Thread: Personal EV journey.

Although I am still somewhat skeptical, yesterday Tesla demonstrated V12 of Tesla's "fully self driven" (FSD) vehicle performing 45 minute drive around Palo Alto.
This version of the FSD software is significantly different from previous versions in that it is primarily AI driven.
The program has very few lines of actual code as it has "learned how to drive" by watching huge amounts of video data gleaned from a global fleet of test Teslas in what is known as end to end neural net training.

In previous versions of FSD software the program had massive amounts of code that had to perform multiple image comparisons ie if it saw an "X", then it had to check what it was and identify it as an "X" and respond using a specific procedure "Y" .
In V12 there are no lines of software code specifically identifying cyclists, pedestrians traffic lights, stop signs or roundabouts or even lanes.
Instead the program now uses AI and has has learnt how to cope by watching exactly how we learnt and what the average human does when driving ie lean by watching.

There are currently thousands of Tesla test drivers in countries all around the globe assessing this V12 software.

A somewhat clunky video of the drive in available. here.
UNCUT: Elon Musk?s MIND BLOWING Live Tesla FSD Demo - YouTube

Might not be too long now though.

Took my Tesla for another country drive earlier this week.
This time I drove from Perth to the small WA locality of Tenindwa, between Geraldton and the wheatbelt town of Mullewa where my nieces and family own 42,000 acres of canola and wheat cropping country. Trip.jpg
The total distance was 459 km each way and I could have made it to the farm without charging but I would have needed to drive at <100kph and even then I would have ended up driving 0n the battery reserves.
As I also had my dogs with me I usually stop and give them a break every two hours I just planned my recharging stop at the small seaside town of Jurien Bay where there is a brand new 150kW charger. When I arrived at JB I had 48% of the battery left and by the time I hooked up the charger, took a leak, released the dogs and bought some awful servo coffee (which I threw away) and a stale sausage roll (which I gave to teh dogs) watered the dogs and gave them a chance to pee the battery was up to 85% and off I went again.
Cgarging.jpg


About one third of the final 200+ kms I did on back roads which are wide/straight and well maintained for trans porting large farm equipment and grain transport. About 50km of this was gravel which eventually runs straight through my niece's farm and right past the homestead. This was one of the best gravel roads I have ever been on. In places it was 3 and even 4 road trains wide and only had 2 slight bend and 4 90º cross roads..The gravel was bone dry and had few corrugations and just a handful of small potholes so I could comfortably sit on 110kph the whole way. Interestingly my car energy meter showed that travelling on gravel used up between 5 and 10% more energy than on bitumen - which also varies depending on how rough the pavement is.
Gravel.jpg


At the farm my niece and family were very hospitable and showed me around and I got to meet some of the other people working there.
One interesting development is they have leased a large area of relatively unproductive land on which their small airstrip is currently located on one side to a Vanadium processing company.
Airstrip.jpg
The reason for that spot is it is at the intersection of rail and a major sealed road, The North West shelf natural gas pipeline out to the Goldfields is about 10km away and there ia enough ground water (independent of what local farmers use). Ore will be trucked or raise from Mt Magnet and the concentrates shopped out through Geraldton port. The plan is to start processing using gas and then set up a solar farm and sore power using Vanadium flow batteries.


About 30km away BHP have set up a 150m tall tower on top of a long ridgeline to test wind speeds with the view to set up a wind farm to make Hydrogen for Green Steel. It’s one of the windiest places in Australia so they wont have entry problem making enough power.
Tower.jpg
All in all it was a really enjoyable trip and one I would like to do again when it is a bit cooler. If its raining I won't got far on the gravel but there are plenty of paved alternatives.. Dust on the car was a bit annoying but given I had done some 150km on gravel, the seals did a great job at keeping the dust out of teh car although there was a bit of accumulated dust in the door and hatch wells. There was next to nothing around the bonnet etc.
doordust.jpg Bootdust.jpg


This is how much dust there was on the drive after the obligatory wash and most of this came from the stuff trapped in the wheel rims.
wheeldust2.jpg

Bob, I've followed this thread and have sponged up all of the information you have given us, I really appreciate your efforts.

I doubt we'll ever get a battery electric vehicle, we may, but I'm not sure if it would happen.

Regardless, have you seen this story about buying two Tesla vehicles, a solar system and batteries with payback in just over 8 years?

Breaking even on 2 Teslas, solar panels and batteries in just over 8 years

Mick.

Bob,
I’ve been following the electric story, it’s been great,

But are we now suffering “first world problems” with the dust, I’m sure there’s plenty of Rural members here, an ye I know I’m new too being Rural[emoji849][emoji849].

I will except what is coming [emoji6].

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by Optimark

Regardless, have you seen this story about buying two Tesla vehicles, a solar system and batteries with payback in just over 8 years?
Breaking even on 2 Teslas, solar panels and batteries in just over 8 years

Mick.

I hadn't seen that specific article but I have seen similar ones. I'm now used to using my solar panels to charge the car battery and now with longer days and fine weather on most days if I do my errand driving in the morning I can easily top up the battery during the afternoon. If I go out for a whole day I don't recharge till the morning (and afternoon) of the following day. But I never let the need to top up prevent me from using it. In fact compared to my ICE days where I would save up non-urgent errands till I 2-3-4 that I could do as a milk run with the EV I just go whenever I feel like it. Solar charging costs me 1c/km which is the feed in tariff I'm getting from my utility but even mains charging is only about 4c/km.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Bob,
I’ve been following the electric story, it’s been great,

Thanks Matt

But are we now suffering “first world problems” with the dust, I’m sure there’s plenty of Rural members here, an ye I know I’m new too being Rural[emoji849][emoji849]. .

I agree, some Tesla owners I know including one of my brothers keeps his vehicle pristine and would not voluntarily go on gravel. My attitude is vehicles exist to be used and not sit in a garage.
FWIW the dust filtration system of the air inside the cabins of Teslas is phenomenal.

Just for fun I set up one one of my dust detectors inside my Tesla, and an identical detector outside and after leaving the doors open for 10 minutes I shut the doors and ran the AC and over time recorded the amount of dust in the air inside and outside the cabin and plotted on a graph below.

Two types measurements were performed at each location every 30s, the first being the numbers of particles per unit volume (refer to LHS axis for quantities) and the accompanying PM2.5 (concentration of particles with diameter of 2.5 microns and smaller) - refer to RHS axis for this info.

FWIW Perth Average has an annual average for PM2.5 of about 16 µg/m^3 so you can see it was close to an average day for atmospheric dust while I did my measurements.

At teh start you can see that the air inside and outside teh car have the same #'s of particles and concentrations.
The way the concentration data dances around a lot for teh outside air is typical of these sorts of measurements and is completely normal.
The data for the outside are the red/pink dots, while those inside are the dark/pale blue dots.

At about the 750s mark I tuned on the "Bioweapon Defence Mode" in the mobile's Tesla App and continued to record.
Bioweapon Defence Mode is available in the bigger Tesla vehciles and sets the AC to only recirculate air through a large internal HEPA filter at max fan speed.
As you can see, when the recirculating HEPA filter kicks in it rapidly drops the particle counts and the PM2.5 concentration to near Zero.

I will repeat the experiment next time there is some burning off smoke around and attempting to measure the actual efficiency of the Tesla’s HEPA filter.
Good to know it's working as well as claimed.


Screenshot 2023-10-18 at 5.01.13 pm.png

However, it the big HEPA will not filter out poisonous gasses like CO or NOX or SOX which are another reasons to seriously reduce the number of ICEs on the planet.

A few weeks back I rolled over the 10k km mark and the first recommended service schedule came up which is a simple tyre rotation.
Because my vehicle uses different size tyres on the front compared to the to back all that can be done is a "side to side" swap.
BIL Joe has a 2T trolley jack which we used on one side while I used my scissor jack on the other to lift the whole front, swap tyres, then the back etc.
Joe also has a beaut clean flat floored garage and decent range of tools that we could do this in out of the sun - all up took about 20 minutes.
My contribution is to supply the torque wrench for the final wheel nut tightening.
MCoperator.jpg

While the tyres were off I took a few photos.

Here's the rear 275 x 35 tyres.
I'm quite pleased with the wear given I don't treat the car with kid gloves.
Rear10k.jpg

Here's pics of a front disc and caliper.
This how they looked as soon as I took the wheels off and shows how little dirt and pad dust there is compared to other vehicles.
Now that I'm used to the regen braking I rarely use the brake pedal but I must use it enough as shows no rust on the discs.
Frontdisc..jpg
Caliper.jpg

Car continues to run like magic.
Last week I did a 450km round trip to Busselton, and then over the past weekend the dogs and I did an 850 km round trip to Walpole on the south coast.
Charging was a breeze apart from one place where I accidentally tried using an 'out of date' credit card which had me baffled for quite a while.

Originally Posted by BobL

A few weeks back I rolled over the 10k km mark and the first recommended service schedule came up which is a simple tyre rotation.
Because my vehicle uses different size tyres on the front compared to the to back all that can be done is a "side to side" swap.

Hi BobL
not wishing to be picky, but are you sure those rear tyres are not asymmetrical? and ditto for the front pair.



I'd be the last to claim any expertise when it comes to tyre tread identification, but given Mr Musk's track record with his computer masquerading as a car -- and NHSA's mandated recall of 2,200,000+ Teslas to reprogram the hasn't a hope of working "auto-pilot" feature -- I have little confidence in any tyre rotation advice coming from Tesla.

When your vehicle is reprogrammed, can you provide us with an after upgrade report, noting what changes you perceive

.
.

BTW, just today when the "auto-pilot" feature was being discussed here in Canada, it was started that on a scale of 0 to 5 -- where 0 represents no driver assistance and 5 represents full self-driving [as in tell the vehicle where it is to get to and do something else why it drives there] -- Tesla's "auto-pilot" rates a 2.

Tyre rotation specification by Tesla is the same as the tyre manufacturer, Pirelli.

The recall is a software update to the full self driving (FSD) mode of the vehicle which I don't have.
Despite issues with FSD Tesla users who use it are 8 times less likely to be involved in vehicle accidents.

Originally Posted by ian

but are you sure those rear tyres are not asymmetrical? and ditto for the front pair.

Ian, you are confusing directional tyres, that are designed to rotate in only one direction, and asymmetric tyres, which have an inside and outside when fitted. Asymmetric tyres can be moved from side to side on the vehicle whilst directional tyres cannot be moved from one side of the vehicle to the other.

As far as EV's are concerned I remain unconvinced that they are going to 'save' us. If Bob continues his current level of vehicle use he will have travelled 200,000 in ten years, when the vehicle will be ready to be scrapped. Having said that most manufacturers of ICE vehicles seem to be designing in more obsolescence to their vehicles. The rise and rise of plastic engine components is an indicator of this. Their plan is to build the vehicle to last just past the end of the warranty period. Not only that they also make these parts so that a $20 single faulty component cannot be replaced alone. The whole unit, a much larger component sometimes costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars, must be replaced. We as buyers apparently accept this because we are 'consumers', constantly replacing perfectly servicable goods for no good reason.

If only we could get Australians to embrace fuel efficient smaller vehicles instead of buying twin cab diesel utes as family cars we'd be a lot better off.

Originally Posted by aldav

If only we could get Australians to embrace fuel efficient smaller vehicles instead of buying twin cab diesel utes as family cars we'd be a lot better off.

If only they designed and built cars that are big enough for full-height people to fit into. I drive a twin-cab diesel ute and even that seems to be designed for 5'6" tall japanese or Korean people. With my injuries from my military service I am struggling at times to get my 6'1" frame into the ute. Smaller cars that are way closer to the ground are almost impossible for me to get into and absolutely impossible to get out of without assistance. Everything is being built smaller and smaller because it's cheaper. Don't get me started on air travel, sitting for hours on end with my knees under my chin.

So yes, smaller fuel efficient vehicles would probably reduce emissions because I for one would not be able to drive around. Solve one environmental problem and creats a societal problem in the process.

Originally Posted by aldav

Ian, you are confusing directional tyres, that are designed to rotate in only one direction, and asymmetric tyres, which have an inside and outside when fitted. Asymmetric tyres can be moved from side to side on the vehicle whilst directional tyres cannot be moved from one side of the vehicle to the other.

Aldav
Thanks for the clarification.

as I said I don't claim any special expertise when it comes to tyre treads

Hi Bob,

late to the thread, sorry to hear you had a horrible 2022. I have a question, does using the regenerative system for braking activate the brake lights? I wondered because I have an acquaintance who commented that they do a lot of one-pedal driving now but for the first few times they drove it, they were a bit jerky until they got used to it so it must be quite effective braking. I didn't think of the question at the time, but yesterday I was following a Tesla and it was no different to following any other car in traffic... the brake lights came on a lot. I suddenly thought, are they using the brake or not? Having driven behind cars with faulty brake lights, I find it quite difficult to perceive deceleration as quickly as when the brake lights come on.

Cheers Mic, 2023 is certainly proving a better year than 2022.

The regenerative braking does activate the brake lights and driver that are not used to EV driving will at first tend to find it a bit jerky and confusing that the vehicle will not coast by taking their foot off the accelerator's. There's a bar graph on the screen that shows a black bar shooting out to the right when power is coming from the battery and the bar turns green and shoots out to the left under regenerative braking. The length of the bars is proportional to the g-forces involved. It does not take long to get used to finding the sweet "constant speed" spot for the accelerator, but better still in traffic just turn on the "traffic aware cruise control" and take your foot off accelerator and brake and just sit behind the car in front and it looks after itself.

Once I got used to this I've found it a real pleasure to drive.

Originally Posted by BobL

Cheers Mic, 2023 is certainly proving a better year than 2022.

The regenerative braking does activate the brake lights and driver that are not used to EV driving will at first tend to find it a bit jerky and confusing that the vehicle will not coast by taking their foot off the accelerator's. There's a bar graph on the screen that shows a black bar shooting out to the right when power is coming from the battery and the bar turns green and shoots out to the left under regenerative braking. The length of the bars is proportional to the g-forces involved. It does not take long to get used to finding the sweet "constant speed" spot for the accelerator, but better still in traffic just turn on the "traffic aware cruise control" and take your foot off accelerator and brake and just sit behind the car in front and it looks after itself.

Once I got used to this I've found it a real pleasure to drive.

thanks Bob, ah technology eh, I still haven't had a car with airbags yet! My old Hilux ute will not die (touch wood). Do you know if the brake light activates from an accelerometer or off a calibrated regenerative current?