By Donna Kelly  

Went for a bit of a roadtrip over the silly season. Up to family at Port Macquarie, then to Queensland for more family time, and then back down again.  

We took the Tesla and it was a lot of fun. Mostly. There’s an EV thing called range anxiety. It happens when you start to wonder if you have enough power to get to the next charging station.  

It shouldn’t really happen at all because you can plan a trip and the car’s computer tells you exactly how much power you will have left when you reach the next charging station on your journey.  

That’s how it’s meant to happen. But one memorable day when we were going to end up in Coffs Harbour with 33 per cent, it trickled down to just four per cent.  

I was having a meltdown, not literally because the aircon was humming away, but certainly my anxiety was up.  

I managed to convince Kyle to call into our motel, about four kilometres from the charging station at the shopping centre down the road, and call for Tesla roadside service. Which we have.  

Turns out the problem, running out of power, is our fault, so there is no service provided. Just a tow at the owner’s expense.

I was a bit annoyed with that. I mean, if you run out of petrol, the RACV will come and top you up. We just needed a few extra amps. I probably should have looked around for an extension lead instead of heading to the bar, while Kyle did the grown-up thing and pushed through the last few kilometres.

Each to their own – again I chose the wrong year to give up drinking.  

Anyway, long story short, we got the top up and decided it was the extra hot,  humid day – and the aircon – that had drained the battery so quickly.  

After that, we had no problems and just enjoyed the quiet drive and the enforced breaks to power up – playing solitaire on the car’s huge screen. Not a bad idea really,  in the past we have often pulled in for petrol and decided to go “just another 100km” without getting a rest.  

The Tesla does well on the open road, no change between going up or down hills,  no straining on gears and quiet as – although it does beep now and again if you go too close to other vehicles or the white lines on the side of the road.

And there is that pesky phantom braking now and again. Just Google that…  

It was really nice to catch up with family too. Lots of kids on Kyle’s side and on my side more people trying to look after ageing parents and work their way through the tricky end-of-life stuff.

Dementia and cancer make for very hard work.

It also has those of us without children wondering who is going to step in and advocate.  

Back at Glenlyon now, to a very dry garden, but also the wonderful sounds of  summer – the cockies (as mentioned by Bill Wootton over the page there in his haiku) and lots of cicadas.

Our trip last year to Central America seems a long way back now, although Trump’s plans to reclaim the Panama Canal is a little triggering, and we have already  booked a trip to the Med in November – all going well.  

I think we have decided that rather than things, we really just want to gather up experiences as we get older.

And, like with Covid, you never know what is just around the corner.  So we are making the most of life, having fun and hanging out with family and  friends.

Oh, we even have two weddings to attend this year. One in Victoria and one in Sydney. One young couple – with one child, and one older couple who said it took 30 years to make sure they were the right fit.

I mentioned to a friend last night that I hadn’t been to a wedding for a long time.  She said, quite gaily I thought, that I could start looking forward to funerals now. I guess there’s always a silver lining. Just sayin’ … 

Hepburn Shire Council will have to pull its finger out if it wants to keep visitors to the area. By the end of next year there will be 40 brands of electric vehicles sold in Australia and when they come to our little spot of paradise the EVs will all be vying  for the total of six charge ports we have across our shire.  

The benefits of an electric vehicle (EV) with all the whizzbangery such as the cyborg (Tesla) that calls TL HQ home are overwhelming. But the pecadilloes that the car features are hilarious and sometimes dangerous such as the “phantom braking”.  

Lately the Telsa has been a bit on the nose due to that idiot Musk aligning himself  with that equally idiotic buffoon with a guinea pig for a headpiece, Trump. And it’s all because these big boys like to throw their toys out of the cot when they get pissed  off.  

Musk used to vote exclusively for the Democrats until the Biden administration gave him the cold shoulder out of fear of angering the United Auto Workers union and Tesla is the only non-union automaker in the US.  

So, Musk ran off to the Trump camp with his bounty of Teslas, Starlinks, SpaceX rockets and a thousand other bright ideas. I personally would have kept him in the  Democratic camp, but that’s just me.  

But back to my Tesla. I have given it the benefit of the doubt when it comes to parking because at the dealership you are told that it needs to “learn”.

Well, the lesson  is over mate, after six months jerking around in and out of parking spaces using the old 15-point parking method it is time for you to shine.  

For God’s sake, it’s not as if you need to drive, you are supposed to be in control  of your own wheels and steering system. I point you in the right direction, a nice clear arc into the parking bay and press the park button.  

But no, you have to adjust the wheel and make me look like an idiot as you creep this way and that and finally arrive crooked and discombobulated into my park after two minutes and a dozen or so fast and violent adjustments between forward and  reverse.  

Mr Musk must have had one of his bright ideas when he invented the fart button,  yes that’s right. We get around in a vehicle that suffers from phantom braking and can’t park to save its life, but if you want to generate a juicy fart noise you only have  to push the button.  

And what is this “phantom breaking” I hear you say, this happens when you are  in full auto drive mode cruising along on a freeway at 110kph when there is a car behind you at what is considered a safe distance, and your Tesla sees a 60kph exit  sign, gets confused and bangs on the anchors.  

This quickly closes the distance between you and the car behind, because the two things Teslas are great at is acceleration and braking.  

Don’t get me wrong, the car is fun to drive, it is nothing short of fast and nippy and a handful to keep under the speed limit, and admittedly my issues are first world.  

But if the ground invasion of AI is led by the Tesla, here’s a quick hint. Corner yourself in a parking bay and you’ll have a lot of time to gather your thoughts and  conjure up a counterattack.  

ICE ICE baby rant over…(for those in the know…)  

Tesla motor cars, in my opinion, aren’t all that they are cracked up to be.

Here at TL HQ we have joined the electric car race and decided to trade the 2009 Toyota in on a Y series Tesla (T). Now, I have been searching around the new car market for a while as regular readers are aware, and it has been important to get an electric vehicle not a combustion engine.

The other side of the purchase argument is it had to be a long-term car as we don’t change our cars very often, so we decided on a new bouncing baby, red Tesla. It was a bit more expensive than other electric cars, however it is built from the ground up to be electric. Not just had its engine pulled out and replaced with an electric engine as some manufacturers are doing.

When parking the thing I am contending with all the sensor sounds and bonging of the proximity alerts, but I do have quite a few cameras looking around to help out this incompetent human. Oh, and then there is the wife who is constantly reminding me in a worried “lookout” voice about things I could bump into, so no more Braille parking for me. (And the worried voice beside me turns to a scream when the T offers me an auto park and I accept.)

But I must admit the auto park leaves something to be desired as the other day I was well lined up for a reverse park and could have completed the manoeuvre in one fell swoop. But I gave into the T’s desire to have a crack.

It then had half a dozen goes at trying to get in and I stopped it, overrode it and with a flick of the wheel was home in my park. It was flicking the wheel from lock to lock, flying full speed back and forward and back again and by that stage we were both screaming. Is there such a thing as a dumb, smart car?

And then there is the auto pilot where we did more than scream. I thought we were dead. Now these things come with two stages of auto pilot – the first is adaptive cruise control which is like regular cruise control, but it also locks onto the car in front. It then adjusts to their speed so you don’t hit them or of course you can change lanes and the cruise will get back to your speed. I could drive with that all day long.

The second marvel of technology comes in the form of a real auto pilot. You know when you have achieved this mode as a rainbow road comes onto the screen. But this bit of tech proved dangerous for us as we found out on the Calder Freeway recently. I was doing an overtake at 110km with a car following us, not too close, perhaps about three car lengths behind.

Everything was going well when the T decided to instantly brake to 60km for some unknown reason. And please bear in mind two of the great things about the T are its take-off – and braking.

The car behind us didn’t stand a chance and if it hadn’t been because it was my first time in this mode and my hoof was hovering above the accelerator we would have been in all sorts.

This phenomenon is called “phantom braking”. It is where the vehicle picks up on something and according to Tesla “errs on the side of caution”. Tell that to a huge semi that’s just entered your tailgate.

So we have since decided that as the autopilot was simply a $5000 ‘over the air’ upgrade, that we wanted it taken off the car. Surely it falls under the rights of the ACCC for a refund if something major is not working?

However the good folks at Tesla are duckshoving from one department to another skipping the pub test completely. Stay tuned rant over…