Two years ago today, we took delivery of our 2018 long range, rear wheel drive Tesla Model 3. We named her Scarlett because we broke from our decades-long grey car theme and went red.
We have driven her over 22,000 miles in those two years (she is our only car) and I wanted to reflect again on our experiences.
Driving is fun again. I grew up as kind of a gear-head (although without a lot of the mechanical part; I just loved cars and learning all about them). In recent years, I had lost the rush from driving. Some of that may have happened during our mini-van years, but I think a lot happened because cars became pretty vanilla. Enter Scarlett. With a 0-60 in just under 5 seconds, a virtually silent motor and incredible handling, I actually enjoy driving again. Almost enough to want to give up my bike and go back to two cars.
Driving is almost free now. Our Volkswagen Passat got decent gas mileage (about 20mpg around town) but needed premium petrol to avoid costly maintenance cleaning out the fuel lines. At about $3.50 a gallon, these last 22,000 miles would have set us back almost $4,000 in just fuel. I geeked out the other day and actually sat down and added up our Supercharging costs (traveling out of town) and our home charging (most of our charging we simply plug in at night and we’re fully-charged by morning). We have spent a total of $646 for electricity. Including road trips. And that’s not taking into account our solar, which supplements our charging, further reducing our costs.
Driving is guilt-free. Because we have solar, our electricity is at worst subsidized from our utility and at best free. Our local electric utility also sources 90% renewable energy and is 80% carbon neutral. So that extra little trip to the store or across town has very little impact on the environment. And it’s fun (see above).
Driving is virtually maintenance-free. In two years, we have rotated the tires once and replaced the cabin air filter once. Total cost: $126.50. That’s it. Total.
I roll my eyes when I see articles about range anxiety and charging, which seems to be the single most prevalent negative perspective for EVs. I did chuckle a bit when I saw a recent headline from the AAA that said “owning an EV will cure range anxiety.” I chuckled because this is so true.
After about two of our first shorter test road trips, we quickly realized that the Supercharger network and even the slower Level 2 charger locations are robust and easy to find and use. Now, we plan 1,500 to 2,000 mile vacations with no worry or concern. Even worst-case scenario, we can plug into a standard 110 outlet. And a side benefit is when we stop to charge, I will usually Yelp a nearby coffee, lunch or dinner spot. We have found some really good restaurants this way and have rarely been disappointed. And it’s fun (see above).
Fit and finish were some early concerns with the Model 3, but we’ve had very few warranty issues. And they all have been corrected by our awesome Tesla Ranger. And what is a Tesla Ranger? Rather than multiple brick and mortar Service Centers, Tesla (always thinking outside the box, literally) has a group of mobile service technicians driving an outfitted Model S who come to us when we need service. My guess is Tesla has figured out this is cheaper in the big picture. But it’s also brilliant customer service. We schedule a service (like a tire rotation) and he comes to our place of work or home, does the work and moves on. We don’t have to drop the car off, take the courtesy van to work, get picked up later to go get the car, and so on. Zero lost time on our part.
In fact, the only time we’ve been to the Oregon Service Center in Portland was February 10, 2018 when we took delivery. The only time.
So, yeah, as I’ve said many times before, we’d do this all again. The two comments we’ve often heard from the beginning and still hear are:
• We absolutely love our car.
• I don’t think I could ever go back to a gas car.