Went up to the
EVCO (Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa) meeting yesterday evening, and one of the presentations was by a local owner of a Tesla Roadster.
Three things I didn't know before:
1) Data acquisition/transmission capability
The car continuously logs all sorts of data about itself, which it saves in memory and periodically transmits to Tesla headquarters via the cell phone network. (Or not, if the owner has declined to participate.)
This is way cool. Real, in-the-field data about the way the cars are being used, and how they are behaving. Invaluable product feedback.
Most interesting... Owners can also copy the data file to a USB stick. The USB port is in the center stack, under the 12v power outlet.
2) Some owners are cracking their cars' data
It's apparently not pre-formatted to be immediately useful, so some owners have been working on decoding the data dump. The Ottawa Tesla owner says he thinks they've figured out about 80% of it.
He used his data to generate a graph showing SOC & Speed vs. Time for a trip he recently took to Toronto (to view the Model S at the company's showroom there).
(For those who realize that Ottawa is ~450 km from Toronto and beyond the car's usual range, he stopped once on the way for a big-amp top-up at a campground in the 1000 Islands, while enjoying a long lunch at a nice restaurant overlooking the St Lawrence River.)
3) The car has an instant & resettable average energy consumption display
This is sort of like the "ScanGauge" MPG reading, but for electricity consumption from the pack.
I doubt that most Roadster owners care very much about driving efficiently - without exception, they like talking about (and demonstrating) its rocket ship-like acceleration!
But I was happy to learn that in the event you want to nerd out and see how energy efficient you can be, OEM feedback is there.
---
One question I forgot to ask: what about gliding?
How easy is it to "glide" the car -- essentially coasting in neutral? (Critical for driving very efficiently.)
I think Prius owners used to call this mode "dead band", where the display shows no energy flow to or from the wheels.
The owner says the car's accelerator is mapped to provide both acceleration and regen when releasing back toward "0 TPS", making it possible to drive the car in traffic with just the one pedal. Regen is strong enough that when you release the pedal back to "0" the car's brake lights will illuminate for safety, even though you haven't touched the left pedal.
(A Solectria Force I have driven does this as well... but not sure about the brake lights part.)
But is there an easily modulated "glide" zone between accel and regen?
I'll ask next time...