LS Tesla swap

[scoti]

"Is it EV hate or just people saying what they don't care for when it comes to EV's?"
-I'd say it's about 50/50, read through this thread (or related posts on the forum) and see for yourself.

"So it can be plugged in anywhere? What if you don't stay @ 'home' every night?"
-Yes. NEMA 5-15, 6-15, 10-30, 14-30, 14-50, 6-50, etc. About any outlet you can think of, you can plug the car in. You also don't need to use Tesla-brand chargers, mine came with an adapter for the very common J1772 EV charger plug as well. Most hotels (that I have come across) don't mind you using their outdoor outlets if you ask the front desk.

"That 30min/half hour to 'super-charge' on an extended trip.... That's once you have access to the charger right? What if you're waiting in line for said charging ability?"
-Yes. All Teslas have a built-in map that shows all available superchargers and how many stalls that are open so you know if you'll have to wait ahead of time. When every stall is full, Tesla charges idling fees if you leave your car in the parking spot after you have finished charging. They move in and out pretty quick. I personally have never had to wait, and have never seen a completely full supercharging station. I do most of my travels in the states between Virginia and Massachusetts and there's plenty of superchargers along major routes for travel. Check this map top see if there are any along your common extended-travel routes: https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=39.788845279968434,-74.01584880326956,38.146802069654676,-77.77317302201956&zoom=9&filters=supercharger

"What if that extended trip needs to happen on a moments notice after you've already been running around w/heat or a/c going? How would you work w/that?"
-You're saying that after I've already driven 200+ miles in a winter day (and effectively drained my battery), what do I do if I need to make an emergency long distance trip at the drop of a hat? I would say that this is a very unlikely scenario. However, lets say it did happen to me - looks like I'm stopping at a supercharger for a half hour. I also want to point out that using the AC makes a near-negligible difference in range compared to heat, so in spring, summer, and fall you basically have the full range of the vehicle at your disposal. Like I mentioned before, in winter I would say you have about 75% of your total range if you are blasting the heat.

Hope this helps to clear some things up

*edit: One last thing I figure I should mention - it is very easy to get way more than the rated range of an EV. My specific vehicle is rated for 312 miles of range on a full charge. That math comes from the fact that the battery is 75kWh and that the rated use is 240Wh/mi (the electrical equivalent of saying miles/gallon). Divide 75000 by 240 and you get 312. On my daily commute to work, I have gotten as good as 186Wh/mi just by never going above the speed limit and not gunning it from every red light like I usually do. That math comes out to just over 400 miles of range with conservative driving.

Thanks for sharing the information. i 'read' the various comments but guess my interpretation wasn't EV hate so much as dislike.

I feel a lot of the exposure to EV's is relative to location. I'm in Texas (Dallas area is home). I can be on the road for an event that requires a 1-2hr drive to reach my destination. I look for the local charging spots & don't see many but I'm also very likely not traveling through the areas where they are because I just don't go to those areas of town.

My comments on the "what if you're not @ home" weren't geared toward staying @ a hotel. There's been many 'a night where I'm not @ my legal address for the night. So I can see where planning would have to be involved.

So the 'Super-charging' if required can impact your extended travel plan. Definitely an obstacle that can be overcame but lets add to that.... You're now traveling @ night. Are those 'stations' still accessible late @ night (again, I'm not familiar so asking)? That's cool if there's a network out there that accommodates it. I'll look @ the map/link you provided later tonight after work to educate myself.

Interesting the heat uses more juice vs. a/c. A/C here is 8-months out of the year.

What about idling/sitting in traffic for extended periods? How bad is the impact on efficiency/charge on range-of travel?

Again... Thanks for the info. I'm not interested in an EV @ this point in life (I can walk home & back to work in <5mins) but you never know what tomorrow brings to the table. Even then, they better make something w/2 doors & a decent price range or I wouldn't be interested.

 

[LukeZ]

I don't daily my GTO or Monte so that is exactly what I would be doing with a Tesla, would be a replacement to the van I daily drive that was my dads. I don't have the setup since once the Blazer is done I will have 3 vehicles I would like to have in a garage where I only have 2 spots. Once I get a new abode that has ample garage space for my fleet I would look at getting a Model Y just because as a daily its nice to have a smaller SUV. I do miss having my Ford Edge Sport as a daily, but couldn't beat being able to get 8k more than I owed on the car when the state decided I wasn't going to be able to drive for a year.

I would say a Tesla makes for an excellent commuter car and an excellent sports car. One of my favorite parts is that it's the best of both worlds, all the time. Just looking at a Model Y Performance like you mentioned - where else will you find a mid-size SUV type vehicle that can go from taking the kids to soccer practice to smoking almost anything that pulls up next to it at a red light? You get all that performance without having to have a car with a choppy idle, turbocharger/supercharger, high test gas, etc.

Have you ever seen the old YouTube videos titled something like "Gutted Tesla trolls the streets"? I think it's great that an unassuming-looking family sedan can hustle a bunch of guys with purpose-built street/strip cars at the press of a button.

 

[mclellan83]

I would say a Tesla makes for an excellent commuter car and an excellent sports car. One of my favorite parts is that it's the best of both worlds, all the time. Just looking at a Model Y Performance like you mentioned - where else will you find a mid-size SUV type vehicle that can go from taking the kids to soccer practice to smoking almost anything that pulls up next to it at a red light? You get all that performance without having to have a car with a choppy idle, turbocharger/supercharger, high test gas, etc.

Have you ever seen the old YouTube videos titled something like "Gutted Tesla trolls the streets"? I think it's great that an unassuming-looking family sedan can hustle a bunch of guys with purpose-built street/strip cars at the press of a button.

Have a buddy who I met through the GTO world, he went from the GTO to a G8. Then went on to a C6 which then got upgraded to a C7 which he later supercharged, then had issues for quite a while that GM wouldn't handle correctly. He got tired of that so went for a Model 3, now this is a guy that has always been into performance and always has road coursed his cars at the weekly event they do in North Park in the summer. Now that he has the Model 3 he is smoking everyone with it, he has taken to the Pizza Power tour we do when you spend the whole day driving around to a handful of pizza places all with muscle cars. I messed with him about having range anxiety on it and he was sure to share his results.

 

[ck80]

You damn Ford guys, that behemoth won't make another 200 beyond that 1400 number with that SBE.


I think. But I'll bet you dollars to donuts that you won't find one in a junkyard for $250 10 years from now 😉 .

Up until I needed a new daily driver in 2013 I bled gm blue. Then I shopped around and everything gm offered was crap, with crap quality build, crap quality interior materials, crap options affordability, so on so forth.

I really wanted a b5 blue challenger.... but there's even videos showing them denting themselves while parked in a garage. Cheap thin metal and wrong adhesive bond application it turned out. And can we talk early to mid-teens Mopar electronics? Bleecccch.

Then I drove a mustang rental, spec'd one out, and that was that. So, I'm a bit of a convert. Love my OLDER gm, before they became general millennial and built junk.

 

[LukeZ]

Thanks for sharing the information. i 'read' the various comments but guess my interpretation wasn't EV hate so much as dislike.

I feel a lot of the exposure to EV's is relative to location. I'm in Texas (Dallas area is home). I can be on the road for an event that requires a 1-2hr drive to reach my destination. I look for the local charging spots & don't see many but I'm also very likely not traveling through the areas where they are because I just don't go to those areas of town.

My comments on the "what if you're not @ home" weren't geared toward staying @ a hotel. There's been many 'a night where I'm not @ my legal address for the night. So I can see where planning would have to be involved.

So the 'Super-charging' if required can impact your extended travel plan. Definitely an obstacle that can be overcame but lets add to that.... You're now traveling @ night. Are those 'stations' still accessible late @ night (again, I'm not familiar so asking)? That's cool if there's a network out there that accommodates it. I'll look @ the map/link you provided later tonight after work to educate myself.

Interesting the heat uses more juice vs. a/c. A/C here is 8-months out of the year.

What about idling/sitting in traffic for extended periods? How bad is the impact on efficiency/charge on range-of travel?

Again... Thanks for the info. I'm not interested in an EV @ this point in life (I can walk home & back to work in <5mins) but you never know what tomorrow brings to the table. Even then, they better make something w/2 doors & a decent price range or I wouldn't be interested.

For sure, always happy to provide any info! It was all foreign to me at one point not long ago as well.

In regards to not staying at your legal address for the night - so long as there is an outlet (even if you need an extension cord), you can charge the vehicle.

Regarding the supercharging stations, yes they are open 24/7/365. Tesla actually has a relatively critical vetting process for choosing locations where superchargers are installed. The criteria is usually decently clean bathrooms, food and drink, and being located on a well-travelled road.

And yea, that fact that A/C uses nowhere near as much energy as heat was a surprise to me as well, but a welcome one.

Idling or sitting in traffic uses no energy other than the insignificant draw from the lights, console screen, etc. Another thing is with most EV's, you almost never need to use the brake pedal. Lifting your foot off the 'gas' pedal stops supplying current to the motor, which effectively turns it into a generator that converts the kinetic energy from the motion of the wheels back into electrical potential energy stored in the battery, further increasing range and efficiency. Brake jobs on EVs are very very infrequent. All in all, great city/traffic cars as well.

I understand your scenario - you need the right tool for the right job. If your current situation doesn't warrant the use of an EV (let alone a motorized vehicle in general haha - I'm jealous of your commute), then that's fair enough.

In response to the price, yes they are a little high right now. I would say that the upfront cost is balanced by the very low operating and maintenance costs. While the lifespan of EVs is still a debated topic as they are relatively new (<10 years), I can tell you that my 4 year old EV with 30,000 miles (24,000 of those miles being put on the car by me in the last 11 months) has seen maybe 1 or 2% of battery degradation.

One topic that I follow pretty closely is the development of new battery tech. Something that has caught my eye recently are the studies surrounding sodium-ion batteries (as opposed to the lithium-based batteries widely used now). Sodium-ion batteries also go by the name 'salt-water batteries', and are looking pretty promising as a clean, abundant, easily recyclable form of energy storage. Their capacity/weight ratio is a little too low for the needs of an electric vehicle right now but I'm hoping that as similar tech develops, the cost of EVs will go down sharply.

Glad we can have this conversation

 

[mclellan83]

It's almost like we could be civilized for once

 

[ck80]

It's almost like we could be civilized for once

Hey, no more pictures of ls swaps...

 

[LukeZ]

Have a buddy who I met through the GTO world, he went from the GTO to a G8. Then went on to a C6 which then got upgraded to a C7 which he later supercharged, then had issues for quite a while that GM wouldn't handle correctly. He got tired of that so went for a Model 3, now this is a guy that has always been into performance and always has road coursed his cars at the weekly event they do in North Park in the summer. Now that he has the Model 3 he is smoking everyone with it, he has taken to the Pizza Power tour we do when you spend the whole day driving around to a handful of pizza places all with muscle cars. I messed with him about having range anxiety on it and he was sure to share his results.

That Pizza Power tour sounds awesome - and I'm glad to hear that your buddy is having good luck with his Model 3 so far.

Nothing I'm saying is to discredit ICE vehicles - I grew up going to drag races and working on cars with my dad and grandfather. They have their place in history, and they have their place in my heart. As someone mentioned before though, things change, and I believe its time to move on. I was critical of EV's early on as well but I believe they have been around long enough to know that this is where things are heading. I like being on the cutting edge

 

[mclellan83]

Hey, no more pictures of ls swaps...

Now its on

 

[mclellan83]

That Pizza Power tour sounds awesome - and I'm glad to hear that your buddy is having good luck with his Model 3 so far.

Nothing I'm saying is to discredit ICE vehicles - I grew up going to drag races and working on cars with my dad and grandfather. They have their place in history, and they have their place in my heart. As someone mentioned before though, things change, and I believe its time to move on. I was critical of EV's early on as well but I believe they have been around long enough to know that this is where things are heading. I like being on the cutting edge

To be honest I think there is plenty of room for both