticeably louder, they briefly introduced a new rattle at motorway speeds – a buzz coming from the gear selector stalk, but a dab of silicone grease has cured that though.
June 2019
Finally after hearing about some prowlers in the neighbourhood, I set about to do some geekery with my dash-cam. I pulled it apart to find out the power supplies inside are not lithium batteries but are supercaps which do not heat up:
This means I have no concerns about running it 24 hours a day. I have done a little Googling on how the 12V supply is managed and I think I should be ok with a few more tens of mA draw. So I made up couple of cables to connect the dash-cam to the permanent supply to the alarm module behind the cabin light pod in the headlining. I have it set up so I can easily switch between the permanent alarm supply or the “ignition on” supply from the rear view mirror. Running the wires was an absolute pig, and I needed to remove the cover over the rear view mirror and camera electronics which is fixed with the most incredibly tight clips, and I was afraid I would break something in the process but thankfully nothing broke.
This is all refitted into the car to give 24 hour coverage with a 32GmicroSD card inside.
We will see what we see!
Finally I am now at 590071 miles which has come up incredibly quickly. Similar age and miles cars seem to be about £45K on the used market now which is only 5k off a new Model3 Dual motor without the Autopilot or performance pack (£50,390). If it was a hatch and not a saloon I would think seriously about swapping the S for a 3. However depending on how family logistics work over the next few months, we are also seriously thinking of selling the Family Volvo as our need for 7 seats is dwindling now and apart from that the Tesla does everything we need from a family car…
Cheers Spunfry
July 2019
There has been a bit of a kerfuffle recently about software updates FW2019.16.1 and FW2019.16.2. This release has affected the range of some of the older cars. Right now it is not entirely clear which ones are affected, but 85kW and 60kW seem to definitely be affected and possibly 70ish kW (not SW limited) batteries. The biggest impacts seem to be on 85kW packs but not everyone is seeing the same effects. Some people have seen a step reduction in range of 20-30miles with the new FW, which is really upsetting those affected, and some (like me) seem to have seen no effect at all.
My theory is that regular supercharging (which back-of-envelope calcs suggests a charge current per cell of >10A vs <1 amp from my 7kW home charger) causes more degradation to the battery that was previously thought and after the fire in China, the max charging voltage has been proportionally reduced depending on the number of supercharges to reduce fire risk and increase the total life of the battery. (And if being cynical- to reduce number of warranty claims during 8 year battery and drivetrain warranty). The effect on this is a drop not only in range but in max power too . I have only used superchargers for long road trips and mostly charged from home hence my reduction has been pretty minimal.
I think this means that if you are looking to buy a used tesla you need to see it fully charged and to check the actual displayed range vs new range to make sure it meets your needs with some margin.
I have found a few data points for my car (270 miles was expected 85D max range when new) which seems to show the degradation is rolling off.
And a little plot – the little glitch is likely to be due to temperature differences on the 2 days in 2017.
July 2019
There has been a bit of a kerfuffle recently about software updates FW2019.16.1 and FW2019.16.2. This release has affected the range of some of the older cars. Right now it is not entirely clear which ones are affected, but 85kW and 60kW seem to definitely be affected and possibly 70ish kW (not SW limited) batteries. The biggest impacts seem to be on 85kW packs but not everyone is seeing the same effects. Some people have seen a step reduction in range of 20-30miles with the new FW, which is really upsetting those affected, and some (like me) seem to have seen no effect at all.
My theory is that regular supercharging (which back-of-envelope calcs suggests a charge current per cell of >10A vs <1 amp from my 7kW home charger) causes more degradation to the battery that was previously thought and after the fire in China, the max charging voltage has been proportionally reduced depending on the number of supercharges to reduce fire risk and increase the total life of the battery. (And if being cynical- to reduce number of warranty claims during 8 year battery and drivetrain warranty). The effect on this is a drop not only in range but in max power too . I have only used superchargers for long road trips and mostly charged from home hence my reduction has been pretty minimal.
I think this means that if you are looking to buy a used tesla you need to see it fully charged and to check the actual displayed range vs new range to make sure it meets your needs with some margin.
I have found a few data points for my car (270 miles was expected 85D max range when new) which seems to show the degradation is rolling off.
| Date | Miles | Range | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01-01-16 | 0 | 270 | 100.0% |
| 16-04-17 | 22000 | 263 | 97.4% |
| 21-05-17 | 23000 | 262 | 97.0% |
| 07-04-18 | 40200 | 257 | 95.2% |
| 27-06-19 | 60000 | 255 | 94.4% |
And a little plot – the little glitch is likely to be due to temperature differences on the 2 days in 2017.
December 2019
As the car has hit 70,000 miles I have a few updates.
Touchscreen fault
In late October I occasionally found my touch screen was not responsive, that is: the touchpad did not work, but the display and all the functions did work and I could get most of the functions I needed to work using either the steering wheel controls, voice commands or the mobile App. Being an engineer by training I tried turning it on and off again (hard reset holding down the 2 steering wheel buttons and brake pedal) to no avail, so the next engineering approach was tried and I found that enthusiastic thump on the side of the screen cowling would get it to work again for a few days.
With much trepidation I booked the car into Bristol using the app (no more phone service) and was told there would be a charge for diagnostics and a charge to borrow a car if needed. I decided to go down and wait to see what happened, figuring that chances are they would need to order parts to actually fix it. I am now self-warrantying so dreaded the need to replace the MCU (Main Control Unit?) which is supposed to be north of £2K!
On arrival I was introduced to the tech who pointed out that I was due a recall for the passenger airbag at Tesla’s cost and he would have a look at the MCU as part of that disassembly process. About half an hour later he was back with the news that the airbag was replaced and that he had found a loose earth strap on the MCU which was now secured. He also noted that I had not reset my trip-meters since I had got the car nearly 3 years ago and this stored a load of data from every trip and could be slowing the system down. I have reset this and the touch screen does seem more responsive and 3 weeks later I have had no more screen hassles. Best of all I was presented a bill for £0.00.
BatteryGate!
A few weeks ago one of the blind SW updates with no release notes came along and I thought my range had dropped so on my next long trip I filled to the brim and captured the range and it has dropped. Some of the drop may be due to winter it was about 2°C but it does look like I have just taken just over a 1.5% range hit in just 6 months which is double the drop I have seen over the previous 12 months. Much less that many have seen but I will keep an eye on it. You can see the dip in the plot of range vs. time below:
Autopilot degradation
I just got this email from Tesla:
Juice!
After doing the sums I have switched to the Octopus Go tariff which give 5p/kWh between 00:30 and 04:30 which should pretty much now nearly half my household electrical bills. Just waiting for my smart-meter to be installed. If anyone wants to use my code to get £50 cash back on switching it is free-prawn-129.
Another referral
The daughter of a friend of mine has been interested in getting a Tesla and after an email chat and link to this thread she now has a M3 on order for Jan 2020 and used my referral code phil7565. For using the code she will get 1,000 free Supercharger miles and I get a 2 entries in a raffle to win a Founders Series Model Y and another to win a Roadster– fingers crossed!
As the car has hit 70,000 miles I have a few updates.
Touchscreen fault
In late October I occasionally found my touch screen was not responsive, that is: the touchpad did not work, but the display and all the functions did work and I could get most of the functions I needed to work using either the steering wheel controls, voice commands or the mobile App. Being an engineer by training I tried turning it on and off again (hard reset holding down the 2 steering wheel buttons and brake pedal) to no avail, so the next engineering approach was tried and I found that enthusiastic thump on the side of the screen cowling would get it to work again for a few days.
With much trepidation I booked the car into Bristol using the app (no more phone service) and was told there would be a charge for diagnostics and a charge to borrow a car if needed. I decided to go down and wait to see what happened, figuring that chances are they would need to order parts to actually fix it. I am now self-warrantying so dreaded the need to replace the MCU (Main Control Unit?) which is supposed to be north of £2K!
On arrival I was introduced to the tech who pointed out that I was due a recall for the passenger airbag at Tesla’s cost and he would have a look at the MCU as part of that disassembly process. About half an hour later he was back with the news that the airbag was replaced and that he had found a loose earth strap on the MCU which was now secured. He also noted that I had not reset my trip-meters since I had got the car nearly 3 years ago and this stored a load of data from every trip and could be slowing the system down. I have reset this and the touch screen does seem more responsive and 3 weeks later I have had no more screen hassles. Best of all I was presented a bill for £0.00.
BatteryGate!
A few weeks ago one of the blind SW updates with no release notes came along and I thought my range had dropped so on my next long trip I filled to the brim and captured the range and it has dropped. Some of the drop may be due to winter it was about 2°C but it does look like I have just taken just over a 1.5% range hit in just 6 months which is double the drop I have seen over the previous 12 months. Much less that many have seen but I will keep an eye on it. You can see the dip in the plot of range vs. time below:
Autopilot degradation
I just got this email from Tesla:
Tesla said:
Our latest software update introduces changes to some Autopilot features that will affect how they operate on your Model S. These changes are required to meet European regulations and only affect some Model S and Model X cars, as most Tesla’s with Autopilot already have this functionality. We are disappointed with the requirements regulators have chosen to impose, limiting the effectiveness of these features, and will continue to advocate that full functionality be restored.
These changes place limitations on some features that you’re familiar with, so we’ve prepared a summary of updates to ensure you understand what is expected when using Autopilot:
• Auto Lane Change will be restricted for use on dual carriageways with two or more lanes of traffic in either direction.
• Once Auto Lane Change is activated and the indicator is turned on, your car will wait a minimum of one and a half seconds before starting the lane change and will wait up to five seconds before cancelling if the lane change has not been able to start.
• The limit of how far the steering wheel can turn while using Autosteer is reduced and can affect your car’s ability to manoeuvre curves or stay within its lane, requiring you to take action.
• Summon will require that you be within six meters of your car’s location to operate.
• You’ll receive a reminder to hold the steering wheel if it does not detect your hands on the wheel for 15 seconds.
You can also reference these changes in the release notes from your touchscreen by tapping on the Tesla ‘T’ and selecting ‘Release Notes’.
Thank you for being a Tesla owner.
This update has already started to download but I have turned off the Wifi to prevent it downloading for as long as I can get away with it. I have read a fair bit of complaining about how much of a backwards steps this is for those who have this SW build 2019.40.2.3. so will avoid it for now.These changes place limitations on some features that you’re familiar with, so we’ve prepared a summary of updates to ensure you understand what is expected when using Autopilot:
• Auto Lane Change will be restricted for use on dual carriageways with two or more lanes of traffic in either direction.
• Once Auto Lane Change is activated and the indicator is turned on, your car will wait a minimum of one and a half seconds before starting the lane change and will wait up to five seconds before cancelling if the lane change has not been able to start.
• The limit of how far the steering wheel can turn while using Autosteer is reduced and can affect your car’s ability to manoeuvre curves or stay within its lane, requiring you to take action.
• Summon will require that you be within six meters of your car’s location to operate.
• You’ll receive a reminder to hold the steering wheel if it does not detect your hands on the wheel for 15 seconds.
You can also reference these changes in the release notes from your touchscreen by tapping on the Tesla ‘T’ and selecting ‘Release Notes’.
Thank you for being a Tesla owner.
Juice!
After doing the sums I have switched to the Octopus Go tariff which give 5p/kWh between 00:30 and 04:30 which should pretty much now nearly half my household electrical bills. Just waiting for my smart-meter to be installed. If anyone wants to use my code to get £50 cash back on switching it is free-prawn-129.
Another referral
The daughter of a friend of mine has been interested in getting a Tesla and after an email chat and link to this thread she now has a M3 on order for Jan 2020 and used my referral code phil7565. For using the code she will get 1,000 free Supercharger miles and I get a 2 entries in a raffle to win a Founders Series Model Y and another to win a Roadster– fingers crossed!
Hi Kapiteinlangzaam, given the incentives in Norway I think I would have traded in my S and Volvo for an X. Although my teenage daughter would have objected to unnecessary "flexing" provided by the flappy doors!
Hopefully last post on the Tesla this year
MOT and Service!
My original plan was to get the car MOTed while it was at the Service Centre, but Tesla no longer wanted to offer this as a service. In theory you should be able to get your Model S or X MoTed anywhere, but in practice they are big beasts and many smaller MOT stations will not be able to fit the car on their ramps. The best thing is to go to an MOT station that can also do small commercial vehicles.
After a little digging I found an organisation called Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Repair Alliance or Hevra who have a list of EV specialists around the country which is great as there are not too many Tesla service centres. I am hoping we will get an EV specialist in Newbury soon – the market must be there as there are a fair few electric cars around now.
I finally chose to go with Cleevely EV in Cheltenham as they have a very good reputation amongst the Facebook Tesla groups and have a good track record with Teslas and also run their own Model S as a hire car. It also gave me a chance to do some Christmas shopping while they did a Service and MOT while I had a wander around Cheltenham – a 20 minute walk from the garage. They do all the stuff you need to stay safe on top of the MOT and nothing you don’t need.
I drove the 50 miles to Cheltenham and arrived just before one, and asked if I could watch the MoT as I like to have a poke about and see the state of the underside while it is on the ramp to see if there is any planned maintenance needed – rust treatment etc, but she was a clean as a whistle, no rust apart from a little surface rust on the drive shaft ends.
The whole process took 2¼ hours and this is what got done:
• Inspection service – disassembled front boot to checks all fluids and pressures and check the 12V battery condition,
• Check brake fluid for contamination
• Checks tyres for uneven wear
• Fit a new pollen filter (lots of disassembly for that too!)
• MoT
The car sailed through the MoT and the total cost for the MoT and service all in was £181 (compared with the £505 for my 1yr 12k mile service and MoT at the Tesla Service Centre last December and £700 for the 2 years 24k service when I got the car in 2017).
Cleevely seem to have put a lot of thought into Tesla and EV support and for instance will provide either OEM or Unroyal tyres depending on your budget and they have also sourced replacement bushes for the suspension arm bushes that have a tendency to wear instead of replacing the entire assembly which is what Tesla do. (Mine were actually done under warranty last December.) They have also sourced brake disks at £95 a corner or £60 to skim yours if there is enough meat left – skimming saved me a fortune with my MG ZT260 as the disks cost a fortune to replace.
And that was my only expenditure in 2019 apart from electricity and Insurance!
Hopefully last post on the Tesla this year
MOT and Service!
My original plan was to get the car MOTed while it was at the Service Centre, but Tesla no longer wanted to offer this as a service. In theory you should be able to get your Model S or X MoTed anywhere, but in practice they are big beasts and many smaller MOT stations will not be able to fit the car on their ramps. The best thing is to go to an MOT station that can also do small commercial vehicles.
After a little digging I found an organisation called Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Repair Alliance or Hevra who have a list of EV specialists around the country which is great as there are not too many Tesla service centres. I am hoping we will get an EV specialist in Newbury soon – the market must be there as there are a fair few electric cars around now.
I finally chose to go with Cleevely EV in Cheltenham as they have a very good reputation amongst the Facebook Tesla groups and have a good track record with Teslas and also run their own Model S as a hire car. It also gave me a chance to do some Christmas shopping while they did a Service and MOT while I had a wander around Cheltenham – a 20 minute walk from the garage. They do all the stuff you need to stay safe on top of the MOT and nothing you don’t need.
I drove the 50 miles to Cheltenham and arrived just before one, and asked if I could watch the MoT as I like to have a poke about and see the state of the underside while it is on the ramp to see if there is any planned maintenance needed – rust treatment etc, but she was a clean as a whistle, no rust apart from a little surface rust on the drive shaft ends.
The whole process took 2¼ hours and this is what got done:
• Inspection service – disassembled front boot to checks all fluids and pressures and check the 12V battery condition,
• Check brake fluid for contamination
• Checks tyres for uneven wear
• Fit a new pollen filter (lots of disassembly for that too!)
• MoT
The car sailed through the MoT and the total cost for the MoT and service all in was £181 (compared with the £505 for my 1yr 12k mile service and MoT at the Tesla Service Centre last December and £700 for the 2 years 24k service when I got the car in 2017).
Cleevely seem to have put a lot of thought into Tesla and EV support and for instance will provide either OEM or Unroyal tyres depending on your budget and they have also sourced replacement bushes for the suspension arm bushes that have a tendency to wear instead of replacing the entire assembly which is what Tesla do. (Mine were actually done under warranty last December.) They have also sourced brake disks at £95 a corner or £60 to skim yours if there is enough meat left – skimming saved me a fortune with my MG ZT260 as the disks cost a fortune to replace.
And that was my only expenditure in 2019 apart from electricity and Insurance!
Cheers Richard!
Feb2020 A bit of a wordy update I am afraid.
Uh oh - I got a “Voltage too low, car may not restart” warning a few of weeks ago when I got into the car which had been defrosting under App control. I turned off the screen demist and the warning vanished. Better call Tesla - sounds like the 12V battery is on it’s last legs – 4 years is not bad going I guess. (better than my Evora’s one lasted but not as good as the Mini which lasted 8 years as 80k miles!)
Also the dodgy touchscreen issue had re-appeared, with a new symptom that occasionally the screen seemed to receive a load of spurious inputs, this can force the Radio volume up, turn on heated seats which was a little worrying.
On 10th Feb I booked a Tesla Ranger Service visit at home for 3rd March (earliest available was 2nd so quite a wait!).
In the meantime I saw a couple of posts of Facebook from a couple of UK model S owners who have had their MMC cards replaced. The MMC card is a non-volatile memory chip soldered onto the Media Control unit (MCU) – the computer behind the big screen. Everything the car did used to be logged on this, and as the memory filled up the older data was then overwritten. The problem is that so much data was written that the maximum number of write cycles for the chip Tesla used gets exceeded and the data can then become corrupted causing problems. There are a few blogs and YouTube videos about this. Since it came to light last year Tesla have apparently pushed updates which has reduced the quantity of logged data, but for many with earlier cars and high mileage that may be too late. The official Tesla solution is to replace with MCU with a new/refurbed one which can cost £2000 or so.
More Googling suggested that one of the symptoms of a failing MMC chip was the web browser not working, so I checked mine and sure enough it does not work even with the recent new browser SW update.
So I contacted the company that the guys on the Facebook group have used and rated highly. The company is EV Link Ltd in Buckingham and you can call them on 01280 830530 or email gary@ev-link.co. It is part of Eurolane MOT Ltd garage at the Swan Business Centre in Buckingham.
I spoke to Gary who runs the company who have been doing these replacements for about 9 months now, and booked the car in for a new MMC chip, a new 12V battery and a check of the screen connections and if needed to re-flow the solder on the screen controller chip.
He quoted me £180 for the battery + half an hour fitting (it is buried quite deep in the car) and £500 for the MMC replacement, + whatever time was needed to fix the screen. He expected the whole lot to be around £700. For context I just got the Volvo XC90 serviced at the main dealer with new front brake pads and disks which costed over £800. The Volvo will be sold at Easter and the Tesla will become the main family car.
The whole MMC replacement process takes 2-3 days as the old MMC chip needs to be removed, the data extracted from the chip, the data uncorrupted – rebuilt, put on the new chip and then the chip put back on the MCU. The data extraction is semi-automated but the application which does it can take days if the data is badly corrupted and needs quite a lot of human intervention to make it work. Gary replaces the 8GB chip with either a 16GB or 64GB which also has a much higher rewrite specification, I chose the 64GB so on those numbers this should be good for at least another 32 years! In reality at least 10 years is a good benchmark as most silicon chips are only really qualified for 10 years of active life.
From what I can tell from searching, EV Link are the only company in the UK so far who offer this service and Gary used his own model S as the guinea pig when it failed. I am pretty impressed that to fix his car he has learned to code in Linux and learned the skills to remove and refit surface-mount chips and to re build the memory contents! There is no website yet but there is a Facebook page which is in it’s infancy – Gary is too busy fixing Tesla MMCs to work on his web presence!
They are just over an hour away from Newbury, and while Gary does not have a courtesy car they have a hire car company round the corner called Rentamech hire car (01280 815680) and Matthew there does a Hyundai I10 for £27 per day.
I cancelled the Tesla Ranger visit on the Tesla App and I took the car up to EV-link on the 27th Feb. In the meantime I have been using the additional voice commands https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/voice-comman... and was mildly tickled to find saying “My ass is cold” turns on the seat heaters!
In the meantime I Ebayed my old Rolec wall charger last weekend and was astonished to get £330 for it – they are only £395 new from Rolec! It seems there is a demand as you can only get the Government grant is you install a “Smart” connected charger which is much more expensive even with the grant.
So I dropped the car off at 8:00 on Wednesday 26th and there were 4 Teslas parked either outside or in the workshop – a mix of S and X and I met one owner there who was picking up his car who had just had the MMC done as he was worried the MCU screen was slowing down, but mainly as a preventative measure having done over 60k miles. Gary seems to be getting a lot of business and his Tesla customers have booked out all of the available hire cars at Rentamech who are even considering increasing their fleet just to support Gary!
The car was ready yesterday – on the 29th, and I picked it up and all is working as it should be. The screen issue could have been one of 2 things – the firmware drivers for the screen are stored on the MMC card and could have been corrupted so Gary has reinstalled known good drivers to be sure. The other possibility is Gary noticed the screen was butted up hard against the bezel which could have been interfering with the touch sensor – he has adjusted it for more gap. Either way is it now working fine even when warmed up. Even if this is not the real cure Gary checked and a new screen with screen controller chip can get obtained from Tesla for abut £500, but hopefully I will not need this.
The whole thing – screen, 12 battery and 64GB MMC replacement costed me £780 plus £88 for the 3 days car hire and £30 to fill up the i30 with petrol. Still less than paying for the extended warranty!
Finally I got this year’s insurance quote form Privilege for £845, but going back to the comparison sites with the same search terms got me £509 but with an extra £150 excess which is already saved in the price so I have moved over to LVE after spending some time on the phone making sure the details were all correct as their quote was much lower than all the others and Privilege could not match it!
Feb2020 A bit of a wordy update I am afraid.
Uh oh - I got a “Voltage too low, car may not restart” warning a few of weeks ago when I got into the car which had been defrosting under App control. I turned off the screen demist and the warning vanished. Better call Tesla - sounds like the 12V battery is on it’s last legs – 4 years is not bad going I guess. (better than my Evora’s one lasted but not as good as the Mini which lasted 8 years as 80k miles!)
Also the dodgy touchscreen issue had re-appeared, with a new symptom that occasionally the screen seemed to receive a load of spurious inputs, this can force the Radio volume up, turn on heated seats which was a little worrying.
On 10th Feb I booked a Tesla Ranger Service visit at home for 3rd March (earliest available was 2nd so quite a wait!).
In the meantime I saw a couple of posts of Facebook from a couple of UK model S owners who have had their MMC cards replaced. The MMC card is a non-volatile memory chip soldered onto the Media Control unit (MCU) – the computer behind the big screen. Everything the car did used to be logged on this, and as the memory filled up the older data was then overwritten. The problem is that so much data was written that the maximum number of write cycles for the chip Tesla used gets exceeded and the data can then become corrupted causing problems. There are a few blogs and YouTube videos about this. Since it came to light last year Tesla have apparently pushed updates which has reduced the quantity of logged data, but for many with earlier cars and high mileage that may be too late. The official Tesla solution is to replace with MCU with a new/refurbed one which can cost £2000 or so.
More Googling suggested that one of the symptoms of a failing MMC chip was the web browser not working, so I checked mine and sure enough it does not work even with the recent new browser SW update.
So I contacted the company that the guys on the Facebook group have used and rated highly. The company is EV Link Ltd in Buckingham and you can call them on 01280 830530 or email gary@ev-link.co. It is part of Eurolane MOT Ltd garage at the Swan Business Centre in Buckingham.
I spoke to Gary who runs the company who have been doing these replacements for about 9 months now, and booked the car in for a new MMC chip, a new 12V battery and a check of the screen connections and if needed to re-flow the solder on the screen controller chip.
He quoted me £180 for the battery + half an hour fitting (it is buried quite deep in the car) and £500 for the MMC replacement, + whatever time was needed to fix the screen. He expected the whole lot to be around £700. For context I just got the Volvo XC90 serviced at the main dealer with new front brake pads and disks which costed over £800. The Volvo will be sold at Easter and the Tesla will become the main family car.
The whole MMC replacement process takes 2-3 days as the old MMC chip needs to be removed, the data extracted from the chip, the data uncorrupted – rebuilt, put on the new chip and then the chip put back on the MCU. The data extraction is semi-automated but the application which does it can take days if the data is badly corrupted and needs quite a lot of human intervention to make it work. Gary replaces the 8GB chip with either a 16GB or 64GB which also has a much higher rewrite specification, I chose the 64GB so on those numbers this should be good for at least another 32 years! In reality at least 10 years is a good benchmark as most silicon chips are only really qualified for 10 years of active life.
From what I can tell from searching, EV Link are the only company in the UK so far who offer this service and Gary used his own model S as the guinea pig when it failed. I am pretty impressed that to fix his car he has learned to code in Linux and learned the skills to remove and refit surface-mount chips and to re build the memory contents! There is no website yet but there is a Facebook page which is in it’s infancy – Gary is too busy fixing Tesla MMCs to work on his web presence!
They are just over an hour away from Newbury, and while Gary does not have a courtesy car they have a hire car company round the corner called Rentamech hire car (01280 815680) and Matthew there does a Hyundai I10 for £27 per day.
I cancelled the Tesla Ranger visit on the Tesla App and I took the car up to EV-link on the 27th Feb. In the meantime I have been using the additional voice commands https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/voice-comman... and was mildly tickled to find saying “My ass is cold” turns on the seat heaters!
In the meantime I Ebayed my old Rolec wall charger last weekend and was astonished to get £330 for it – they are only £395 new from Rolec! It seems there is a demand as you can only get the Government grant is you install a “Smart” connected charger which is much more expensive even with the grant.
So I dropped the car off at 8:00 on Wednesday 26th and there were 4 Teslas parked either outside or in the workshop – a mix of S and X and I met one owner there who was picking up his car who had just had the MMC done as he was worried the MCU screen was slowing down, but mainly as a preventative measure having done over 60k miles. Gary seems to be getting a lot of business and his Tesla customers have booked out all of the available hire cars at Rentamech who are even considering increasing their fleet just to support Gary!
The car was ready yesterday – on the 29th, and I picked it up and all is working as it should be. The screen issue could have been one of 2 things – the firmware drivers for the screen are stored on the MMC card and could have been corrupted so Gary has reinstalled known good drivers to be sure. The other possibility is Gary noticed the screen was butted up hard against the bezel which could have been interfering with the touch sensor – he has adjusted it for more gap. Either way is it now working fine even when warmed up. Even if this is not the real cure Gary checked and a new screen with screen controller chip can get obtained from Tesla for abut £500, but hopefully I will not need this.
The whole thing – screen, 12 battery and 64GB MMC replacement costed me £780 plus £88 for the 3 days car hire and £30 to fill up the i30 with petrol. Still less than paying for the extended warranty!
Finally I got this year’s insurance quote form Privilege for £845, but going back to the comparison sites with the same search terms got me £509 but with an extra £150 excess which is already saved in the price so I have moved over to LVE after spending some time on the phone making sure the details were all correct as their quote was much lower than all the others and Privilege could not match it!
Hi Ok
Could you post a link?
I think you may have confused illegal with this
Where European regulations have reduced the allowable autopilot features - basically where:
1. It nags you to put some turning force on the steering wheel more often.
2. If you indicate to change lane, it seems to takes ages for the autopilot to respond so I just take over, change lanes manually and re-engage the autopilot.
Could you post a link?
I think you may have confused illegal with this
Where European regulations have reduced the allowable autopilot features - basically where:
- Auto Lane Change will be restricted for use on divided roads with two or more lanes of traffic in either direction.
- Once Auto Lane Change is activated and the indicator is turned on, your car will wait a minimum of one and a half seconds before starting the lane change and will wait up to five seconds before cancelling if the lane change has not been able to start.
- The limit of how far the steering wheel can turn while using Autosteer is reduced and can affect your car’s ability to manoeuvre curves or stay within the lane, require yu to take action.
- Summon will require that you be within six meters of your car’s lcation to operate.
- You’ll receive a reminder to hold steering wheel if it does not detect your hands on the wheel for 15 seconds.
1. It nags you to put some turning force on the steering wheel more often.
2. If you indicate to change lane, it seems to takes ages for the autopilot to respond so I just take over, change lanes manually and re-engage the autopilot.
had ham said:
RobDickinson said:
lol mkay
Why do you have to pollute every EV thread with your pathetic fanboism?Please, just go away.
OP - no electric car fan by any means but, interested reading your stories and history with the car, amazed you managed to get so many nice free things from referrals, good on you for playing the system
Spunagain said:
Cheers Richard!
stuff
MCU1 -> MCU2 upgrades coming soon...stuff
https://www.tesla.com/support/infotainment?redirec...
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