Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S

Re:Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S by ZeroGravitas on Friday February 15, 2013 @06:08AM (#5225573)

I thought one of the benefits of electric cars was that since you had them plugged in overnight you could program them to automatically heat the car to a pleasant temperature for when you went outside to drive, taking energy for this directly from the charger, rather than the battery. And that if your schedule was a bit more unpredictable you could activate this via a smartphone app as well.

Does the Tesla not do that (yet)?

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Re:Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S by danielweber on Friday February 15, 2013 @08:48AM (#5226096)

Plugging in overnight would have made the NYT review a non-event. In fact, it doesn't look like the CNN review involved an overnight stop at all.

NB: Tesla claims you don't have to plug in overnight. Whatever other problems the NYT reviewer had, he wasn't cheating by leaving it unplugged overnight.

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Re:Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S by speg on Friday February 15, 2013 @07:30AM (#5225819)

It can and does, but the writer in the NYT did not do that. Wherever he stayed overnight probably didn't have a charger? Although I've never seen a building without a standard outlet somewhere outside... perhaps it wasn't available or he just thought he didn't need it.

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Re:Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S by makomk on Friday February 15, 2013 @10:29AM (#5226594)

This probably works well when you're at home and have your own charging point in the garage. It doesn't work so well when you're in a hotel somewhere and the nearest charging point is a public one in the next town over. (Attempting 110V charging may actually make matters worse in cold weather, based on the experiences of other Tesla owners.)

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