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If you take your car to enough Electric Vehicle (EV) events, you quickly realize almost everyone asks the same questions – often in the same order! Here are the questions I hear the most and my answers to them:

1. How far can a Tesla Model 3 go on a charge?

To me, this question is like asking how many minutes your phone lasts on a charge. Sure, battery life is important, but literally 99% of the time I am using my car, this never crosses my mind. My Model 3 – the Long Range version – is rated to 310 miles, but I would never charge to 100% and drive down to 0%, so that’s not really a realistic number. For daily driving, the total range is irrelevant, because I have more than enough range to go everywhere I want to go in a day (for several days, really). I typically charge to 80% at home every few days, which is WAY more than enough for my driving needs.

The only time range is even a consideration for me is during long (several hours or more) road trips. This is where it’s nice to have a larger battery, both because you can go further on a single charge, but also because the larger battery will charge faster. Please see the Tips & Tricks page for more details about Tesla road trip strategies.

2. How long does it take to charge a Tesla Model 3?

Again, using the cell phone analogy, how long does it take to charge your phone? You probably don’t know, because it’s never an issue. You just throw it on the charger overnight and it’s ready to go in the morning. A Tesla is the same. Plug in in when you get home and it will be ready to go when you leave. You will never drive down to 0% and then charge up to 100%, so that makes answering this question tricky too.

A note about battery health: Tesla batteries don’t like to sit idle at a very low (near 0%) or very high (near 100%) charge. This is why it is recommended to only charge above 90% prior to leaving for a road trip, and if you do this, try to time it so the car will reach 100% shortly before you are leaving, as opposed to the day before.

I explain this in more detail on the Tips & Tricks page, but even on a road trip, it makes no sense to sit around waiting for your car to reach 100% charge before leaving. All you need is enough charge (plus whatever buffer you are comfortable with) to get to your next charging stop.

Given all of that, my answer to this question is that I charge at home 99% of the time and have no idea how long it takes, but on road trips, I typically stop at Tesla Superchargers for 15-20 minutes every two or three hours. This is enough time for me to stretch my legs, use the restroom, grab a drink and/or a bite to eat, and have enough charge to be on my way.

3. Where do you charge your Tesla?

99% of the time, I charge at home. I installed Tesla’s High Power Wall Connector in my garage, but this is not necessary. A 240 volt outlet is sufficient. Heck, you can charge on a common 110 volt wall outlet, but it will take a very long time. The advantage of the HPWC is that you can keep the charging cable in your car (the HPWC has its own cable), so you’ll never risk leaving it home when you take a road trip. The HPWC also looks nicer and you won’t risk wearing out the outlet by inserting and removing the charging cable over and over.

4. How much does it cost to charge a Tesla Model 3?

This question is like asking how much a tank of gas costs, which of course depends on the cost of gas and the size of the tank. The better apples-to-apples metric here is to figure out how much it costs to drive 1 mile.

Where I live, electricity costs around 10 cents per kwh. My “spirited” driving results in 250 wh per mile energy usage, meaning I can drive 4 miles per 1000 watts (1 kw) of energy usage. So that means driving my Tesla Model 3 costs me 2.5 cents per mile. You can calculate what a gas car costs to drive per mile by taking the cost of gas and dividing by the mpg it gets. ie, if gas costs $2.50 per gallon and a car gets 25 mpg, it costs 10 cents per mile to drive that car.

Supercharging will cost a little bit more than charging at home (as it should), but even that is very reasonable. The cost varies from state to state and can be found on Tesla’s website. To give you an idea though. I drove from Florida to Pennsylvania and back (around a 2200 mile road trip) and my total Supercharging cost was $76.

This is a good place for me to mention that if you use my Tesla referral code (mark26115) when ordering your Tesla, you will get 1000 miles of free supercharging.

Anyway, back the the original question. If you really want to know what a “full tank” (battery) costs, the full 310-miles battery would cost me under $8 to fill up at home (even though I’d never actually do this, as explained above).

5. What about maintenance for a Tesla?

I’m glad you asked! In addition to low per-mile operating expense explained above, the maintenance costs for a Tesla are very low. Remember, there is no engine, so all of those countless parts that break in Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars don’t exist in a Tesla. No more alternators, timing belts, head gaskets, spark plugs, oil changes, etc, etc, etc. The average ICE car has something like 1800 parts in an engine compared to just 18 in a Tesla motor. Don’t quote me on that, but that’s pretty close. Google it.

Back to the question: Routine maintenance for a Tesla is essentially this:

• Tires
• Wipers
• Windshield washer fluid

Yes, seriously, that’s it. It is only fair to mention here that the instant torque of an electric car (this is what causes the “Tesla Smile”) will cause tire wear faster than in ICE cars, but it is totally worth it!

6. How much does it cost to replace the battery pack in a Tesla?

“Sure, Tesla’s are inexpensive to operate, but how much will it cost to replace the batter when it dies?” This is a super common misconception, and one where the cell phone analogy does not work, because Tesla’s use a completely different battery technology then cell phones.

I should also mention that my Tesla Model 3 came with an 8 year, 125,000 warranty on the battery pack… but more importantly, data shows this isn’t an issue. There are Tesla taxi services with 400,000+ miles and their battery packs are still operating above 90% efficiency – just 10% degradation after nearly half a million miles! No one has owned a Tesla long enough to say for sure, but all the evidence out there suggests Tesla batteries (and motors, btw) should last 500,000 and maybe even 1 million miles, far longer than almost anyone keeps a car.

So the answer to this question is really: “It doesn’t matter. It’s not an issue. You won’t drive the car long enough to ever find out.”

You bought a Tesla – Congratulations! But now what? If you are anything like me, you probably knew more about your new Tesla than the Tesla employee who gave you the orientation about your new car when you took delivery. You are a member of several Tesla forums and Facebook groups and have watched countless Tesla videos on YouTube. The names Zac and Jesse and Kim and Ben and Trevor and Bjorn and Brian (etc, etc) mean something to you. If this is you, you can stop reading right now, because you already know all this stuff. 🙂

If that is NOT you, and you are new to the world of Tesla, keep reading, because I have some simple tips for newbies like you.

 

Charging

Set your daily charge limit to 80%. Plug your car in when you get home for the day and forget about it. Only charge above 90% prior to starting a road trip, and use the “Scheduled Charging” option in your car to time things so your car will reach 100% not too long before you plan to leave for your trip. Tesla batteries don’t like to sit too long near 0% or 100%.

 

Creep

Don’t be a creep! Creep mode is an option that allows your Tesla to mimic a gas car, where it will slowly move forward without you pressing the accelerator (note I didn’t call it a gas pedal). Many people like this, because it is familiar to them, but please trust me and embrace your EV! The car should only move when you tell it to by pressing the accelerator. This may feel a little weird for you for a day or two, but I promise you will come to love it.

 

Regen Braking

Set your regenerative braking to the max setting. Regen braking is one of the coolest things about electric cars. It will feel weird to you for a little while, but you will be used to it and will love it in no time. Basically, when you life your foot off of the accelerator, instead of coasting, the car will start to slow itself down with the motor, recapturing that energy and putting it back into the battery. Cool, right? In time, you will find yourself almost never touching the brake pedal, basically only when the car is moving under 5 mph as you approach red lights and stop signs. This means even your brakes will last ages before needing to be replaced – Score!

 

Road Trips

OK, this is the big one and one of my very few complaints about Tesla. As far as I can tell, Tesla’s navigation system optimizes for fewest charging stops instead of (the much superior, IMO) shortest total trip time. Personally, I would much rather make more short stops to stretch my legs than fewer long stops, especially if doing so meant I would get to me destination sooner. If you agree, instead of using Tesla’s navigation to plan your charging stops, use a third party tool like A Better Route Planner. This really is a better route planner. You plug in your starting point (can be “current location”), your final destination, any waypoints you want to hit along the way (Tesla’s Nav doesn’t support this either), and enter all sorts of additional variables like what model car you have, extra weight in the car, air temperature, goal arrival percentages, etc – it’s a very thorough list. Anyway, plug everything in and push the button, and your route will be magically planned for you and you will get to your destination much sooner than you would have if you did what Tesla’s navigation suggested.

The main reason this works is because Tesla batteries charge very quickly from 0%-50% and then they start slowing down and continue to slow down. Going from 99% to 100%, for example, probably takes as long as from 10% to 25%. So the idea is to drive the bottom of the battery instead of the top. What I mean by this is instead of hitting Superchargers at 50% and charging up to 90%, it would be much faster to arrive at 10% and charge up to 50%. Either way, you add 40% to your battery, but the former will take much longer than the latter. So for an ideal road trip, you’ll “fill up” at home before you leave but then only supercharge enough to make it to your next stop (with some room to spare – I like to arrive with about 10% remaining). Charge to 50% or 60% or whatever it will take for you to make it to your next planned Supercharger stop and have about 10% remaining (A Better Rout Planner will spell this all out for you), and then continue on your way, repeating this process until you reach your final destination.

To give you a real life example of this, driving from Florida to Pennsylvania (and back), Tesla’s Navigation wanted me to stop to charge 4 times in each direction for about 4 hours of total charging time. But using A Better Route Planner to plan my trip instead, I ended up stopping 8 times in each direction, but for only about 2 hours of total charging time! So I got to stretch my legs, use the restroom, and grab a bit to eat twice as often and still managed to arrive at my destination nearly 2 hours ahead of time.

Hopefully I have explained this well enough. Not understanding this “bottom of the battery” driving is one of the biggest mistakes I see new Tesla owners making. In summary, use A Better Route Planner and trust it!