I drove away from the dealer lot without a care in the world, but a couple of miles down the road I noticed a warning on the screen that public charging was unavailable because of an unpaid charging bill. It was 200+ miles home and I would need to charge. Back to the dealership. The salesman and finance manager who had been so interested in me 20 minutes earlier, now could not be bothered. I insisted till they found someone in the service department to sit in the car with me for and help.
The car needed to be on a Wi-Fi network, so the dealer had to give me the password to their network to connect the car. downloaded the Tesla app and selected 'register product' which instructed me to rename the car. Renaming sounds straightforward but I got confused about the profile name which is associated with the driver and the car name associated with the owner. After several dead ends the service guy found out how to rename the car. Next was input of information about myself and two forms of documentation that I had purchased the car. The document options in the app did not correlate well with the paperwork I had from the dealer. Service guy figured out the temporary registration is the dealer tag on the back of the car. The requested bill of sale was a document I had of some other name with similar information. These needed to be photographed and uploaded through the app. Bill of sale wanted a front and back photo where mine was one-sided so we found a related document and photographed that as the back, maybe we got it right maybe not. Then the app said my registration is under review but meanwhile I will be associated with the car. This cleared the error that was showing on the screen about not being able to buy public charging. I was on the road again and successfully charged about 100 miles down the road.
About there I realized the charging cable was not in the car, it was still back at the dealer. I got home and texted/called the salesman to please ship me the cable, no response for two days. After threatening a bad review he texted that they were buying me a new charger. As a back up plan I ordered a charger from Tesla which arrived in two days. A week later and the dealer kit still has not arrived. If I had not been proactive and insistent, this dealership would have let me drive down the road only to run out of charge in the middle of nowhere with a car that, as far as Tesla knew, I did not even own.
All in all not a good buying experience. Love the car, but many would have given up and walked away. Part my fault for being a newbie but mostly dealership fault for not paying attention to details and after-sale setup that a used Tesla buyer needs.
Which town? Which dealership? Which salesman? Let's keep it anonymous if they come up with the charging cable.
Full charge @ supercharger81 kWh * 0.36 $/kWh = $29.16Range is 330 miCost per mile$29.16/330 = $0.088/miFull charge @ home81 kWh * 0.12 $/kWh = $9.72Cost per mile$9.72/330 = $0.029/miGas vehicle($/gal)/(mpg) = $/miExample$3.50/gal / 15 mpg = $0.23/mi