I’m happy to report that I made some solid progress today (or others did on my behalf ?). The electrician turned up to install a NEMA 14-50 plug per Tesla’s recommendation. My worst days of driving around all over Massachusetts are <200 miles. This connection can charge 200 miles of range in 7 hours per Tesla’s site.
The electrical work and cost is going to vary greatly for each person depending on what power you have already, where the breakers are, if you own or rent and many other factors. In my case I happened to have an unused and dead 50A circuit right where the Tesla will be parked:
The circuit was dead and those connectors are not NEMA 14-50 and I haven’t used them in the 15 years i’ve lived there. The electricians traced the wires back and found the wires cut inside the breaker box. They were out of space in the box and got some 2-for-1 breakers and then added the 50A breaker. I have 200A of service for my house so no concerns on capacity (someday i’ll research the whole Solar thing). The whole electrical process took 3 hours including an hour run for parts. Haven’t seen the bill yet. The result:
Ready for my Model S!
About the time they finished up I got first contact from the Delivery team with some proposed times/dates for delivery (I picked the earliest possible, 4/25 at 10am) and some questions.
What they asked:
- Need a copy of license/proof of insurance to finalize bill of sale – you can scan and upload online to them which I did
- Question about license plates – transfer or new – answered those
- If you’re going to use their financing or not (if you are you can start now, otherwise wait until you get the bill of sale). I’m not so we’ll see how smooth that process is.
- Asked if I was doing a trade in (i’m not).
Your “My Tesla” account which you create during the order process is a good part of the hub of communications – documents to you or from you, status etc.
The timeline is interesting. When I ordered I was expecting a 3 month wait. When I ordered they said 2-3 months online. The sales guy said more like 2 months and then I accelerated things by confirming quickly. This planned delivery is 35 weekdays after the order, or 49 days or 7 weeks in total. Thats much faster and better than I had expected. I do have to compare it to every other car where i’ve driven them off the lot but this is also the first one custom built with exactly the options I wanted and none of the ones I didn’t just because it was what was in stock.
You will want to get some wall hooks to carry the weight of the Universal Mobile Connector and to loop excess cord around.
It’s not good to leave the weight of it just hanging from the outlet, it creates stress on the plug.
(Any utility-style wall hooks from Lowes will do.)
Thanks, good advice. I saw some posts on the forums about that but not too many pictures.
Oh. Warning regarding real-world range in the winter. In very cold weather, with bad snow on the ground, you can rely on about 180 miles of range when fully charged. That’ll probably be fine for you in MA.
You will get worse range than that if you stop, let the car cool off, start again, stop and let the car cool off again, etc; each time can burn up to 10 miles of charge “reheating” at startup.
Also, in bad weather, you need to clean gunk out of the wheel wells or your mileage will be terrible.
Oh! And when you get winter tires, if you don’t get the Tesla ones, make sure to get Low Rolling Resistance tires.
— Tips from an upstate NY Tesla owner
Thanks. Did you try chains at all?
Nope. I’ve never been in weather which seemed bad enough for that… at least, it never seemed bad enough when I was setting out on the trip!
Frustratingly, I actually did get stuck going up a hill once, on less than a quarter-inch of slushy ice. Apparently the secret is to turn off traction control.and let the wheels spin a bit until they reach the ground. I ended up making it out by scraping the ice out from under the car.
One owner (on teslamotors.com?) reported the TM chains went on and off easily, and worked fine.
I saw that. Ive never done chains, but they also have a max speed of 30MPH from what i’ve seen.