So, I am trying this new format. I have had some time to think, and I kept writing these massive walls of text; then I thought, ok, I'm sure everyone loves reading massive walls of text, but hear me out. What if the wall of text had a 500-ish word limit? So, I tried that over the weekend, and I'm scheduling posts for 10AM each day. I don't know how well this works, but I'm trying it.
That being said, this post is Part 1 of a 3-part series following up on my 2023 Electrified Road Trip posts and The Test Trip V1 after three and a half years with our 2023 Tesla Model Y. It will take three posts to reach my final verdict in Part 3, because while this is easily the most fun vehicle I have ever owned, a few things over the past couple of years have left me genuinely conflicted. Today in Part 1, we are starting with why I suddenly parked the Tesla for a week right before hitting 50,000 miles; in Part 2, I will pull our real-world cost and trip telemetry out of Home Assistant and TeslaMate; and in Part 3, we will tackle Full Self-Driving, dealership games, and whether I would actually buy another Tesla today.
Right now, the odometer in my TeslaMate dashboard sits at 49,862.8 miles; meaning I have exactly 137.2 miles left before the 50,000-mile basic factory warranty expires. After reading a couple of articles about Tesla owners who scheduled a detailed service inspection right before their warranty cutoff and caught multi-thousand-dollar suspension or hardware repairs while Tesla still had to foot the bill, we booked the $500 comprehensive inspection.
Booking that appointment created a funny logistical problem: with under 200 miles of buffer left before our service date, we had to park the Model Y for the week so we wouldn't cross 50,000 miles early. Normally, my daily routine is dead simple. I set the charge limit to 60% and plug the car into our charger every night just like charging a cell phone. Daily school runs and local errands only drain the battery down to 55% or 50% (honestly, I could charge it on Sunday night and coast through the entire workweek without touching the cord, yet plugging it in nightly became an easy habit).
To save those final 137.2 miles, we went cold turkey this past week and drove our 2018 Honda Odyssey everywhere - and boy, was that a rude awakening. Before the Model Y, I always drove a minivan (Chevy Astro, Pontiac Montana, Honda Odyssey) or a 2008 Honda Accord, so the Tesla was already the sportiest car I had ever owned by a long shot. When you drive a gas car every day, you never notice the delay; however, once your brain gets wired for an electric motor that moves the exact instant your foot touches the pedal, going back to a gas engine feels sluggish. You press the gas pedal in the Odyssey and wait a full eternity while the engine revs up and decides whether it actually wants to move the van. Any electric car will spoil you this way... and it makes me never want to drive a gas car again.
Parking the Tesla also highlighted how differently the two vehicles handle maintenance and recalls. Over the past three and a half years, our Honda Odyssey has had eight separate factory recalls; every single one meant dropping the van off at the dealership overnight (or for two full days while we juggled family rides). By contrast, nearly every recall on the Tesla was an over-the-air software update that fixed the car in my driveway while I was asleep.
Ironically, we did just get our very first physical hardware recall on the Tesla to replace the headlights. Just like an active Honda recall where we couldn't get the part, the replacement Tesla headlights are currently on back order; which makes me wonder what would happen if my headlights actually burned out tomorrow (would I just be stuck with a car I can't drive after dark... during a time of year with 4 hours of daylight per day?!??).
Anyway... while the Model Y sits parked in the driveway saving its final warranty miles, Part 2 will open up my Home Assistant and TeslaMate database to see what 20,833 kWh actually cost us, how badly the Odyssey's usage collapsed, and how the car handled 30 mountain ski trips - all building toward my Part 3 verdict.
Later,
SteveO