June 2023, Central Valley, CA
This is a living document so I’ll keep adding pics as time passes. At the moment we have 69,000 miles on our Model 3 and it’s 5 years old.
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Tag Archives: EV
Good News: Carbon Emissions from Producing Electricity Continue Decreasing
Emissions from producing electricity for the U.S. grid have been steadily dropping. This has resulted from long-term trends of more renewable and cleaner burning sources of energy used to produce electricity. One upshot of this: EVs are cleaner than gas-powered cars, and keep getting cleaner.
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Ford Mustang Mach-E
November 2020. California.
This week I checked out Ford’s Mustang Mach-E in person at a local dealership in Sacramento. The Mach-E is Ford’s all-electric version of the Mustang, and I was excited to see it since the Mustang has been one of my favorite cars for as long as I can remember.
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Electric Road Trip in the Tesla Model Y
July 2020. California.
Last week we took our Model Y on a short road trip to visit Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Crater Lake is 350 miles from our town, not very far, but it was a long enough drive to get a feel for what it’s like taking the Model Y on road trips.
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Model Y Delivery and First Impressions
June 2020. California.
In March of 2019 we reserved a long range dual-motor Model Y with standard wheels in midnight silver. Yesterday we went to our local Tesla Service/Sales Center to pick it up. We had been scheduled to pick up our car back at the end of March 2020, but at the last moment delivery was understandably delayed by the pandemic. Three months later we got our car on the summer solstice.
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Camping trips in our 2012 Rav4 EV
May 2020. California.
Our Rav4 EV is 7 years old now, has 88,000 miles / 140,000 km on the odometer, and continues to serve us well. Nowadays we use it most for commuting back and forth to work (35 miles / 55 km per day), for shopping, and running errands. But we’ve also gone on lots of family trips in our Rav4 EV over the years.
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Repost: Winter Snow Adventures in a 2012 Toyota Rav4 EV
January 2016. Sierra Nevadas, California.
This article was originally posted on the Transport Evolved website in January 2016.
We live in California’s Central Valley about 100 miles from beautiful spots in the Sierra Nevadas, and we try to get up there as often as possible. Our town sits just above sea level, so traveling to the Sierras involves a climb of 7000 feet. This could be a problem for EVs that have 80-100 miles of range and no options for rapid DC charging, especially in the winter.
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Every Day is Earth Day: Driving Electric Reduces Carbon Emissions
April 2020. California.
Have you wondered how much of a difference it would make for the environment if you started driving electric? This year for Earth Day I analyzed our data from 15 years of driving to compare the carbon emissions produced by the gas-powered and electric cars we’ve owned.
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Charging your EV at an RV Campground
February 2020. California.
This weekend while visiting the Mount Shasta area we stayed overnight at a Lodge / RV campground and charged our car on an RV electrical hookup. I plugged in that night and we left the next morning with 281 miles of rated range (and a warm cabin).
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Tesla Model 3: Rated Range over Time
October 2019. California.
I bought a 2018 Long Range RWD Model 3 in April 2018. I have fully charged the car 5 times. At 24,000 miles a 100% charge gave me the full advertised rated range of 325 miles (520 km). At 43,000 miles a full charge gave me 300 miles of rated range. At 5 years and 67,000 miles I got 291 miles of range.
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Electric Road Trip: Touring the American Southwest in a Tesla Model 3
October 2019. American Southwest.
In October 2019 I went to New Mexico for 5 days of work. The trip to Albuquerque would have been about 1200 miles as the crow flies, but rather than fly I drove there in our Model 3. The full trip was 2,700 miles through 6 states. I used 17 Superchargers and paid $92.66. Driving electric reduced my emissions by over 70% compared to driving a car that gets 25 MPG (or burns 9.7L / 100km).
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Mom Steps Up – Gets a Plug-in Car
November 2019. New Jersey.
My mother is 84 years young and maintains a very active lifestyle. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and always wanting to race her, I was always trying to keep up and wanted to be faster than her. Here we are 50 years later and I’m still trying to keep up. I get daily exercise reports from her fitness watch and she’s literally miles ahead of me every single day.
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Day Trips in the Tesla Model 3
August 2019. California.
This week I drove my daughter in to San Francisco to see Hamilton. This is a 150-180 mile round trip for us, depending on route and where we park. The night before I charged our Model 3 to 85%, giving us 275 miles (440 km) for the day.
CHAdeMO Charging the Model 3
July 2019. California
Last night I received the 2019.24.4 software update for our Model 3. So this morning I tested Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter to determine the rate of charge, and see how many miles I’d get and how long it would take to charge from a given SOC. Summary: 45 minutes gave me 139 miles of rated range and cost $8.69. Tesla’s CHAdeMO adapter is easy to use and provides more charging options for the Model 3.
Solar Power, Part 2: Tesla Solar for our Home and Model 3
July 2019. California.
We purchased a solar power system to produce and offset the electricity we use in our house and to charge our Model 3. Our primary goal was to produce as much electricity as we used each year. This post describes how well our solar system meets our needs.