In mid November on a quiet Sunday morning, I spotted my first Cybertruck in the wild. As I live near Tesla’s last headquarters in California, I have seen many early versions of various vehicles. The vehicle has a MFG manufacturing plate and happened to travel in the same direction as I was driving for about 15 miles down two freeways before it exited. My thoughts have not changed about the appearance of the Cybertruck. I am a fan of modern architecture but the looks of this truck don’t have any particular appeal; I neither like nor dislike the design. My thoughts often drift to dystopian movi ..read more

The title of this post is technically incorrect – my Model S is actually 10 1/2 years old.  I have lost quite a bit of enthusiasm for both posting and Tesla in general so a significant delay occurred before writing this post. For newer readers to this blog, I started my electric car journey with the Roadster back in 2009.  I ‘upgraded’ to the Model S in 2013 primarily for an extended range and the ability to supercharge.  I took the Model S on a cross country trip in 2014 and have enjoyed many long trips using the superchargers primarily within California. I thought a quick summ ..read more

On a pleasant sunny day just driving up my street my Tesla began to give me a scary warning.  I don’t remember the exact words but the warning was to the effect that the car won’t likely restart.  A bit alarming but I was glad I was very close to home and parked the car in the garage.  The warning only flashed once and went away.  I plugged the car in as normal and went into the house. In hindsight I should have driven the car straight to the service center or left the car parked on the street in a flat location. The Next Morning I was concerned about the car, so the next m ..read more

Here in wildfire and drought stricken California, we have experienced somewhat frequent power outages over the last few years. I have considered many times various solutions for backup power and settled on a $3,000 option. The majority of outages are a result of weak trees or weak branches falling on power lines. These are local power lines, not large distribution wires and so far have not caused any wildfires. PG&E (despite all of its many flaws) in the last few years has locally done an ‘okay’ job at keeping the wires clear of trees. But even the smallest collision of tree and power line ..read more

It took me a while to decide to upgrade the electronics on my car for a better cell connection. The Tesla is now 9 years old with 114,000 miles. But honestly the car is just fine and the items I am most interested in upgrading are quite small (CarPlay and a physically smaller car), or quite expensive (a giant battery giving around 300+ miles of range). The 3G capability of the car was getting quite unreliable. About half the time it could not connect at all. At times having the traffic data on the screen is quite useful, and other times being able to find a new place on the map was helpful by ..read more

I recently installed a hybrid heat pump water heater to replace a gas water heater.  As one of the early adopters of an electric hybrid heat pump water heater, I learned a lot during the process about the technology.  Hybrid electric water heaters are great in the mild California climate for a larger house. In about seven years, the cost of the installation (with some local generous rebates) will be paid back in about seven years. In much colder locations or much smaller homes, alternative technologies may be better choices. Hopefully this article will help you understand the technol ..read more

After 4 1/2 years, I got another warning light that my 12 Volt battery needed replacing. I have to admit, I love Tesla Roadside service. I scheduled an appointment for a week out. Every few hours I checked the app for an earlier appointment and I eventually got a next day appointment. I think a fair number of customers reschedule appointments, so its pretty easy to get an earlier time slot. The service person was kind and efficient as always and wore a mask in the open garage. He even checked the wear on my tires. They are holding up after 6,000 miles very nicely at 8.5/32 on all four tires. I ..read more

On a bit of a whim, I decided to try a different brand of tires, Hankook.  This brand runs about 70% of the cost of more conventional brands but are not as high rated in terms of performance or wear. When driving on the tires, I generally found them to be just fine.  I think only in one situation during their lifetime, I thought “gosh these tires are underperforming”, so from a performance point of view they served their purpose just fine. During this experiment, I meticulously checked the tire pressure monthly and added air as needed and rotated them twice around 6K of mileage.  ..read more

The Tesla Model S finally hit the big 6 digit mark during the pandemic. The car is now over 7 years old. Nothing really to report as everything is fine with the car. I have no desire to upgrade or replace it anytime soon. Not interested in self-driving features or any other incremental new features. Ideally I’d like a slightly narrower car but I’ll keep this one for now ..read more

I rarely blog unless something unique happens but today something actually did.  Nothing significant but makes a decent yarn. I was out on the San Francisco Bay paddle boarding  in an unpopular location.  As I returned to my dock, I found a Tesla Model S in the water.    Having been to this location many times I knew this was unusual.  I asked the man in the dark shirt to the right: “Are you stuck?” He said “no”. As I docked, the Model S successfully pulled out of the water. I noticed two unusual things:  a missing silver door handle and then the telltale MF ..read more