Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 A one thousand mile trip in a self driving car, as a passenger.

Gentrification has come to Bombay Beach.
Along with Air B&B.

Shattering preconceptions, prejudices, mis beliefs, and an outright refusal to be open minded.

A visit to The Salton Sea in a Model Three Tesla, owned by my Son.

He invited me along on a photographic excursion to BomBay Beach.

The sign has been recently restored.

Bombay Beach is a former resort town on the east shore of the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is a landlocked lake that was greatly expanded when an irrigation canal with water from the Colorado River, which was en route to the Imperial Valley's agricultural fields, broke a dike and spilled into the low lying existing lake. This fresh torrent of water continued unabated for quite a while. It transformed the ancient shrunken lake into a freshwater lake that became a mecca for water sports and fishing in the 1950's. It is California's largest lake. However, lacking a steady inflow of fresh water from a river, the lake could only rely on very scant rainfall for replenishment. Because of this, the water became saltier and saturated with pesticide run off, and minerals leached from the desert soil.

A scene for it's 1950's heyday.

This condition has continued over the past half Century as the water quality deteriorated and aquatic life, both plant and animal, has died out or abandoned the area. 

The town was pretty much abandoned except for a few die hards. Then it started to attract avante guard bohemian artists and it has become known for the unusual art installations that are located throughout the town.

We had visited Bombay Beach a bit over five years ago, at the time it was dirtier, weirder, and more distressing. If it hadn't been for the art it would have been a heartbreaking scene of pure squalor. It has recently been cleaned up with most of the trash removed, many houses have been renovated and overall it's fortunes appear to be on the uptick. However, like many other "rediscovered" locations, it's funky old time soul appears to be in the process of being  "bleached out." The lake remains as toxic as it ever was, and it's sobering to see official warning signs discouraging any exposure to the water.

This post is not really about Bombay Beach, but about our trip there and the local area.

My Son's Tesla Model 3 is equipped with the fully self driving mode. It had been updated from the earlier lane assist program. This is a subscription feature.

I am not one of those rabid anti Tesla haters that populate the web. It's true that I have been skeptical of the company and it's founder. I will be clear that while I intensely disagree with the policies and actions taken by Mr. Musk. I'm only going to discuss the cars that his company has produced. 

By any account these electric cars have been groundbreaking game changers. 

My Son has owned the car for almost five years and has amassed 80,000 miles on the odometer.

That's a pretty good testament to the reliability and potential longevity of the product.

My Son picked me up in San Jose, and besides the novelty of riding in an electric car, the novelty of being a passenger was even a rarer experience. This would be the longest trip that I have taken as a passenger, since I was a teenager. Fortunately, my Son is one of the few people that I have complete confidence in their driving, allowing me to relax more than I ever have as a passenger.

It was an unusual feeling to sit in the right hand seat and just watch the scenery roll by. I've been driving for a lot of years, and in my married life I am essentially the only driver. My Wife has enjoyed the benefits of a "spouse driving car" for decades!

The car is a Model Three, a single engine rear drive package with the base range battery. As I mentioned, my Son had upgraded the car to fully self driving mode. I had ridden in the car when it was "lane assist only" a couple of years ago on a trip to Portland during our vacation. My impressions of the car were quite positive as a backseat passenger, though headroom was a bit tight.

It was 500 miles to our destination and he made four stops to charge the battery on the way down. The battery charges fastest from 10% to 50% range, and a bit slower from 50% to 70%, and so on, in various increments. The longest period is from 80 to 100%. Therefore he has developed a strategy of driving faster and running the battery to 10% and charging it for generally 15-20 minutes to get it over 50%. Or something like that, I'm not completely sure of all the details. But he has figured out a system that works for him and makes for the least time spent in charging. The car is a great help with this, as the computer displays the charging locations and plans the charging stops. 

His car has only a 200 mile range on a full battery. That isn't very far, as most of my cars can go well over 300 miles between refuel stops, which take less than ten minutes. I had a Navigator which had an almost 500 mile range, but the costs of a full tank of gas was well over 100 dollars! 

Currently gas prices are very high due to the war and other conditions. The upside is that electricity is not priced as a commodity and it hasn't seen the same price increases as gas. I didn't ask him how the price of charging compared to gas, but as I've been averaging around 5.00 a gallon, or more on the road, on a recent driving vacation, I'd bet his costs per mile were considerably lower.

Truthfully, the stops were fairly short and we took the opportunity to stretch our legs and use the facilities. It's a good idea to stop every three hours anyway, but as of now, a guy wanting to make time could do that better in an ICE car. 

Some people don't consider that the same factors that reduce fuel economy in an ICE car will also affect range in an electric. Cruising speed, elevation changes, head winds, heat and use of the a/c, all reduce range.

In this car, there has to be a driver seated behind the wheel, although they are not required to keep their hands on the wheel. There is a camera located near the rear viewer mirror which monitors the drivers eyes to insure that they are facing forward and looking at the road most of the time. When the camera detects the driver's extended inattention to the road it emits a warning sound, and the screen changes color and displays a warning signal. I asked my Son what would happen if the driver fell asleep. He told me that the car would recognize that, and safely pull off the road and park. I can believe that, as the car had no problems changing lanes and making turns on surface streets. Whenever it changes lanes or pulls into traffic the screen displays a camera image showing that the space is clear and that it's safe to make the movement. The driver can easily override any movement by steering or braking. In the case of some gross computer failure, the car would alert the driver and default to manual mode.

I didn't catch the car making a mis step, or a questionable move, it even displayed courtesy to other drivers allowing them to merge in front when needed. This is one of the real benefits of self driving; it removes emotion, poor judgement, ego, and fatigue from the driving equation.

Most of the stops were at Tesla supercharging stations. One was right off I5 near a McDonalds which had an outside restroom building. The other Tesla station had a large (and clean) restroom building along with a separate vending machine building. The least hospitable Tesla station had a couple of large, but clean, Porta Potties. The final stop on the way home was at a Tesla lounge style station. It had a large building with restrooms, tables, free wifi, suitably air conditioned and clean. My Son told me that it had previously had a coffee bar, but that was removed a while back. Access to the facilities is by code, which is done by a phone app, so no free loading by the general public is possible.

One of the things that my Son and I discussed was my distrust of the infallibility of technology. Many folks from my generation don't have complete faith in technology. My Son's generation grew up with home computers, the internet, smart phones and other modern devices and are very comfortable with using and taking these things for granted.

The overall reliability, and the length of the service life of the hardware is also a bit of a concern for me. I wonder just how long the computer system will be "supported." How many cell phones, computers, tablets, etc. have you replaced in the past, because they had become obsolete? Sometimes they still seemed to work, but they can no longer tie into their networks. 

I have a particular beef against old computers because I had an experience with old computers with my '89 Jaguar XJS. The ABS computer wasn't working properly and all the research that I did indicated that I was out of luck; there was no support to rebuild the unit and nothing that could be substituted and made to work in the system. Yes, the car was over thirty years old, I suppose that I should just accept that it was obsolete. But as an old car guy, my whole world revolves around obsolete machinery.

For me, simpler is better, after all my 80 year old Plymouth is still a viable vehicle. Within it's limitations.

Another question I raised was about parts availability. I had heard for years that Tesla would not sell parts to private parties or repair shops. My Son assured me that most vital consumable parts were now available for DIY repairs. 

Maybe so---- maybe... no.

My Son took a lot of photos on this trip, that was the real reason for the trip. I took a few myself and will include them in a future post.

Overall I was quite impressed by the car's capabilities. I can see how this feature could be a boon for elderly and handicapped people. Many of us old people have legs and knees that can't take extended driving. Not to mention the old folks poorer night vision. It also reduces fatigue during long periods of driving which can increase driver safety. It also relieves the driver of the "burden" of driving, though I don't feel the need for this at the present time.

The prospect of "range anxiety" which was a real concern initially for many consumers seems to have been overcome by plenty of Tesla charging stations, at least in California and Western states. I will give kudos to Musk for that. His emphasis on creating this infrastructure is what has made the use of electric vehicles a viable alternative. Detroit built experimental electric cars but never made a commitment to building the charging infrastructure.

Do I see an electric vehicle in my future?

Maybe, I usually only buy used vehicles, so I balk at the price of the cars as a new vehicle purchase. However Ford is making a real commitment to producing some lower priced models in the near future, and I wouldn't rule them out. So who knows?

Musk is putting those darn chargers everywhere.
Even on the shore of the Salton Sea!