The New Car

We picked up the Tesla yesterday. As one of Valerie's friends said, "it's like driving a laptop". We're still learning the operating system. We played with cruise control, climate control, and navigation, and now we're playing with range. We drove 75 miles today, and used about 50% (from about 80% down to about 30%), so it seems like it's not as great as it could be, on the other hand it was cold and raining, and both of those things are problems for range. Hopefully it will be way better in the summer. Anyway, we are currently charging it at home, where we have faster than 110, but still we only get 3kW which means that to charge it back to the 80%, it's going to take all night. Periodically we go out and check how far it's got.

We have to take it back, because it has summer tires, and we want all season tires, and for unknown reasons, the tires are being shipped one at a time, and so they only had three by Friday morning, but we wanted to have the car so we could start learning about it. We are also having a number of other problems, including getting it registered at Tesla to us, so we can do things like schedule service. We need to schedule service because this car is on the 3G network, and we need it upgraded before February! Being on the network is apparently not optional. Must be interesting if you live in the back of beyond where there isn't really any cell service – you drive into some town, and suddenly your car updates its firmware. Also, less than 12 hours after we picked up the car, one of the door handles broke. Apparently Tesla door handles are a known fragile object, and break all the time. In fact, the previous car we looked at had a broken door handle, but at that time we didn't know that they just break all the time. Anyway, the dealer says that (assuming we can get it registered and get it scheduled) he will pay for the door handle replacement by Tesla.

Next up: vacuuming the SUV and taking pictures and posting on craigslist.

Finally 2000

Back in July I noticed that I reached 1000 miles on my bicycle a month later than usual, and in early November I was kind of worried that I would not get anywhere near 2000 for the year. I gave more priority to bicycling for my daily exercise in November and December, and I did manage to get the milestone. I rode my 2000th mile this morning. There are still 13 days left in the year, and so presumably there will be somewhat more bicycling – it's going to be cold but clear this week. On Solstice, I will try to do my annual ride to Solstice Street, which is a 5 mile round-trip (not really a big deal, but a fun holiday tradition).