Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Happy Tesla Tuesday!

One of the features we really enjoy on our Escape are the driver memory buttons. We both drive the car fairly often and we are very different sizes. Hitting the memory button automatically adjusts the side mirrors and the seat. Since we use it so often, I’m very excited for driver profiles in a Tesla. When you get in, you select your profile and it will not only store the mirror and seat position but also the steering wheel position and countless other things like mirror auto fold, cruise follow distance, acceleration mode, steering mode (comfort/normal/sport), stopping mode (creep/roll/hold), seat heat, walk away door locks, navigation settings, temperature, air vent direction, and much more. Now these settings are also getting synced up to the cloud so even if you rent a Tesla, you can apply all your profile settings!

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know that one of my criteria whenever I buy a new gadget is whether or not it has an API that I can connect to. I want to have access to all my data! Today I have apps running that collect weights from our digital scale, temperatures and runtime from our thermostat, runtimes from our irrigation controller, the list of beers I’ve tried, how much water our house uses by the minute, how much power we use by the day, and a few other things. I used to log every trip we took in our cars too before the service that I was using died. So when I looked into an API for Tesla, I got excited.

Tesla doesn’t officially offer an API but there’s obviously one available since you connect to the car with your phone. There are a few popular services which let you use that API to get nearly endless amounts of data from your car. I’ll probably end up using TeslaMate but TeslaFi is an option if you don’t want to host it yourself. These services pull down all the data from the API and store it for you to generate even more charts than what the Tesla gives you by default. This YouTube video demos the capabilities early in the video and then goes into information about setting it up. He demos it in the browser inside the car but you could view the info from anywhere. Imagine having a log of everywhere you drove, how much energy you used on each trip, and details like how long the seat heaters were used on each trip.

Pretty much everything in a Tesla is connected into the computer. Even opening the glove box requires a button press on the screen. At first that might seem unnecessary, but when you go that route, it opens up a ton of new capabilities. For example, now you can set up a pin code that must be entered to open your glove box. Or instead of just having a button to retract your mirrors, because it’s hooked into that central computer, you can tell the Tesla to automatically fold your mirrors in or out as you approach or leave your home. The same is true for your garage door opener (if you add the Homelink accessory.) There’s a pedestrian warning speaker on the outside of the car, but you can play Spotify music through it while you’re washing the car. And since all of this stuff is controlled by a computer, you can do a lot of these things from the app on your phone too.

The phone isn’t just for running the app though. It can also serve as the key to get into your car. It connects to your car via Bluetooth as you walk up, unlocks the car, and lets you start driving. Just put your foot on the brake to “start” the car and you’re off! It takes “keyless entry” to a new level. There isn’t even a key! (There’s also a card you can keep in your wallet as a backup or you can even purchase a fob if you really want one.)

So yes, some of the scenarios are silly, but I love the open world of possibilities. Instead of trying to predict every button or feature that needs to be added, everything gets plugged into the central computer. If users want some new integration between components, it can be added in software and blasted out to everyone’s car automatically.

Welcome to another Tesla Tuesday! Let’s talk about range anxiety. It’s the most common topic when people hear that we’re buying an electric car. “What happens when you run out of battery?” When someone asks me that, I usually ask “When was the last time you ran out of gas?” And that can be followed up with “Would you have run out of gas if your car was magically filled up every morning when you woke up?”

Everything in the car is built to help ensure that you never run out of battery. If you set your destination, you’ll be automatically routed to chargers along the way if you’re even close to not making it. And if you ignore the warnings, the car will become increasingly annoying at reminding you that you’re making bad choices. Pretty much the only way you can run out of battery is to do it on purpose.

But ok, let’s assume that you are somehow out for a drive and you magically end up with no battery. Then what? The first step is to call Tesla Roadside Assistance. If it was a car issue, they’ll take care of you, and if it was your own mistake, they’ll still help you but you’ll end up paying the bill. The likely response is that your car will get put on a flatbed and towed to a charger. After a few minutes at the charger, the car can be unloaded and you’re on your way.

When our Escape had a dead battery in our garage, we had to get towed to the dealer and I realized that I didn’t know how to get it out of the garage onto the truck. It’s a keyless ignition system so how do I turn on the ignition to put it in neutral? I finally found a “brake shift interlock” that solved the problem. There’s a similar procedure for a Tesla. You need to charge up the 12v battery enough to power the screen so you can put it in tow mode. Then it can be pulled up onto the flatbed. There’s a procedure for getting into the frunk mechanically and getting to the 12v battery charge points.

EVs can generally be charged by generators too as long as they are a nicer generator that puts out a clean sine wave. You probably just need a few miles of charge to get to a real charger. As EVs become more common, there will be more roadside assistance vehicles driving around with this option.

So sure, it could theoretically happen. I could theoretically run out of gas too, but I don’t worry about that. If range anxiety was a real thing, I doubt that all four of Teslas cars would be in Consumer Reports’s list of the 10 most satisfying cars (and three of the top 4 spots are Teslas!) Want range anxiety to go away? Buy an EV.

Our upcoming Model Y, like all Teslas, come with some self-driving features but others are optional. The term “Autopilot” has a lot of features that may or may not be included with any given Tesla so in this post, I’ll try to demystify what they mean.

All Teslas come with Traffic Aware Cruise Control. This is very similar to what is found on a lot of other cars, though it’s fancier than cars that I’ve owned. When you engage cruise control, it will attempt to drive at the speed you’ve set. The max speed can be easily adjusted with the thumb scroll on the right side of the steering wheel. If a car in front of you is going slower than the max speed, it will follow at whatever distance you’ve configured. You can also configure the cruise control to always be set to X mph over the speed limit or X% over the speed limit. The cruise control will automatically adjust to the current speed limits. The car will automatically begin to slow down for situations like exit ramps (it uses the average speed of cars that have gone before you) or if someone pulls out in front of you. It will even bring you to a complete stop if the car in front of you stops. If you’re following a slow vehicle and you use your turn signal to switch lanes, the car will automatically speed up to your desired speed if no one is in front of you. I use cruise control a lot but frequently end up disengaging it to deal with traffic so I think I’m really going to enjoy this feature.

All Teslas also come with Autosteer. After the cruise control is engaged by clicking down on the right stalk, clicking down again will enable autosteer. Autosteer is recommended to be used on highways and interstates, but it can be enabled on almost all roads. This is a differentiator from systems like “Blue Cruise” which only work on specific roads. The autosteer system does what it sounds like: it steers the vehicle for you. We tried this out on our test drive and it was creepy and awesome at the same time. You must keep your hand on the wheel at all times and give it a little tug every 30 seconds or so to let it know that you’re still paying attention. If you really drive hands off and ignore what’s going on, you’ll get progressively stronger warnings until the system disables itself. (Drunk drivers have found themselves pulled over on the side of the road automatically.) The system isn’t perfect but from reading reviews, people almost unanimously agree that it reduces stress especially on long drives. You don’t realize how much effort it takes to just stay in your lane for hours at a time until you don’t have to do it anymore. I don’t know how much use we’ll get out of this feature around town, but it makes me excited to take a road trip and let the car handle a lot of the driving for me.

There are other features like Autopark, Lane Assist and Collision Avoidance Assist which have multiple options that can be configured. For example, maybe I just want a chime if I’m drifting out of my lane in most cases, but if I’m drifting into oncoming traffic and a collision is imminent than take over and get me back into my lane.

The next big features is commonly referred to as the Full Self Driving (FSD) beta but it includes things like Navigate on Autopilot, Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control, and Smart Summon. These features are not enabled by default and currently cost $10,000 extra. Smart Summon tells your Tesla to move to your location. It will exit its parking spot and come to you. I could see this being a fun party trick but the car moves too slowly or gets too confused in busy parking lots to be useful. The first two are the ones that are making all the news. With these features, you can get in your car, pick a destination, and let your car drive you there. You are still responsible and need to have your hands on the wheel but it will change lanes, make turns, and stop for traffic signals. The $10,000 price tag is hefty and most buyers do not opt for it, but Tesla is now offering a $200/month subscription service to temporarily enable them. This works because all the cars have the required hardware in them.

The Full Self Driving feature is still in beta and honestly, it’s probably a poor choice of name. This is generally considered to be a Level 2 self driving feature. The levels range from 0-5 and at level 2, there’s still a lot of responsibility on the driver. Tesla is furiously working to move up the levels, but for now “full self driving” is aspirational.

Waymo is one of the leaders in this space. They’re probably a level 4. If you’re in Phoenix, you can call a Waymo self-driving taxi to your location, get in the back seat, and then proceed to your destination with no human driver. (If you’re intrigued by this idea, check out Malcom Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast episode titled I Love You Waymo.) It’s only level 4 because it works in a ring fenced area of Phoenix. You can’t tell it to drive you across the state, but like Tesla, they’re working hard to improve.

The tech side of this is amazing. Tesla has billions of hours of driving footage form their cars and they use this to train their models over and over again. They’re building their own supercomputers that specialize in these types of computations and employ armies of the smartest AI engineers. They held an impressive AI Day event in August and you can either watch the full event or get a 19 minute version of it.

While the tech and the enormous amounts of computing power are exciting to me, I’m also excited about the safety aspect. While it’s uncomfortable, the safety records of these systems already put humans to shame. 80-90% of people think they are an above average driver so it’s no surprise that people think they’ll drive better than a computer, but if you’re in that camp, watch that AI day footage and tell me that you’re processing that much information about your environment every second without a single lapse of attention. With so many Teslas on the road, there is already plenty of data to show how much safer it is to let computers drive. As of April the NHTSA says there is an accident every 484,000 miles, but if you’re driving a Tesla with Autopilot engaged, there’s only an accident every 4,190,000 miles. It’s not a totally fair comparison because there are some situations where Autopilot won’t engage, but still, they are approaching 10x better safety than humans. It doesn’t stop there though. Tesla is continuously improving and pushing out software updates on a regular basis to all the cars. They track the accident rates and it keeps going down as they improve. The computers have a lot of hubris to overcome, but the data is on their side.

So while it seems futuristic to have a car steering for you, the future is now… and Tesla has been doing it since 2015. With the rate at which they are progressing, it’s not hard to imagine that by the time I’m retired and too old to drive safely, I won’t have to drive at all, but I’ll still be able to get around.