Odometer: 4716 miles

I’ve been traveling almost continuously for the last two months, so I haven’t been home to drive Lightning. Carolyn and I did do another 500 mile round-trip to UMaine to visit David in September for Parent’s Weekend, and that was completely uneventful, mostly because the new Bangor Supercharger is now online. Driving to UMaine is now about the same as in a gasoline car because I can Supercharge at my destination as well as along the way.

However, now that I’m back from Mumbai, I’m home for a couple weeks before engaging my final business trip of the year. But now that I’m back and taking some vacation days, I’ve had the opportunity to take Lightning out for errands around town and to enjoy that new Tesla experience all over again.

So here are my thoughts from a few days worth of driving about town.

• Driving Lightning remains just as fun as it was before. Driving around in silence is blissful, and the crazy acceleration never gets old.
• Range anxiety is now old news. Driving around in silence is blissful, and the crazy acceleration never gets old.
• Version 8.0 of the autopilot software was initially squirrelly but has settled down. The new radar-based version 8.0 autopilot seemed to be about the same as the old 7.1 version on highways. However, I drove a couple trips when the new software was released, and it seemed to have a scary predilection for steering toward oncoming traffic on two-lane roads (to be fair, autopilot isn’t recommended for use on two-lane roads, so no harm no foul). However, Tesla has accumulated more auto-pilot radar signatures for those roads, and 8.0 now seems as stable as the old camera-based system.
• Power consumption is going up as the temperature goes down.Since getting Lightning in June, my power consumption has averaged 286 watts per mile. The last couple of days I’ve been driving around with the temperature in the 30s, and my average power consumption has now more like 295 watts per mile, I assume because heating the car takes more power than cooling it. It will be interesting to see what that number approaches as we get to temps in the teens and single digits.
• EZPass use is still a mystery.Our EZPass mounted on the windshield works perfectly here in Massachusetts and in Maine. In New Hampshire tollbooths, though, it fails to register. I’ve resigned myself to it just being flakey.

I’m home for a couple weeks, so I hope to collect a few more Tesla experiences to share. Elon has promised that we’ll see version 8.1 of the autopilot software in December, so I’ll certainly write that up when it arrives.