This blog follows the progress of restoring and converting a 1973 Porsche 914 from stock to full electric drive, with an electric motor and half a ton of batteries. Now that the car is done and in storage while I live overseas, I'm adding descriptions and pictures of each Tesla location I visit.
I discovered Tesla had a showroom in downtown Vancouver so I headed into the city. I couldn't walk to the Tesla store directly as some streets were blocked off due to a gas leak under the city streets, firetrucks all over the place.
The Tesla store is quite small, with only enough room for one car and no rolling chassis.
After a long discussion with Tesla staff member Preston, he offered to let me have a test drive. He asked me if I wanted the P85D and I said of course! Walked to their parking area, they have 4 cars ready for test drives. We crept through the grid-locked CBD due to the light rain and gas-leak blocked roads, having to wait a couple of cycles for each light. Not the best demonstration of the Tesla's performance. Finally the traffic opened up and we went into a not-much-used tunnel leading to the docks which luckily was also dry so I punched it in Insane mode. I could only hold the pedal down for a couple of seconds before I had to let up. My eyes went a bit tunnel-vision and I got a pulse shock of adrenaline through my system. It's truly an unbelievable feeling, even more than the other Teslas I've driven. Big thanks to Preston!
Nick took me to the storage area where he's working on his Mazda Miata conversion project. He's doing the final wiring loom hookups, then the battery boxes and should be ready to go. Very tight area but the MX-5 is small too...
Follow his progress through his video submissions to evtv.me.
Steve's Tesla Model S has been invited to go on display at a local race track as part of the "Mother's Car Polish Show and Shine" vehicle display area. #LeadingTheCharge participates in as many of these events as possible to spread the word about electric vehicles.
Nick and I make our way to the track and talk our way in without having to pay the $20 entrance fee. Score!
We attend the driver's meeting to prepare for giving test rides but we don't have the required paperwork for the car, unfortunately no follow through from our contact. All we can do is stand next to the car all day. We walk around and I drink hot chocolate to stay warm, it's blustery and cold, with waves of blue sky and showers rolling through.
The track is doing DYM - Drive Your Mate. People can take any car on the track but they have to stay under 100kph, and cannot drift or pass in the corners, and most of the cars follow the rules. Lots of hopped up street cars plus many dedicated racing cars, mostly Kiwi and Aussie models. Other times the track is open for drifting, serious cars with lots of power at full drift through the corners, tires billowing smoke.
Also a dedicated skid pad where you could drift your car for about 2 minutes. I saw one guy spin his car and end up in a large puddle at the side of the track, had to be pulled out by a Hummer. Another track-prepped car was trailered back, it apparently hit a wall head on, the front was pushed in and flat and both airbags fired, the driver did not look happy!
We spoke with about 20 people through the day, showed them the car, let them sit in it and play with the 17" touchscreen. Everyone who stopped was very positive about Tesla and electric cars in general and we described the Leading The Charge trust and Steve's upcoming charging network. Around 3PM we decide to give up and go home because of the freezing weather, lack of test rides and lack of interest by the mostly petrol-head attendees, no offense...
My timing was excellent as day after my arrival in the city, the Auckland Sustainable Building Network held a Smart Transportation Forum conference in the city center, this is right in my electric car / renewable energy sweet spot.
Steve gave me a ride into the city in the Roadster. Neck-snapping acceleration and it handled well even in the rain. We found the conference building and parked in a special EV demo spot out front, along with a BMW i3, a solar/electric enclosed tricycle thing and Dee brought the Model S a bit later.
The day consisted of a series of speakers with expertise in city planning and the impact of pedestrians, bicycles, buses, cars, dedicated lanes and the like. One fact I heard was $1 in car driving costs society $9.20 due to fuel subsidies, accidents, injuries, pollution, illness, etc. Gabe Klein had an impressive talk and has a book coming out soon, check him out at gabeklein.com
New Zealand is already in an excellent position, as it now generates 80% of its power from renewable resources, including hydro and geothermal. The grid is ready for another 10TW of solar to come on line to support full electric transportation across the country. The Mighty River Power / Mercury Energy company generates 100% renewable power now and supplies over 1 million homes with clean power. 85% of residences are capable of having a home car charger. Power companies give 30% off for overnight charging.
The main theme was Make Cities Better For Humans, not Cars. City planners need to take all of the following and more into account: bikes, shared bike plans, carpooling, car sharing, light rail, move away from gas and diesel, more EVs, public charging, young people aren't getting licenses or buying cars, working in shared spaces close to where people live, etc. Building more roads and parking garages is actually highly counterproductive.
At the end of the day, we did a tabletop workshop to brainstorm on How To Get To Work / Hospital / Next Delivery / School / Holiday. We used sticky notes to write down things, the relationships between those things and tried to come up with potential solutions to any problems identified. Then I drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of cheese.
By prior arrangement, I was picked up at the Auckland airport by my EVTV electric car buddy Nick Smith. We drove to my other EVTV electric car buddy Steve West's office and workshop. Steve and his Canadian (yay!) wife Dee have the only Tesla Roadster in NZ and also a Tesla Model S and a Nissan Leaf. They just placed an order for another Model S.
You could say they're a bit nuts about electric vehicles and you'd be right, but it doesn't stop there. They run a trust called #LeadingTheCharge which works for the uptake of electric vehicles, charging and energy independence in New Zealand. With the rest of their spare time, they've started a business called Charge.net.nz which will roll out nearly 100 DC Fast Charge electric vehicle stations all the way up and down New Zealand.
I got to see the first charger up close and unplugged my first CHAdeMO plug from a friend's Nissan Leaf who popped in for a quick charge and test the functionality.
The next day I took the bus to Chadstone Shopping Center in eastern Melbourne. As you can see, it's in the middle of the walkway in the mall, at a bend with a cupola above, big pillars and a pair of escalators, a perfect place to pick up a lot of foot traffic.
There was a white 85 and a rolling chassis with only the rear motor, plus a mockup supercharger and an HPVC unit that had enough power to open the charge port on the car.
I spoke briefly to the Tesla staffer who I thought I recognized from yesterday, but by the way he was talking it was like he didn't know me, so I explained about my visit to Church Street yesterday, my love of Tesla, my car, my trip, etc.
I was sitting at a side table looking at my phone and people kept coming up to ask me questions. I'd tell them I don't work for Tesla but the staffer was always busy so I tried to answer best I could. They normally have two people working, with two Teslas in the parking garage ready for test drives.
This is a great marketing strategy to pick up folks who just happen to walk by and are drawn in by the cars. Infinity had a similar display in another part of the mall but there was nobody looking...
Tesla has two locations in Melbourne Australia, a full showroom & service center on Church Street in East Richmond, and also a display area at the Chadstone Shopping Center. This is the Church Street location,
The folks at the Church Street showroom were great. I talked with Nick, a service technician. He gave me the tour around. This location has a massive service shop area, only about 25% of the floorspace is used right now; I was asked not to publish any pictures. This building is meant as an owner support center while the other site at a shopping mall in nearby Chadstone is where they get the foot traffic and sales leads.
I then spoke with Nathan, the Product Specialist. He has a flexible role but is the go-to guy for technical issues. He handles walk-ins and phone calls, works 9-5 5 days a week and floats between the two locations. He does test-drives, follow-ups, and lead captures. He needs to log about 45 leads per week but it's easy to do at the Chadstone location.
We also discussed the Delivery Experience role and the Service Concierge role, with me filing the information away for a foggy future plan... This is the Delivery area.
Tesla offers a 24-hour lounge for folks who need a charge outside of business hours. It's accessed via a keypad on the door and is heated & cooled, lighted and has a coffee machine.
Tesla has to make locale-specific changes for the various markets around the world. The differences on the Australia model are: 1) No child seat option - against crash safety rules. 2) No web browser in the 17" display - against driver inattention rules. 3) Mennekes Type 2 charging connector. 4) Some of the new autopilot features will be allowed, but some may not comply with current law and will be excluded.
One top goal on my Around-The-World trip is to hit as many Tesla locations as humanly possible.
While in Sydney, I took the bus from my hotel across the city, jumped off and walked about 300m to the Tesla showroom. It's really big, with a huge long glass wall along the road, with about 10 parking spots right in front and superchargers all across.
Like most Tesla showrooms, they had a rolling chassis on display but this one was the first I've seen with the "D" motor installed up front. They don't have any Ds for sale yet, but should be soon.
I spoke with Gavin, the assistant service manager about Tesla and my electric 914. I then arranged for a test drive with Taylor, an American woman who went to Uni here and never left. I didn't get to punch it due to city traffic, but it drives perfectly.
They're running a special Billion Miles event the next day, so I got a Tesla neck lanyard and ID card for taking a test drive.
Gavin took me downstairs to the service area, it's painted Tesla red and white and sparkling clean as you would expect, only one orange Roadster in for service. Gavin said that since Australia was later in the worldwide rollout, they didn't experience a lot of the early problems such as naughty door handles and drivetrain bearings. Gavin asked that I not post any pictures of the service area and I'm happy to comply.
We discussed the Right To Repair documentation issue, he doesn't think Australia legislates full disclosure like Massachusetts.
Tesla uses the Mennekes Type 2 connector here for supercharging, with 7 pins, and physically a bit larger than the US connector.
Pricing goes from AUD $113,152 "on the road" for the cheapest 70 kwh pack with a 4 month delivery queue, up to $225,763 for the fully loaded P90D, including $43K in taxes. The only government savings on an electric car is a slight decrease in the Luxury Car tax. The current Aussie government thinks coal is the solution for the future and is actively fighting solar, wind and electric vehicles. Hope the bums get voted out next time.
Many thanks to the Tesla staff for taking the time to chat and answer my questions and give me a test drive!
Well, all of my pictures are gone. Thanks (I think...) to Jason for point this out.
After a quick Google search (ironic) I found out why. When I make a post, I write the text and explicitly upload each picture or video. I move and size the picture, then save and publish the post. Easy, right? Not exactly.
Google now owns Blogspot. What happens under the covers is Google doesn't lock the photo to your blog post, it puts your uploaded picture into your AutoSync thingy and then makes a link from the blog to your photo.
AutoSync was starting to fill up, I thought, with every picture I took on my phone and I was running out of the space Google gives you for email. So I cleaned it out. I just invoked the Law of Unintended Consequences. Fuck me.
So what to do.
After I get over this rage I have going on right now, I'll probably slowly go back and fix the posts. I hope it's easy to fix these, I've got a couple of thousand to do.
Note that this would not have happened if Blogspot had remained independent, or if I used another blogging platform.
Update: On May 16, 2015 I've just finished fixing all 205 blog entries with over 1600 images. That's a lot of hours I won't get back.
After building the electric 914 and planning a move to Thailand, I was very interested in the state of electric vehicles there, again trying to avoid gasoline-powered transportation. What I found was disheartening... There are no pure-electric cars for sale, not even the Nissan Leaf despite Nissan dealers everywhere. I did find one electric golf cart shop that had an electric scooter from Toyotron www.toyotron.com but they told me it wasn't legal to drive on the road. I ended up buying a Honda Click 125cc motorbike, which gets about 110 miles per gallon, so I'm minimizing my use of gasoline the best I can.
I've been watching the Toyotron web site since then to see what electric motorbikes are available, and if and when they will become legal for street use. Sadly the site hasn't changed so I don't know if they are coming out with new designs or are even still in operation.
I was dropping a friend off at the airport in Bangkok so we stopped by the address on the Toyotron web site for a personal look.
We were greeted by two Thai ladies who spoke no English, but we managed to get some photocopied brochures and a couple of test rides. The factory is somewhere else in Bangkok and as you'll see from the videos below the showroom is pretty bare and the rear area of the property is piled with old parts and broken bikes.
The main model listed on the web site is the Dragon-G, with a small and large battery pack available. The Dragon-G body style is much like my Honda Click 125cc bike and several others in use here. The spec on the Dragon-G Turbo (which shows a distinct lack of marketing prowess as you don't need a turbocharger on an electric motor...) is 40-60 kilometers range and a top speed of 55 km/hour. This is a little small for my use around town and up and back to the next towns. The Dragon-G Super has 60-80 kilometers range and top speed of 65 km/hour. I wish there was still more range and I have a dream of buying one without a battery pack, then building my own pack with CALB LiFePO4 cells and an appropriate charger. I wonder if they would agree to it?
Strangely, they had two bikes on display called Hunter but no paperwork available and not shown on the web site. I did a Google search and found this article from 2008 showing how close it looks to a Honda Big Ruckus. The Thais generally have no respect for copyright law, so I assume they just welded it up based on the Big Ruckus shape. I have no idea if they're still building it or these are just leftovers. It has a very upright driving position, with a forward-backward adjustable seat. The backrest tilts down to make a second seat, and as you can see it has additional storage space available in the saddlebags.
They also have two models which are essentially electric bicycles which I'm not interested in.
The ladies made it clear that the motorbikes can be licensed and driven on the roads, so I'm getting conflicting information.
To wrap up, here are three videos we took of test drives around the back area. None were brand new, and the Hunter had a nasty grinding noise when it first started rolling, but it has nice pickup. The Dragon and T-Win felt light with good balance and handling, while the Dragon-G was in very bad shape after nearly 5000 kilometers and nearly no charge remaining in the pack. The last video also has some footage of the inside of the showroom and the other bikes on display.
While these are competitively-priced with similar sized gasoline bikes, I would be asking for more range than they can deliver so I think my best plan may be to buy a used motorbike with a chassis I like and converting it to full electric with my own design. I just need to figure out how to make it legal first!
