u/bitchstewie_va

I'm a bit of an OCD type about using good quality washer fluid and my new Model 3 seems to have something from the factory that is absolutely clear and absolutely odourless (that I can smell).

Does anyone know if Tesla sell this as I've not seen a single Tesla branded fluid yet.

If not what do people use?

If I go from the Tesla recommendation and with winter coming if I go from the SDS the best stuff that's easy to get hold of is (randomly) Ford/Omnicraft S20 as it's rated down to -20 and according to the MSDS it's chemically heavy on ethanol but not much else.

Before I literally hit the buy button I have an installer booked for next week to fit one of these.

Car is a Tesla Model 3 which I just got and I'm on Octopus - currently on flexible.

I've looked at Salus and all the really cheap chargers and I keep coming back to the Sync as a safe middle ground.

I'm just not seeing any real-world benefit in spending more money.

Anyone care to try to change my mind in the next 4 hours? 👀

I have a Tesla arriving soon and I've just got around to having the meters swapped to smart meters.

Now I need to sort out getting a charger installed.

Hypervolt look nice but I fear I may be basing too much on aesthetics when I won't be sleeping on the drive watching the lights and admiring the casing.

The Sync Energy charger looks perfectly functional and comes from what looks like it's from a large established company.

Is there any sensible reason that justifies the extra £300 on a Hypervolt please?

Also are there any other chargers I should be considering please?

As I've only just had the meters swapped and this is my first EV the plan (for now) is to just stay on flexible for a month or two to build up an accurate idea of energy usage before changing anything.

Even on flexible it's half the cost to charge the car v petrol so I'm saving money.

Tesla is finally due (hopefully) in a couple of weeks and I got smart meters swapped in yesterday so now I need to finalise sorting a charger.

I'm on Octopus but having only just moved to smart meters and not yet having the Tesla I'm going to use a Home Mini to understand the best/optimal tariff once I have the info.

Where I'm still slightly torn is chargers.

The Hypervolt looks nice but I don't live in a mansion and I won't be sleeping on the drive watching the lights.

The Sync Energy charger looks perfectly functional and comes from what looks like a large established company.

Is there any sensible reason that justifies the extra £300 on a Hypervolt please?

Also are there any other chargers I should be considering please?

I had a meter swap yesterday so I now have smart meters. Signal on the meters is good and the installer said they had checked in successfully or whatever the term is when they do the install.

He left me with a Home Mini.

Is there any point trying to set this up now or should I wait until I can see in the Octopus portal that the smart meters are actually feeding back and being used?

Thanks.

EDITED to add - Thank you I didn't know if it would brick anything if I tried before the meters are officially online.

It's working.

Took about five minutes maybe ten if I include waiting for it to pick up the meter.

I'm now seeing live usage in the app though of course the day/week/month tabs aren't live as I assume those depend on the actual meter readings.

73W usage right now.

I've a Tesla arriving in a month or so hopefully.

I need to get a smart meter fitted as both meters are old dumb meters - that seems simple enough.

The Octopus account isn't under my email address but I guess I'll need it on my phone for the Octopus app plus I think it'll let me link Electroverse to it - I believe the process is have the account holder email account email Octopus and have it added so it's just a second email address against the house account so that sounds simple enough.

Anything I'm missing on either of those two?

I'm an Octopus customer and I have a Tesla on order so I'm looking at what makes sense both financially and "lifestyle" wise around tariffs.

I do around 12K miles a year and where I live the Flexible Octopus rates are standing charge of 56.42p and unit rate of 25.33p.

I could fix for 23.52p with the same standing charge.

IOG is standing charge of 59.05p with a night rate of 8p and a daytime rate of 32.02p.

Last electricity bill was for £58.

I need to get a charger installed and I'm looking mainly at Sync Energy and Hypervolt.

Even staying on Flexible Octopus I could charge the car for around half what I currently spend on petrol.

What I'm cautious about with IOG and similar tariffs is the skew on the daytime rate as there's just not much that can easily be moved to night time.

I also don't really want to run my home life around charging an EV when I'm already saving a fair bit.

I've looked at a few online calculators and they suggest there's probably £25/month in it between sticking on Flexible v IOG based on current annual estimated usage of around 2400kWh.

I'm also trying to get my head around Agile Octopus because we don't fit a typical 4pm - 7pm peak household and could do quite a bit during the daytime other than obvious stuff like cooking - but right now I need to get a smart meter fitted as the existing meter is ancient but this also means I just don't have usage data.

Is there anything I've overlooked or might not be thinking of please?

Let's assume this isn't about saving every single last penny.

Thanks.

I have a Google One plan so I'm a paid user but I don't have a specific AI "Plus" or "Pro" or "Ultra" plan.

I noticed yesterday that Gmail had logged me out in the browser and was showing bunch of Gemini ad type stuff and when I logged back in there was and is a permanent "Upgrade" button in the top right.

I was thinking of getting a Plus plan as I use Gemini a fair bit.

Will this remove the button though?

Reading up and I'm seeing it might just turn into an "Upgrade to Pro" and then (if I did) an "Upgrade to Ultra" button.

Is this just going to be never ending upgrade demands even with a paid sub?

I'm on a MacBook using Safari with uBlock Origin lite if that helps.

Ordered a 3 RWD on the PCH offer in mid-May.

Not quite sure when I might expect to see an update in the app and what the next update should be?

All the finance has been done through Lex i.e. documents signed and I have a Lex portal login etc.

What happens next please and does anyone have any idea of rough timescales given when I ordered?

I notice on the Tesla website it says Aug-Sep even for cars ordered now.

Thanks :)

I have a Tesla 3 on order and I'm looking at the options for budget home charging.

By which I mean I'm not necessarily about to jump onto an EV specific tariff because of the fact I think I would only need to "top up" 40 miles or so daily and the EV tariffs drive up daytime usage by around 30%.

Now where it's confusing is chargers. There are some really cheap chargers out there that look to have all the electrical functionality needed but they aren't as integrated with electricity providers as some more expensive chargers - but I'm not sure I need that.

Also as I understand it with Tesla the car talks to Octopus or can schedule charging directly.

Basically I'm trying to understand why I need a £600+ charger when something like a Seren Aurora is £270.

Let's assume I wanted an installed charger v a granny charger.

My house is pretty simple electrically so far as I know.

The box below is in the garage and everything goes in and out of that.

The drive and outside wall of the house is about 2M to the right of the box through either a brick wall or a hole drilled through a door frame.

I am going to get a local electrician out to have a look and give me some options on either getting a wall mounted EV charger installed outside or on getting an EV rated socket installed.

I believe to comply with regs any of those options are likely to require some additional works but at this point I'm not an electrician so don't know what they are.

Is anyone able to tell me anything obvious to an electrician that I need to consider from the photo below please?

I'm one of those people where I can feel a bit pressured when you've got someone stood in the garage suggesting you must do X, Y and Z so any homework I can do in advance is useful.

Thanks in advance.

https://preview.redd.it/j8zbcdy4qu2h1.jpg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=098c0b7c58e3a899cdef955556f2febd06eb6428

I have a model 3 on order.  I have access to plenty of "cheap enough" charging between work and superchargers so I'm not jumping in with a full charger installation right away but I would like to be confident if I need to "top up" from home the odd day that I could do so.

Apparently Tesla no longer supply a granny charger so I was going to buy the Tesla one which is £180 but it doesn't quite have enough reach so I would need an extension lead like the ones Toughleads sell.

So around £220 all-in.

A Cord Plus 10M charger is £135.

Looks like the moment I put a link to the Cord EV website the post gets pulled by some content filter so third time lucky.

I'm seeing conflicting info on the safety side of this.

The charger above is type 2 and maxes out at 10A and can be downgraded plus I would say Cord look like a reputable brand v some of the "who on earth makes this?" stuff you see out there.

I plan on getting a local electrician to quote on a charger install and also see if they can check/inspect/replace the 13A socket in the garage which is literally 2 feet away from the consumer unit.

I wouldn't be plugging this into the lounge next to the TV or anything that seems daft.

Is there anything to be concerned about please as I keep reading a range of view from "this is absolutely fine" to "your house will burn down".

I have a model 3 on order.  I have access to plenty of "cheap enough" charging between work and superchargers so I'm not jumping in with a full charger installation right away but I would like to be confident if I need to "top up" from home the odd day that I could do so.

Apparently Tesla no longer supply a granny charger so I was going to buy the Tesla on which is £180 but it doesn't quite have enough reach so I would need an extension lead like the ones Toughleads sell.

So around £220 all-in.

A Cord Plus 10M charger is £135.

I'm seeing conflicting info on the safety side of this.

The charger above is type 2 and maxes out at 10A and can be downgraded plus I would say Cord look like a reputable brand v some of the "who on earth makes this?" stuff you see out there.

I might look at getting a local electrician to quote on a charger install and also see if they can check/inspect/replace the 13A socket in the garage which is literally 2 feet away from the consumer unit.

I wouldn't be plugging this into the lounge next to the TV or anything that seems daft.

Is there anything to be concerned about please as I keep reading a range of view from "this is absolutely fine" to "your house will burn down".

I was hoping I could get some best practise please.

I have an EV on order (Tesla if that matters) and it's my first EV and initially all I know is I'm on a three year lease so in three years who knows what I'll do car-wise.

I haven't rushed in to getting a full EV charger because they look to be around £1000 and £1000 buys quite a bit of public charging at my mileage plus the car won't be here for a couple of months so there's no mad rush to do something asap.

It would be nice to have the option to "top up" at home and this is where I'm not an electrician so I'm trying to do some homework.

I could use a three pin charger but I believe I'd be best getting a proper EV rated 3 pin socket professionally fitted rather than just plugging into some random household/garage socket?

I also believe that as Tesla offer a commando adaptor I could look to get a commando socket professionally fitted and charge from that.

I believe both of those should be fairly simple.

Before I look to speak to the electrician we usually use (last time I spoke to him he mentioned he was about to embark on taking some "EV installation exams") I just wanted to see how often and how safe you see EVs being charged like this?

As a non-electrician you see manufacturer supplied 3 pin chargers so it seems reasonable to assume you can charge from a 3 pin - doesn't seem quite that simple though.

Just to be really really clear because of the subreddit rules I'm not asking how to do this myself.

I'm asking what to be aware of before speaking to the usual qualified professional electrician we usually use.

Very tempted by the £249/month PCH so I'm doing a crash course in stuff I need to know about a Tesla Model 3.

My needs are basic. I get in the car I drive it. It's usually just me.

I can't see a single reason I need any more than the "base" as it's just a means of getting from A to B in relative comfort.

The commute is around 20 miles each direction and I could probably put in a home charger but don't have one right now. I do have a drive. Pretty much all my workplaces have chargers and I'm about 7 miles from a "Super Charger".

My current car is cheap reliable and mine and does around 60mpg and I wasn't really thinking of changing it but this is seriously tempting as I LOVE lots of glass and the ease of automatic etc.

As I understand it build quality is now much much better as most of the UK cars are made in China? I've done an insurance quote and that's sensible. I believe VED is included in PCH so other than insurance and charging running costs should be covered?

I did the self serve test drive yesterday and came away with a good impression but not necessarily "wowed" though some of that is possibly just down to the sheer amount of stuff to take in when you turn up and the car is there waiting for you to get in and drive it.

Took a moment just to figure out that once in drive it doesn't "creep" like an auto and the sensation when you take your foot off the accelerator is very different to the coasting/neutral sensation you get in an ICE car.

I was impressed with the build quality more than I perhaps thought I would be. Everything felt solid and well put together. The lower plastics are pretty cheap and nasty but who really goes tapping those in the real world.

Driving around I think my biggest takeaway was the lack of noise and just how "calm" it felt. Liked the glass roof though it's not been a very sunny day so it was easy to forget it had one unless I looked up.

Sound system seemed fine but I always seem to say that with every car I've had.

I think where I struggled a bit was just the sheer amount of "stuff" in the menus compared to my very basic current car. It did have me wondering just how much I'd actually use all that stuff.

Bit weird getting used to buttons for things like flashing the lights but this is a MY26 so did have an indicator stalk though I didn't manage to work out if you can do the "three blips" when pulling in/out.

It's certainly given me a lot to think about over the next couple of days. I liked it a lot but I like my current car a lot and if this PCH offer hadn't caught my eye I never would have bothered looking let alone driving one.

I suppose right now where I am is if I woke up tomorrow and found Tesla have pulled the £249 PCH offer would I be gutted and I'm not sure I would.

I have some thinking to do.

So what other things should I be thinking about when it comes to the "base" 3 that I might not have considered please?