Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

Erich said:

I'm old-school but dedicated physical buttons are still way preferable to me than a touch screen interface. My BMW, you have physical buttons for all the most frequently used functions like seat heater, radio, volume, HVAC etc. My wife's Pacifica many of these functions are on the touchscreen, and sometimes buried in submenus, which leads to extended time where your eyes are off the road. 

It's worse yet to think you could figure out how to operate these menus and screens and wake up one morning to find it's all been changed by some OTA update. Maddening. 

I agree. I like the way that the Bolt does this, but I also wish the Bolt app was as good as the Tesla one.

There are still hardware buttons for the things you use the most while moving - audio play/pause/next/prev/volume, wiper sweep, cruise set/accel/decel/cancel/follow distance and initiate voice command. The seat heaters are the next in line although you can use voice for those. They're also easy to turn on for pre-heating via the app but I assume any app will be useless in a short timeframe.

I think I might actually be able to code up some buttons. I have the details on the CAN protocol and it may be possible to send a change notification for something like the seat heaters there. Depends on where the logic lies. Haven't tried yet but it would be an interesting experiment.

Looks like we may have a recall for a fatiguing wiring harness that could break the rear camera: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/12/tesla-is-recalling-over-475000-model-3-and-model-s-vehicles/ Sounds a lot like the same problem that takes out the third brake light in the NA/NB Miatas :)

Doesn't affect all Model 3s in the date range based on the numbers, so I guess I wait and see if we get a letter.

This will be a test of Tesla's distributed service model. If it was Mazda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Audi - basically, anyone but the big 3, Honda, Toyota or Kia - I'd have to drive 500 miles round  trip to Denver to get it done. Tesla will come to my house. It's just a matter of when. Oh, wait, we have Subaru and VW now. Still.

When Dodge issued the inevitable recall for the bad steering tie rod ends on my truck, it took a year, multiple phone calls and fortuitous timing to get it fixed. "Don't worry, it'll probably break at parking lot speeds", I was told. Tesla has a low bar to meet in order to be as good as a "real" automaker, and the failure mode isn't one that will involve a loss of steering in this case. 

That Dodge recall experience is a major factor that made a new Grand Cherokee an absolute no-go for me, which is what Janel would have bought if I hadn't managed to get her into her weird electric car.

BTW, here's what the main control screen looks like now. You tap the little car in the bottom left to pull this up. You can close it by swiping down or by tapping the little car again. Since the little car is a permanent icon and very easy to locate in the corner, that's pretty easy.

There are reflections on the screens that I never noticed while driving, they only show up when I'm trying to take a picture. The screen is pretty well judged for legibility and not blinding the driver overall. That's the screen brightness setting at the bottom, I've never had to second-guess "auto".

Those are all secondary controls - the car remembers things like steering wheel and mirror position per driver. The mirrors fold automatically when the car locks (or when it turns off at home) so I've never had to change that manually. The wiper controls also pop up on the left side of the screen when you press the button to do a single sweep, but that's probably the one that would most irk people. All of these settings used to be spread across a few different screens so it's good to have them collected here.

Here's the little blind spot camera that pops up when you flip on the turn indicator. I'd prefer to have it higher on the screen but I think it's a good idea. Janel really likes it. The music control bar shown can be hidden by swiping down or pressing the stupid orange "music" icon. It can also be expanded by swiping up to go through the rigamarole of choosing a source or content. Ever since we went to anything more than tracks on a CD or a radio frequency, audio controls have been a user interface problem.

Keith Tanner said:

We got a new key.

It's a ring with an RFID chip inside that speaks Tesla. Basically, when Janel's playing outdoors, she doesn't always want to carry a phone. She can carry one of the car's card keys but you still have to fit something the size of a credit card in your pocket - not always convenient when you're running or playing in the water in a suit that doesn't have pockets. This ring acts exactly like a key card so she can unlock and "start" the car and of course it's easy to carry around. The color scheme was chosen by her. Neat.

Ok. That's cool, and a great idea for her use case of the car. Was that something Tesla put out, or an aftermarket accessory?

And that interface change is frustrating. You'll eventually get used to it, but frustrating. At least it came with some helpful improvements.

It's aftermarket. I'm not sure if they're taking key cards apart or doing the RFID chips themselves. You can get it with the Tesla logo if you want to announce yourself, but not for us.

I've spent some more time with the interface and am coming to terms with it. I like the new font, it's very clear. I still don't like the idea of dynamic controls (and I will bitch about the fact that Hummer has done that on their beast as well) but since I was able to select all but one of the icons as permanent it's not much of an issue. Having the blind spot camera pop up when you turn on the indicator is a very good feature - but given where it shows up on the screen, it's occluded by my right hand every time I turn on the right indicator. It should be higher up on the stack instead of in the bottom left.

Fun fact I don't think I've mentioned - a friend is building a separate display for his 3 so he can have information of his choosing in a separate screen on the steering column. One of the things he's displaying (because he can, not because he needs it) is the torque delivery for each wheel. That includes regen. And it turns out the car seems to do most of its regeneration on the rear wheels, even with dual motors. That's interesting, I should have picked up on that. Hard regen has a different feel than braking at the same rate, and I think it's because it's pulling from the back. I recognize it from setting brake bias on Miatas when I think about it. I don't know why it's doing it, but it might explain the accelerated rear tire wear? No, that's probably Janel zipping. Is it because some Teslas only have rear motors and they share a bunch of code? It's never caused any instability other than on really slippery surfaces, you can feel the back end being kept in check by the electronics in that case. Not big swings, just a bit of a rear engine feel.

Also, with the post-snowfall grit on the roads, I've been taunting the stability control. It's working quite well, but interestingly it doesn't pop up a warning or notification like every other car I've experienced has. It's also pretty subtle when it comes in. Quite different from the Forester I drove at an ice driving test track a while back, it was overtly saving your life constantly and flashing a big warning light about it. The CX-5 (or 3?) let you take a nice little set and it enabled the car to stay there, while being low-key about it. Haven't had the chance to try to four-wheel-drift the Tesla yet.

I got in the car today and it started playing "She's Electric" by Oasis, which I thought was pretty appropriate.

Enjoyable thread. It helped get me off the bubble this summer. I bought my own dual motor Model 3--blue with white interior. 
 

And it turns out the car seems to do most of its regeneration on the rear wheels, even with dual motors. That's interesting, I should have picked up on that. Hard regen has a different feel than braking at the same rate, and I think it's because it's pulling from the back. I recognize it from setting brake bias on Miatas when I think about it. I don't know why it's doing it, but it might explain the accelerated rear tire wear? No, that's probably Janel zipping. Is it because some Teslas only have rear motors and they share a bunch of code? It's never caused any instability other than on really slippery surfaces, you can feel the back end being kept in check by the electronics in that case. Not big swings, just a bit of a rear engine feel.

I think one reason they bias regen to the rear motor is for efficiency.  The permanent magnet rear motor is more efficient than the front induction motor.  I assume it would be a more efficient generator, too. I think that motor is also used preferentially for slow/moderate acceleration. It will cause uneven tire wear when the rear tires are passing most acceleration and braking energy!

I saw the same thing ( on a larger scale) when I did some mountain towing (up and down) with my diesel F-350 with the exhaust brake.  The Michelin Defender sipes felt serrated after the drive since they had been worked so hard.  The front tires just steered and held the front of the truck up. 

Good point about the motor type, that makes sense. 

It is interesting that they do regen on the oversteer end of the car

I'm definitely going to be running some tests to see how it likes mid-corner regen on gritted roads :)

Keith Tanner said:

I'm definitely going to be running some tests to see how it likes mid-corner regen on gritted roads :)

Just dont do a "Hamster" spin off of a mountain road. I know yours isn't a million dollar supercar, but I like reading about it in one, non-crumpled, piece.

I'd be really curious to see what your friend's screen reports during your regen tests; I suspect it's going to dial rear regen way down on any combination of slippery and/or cornering?

I bet enough regen is done in nominal conditions that it can sub "real" brakes in anytime conditions make a bundle of rear brake a sketchy move from a stability standpoint?

As long as you're pointed straight ahead, drag behind the CG is a stabilizing influence, no? I wonder how subtly it can keep straight with judicious rear-caliper "vectoring".

That's sorta the feel I get from rear-biased braking, "drag behind the CG". Until you exceed available traction, at which point the drag behind the CG drops and all of a sudden the CG is behind the remaining drag...

I suspect that the regen will stay the same when the stability control kicks in, the friction brakes will start working on yaw control. But I will do some (slow!) testing because I'm curious.

I have the tools to log all this stuff, I just have to get the motivation up to try it when it's so much easier to try to build a DBW setup for a 37 year old van with the wrong engine.

I performed the "provoke the car on loose surfaces" experiment today. A corner near my house (second gear in a car with gears) is paved but has been liberally gritted for winter and has dirt for runoff, so no chance of a firey doom but a pretty low coefficient of friction.

Turned in, goosed it a bit and then cut the throttle all the way. Back of the car took a half step sideways with the spike of regen and then the stability control grabbed it. No driver reaction required, just a little stutter in the back. It almost felt like I'd briefly spiked the handbrake and immediately let it go before momentum could continue the slide, or as if I'd come off the gritted section and hit bare pavement. I tried a few more variations with less extreme control movements and the car never moved at all.

So yes, it would seem that most of the regen is indeed in the rear but it's not enough to get past the stability control in this particular experiment. I was not willing/able to try this test at 80 mph so I don't know how the car would react to full regen on an icy corner on the interstate :)

Carry on.

Just received this photo through one my jokes and funnies groups on Whatsapp, and thought I needed to post it on your build thread 

Yikes 

It looks like Tesla has implemented a snow mode. When it detects some slip during acceleration, or maybe in regen also, it turns the long range/all wheel drive cars into a 50-50 power distribution mode for a while. There's no direct feedback or notification to the driver about this as far as I know.

I don't really understand how they've sold this car since 2017 and are just figuring out winter driving. But I'm glad they're making some improvements to the heat pump heating system and the traction control.  I realize the heat pump is newer than 2017, but still.

This video shows some data logging and explanation of winter mode. I'd watch the first couple minutes, and then skip to about the 12:30 minute mark where he shows rear bias mode and then winter mode.

https://youtu.be/ENFTsOsHxcs

This sounds like the sort of thing that CUVs like the CX-5 have been doing for a while, I know that car will actually take windshield wiper activation into account when managing the powertrain. They run 2WD until something starts to slip.

It's an interesting peek into the behavior of the different types of motors at each end and why you might want to use them differently. The snow mode sacrifices efficiency for improved traction when it senses that things are particularly dire. I've had our car on snow-covered roads and it never acted terribly untoward, but I was also driving like it was on snow and wasn't provoking it much. I did give it a good bootful on an onramp and the car got a little loose, but not as loose as a RWD car would and no special skills were required to maintain the car's heading. Enough to reassure me that the car was doing a pretty good job of managing things. So I wouldn't call this a bandaid on a vehicle that's woefully incompetent but an increase in capability on a car that was acceptable. And it's super-cool that it's just happening even on a car I've owned for a couple of years.

What would be a really interesting companion to this video would be the same data captured from a car that does not have snow mode. How did it juggle regen and acceleration? They obviously respond to wheel slip already.

 The 2019 Miata makes more power than the 2016 does too even though it's based on the same basic parts, just with some properly shaped holes in some of the metal parts and different bumps on the bumpy sticks. I don't understand how Mazda could sell that car for three years without realizing they could just spin the engine faster ;)

It does sound like the heat pumps had some problems in extreme situations for sure. I haven't been following too closely because our car has a resistive heater instead.

On a related note, it looks like some of the interface tweaks added in v11 are possibly being rolled back after user feedback. I know I got some user feedback from Janel when she tried to fire up Netflix -  it's in the "entertainment" area instead of the audio system. She blamed the interface change but she'd never actually tried to access it before, and it's always been in the entertainment area :)

In reply to Leadfoot :

I guess that like every manufacturer on the planet they make improvements as they go.  
  The thing I like about Tesla is they don't wait until the new model year to change things. When they feel it's ready they do it.   
   It's typically not just a different trim level or headlight arrangement, but something of value. 
      The hard part is for a very long time Americans are used to changes every model year and getting a discount at the end of the year because next year things will be different. 
Tesla treats buyers with respect. Those buyers know that there will be improvements  but no incentive to take an old model. 

One fun thing that happened yesterday was when I was called to do nephew pickup after soccer. I pulled into the parking lot and ended up beside a sexy looking Mach-E and a less sexy Leaf. All just being normal cars on the soccer run. Which is pretty cool.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Have you watched the guy on UTube do the Tesla /Jaguar? 

I am not a YouTube consumer, alas. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I have to do something when waiting for my next load of kids. 
  Anyhow he put a Tesla "chassis" under a 1947? Jaguar sedan.  

There's a shop called Electric Classic Cars in the UK that does really high quality electric swaps. BMW 3.0 CSi, Testarossa, Mini, Land Rover, 944. They're great to see. Someday!