Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S 75D, Leaf still Daily Driver

Now that we have owned our new Tesla for One whole week, we find that my Wife still prefers to use the Leaf as her daily commute vehicle. It is smaller and therefore easier to maneuver in the parking garage at work, plus it would cause major heartache if someone scraped the side of her brand new Tesla, Tessi. Yes, she names each of her cars and treats them as her children. Plus, the Leaf (Graffi) is far more energy efficient than Tessi.

This last weekend my Wife, her children and grandchildren, along with her ex, all went to Disneyland for Fri/Sat. Fortunately I was able to escape the trip (after all, I went to Disneyland in July 1971 so why do I need to go again). Her oldest son (32) who is a big car guy along with her ex, drove Tessi up and back (about 200 miles R/T). I think her ex wanted to drive, but neither her son nor she offered him the chance to do that. Her ex has had a Ford GT for years now, along with several other cars, including a high performance Mustang. Both were very impressed with Tessi. Now her ex wants one, LOL, Actually I think he just wants to drive her's. I had suggested that he set the autopilot at the speed limit and let it do all the work up the I-5 from San Diego to Anaheim. He would have nothing to do with that. He wanted to feel the car the entire drive. I did not tell him about changing the steering to Sport mode. It is set for standard. Oh, and I LOVE the phone app. I was able to follow the trip the whole way, including speed, and satellite view. I was even able to pinpoint the exact parking space they parked in at the motel. I kept texting my wife that her son was going way to fast and would burn up too much electricity. Plus they decided to not fill up at the Santa Ana Supercharger until Saturday night on the way home. Turned out that they got there with only 30 miles left on the charge. By Saturday night it was only 24, but the Supercharger was only 6 miles away. He drove home the same way, maybe a little faster but I was not able to monitor that drive. I was asleep. They got home after 1 am. Sunday morning, with only 17 miles remaining. After my wife got in bed I got up to plug Tessi in, and set the limit to 50%. That is still 37.5 Kwh, so gives plenty of range until I charge it again for our next trip, this Friday morning driving up to the San Francisco area for the Memorial weekend. Should be a fun drive up and back.

I will keep you posted....

Graffi said:

Oh, and I LOVE the phone app. I was able to follow the trip the whole way, including speed, and satellite view. I was even able to pinpoint the exact parking space they parked in at the motel.

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After how horrible and unreliable Nissan's app is (which I suspect is on par with many other automakers), the Tesla app certainly blows me away for how awesome it is. I've also watched my car drive down the highway. If you do this while a passenger in the car, it also shows you on the map, so you can see the small delay in reporting the location. My daughter borrowed the car and promised to park it in an end parking spot to make sure no one would be near it, and with the app I was able to see that she did exactly that. It's also nifty that it can use the on-board GPS to geofence your home, allowing it to auto-trigger the HomeLink.

(OTOH: if you plan to cheat on your spouse, don't take the Tesla)

The most amazing thing so far is that in 3 months I've had 3 software updates, each of which has expanded features on the car.

My LEAF is still my daily driver for 4 days a week. This introduces an interesting problem: Going from the Tesla to the LEAF, I end up turning on the wipers every time I want to shift into reverse or drive.

I am confused, can't the 75D make a 200 mile R/T without charging? Or was it a speed issue or not charged full or ?

BrockWI said:

I am confused, can't the 75D make a 200 mile R/T without charging? Or was it a speed issue or not charged full or ?

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By the time they left the house on Friday morning Tessi only had a range of around 135 miles, I do not remember the exact number. Anyway that amount would have been almost exact if they had driven at 65 mph. Going 80 to 85 mph burned a lot more electrons so they arrived at the hotel with 31 miles projected. Then when they left, 36 hours later Tessi was down to 24 miles. The Supercharger was only 6 miles away, so they plugged in on the way home.

Yes, to answer your question. With a 100% battery charge it has 255 miles range driving 65 mph. Slow it down to 55 mph and it would be over 300 miles. The initial plan was to leave a few minutes earlier than the other car, stop at the supercharger, then meet the other car at the hotel before going to Disneyland as a group. At the last minute they decided to meet for breakfast and both cars travel together to the hotel. Therefore the Supercharger stop on the way home.

The funny thing about the return trip is that after the Supercharger stop and the "Lead Foot" drive home, Tessi still beat the other car back. Maybe the other car had to stop for potty break on the way home, I do not know.

ahhh makes sense now. The nice thing is with that size battery and superchargers you don't have to "worry" as much about charge state, ie with the Leaf I have to make sure it is 100% full to make it on a couple of my trips, we have no chademo up here.

BrockWI said:

with the Leaf I have to make sure it is 100% full to make it on a couple of my trips, we have no chademo up here.

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I do the same (starting at 100%), and we have many CHAdeMOs around here. It's totally hit and miss as to if one will be working - and that goes double for ones at Nissan dealers, which are broken all too often. Even the ones that charge $10/session at the malls are sometimes out of order. As a result, my LEAF only ever travel more than 50 miles from home a few times (and it will never do so again).