- Joined
- Nov 9, 2021
- Messages
- 559
- Reaction score
- 525
- Cars
- Lucid AGT, Tesla S 90D
My brother in law and I made the 1300 mile road trip this weekend. The car only had 600 miles on it when we started so no “break in” period. We only stopped 4 times to charge (between 20 and 30 minutes each) plus an overnight slow charge at hotel just north of Richmond, where the reformatted TeslaTap was a life saver since both J-1772 stalls were occupied by ICE vehicles. Overall, the car performed really well. We had a couple of frustrations but this car is just so fun to drive. I kept pretty meticulous notes on range for each 250 mile or so leg including ACC or not, speed, wind, and outside temp. Overall we averaged between 3.4 and 3.5 M/kWh with a range of 3.2 to 3.8. So about 75% of EPA at high speeds, which I was personally very happy with. By far the biggest variable was the presence of traffic, which increased the numbers somewhat dramatically. Wind was pretty light for the entire trip. We tried to drive at a speed the lower of 16 miles over the speed limit (14 mph adjusted for Lucia’s 2 mph overstatement of real speed) or 86 mph. But every once in a while, it was so much fun to pass someone who was doing 80 in the left land like they were standing still. For the first day of 900 miles, the temperature averaged over 90 degrees and we had a range of 3.2 to 3.6. I averaged 3.2 in the am when it was cooler and he averaged 3.6 at peak outside temperature but with presence of traffic from time to time that reduced our overall mph. But we still targeted that 16 mph over speed limit. Overall, I was really happy with the range. And we had no problems at the EA stations. (Other than everyone stopping by gawking and asking questions!). I found it pretty easy to estimate real range versus what car was predicting. Pulled into one EA station at 6%. It seemed like car dramatically reduced A/C at that point.
A couple of miles into the trip, all sound disappeared from the car - Alexa, music, phone. I knew we probably needed a reset but I wasn’t about to pull off the road and go through the reset tricks. So we drove 300 miles with no music or interaction with Alexa and spoke on phone the old fashioned way. After getting to our first EA station, I tried the turn signal trick, first while in the car and next exiting the car. No luck. I then did the key card reset which fixed the issue. The problem did not resurface.
The sound system, when it worked, was great. The Dolby Atmos recordings were stunning the few times they played in Dolby Atmos. The staff picks for Dolby seemed to work but no others, even if they were recorded in Dolby. But it kept stopping in middle of playlists, seemingly because there was not enough bandwidth but that’s just a guess. I did find that the non Dolby recordings sounded better when I moved the balance more towards the rear of the car. When you could hear both the front and rear speakers simultaneously, we both thought the music sounded fuller. You had to increase the volume to make up for half the sound coming from back of car. The Dolby songs default to the balance setting of the factory. I found the Spotify music was the worst quality - worse than streaming over Bluetooth. Tidal was probably the best, even for non Dolby songs. It was strange that even when the music was Dolby Atmos, the Tidal setting showed the quality as high rather than hi-if or master. The latter two were grey and couldn’t be selected. That was true for both Alexa instructions as well as making the selections manually. Time for CarPlay!
The navigation system was mediocre at best. We never would have made the chargers they directed us to. I used ABRP which was much better at the start but ended up deciding where our next stop would be as car was charging and then inputting that into the Nav system. (I had mapped each EA station for the drive). And I would also use Waze to double check the route. If they disagreed, I then used Google Maps as arbiter. We had to not follow the car’s nav system a few times, once when there was in accident near Washington DC that would have added an hour to the drive. And that annoying voice. If you really want to get pissed, change the balance like I mentioned in the prior paragraph with the higher volume and then have her scream directions at you.
At the highest temperatures with full sun overhead, I found we needed to manually adjust the fan speed to make the car really comfortable and even then if we didn’t cool the cabin while car was charging, it was difficult to quickly cool the car. The cooling ventilated seats helped. @hydbob’s suggestion of using front defrost vents as well as forward vents didn’t really help (at least the way I did it). So much of the cool air was directed to the windshield that very little hit the passengers directly. I didn’t see a way of manually adjusting how much went to defrost vs. dash vents. I didn’t tint any part of the car. If I was keeping my car in Florida all year, I might be tempted to tint. But it was only a problem after the car sat out in the sun getting charged and the windshield and canopy really got scorching hot.
The car is so comfortable, neither of us felt fatigued at all. He has bad sciatica and it rarely flared up. The massage seats were great even though we didn’t use them too much. I’ve never done the drive to or from Florida (I shipped a car for a few years but ended up having 2 in each location since I hated dealing with car shippers) but it really was pretty pleasant. I might even do it again!
A couple of miles into the trip, all sound disappeared from the car - Alexa, music, phone. I knew we probably needed a reset but I wasn’t about to pull off the road and go through the reset tricks. So we drove 300 miles with no music or interaction with Alexa and spoke on phone the old fashioned way. After getting to our first EA station, I tried the turn signal trick, first while in the car and next exiting the car. No luck. I then did the key card reset which fixed the issue. The problem did not resurface.
The sound system, when it worked, was great. The Dolby Atmos recordings were stunning the few times they played in Dolby Atmos. The staff picks for Dolby seemed to work but no others, even if they were recorded in Dolby. But it kept stopping in middle of playlists, seemingly because there was not enough bandwidth but that’s just a guess. I did find that the non Dolby recordings sounded better when I moved the balance more towards the rear of the car. When you could hear both the front and rear speakers simultaneously, we both thought the music sounded fuller. You had to increase the volume to make up for half the sound coming from back of car. The Dolby songs default to the balance setting of the factory. I found the Spotify music was the worst quality - worse than streaming over Bluetooth. Tidal was probably the best, even for non Dolby songs. It was strange that even when the music was Dolby Atmos, the Tidal setting showed the quality as high rather than hi-if or master. The latter two were grey and couldn’t be selected. That was true for both Alexa instructions as well as making the selections manually. Time for CarPlay!
The navigation system was mediocre at best. We never would have made the chargers they directed us to. I used ABRP which was much better at the start but ended up deciding where our next stop would be as car was charging and then inputting that into the Nav system. (I had mapped each EA station for the drive). And I would also use Waze to double check the route. If they disagreed, I then used Google Maps as arbiter. We had to not follow the car’s nav system a few times, once when there was in accident near Washington DC that would have added an hour to the drive. And that annoying voice. If you really want to get pissed, change the balance like I mentioned in the prior paragraph with the higher volume and then have her scream directions at you.
At the highest temperatures with full sun overhead, I found we needed to manually adjust the fan speed to make the car really comfortable and even then if we didn’t cool the cabin while car was charging, it was difficult to quickly cool the car. The cooling ventilated seats helped. @hydbob’s suggestion of using front defrost vents as well as forward vents didn’t really help (at least the way I did it). So much of the cool air was directed to the windshield that very little hit the passengers directly. I didn’t see a way of manually adjusting how much went to defrost vs. dash vents. I didn’t tint any part of the car. If I was keeping my car in Florida all year, I might be tempted to tint. But it was only a problem after the car sat out in the sun getting charged and the windshield and canopy really got scorching hot.
The car is so comfortable, neither of us felt fatigued at all. He has bad sciatica and it rarely flared up. The massage seats were great even though we didn’t use them too much. I’ve never done the drive to or from Florida (I shipped a car for a few years but ended up having 2 in each location since I hated dealing with car shippers) but it really was pretty pleasant. I might even do it again!
