I thought this newsletter would come out last Monday but it turns out that life got it the way. I think that if I want to succeed at having a semi-regular publishing schedule, I’ll need to work through the week on incrementally writing instead of trying to write it all up on the weekend.
The current
The end of our trip out west was quite nice and, like most trips that are enjoyable, ended too soon. On our last night in Whistler, we went to one of my favourite sushi restaurants, Sushi Village. Established in 1985, the restaurant has been there pretty much since the early days of the Whistler resort town and if you’re spending time in the area, I encourage you to pay them a visit.
The next day, we drove back to Vancouver in preparation for our flight home and I got the chance to try the Tesla some more on highways and into some light to heavy traffic. More on that below.
The Sea-to-Sky highway, especially on the section in between Squamish and Vancouver, has to be one of the most picturesque drives I’ve ever done. I drove it four times now and every time I find it just has stunning with the mountains on one side and Howe Sound and more mountains on the other. Every time, I try to stop somewhere along the way to soak in the beauty that mother nature created.
There was a something special happening for me on our flight home. I’m a bit of an aviation geek (maybe I should say “was” as I follow the industry a lot less lately) and since 2011, I’ve been hoping for a flight on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. So many times I’ve been in airports waiting for a flight, looking outside the windows at the airplanes on the tarmac and wishing that a 787 would show up at my gate. You know, just to say that I’ve been in one. Up until now, it had unfortunately never happened. Nowadays, most airlines put the type of aircraft on the reservation and I was so happy when I saw that I was finally going to ride in one when leaving Vancouver. Gold!
It hit me once we walked on the Dreamliner that although it was my first time seeing the interior of one, it is no longer the shiny new plane that it once was. The plastic of the overhead storage compartments was visibly aged and the scratches, dents and marks inside of them showed years of wear. Nonetheless, I was still quite happy to finally sit in one and experience flying in this aeronautical marvel. Smooth and relatively quiet flight, dynamic window tint and speed over ground above 1000 km/h. What’s not to love?
Fun fact, Boeing has delivered just over 1000 units of the 787 and has yet to report a profit on the sale of the aircraft. 😬
The topic
As I've mentioned, in the first edition, we decided to rent a Tesla Model 3 for our week on the West Coast. Although I had sat in one twice before for a grand total of 10 minutes of being a passenger, I wanted to really get a feel of what it would be like to own one. You know, have it long enough to travel some distance and have to charge it. When we arrived at the car rental place, the person at the counter gave me the card for the car. Yes, a car card. Because Teslas are too cool for keys. It’s pretty much an RFid card much the same that you might have for entering your workplace. That’s what you have to use to lock and unlock the car as well as tell the car you’re ready to drive.
When the employee at the counter sent me off to get the car, she asked if I had driven a Tesla before and if I wanted help with how to operate it. Of course I said I had — even though I hadn’t — driven one before and didn’t need help. It’s a car. I figured that if I needed a crash course on how to operate the car then it would be a big failure on the user-friendliness side of things.
I rented the car with Hertz and they did a pretty good job of sending a few emails in the week prior to our arrival with some information on the Tesla. Like how to charge it, how to operate the cruise control, how to unlock the car (because remember, there is no key), where to put the card to tell it you want to drive and how to put it into drive. I figured that was enough instructions.
When we got to the car, unlocking went just as planned. Bring the card just below the side camera and you’ll hear the car come to life. Mirrors turn to their driving position, lights turn on and the doors unlock. The car was too close to the back wall to bring our luggage around and put it in the trunk so I first had to move the car forward. I sat down in the driver seat, the centre display was reminding me to bring the card under the front of the elbow rest/storage compartment to put it in driving mode. Once that was done, all I had to do was pull down on the right lever next to the wheel and the car was ready to go forward. I drove the car a few feet, exited, then put the luggage in the trunk and sat back down in the car to leave the parking garage. Huston, we have a problem…
As I went to put the car back into drive by pulling the lever down, the car wouldn’t go into drive. The centre console wasn’t showing any errors or anything specific I needed to do and I had no idea why this was happening. My wife and I even spend a bit of time on our phones searching the web to figure it out. Nothing was really coming up with useful information so I just stood out of the car, locked the doors, unlocked them a new and resumed the procedure — scan the card under the elbow rest and pull down on the lever. Some of you might already have noticed what I had done wrong after putting the luggage in the trunk. It took a couple more times getting the unresponsiveness situation to finally figure out what was going on. It was simply that when the car is put into park and the door is opened, the card needs to be scanned again to put it back in driving mode. 🤦♂️ Facepalm moment.
The first thing I noticed is that putting the car into drive does not make the car automatically want to roll forward as it would with an automatic transmission gas-powered car. That in itself certainly will reduce wear on the breaks. The other thing that is quite noticeable is the lack of engine noise. This is probably my favourite thing about electric cars. So quiet at low speeds.
The car is heavy. About 30% heavier than a comparatively sized gas-powered car. You can feel it by how smooth the ride is and how the low centre of gravity makes it stable when cornering. When pressing on the accelerator, you wouldn’t think you’re driving a heavy sedan, though. Even this base version that we were driving accelerates plenty fast to press you firmly in your seat and the torque control of the electric motor is so precise that asking for maximum acceleration while turning on a wet surface won’t even make the car unstable.
There are a few negatives that I want to point out as well. There is no engine noise but at high speed on the highway, it feels like the heaviness of the car creates extra rolling noise (the tires are loud!). The assembly quality is also left to be desired. The interior lines have very little interruptions — the dash goes from one side to the other in one section — and yet they still manage to have misalignments. The passenger side windows were possibly misaligned on the seal as we could hear a decently high wind noise seeping through 💨. I also found the seat to be a little narrow with the firm padding on each side of my glutes giving me some oddly uncomfortable pressure points. Probably something I could get used to but still worth noting.
The cars in Vancouver don’t need winter tires. There so little snow that most people just use summer tires year round. Rental companies put what they call “mud and snow” tires. Not sure why they are called that because they have none of the characteristics of a tire I would use in the snow and even less so of one I would use in the mud. Vancouver received a good 10 cm snow dump the night prior to our arrival and the side streets don’t really get plowed, even less so the alleyways. When we visited our friends on the first day, they asked us to park in their underground parking garage that is accessible only by the alleyway. The 10 cm of wet snow on the ground was enough to make it very difficult to maneuver the Model 3. At one point I had to stop to let someone walk by and pressing the accelerator would yield zero forward movement. Actually, the wheels wouldn’t even turn. I did say that the motor has excellent torque control but a little less in this case might have helped a little. Something similar happened in Whistler a couple days later when I parked at our friends’ place over there. The difference is that this time it was on a slightly wavy ice surface but the outcome was the same. My buddy had to push the car while I pressed the accelerator to move it forward. A little embarrassing I must say. I learned only later that there is a slip start feature that can help in those kinds of situations.
Charging the car was a breeze. When you enter your destination on the car computer, it will tell you how much charge, approximately, will be left on arrival. The drive from Vancouver to Whistler is only 120 km. A hilly and windy one but still not that long. We didn’t want to have to worry about charging when we got to Whistler so we decided to stop in Squamish for a doughnut and then a short stop at the Supercharger station. The battery was at about 60% and it took less than 15 minutes to get to 97%. I don’t have a good answer for you as to why we decided to stop it at 97%. We just did 🤷♂️. Fifteen minutes was just enough time to open up YouTube on the car computer and watch an episode from, Alluring Arctic, one of our favourite sailing channels. The charging fee gets automatically billed to the car owner’s account, which in this case is Hertz, and was simply passed along to us later without any added fees. I have to say it’s quite a pleasant experience.
We did end up charging in Whistler later in the week and we went for a warm beverage while we were waiting. One thing to note is that if you stay longer than needed at the Supercharger station, you get charged for the extra time. If not careful it can add up really quickly. I think we probably came back 15 minutes after the charge was finished and we had about 6$ extra on the bill. It comes up to $0.40 per minute. If I owned the car, I would have had the Tesla app on my phone letting me know about the charging status and probably would have avoided the extra charge.
When we drove back to Vancouver near the end of our vacation, I was also able to test out the autopilot feature. Press down on the right lever twice and it activates. It has to be on a supported road though otherwise the car won’t let you activate it. At constant speed it’s actually quite nice. The car slows down when it gets too close to another vehicle and takes turns in a smooth enough fashion. When approaching slow and heavy traffic though it tends to break way too late and hard. Similarly, when stopped in traffic, it tends to accelerate too abruptly when getting moving again. It might be something that can be adjusted so it might just be an operator problem. The way it was, though, it was unpleasant enough that I preferred driving the car myself.
Overall, the week with the Model 3 was a nice experience. If I was on the market for a new vehicle, however, I’m not sure I would even consider the Tesla. In a capitalist system, we say that we vote with our wallet. Buying a Tesla would mean giving Elon Musk my vote and given his recent douchebag behaviour, I don’t think I could convince myself to turn a blind eye to the douchebagery. I’d rather go for something like the Hyundai Ionic 5 or the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
Note to self: Don't add text last minute without taking the time to proof read it before pressing send. Especially when it's at the top of the newsletter 😅.