i've owned a tesla model 3 now for almost 18 months and i've learned
quite a lot so if you're new to tesla model 3 ownership or scared to take the plunge
don't be. In this video i'm going to go through the top things i wish i
knew before i got model 3 and share what i've learned including what i think is my biggest
mistake and the one i would definitely do differently if i did it all over again
ev ownership in the uk is still pretty niche and although electric vehicles on the roads are
increasing there's still lots of people out there that don't really understand them
or scared to take the plunge out the 38 million cars registered on UK roads at the end of 2020
only 164 000 of those were pure electric plug-ins now 2021 is an exciting year because there's lots
of new models coming out on the market for people to choose from and with tesla leading
the way in design and innovation and lots of other manufacturers catching up rapidly it means that ev
ownership is becoming more viable for lots of people now owning an ev takes a little bit of
adaptation to your lifestyle and as an early-ish adopter i did make some mistakes along the way
so in this video i'm going to be sharing some of the things i wish i knew before i got my model 3
so that you don't make the same mistakes and if you already own a model 3 don't forget to make
some comments about what your experiences are because you always give great advice
so i've always been used to the fact that if you're running a combustion car and you
have the air conditioning on it wreaks havoc with the mpg now with an EV you just have to
bear in mind that it's actually the heater that drains your battery and ruins your efficiency
not the air conditioning the air conditioning actually has a minimal effect on your range
so when you're calculating your running costs and your charging costs for winter you need
to bear in mind that you won't actually make the advertised range of your model 3.
the american automobile association actually did a study on five evs at minus six and found
that the range with the heater running could reduce anything between forty and fifty percent
with the air con it generally reduced the range by about ten to twenty percent to cool the cabin
adding to the fact that evs are generally just worth performing in winter because of
the battery chemistry and that could seriously mess up your calculations now the tesla model
3 and model y both have a heat pump fitted so that range reduction with the heatron shouldn't
be quite as severe but it is still going to be a lot less than what you're expecting
it's still way cheaper than running a combustion car don't get me wrong but if you're particularly
sensitive to running costs a near doubling of your calculations could throw you off somewhat
so there's something that's not really talked about that often i don't think in electric cars
and that's called phantom drain now this weird thing happens when i leave my ford fiesta at
the airport for two weeks with three quarters of a tank of fuel when i come back it still has
three quarters of a tank of fuel in it not so with electric cars and that's due to this thing
called phantom drain now because evs are always connected and we can control them through apps
and they need lots of computers to control the battery capacity and things like that
you've always got electronics running in the background so when you leave your model 3 at
the airport for two weeks whatever charge you left it with won't be the same when you come back and
that applies even over a couple of days in the garage now this is completely normal for all evs
and tesla actually say in their manual you can expect to lose one percent per day through this
phantom drain and cold weather and environmental conditions can actually make that worse if you
leave your car on sentry mode you could expect to lose maybe one percent every couple of hours
so effectively if you drove to the airport and you aim to get there with 20 charge leave your car for
two weeks while you're in sunny costa del sol come back you're probably only gonna have six percent
charge left now airport car park companies are catching on to this and offering a service to make
sure your battery is fully charged by the time you come back but you're still going to need to
account for the phantom drain because they're not going to leave it on charge for the two weeks and
generally plug it in the day before you do back to arrive so if you got there with 14 they won't
put it on charge straight away and your phantom drain would then run out over those two weeks
so phantom drain leads nicely onto this next one and it's the fact that you should keep your
model 3 charging all the time when i first got an electric car i was very much in the mindset
of a combustion car owner in the sense that i'd let my battery get down say 20 30 before i put
it on charge a bit like i'd let my fuel tank run down before i actually filled it out with petrol
because let's be honest i wouldn't have filled my petrol tank up all the time i gradually learned
it's actually far better to keep your model 3 plugged in all the time and it's even recommended
by tesla to do so it's not going to do any harm to the battery because you're not charging up to 100
and even if you just needed a five percent top-up it's worth it and that's because
sometimes i get home with say 60 to 70 charge i'd not plug it in because it didn't need it
then i'd leave it for a couple of days phantom drain would kick in and then maybe when i did
come to use it i might do an unexpected journey along with my usual routine which would then
put me at that 20 to 30 battery range and that's when the anxieties start to kick in a little bit
it's a little bit like when you get the range warning on your petrol cars and it says the 60
miles left you know full well you'll make it to a petrol station no problems but you just
become conscious of it and that's the same when i think you get to that 20 30 in your model 3.
i found that by leaving home every time with 80 i didn't care about preheating
it i leave sentry mode on for 12 hours i'd use the heater to whatever i wanted to make myself
comfortable and didn't really worry about my driving style being economical or not
it was just i wish i'd adopted that approach earlier because in the early days i think when
i hear that 20 30 mark it gave me a little bit of anxieties i didn't really need to worry about
i've been looking at electric cars googling information about range economy watt hours per
mile all of that for years i even thought about getting a renault zoe one of those first came out
but my friends wouldn't let me hey it was either that or a nissan leaf anyway where i'm going
with this is the fact i'm in the minority so when you're dealing with companies and individuals and
electric cars it's all still pretty new like for example when i went to insure my model 3 only a
handful of companies would actually even offer me insurance and most of those were really expensive
similarly when it comes to electricity tariffs there's loads of really good ev tariffs out there
but some of them can take months to set up so for example when i chose octopus referral link in the
description if you want to earn yourself 50 quid um i had to go on to their standard ev tariff to
start with which is common with most ev tariffs get a smart meter installed and then i could
switch to the cheaper ev tariff but smart meters can take a couple of months to get installed
so rather than wait for your model 3 to be delivered and then start looking into all of this
what i'd say with anything that normally took you a couple of days or a week to set up
look well well in advance even just make inquiries and ask about the lead times to installation i'm
expecting a similar issue when it comes to mots and repairs tesla do offer all of these but i'm
guessing they're not going to be the cheapest so if you like a good deal bear in mind that
it's going to take a little bit longer to shop around and get the cheapest deal going this will
probably also apply to your chargers because with the increase in ev uptake i imagine charger stocks
are going to run low and you might be looking at a couple of months before some come in stock
now a new one and a big one for electric car owners is the range is not the range
so the advertised range is actually if you took your model 3 from 100 down to zero
except good practice is to keep your battery between 20 and 80
and definitely never run it down towards zero because that causes long-term damage
now if you're leasing the model 3 probably won't be as worried about this but if you're buying it
then you should really consider it so what does that mean in reality well if you're trying to
keep your model 3 between that 20 and 80 range you're only ever going to use 60 of the capacity
currently the tesla model 3 is advertised at 278 miles which if you times that by 60 gives
you an actual range of 166 miles so if you were buying the tesla model 3 standard range plus
to do say a 200 mile commute round trip in theory you've got 78 miles to spare but in reality you're
just short to keep it in that sweet spot factor in with that as well the effect winter has on that
and that's going to reduce that 166 miles even more so you might struggle a little bit without
damaging your battery or causing long term damage the good news is though is that for most model 3
owners the average trip in the uk in 2019 at least was 8.4 miles so the range on that is going to be
ample for most people but what i would say is if you're super close to the advertised range
on a daily basis then you might want to think about opting for the longer range model threes
the good news for longer journeys though is look at this new tesla supercharger map they produced
there's superchargers popping up all across the country in 2021 and whilst i don't expect tesla
to stick to these time scales at least they've got a lot more planned in more remote places as well
and there's no way i'm going 166 miles without needing a loose stop anyway
so what's the top thing i wish i knew now after owning my model 3 for 18 months now don't hate
me for this one and i think electric car owners will get behind me on this as well so please do
but if i knew then what i know now the simple answer is i'd have done it sooner i sound the
fence i earned i add about range cost all of that and having made the plunge and bought a model 3
i just wish i'd have done it sooner and that's not even a lie that is purely my biggest regret
and my biggest mistake i think is not just having that leap of faith and going for it
earlier i much prefer the driving experience of an electric car it's just way easier it's probably
made me a bit of a lazy driver i'm not going to lie because it is literally start and stop
to be honest you don't even really need to stop because the regen braking kicks in
charging is not a problem i am lucky because i have off-road parking and i just get home
pop the charge port plug it in and then close the garage and because of that kind of like new
charging regime that i've adopted range isn't ever a problem because i get my model three it's always
charged up when i get in it and i just drive around whenever i want even longer journeys aren't
a problem and my battery has a lot less capacity than the newer model 3s that are out there
apart from the bumps i've mentioned as i said it's been an absolutely brilliant experience
and i can't recommend it enough now i know not everyone can afford a tesla
but if you're in the market for a brand new car i would seriously consider switching to electric
2021 has loads of new models coming out there hopefully to fit people's budgets and there
are plenty of savings you make having an electric car as well but in my personal experience i think
tesla is worth the extra cost for the value that you get and the extra little benefits from their
supercharger network the over air updates and all the developments they do as well don't forget if
you own an electric car to put some comments below about your experiences and if you've got any mates
sitting on the fence about going electric feel free to forward them this video six percent of
new cars registered in 2020 were evs which made about a hundred thousand so i think we need to
push that number higher and get over 300 000 evs on the road by the end of 2021 that's all for this
week thanks for watching don't forget to like comment share and subscribe i'll see you soon