Lexus to Tesla - 2 Years On

[DJP]

I did an update a year ago and thought it might be worth doing another a year later. Here's a link to last years, hope it works as I'm not to clever with these things..

Anyway, this will be brief ( I always say that and never manage it) but the TL;DR is I'm still a very happy bunny.

Various headings for use of reading.

Reliability

I have now done 30k in the 2 years and have not had a single solitary issue. It has been rock solid which considering the lack of pedigree is pretty amazing I think.

Range & Battery Degradation

I have the 75kWh Battery and on a long journey in the summer at legal motorway speeds 260 miles is achievable. Nearer 200 in the winter. Obviously this only matters when I'm doing a long journey as on a day to day basis I'm home well before range becomes an issue. A pic of the instrument binnacle taken yesterday:

My average lifetime consumption of 336Wh/m is about 10% over what Tesla think is "typical" for this car. This was taken at the end of my commute home where consumption was 504 Wh/m and really shows the impact of short journeys - all uphill too. In terms of cost per mile its running at about 3p compared to circa 20p on petrol. This is charging on E7, usually for no more than 1-2 at night, obviously depending on how far I've driven that day.

I've lost a handful of miles in degradation and there are cars in the US and Scandinavia that have 300k+ miles without significant loss of range. This is in large measure due to the sophisticated Battery management system that looks after the Battery pack.

Servicing & Insurance Costs

I am on PCP so need to have the car and whilst not a requirement to be done by Tesla I have chosen to do so. It's far too expensive at £450 one year and £700 the next. 1 year / 12.5k miles interval. 

Insurance is about the same as I was paying for my NX so not eye watering at all.

Software Updates

These arrive about one a month and deliver either new features or fix bugs. Often they will introduce bugs which are then squashed in a  later release.  One of the most beneficial that spring to mind is the "PIN to Drive" which combats the keyless entry/start fob booster theft attempt. Foot on brake, PIN pad appears on centre screen and car won't engage drive until PIN is entered. 

An OTA improvements to Autopilot recently was the auto lane change update. When on Autopilot a single push down/up on the indicator stalk will initiate a lane change once the car has checked the intended lane is clear. There are now 8 cameras in operation plus sensors and radar for the adaptive cruise.

Downsides to Ownership

Parts supply is awful so heaven help you if you have an accident that takes the car off the road. If something breaks.

Tesla communications can be poor  and inconsistent - they could learn a lot from Lexus 

Competition

Kudos to Jaguar for getting there first with the I Pace. A well built car (certainly better than the Tesla which is American don't forget) as is the Audi E tron. Both severely hampered that is the mess of a public charging network which is simply years behind the Tesla Supercharger network. It'll get better but it's a long way off and makes long journeys problematic. The Porsche Taycan looks good.

Driving Experience

Fantastic and brings a smile to my face every day. There is nothing like it.

I welcome comments or questions if there are any.

 

 

[LexusIS300h]

Thanks David, interesting update. A couple of questions :

1- would you go back to hybrid or petrol, or are you now hooked on electric?

2 - Would you buy the Tesla again now, or look at something else?

3 - I would like to move to electric car next, but really not sure if the infrastructure is ready for it yet. I suppose with a Tesla that hasn’t been a problem for you, but if you changed car, how do you see the current state of chargers and probable future queues for them at service stations?

[Shaunomercy]

How's this huge price reduction on Tesla's going to affect you at the end of your contract ?

They are nice cars. As you mentioned the Jag, reliability wise, and how jlr products fair in the JD power survey, I'd have thought the Tesla was the most reliable purchase

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[olliesgrandad]

The Battery capacity would stop me from buying a Tesla with such a small range. I often do 175 business miles a day with domestic motoring on top so 200-mile  would leave me with sweaty palms😊

[Shaunomercy]

The battery capacity would stop me from buying a Tesla with such a small range. I often do 175 business miles a day with domestic motoring on top so 200-mile  would leave me with sweaty palms[emoji4]

No use to me when I hook up the trailer tent and head down to the south of France...
Maybe Lexus self charging hybrid is the way forward in the short to middle term till ev's have a decent range.
It will be interesting to see what impact these new grapheme batteries in the car ev industry

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[DJP]

1 hour ago, LexusIS300h said:

Thanks David, interesting update. A couple of questions :

1- would you go back to hybrid or petrol, or are you now hooked on electric?

2 - Would you buy the Tesla again now, or look at something else?

3 - I would like to move to electric car next, but really not sure if the infrastructure is ready for it yet. I suppose with a Tesla that hasn’t been a problem for you, but if you changed car, how do you see the current state of chargers and probable future queues for them at service stations?

1. I would never go back to internal combustion engine of any type through choice. The EV responsiveness, torque, quietness and largely one pedal driving using the regenerative braking is just superior to anything an ICE can produce. The acceleration from standstill is astonishing but equally you can waft along like royalty.

2. Yes I would without hesitation. Coming from Lexus I was very nervous about the brand, and they can be ‘challanging’ but the car is a breath of fresh air. The lack of knobs, buttons and dials is wonderful and the over the air updates with improvements to your car after you’ve bought it is, I think, unique. I would love to look at something else but as a main car for use on longer journeys the public charging network is rubbish by comparison to the Supercharger network. 

3. When the high speed charging network gets established queuing shouldn’t be a problem, but it will take time. The current network only delivers at 50kW which is less than half the Supercharger speed of 120kW. It takes about 20 mins to get from 20-80% so with 4-8 stalls the throughput is pretty good. 

[DJP]

2 hours ago, Shaunomercy said:

How's this huge price reduction on Tesla's going to affect you at the end of your contract ?

They are nice cars. As you mentioned the Jag, reliability wise, and how jlr products fair in the JD power survey, I'd have thought the Tesla was the most reliable purchase

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

The big reduction was on the P100D (now called Performance) and that has hurt a lot of people, no doubt about it. Mine has only been affected marginally, but as I bought on PCP it’s the finance company that will take the hit. I deliberately went for PCP as I wanted to be able to bail out if anything went wrong and have always expected the market value to be below the GFV, which is a crazy generous 54% of purchase price after 4 years. 

The P100D was crazily over priced, but Elon Musk has never hidden the fact that the S and X were priced in part to subsidise the Model 3. The Performance version is now much closer to the price of mine, and I’m sure many will stretch to get into the 0-60 in 2.4 sec version 🤔.

You’re probably right about the reliability v JLR, most of the problems with the Tesla are design faults e.g. the self presenting door handles were initially plagued with failures. They worked out what was going wrong and are now on Gen 3 with replacements being fitted FOC well past warranty. 

[DJP]

1 hour ago, olliesgrandad said:

The battery capacity would stop me from buying a Tesla with such a small range. I often do 175 business miles a day with domestic motoring on top so 200-mile  would leave me with sweaty palms😊

There are plenty of owners doing galactic mileage, they must never be home! It does depend on your driving profile, but bear in mind a Supercharging stop for 20 mins will give you another 100/150 miles. I often find the car is ready before I’ve had time to have a leak and grab a coffee. Have a look at the network of Superchargers, and remember there are 6-8 stalls in each location so the likelihood of one not being available is vey small. The sat nav will also tell you how many stalls are occupied on a real time basis so if needs be you can miss out a stop and go to the next one. 

https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=51.71689632634334%2C0.2825150263976184%2C51.31824551177659%2C-0.3979506718445691&zoom=11&filters=store%2Cservice%2Csupercharger%2Cdestination charger

[DJP]

1 hour ago, Shaunomercy said:

No use to me when I hook up the trailer tent and head down to the south of France...
Maybe Lexus self charging hybrid is the way forward in the short to middle term till ev's have a decent range.
It will be interesting to see what impact these new grapheme batteries in the car ev industry

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

That “self charging hybrid” line is brilliant marketing but in the case you describe would be the worst drive train you could buy. The teenyweeny motor is designed to support the engine at lower speeds, typically around town. They are good at that - when I moved from my IS250 to the IS300h I halved my petrol bill. In your case all you’d be doing is lugging around the weight of Battery with no gain at all.

There are some owners of the Model X who tow (the Model S isn’t type approved for towing) and the Supercharger network is extensive in Europe, but there’s no doubt the range gets hammered. If the aim is to get there as fast as possible then forget an EV for quite a while  

 

[olliesgrandad]

56 minutes ago, DJP said:

There are plenty of owners doing galactic mileage, they must never be home! It does depend on your driving profile, but bear in mind a Supercharging stop for 20 mins will give you another 100/150 miles. I often find the car is ready before I’ve had time to have a leak and grab a coffee. Have a look at the network of Superchargers, and remember there are 6-8 stalls in each location so the likelihood of one not being available is vey small. The sat nav will also tell you how many stalls are occupied on a real time basis so if needs be you can miss out a stop and go to the next one. 

https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=51.71689632634334%2C0.2825150263976184%2C51.31824551177659%2C-0.3979506718445691&zoom=11&filters=store%2Cservice%2Csupercharger%2Cdestination charger

On my regular business route there is a distinct lack of chargers so it sadly isn't for me at present. This was reinforced last week when I visited some Council offices where they have a fleet of electric pool cars. A poor unfortunate came to collect their vehicle and the previous user had put it on charge but not switched on the charger 😭