Dismal Wizard gets the new car itch every 7 years or so. In 2023, it struck early. It’s a long story. In 2021, on faith, sight unseen, DW ordered a new VW ID.4 expecting Volkswagen to have its electric vehicle act together following the Diesel scandal. In December, he took delivery. In April 2023, the car was a participant in a mishap on Independence Boulevard in Virginia Beach. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men took 14 months to mend the ID.4. Five months on, DW was getting sick of rental payments to Enterprise for a Nissan Versa sedan, a mean little thing. Realizing he was giving Enterprise a car payment each month, he decided to turn a rental payment into an actual car payment.
I’m a retired engineer which can make me a harsh critic of other’s work. As you read this tale of two vehicles, please keep some things in mind.
My local dealer properly mended my ID.4 and that I was pleased with all aspects of their work except its timeliness.
The ID.4 is an OK BEV
Volkswagen still designs and builds a quality vehicle.
Why a view of the dog’s observation post (back porch)? On the railing columns are two battery powered video cameras whose batteries can no longer be charged. These cameras are to be replaced. But with what? What did the original cameras do? What should the new ones do? What should I purchase? Read on to learn what Dismal Wizard did.
I’ve probably written about CYME PeakTo before but today seems like a good time to do so again. And to tell you how I have reorganized all of the photos at Dismal Manor. This all began when I noticed that the 2 TB MacOS system volume was getting skosh free space so I began looking into a potential solution. Read on to learn about the tools used and what I did.
Tesla Motors had made April 2024 its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) product debut. The debutant has been in gestation for about 16 year and has just come of age. FSD (supervised) is amazingly competent most of the time in coping with meeting sections and right of way at intersections. And it can be tuned to be chill, standard, or assertive at intersections. These determine the amount of margin to require during intersection maneuvers. All in all, an amazing achievement that was cutting edge research 10 years ago (and may still be).
I’m not an expert and not a fan. And I’m a poor retired moocher. What is it like? What do I think of it? Read on.
Schiit Audio Freya+ Remote that had gone MAD and is about to be reassembled and modified.
Both Schiit Audio and PS Audio provide this simple remote control with some of their products. It’s a simple but effective thing and the one shown here has survived 4 years of drops onto a hardwood floor. When that happens, the circuit board, secured by magnets, can be dislodged from the housing. It’s easy to fit back together. No self-respecting audiophile would put up with such nonsense and would immediately begin the search for a DIY mod to put an end to remotes gone MAD. There’s a simple cure offered and a bit of silly after the break.
Last weekend, extreme cold weather caught Chicago ride share operators unprepared for driving their electric vehicles in the extreme cold. In most cases, these operators were renting vehicles through the ride sharing services with which they were affiliated. Tesla Model 3, Kia Niro, and Chevy Bolt were the most common choices, and all vehicle types found themselves dead in the water at a charge point.
In this article, I’ll identify cold weather effects on battery electric vehicle operation and describe how the practice of scant bunkering can reduce time spent charging on shift and reduce charge point congestion.
Rocky and Missy in the Dismal Manor gardens -- photo by the author.
Another year in the books and another birthday, number 75. Early in the year, my fraternity chapter sent out an E-mail with the chapter list looking for E-mail addresses for those with whom the chapter had lost contact. While reviewing the list, I realized that a number of my contemporaries were listed as deceased, mostly those who smoked tobacco while at college. Three years from median life expectancy, I’m still alive and healthy but with some wear and tear and chronic conditions.
Elon Musk’s young son asked Dad why the future did not look like the future, well the young boy’s notion of the future. Dad went to work to challenge the Tesla product designers and product engineers to make a truck that looked like it was the future and not another me-too pick ’em up. They did, the 2024 CyberTruck.
In this post, I’ll pull together information from several content creators granted extended driving access to the 2034 CyberTruck to look beneath the skins at the way Tesla is changing the automobile.
James River Greyhounds has an yearly picnic for the adopters. Every year, hounds from all over Virginia gather at the “farm” for fun and games and several fundraising events. It’s a bit of a report to the members and adopters of the year’s accomplishments and the state of the group’s finances followed by a fund-raising auction. There were burgers, sides, and dessert, and silly dog games while people visited the shops and the raffle ticket sales.
When we can, Dismal Manor Gang makes the voyage to the Richmond area for the event. It’s always a good time and an excuse to drive some Virginia country roads.
In this article, Dave describes the experience of making this trip for the first time in a Tesla Model Y. Those curious about JRG can read the 2021 and 2022 picnic articles as this article is about making the voyage in the Model Y.
In October, a Tesla Model Y replaced the ID.4 as my daily driver. Six months after the ID.4’s mishap, VW still can’t tell me when they will have the contactors needed to repair my vehicle. I’m becoming concerned about the battery’s health as it has been in a discharged state for 6 months now. But the things that drove the Model Y order were
The price cut
Tesla is a “start-up” integrated manufacturing and retail operation, not a legacy OEM, distributor, and dealers.
Tesla’s has a can-do attitude, mission, and enthusiasm for the mission.
The bloody “replacement rental” was costing a car payment. I’d rather have a car payment and an actual car.
Munro Associates on Tesla Model 3 and Y
Cory Steuben, then with Munro Associates, made a telling statement that I’ll paraphrase.
When I talk with friends working at the American OEMs, they talk about their promotion, pay, their careers, but not the cars they build. When I talk with friends at Tesla, they talk about the company, the company’s mission, and the cars they’re working on.
Apparatchiks versus car guys. I’ll take a car built by car guys and gals any day! The video is Skip and Cory talking with the Autoline After Hours journalists. Skip and Cory talk about Tesla’s spring show and tell for finance types, the things they saw on the factory tour, and the evolution of Tesla design and manufacturing from Model 3 to Model Y as seen in tear-down analysis and the implications for Tesla’s growth and competitors (they’re toast).
Skip Munro and Cory Steuben continually talk about Tesla’s continuous improvement process, running changes on the line, and steady improvement of build quality.
When initially asked to review Model 3, Skip took a look at the haphazard fit and finish and scowled. Hanging out in the lot, he noticed that his engineers who had driven the car were grinning from ear to ear. When the engineers began the tear-down, the simplicity of structure and assembly impressed him. About 4 months later, they received a second car that they compared to the first and noted that significant improvements had been made on the line.
The Model 3 is built from stampings and weldments but Model Y replaced 70 or so stamped parts with die cast aluminum frame castings (“giga-castings”) significantly strengthening Model Y and simplifying building it.
A Model Y has a lower assembly cost than a Model 3 as a result of the optimizations made in the structure, use of giga-castings to eliminate assembly steps, and simplified control area networks and associated wiring harnesses, and a compact spur-line assembled integrated cooling and HVAC system. The HVAC is organized as a multi-zone heat pump system with heat recovery. It can cool the battery and drive while cooling or heating the cabin.
About 43% of Model Y’s cost is in the battery, drive, and cabin and drive cooling.
More Driving Impressions
Tesla’s tuning of the Model-Y accelerator and drive is just amazing. I have the vehicle set to hold position while feet off. When I roll the vehicle off, I can control the creep precisely with just the accelerator. If I want to move the vehicle 3 inches, I can!
The traffic sensing cruise control works pretty well on the motorway but only kind of sort of around town. It will maintain speed pretty well but Tesla has tuned it for open road motoring and not keeping posted speed in a school zone. Coming out of cruise, the car would drop into 1 pedal with the accelerator released and begin a robust slow-down. I didn’t like this behavior. Maybe less coast down for road trips?
First Charge
The Model Y feature to start charging at time T works. I set up the car to commence its first charge Friday midnight and it did. For Saturday’s trip to Richmond, I’ll set it to have the car ready to go at 0830 and it likely will. The dialogs are clean. No table of places identified by mensurated coordinates from the GPS.
Just pick how the next charge should behave. Normally, the car will charge cell phone style if a start time is not set. Start time and completion time are mutually exclusive and independent features. Choose one from column A; there is no column B to complicate the logic.
That’s not an NACS connector!
Our WallBox Pulsar+ was originally specified as J1772 to mate up the the ID.4 charge connector. The North-American Tesla Model Y is NACS. Tesla provides a J1772 to NACS “pig-nose” connector that converts J1772 to NACS for destination charging of Model-Y here. In Europe, Tesla uses the 3-phase version of J1772 (different number I’ve forgotten) and CCS. On the continent, most homes have 3 phase power unlike here.
Parking
Tesla uses machine vision and the full self-driving cameras for parking proximity warnings. Multiple stereoscopic cameras identify the nearest obstruction and estimate range to it. Edge detection identifies the curb and adjacent vehicles. This works with some drama, alarms, and re-alarms. Machine vision is still not the equal of a sober Mk 1 eyeball. The backing camera is crystal clear.
Parking head in, the machine vision forward safe distance estimate makes up for the inability to see the Model Y’s nose. I thought I’d miss the sonar distance to the obstruction. The camera is so good, that I don’t need the fixed box or the clearance and bumper lines.
Reversing into the carport, the machine vision seems to be learning the carport. After a week of returns home, it is less shouty than on day 1. The calmest approach is to turn in, pull forward to adjust the line up, then back straight into the carport. I stop with the A-pillar door hinge at the side posts. This keeps the bumper about 2 feet off the head wall.
The drive tuning is much better than that of the ID.4 for negotiating the driveway slope. ID.4 had a tendency to roll if you lifted off on the sloped part of the drive. And rolling off was a bit grabby and jerky. Not so, the Model Y. It will stop and sit feet off. It will roll off smoothly with complete control of creep.
Driving in Traffic
The Model Y does not have a steering column mounted binnacle unlike the Model S and X. The center display has the speed, turn indicators, navigation next turn and distance to the turn. Surprisingly, that makes for a good scan. From the road to the centerline mirror then down to the centerline display to check the Autopilot display and navigation next turn. And finally, the wing mirrors. The left pane also shows the wing cameras when active. The right pane shows the entertainment or the navigation map.
The Model Y has conventional wing mirrors and a conventional rear mirror. The wing mirrors are tapered to reduce drag relative to the ID.4 mirrors. The view aft out the Model Y rear window is better than the ID.4’s tunnel-like view aft. The real magic is in the blind spot monitors. Both use machine vision but the Tesla Model Y lets you see what the cameras see and the system’s evaluation in two ways.
The Autopilot monitoring display is a machine vision rendering of what the cameras see ahead and along side. If a car is in the blind spots, the Autopilot display will show it. If you signal a lane change into a fouled lane, a chime will alert you to look. The Autopilot display also shows the traffic ahead and following distance. The right encoder-rocker lets you move following set point in or out. The right encoder roller lets you adjust autopilot’s speed set point up and down. The right stalk engages and disenages Autopilot as does a tap on the brake.
When you signal a lane change, Autopilot shows the view from the two wing cameras. You can confirm what is over there. When you signal a turn, Autopilot will show you the camera on the side toward the turn.
The Autopilot cameras can almost stand in for mirrors in polite traffic. Unfortunatly, Virginia Beach has rude impatient traffic with fast overtaking and reckless lane changes to exit the road from the passing lanes. The mirrors show the fast overtakers that the machine vision seems to miss.
Minimalism
The Model Y steering wheel mounted controls follow the same minimalism that the interior design does. The limited ornamentation reduces visual clutter that the driver must contend with. Controls are simple, easily learned, and easily remembered. The controls on the steering wheel are simple compared to those on my recent VW-Audi products. I never did learn to use all the doo-dads there for interacting with the phone, audio, and cruise control.
Yet I’ve easily learned the Model Y’s two thumb controllers. I have the left one set up for the radio volume and wipers. The right is set up for the cruise control. No phone buttons. No cruise on-off or lane aid on-off. The drive stalk does all that. The wipers are in auto normally with manual control on the left roller when pushed down.
The left controller is also used to set up the mirrors when stopped. The right adjusts the wheel position and pedal position when stopped.
These are both parked functions enabled from the Vehicle display. One tab is dedicated to driver adjustments and driver profiles. Profiles are paired to the keys and mobile phone BlueTooth MAC addresses. The key presented identifies the operator profile to be loaded. No extra set and recall buttons on the seat trim. The car learns and remembers your preferences for seats, controls, cabin conditioning, etc.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 
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