Used 4CT Feedback Request -- Bellevue WA & Deerfield Beach FL

[WasserGKuehlt]

How about if I mount it on the roof rails?
Or maybe just place it directly on the glass roof then use some bungees to secure it in place to the roof rails.

Nono. Jeez. Okay, here’s the full algorithm:
- roof is for custom welded cargo basket; alternatively, rooftop tent which you carry tear-round to your downtown office commute. Also extensible canopy mounted to the side. Bonus points for bold lettering.
- left side rear quarter is for traction boards - orange is the grippiest color
- right side rear quarter is for canisters; you can substitute a battery pack shaped like a gas canister, or fill the canister with water. Leave room for stickers.
- front right side is for the snorkel; if anyone asks, say “ram air effect for cooling batteries; electricity is hot, y’know”
- rear is for the spare, propane tank, shovel, antenna and more stickers

Now you’re ready to go to the car show (or grocery store). Do send pics.

(edit) ah, forgot this (very important): you must refer to your vehicle as a “rig”.

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[Jonathan S.]

Good to know about the lack of a pollution problem in WA -- I'll have to tell all my clients to drop their Clean Air Act lawsuits!

That CT setup sounds like a good start. Maybe I'll some fixed-length avalanche probes and shovels too.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Mmm, guess again there Mike.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Mmm, guess again there Mike.

You guys get snow out there? I thought it just comes down as pre-packed ice. Very cool. Yeah, keep ‘em guessing.

 

[Jonathan S.]

You guys get snow out there? I thought it just comes down as pre-packed ice. Very cool. Yeah, keep ‘em guessing.

From the sky, at our local ski area mentioned in my Strava comment, in a river valley almost at sea level, and with a suboptimal NW aspect -- rarely, and when it does get snow, I'm almost always backcountry skiing somewhere else. But it does have reliable snowmaking coverage (or more like pre-packed ice coverage, as the nickname for "Berkshire East" is of course "Berkshire Ice"), so good for skinning to train for the real thing. (Was also good for alpine race training back in college.)
The other nearby ski area (Wachusett) somehow manages to usually open before Thanksgiving (despite being in Central Mass), so "dawn patrol" skinning opportunities there are among the earliest anywhere in New England, go figure.

In more immediate matters, I had planned to drive only ~4 miles today, but ended up driving to drive another 30 instead of biking, even though biking would have been faster.
That meant though that I got to drive 34 miles in the Taycan, even if in conditions that, well, see prior comment about biking.
Max speed was going with the flow of traffic at 50mph in on a 40mph speed limit strip mall.
But despite that ...
OMG is this f'ing awesome!!!!!

Somehow that didn't come across fully in my test drive.
Perhaps all the roads were so unfamiliar, and I-95 so busy, that I was focusing on navigation and not bumping into other vehicles.
Plus my main concern was to check to the backseat for family, check out the seating position for myself, and just assess personal comfortableness level in general.

But driving on familiar roads, even roads with zero potential for anything approaching a driver-centric experience, something about this car, I can't even describe it ... on paper, sure, combine the best attributes of my Audi A6 Allroad with my wife's BMW i4 M50, subtract a few practical elements, add a few annoyances, and then infuse it with ... Porcheness?

I strongly suspect that RAS is enhancing the feeling of nimbleness for such a large and heavy car even at low speeds in tight quarters like shopping malls and relatively dense urban neighborhoods.
Somehow this is just so fun to drive even in conditions that aren't featured even in ads for minivans.

Oh, and our daughter absolutely loves it!
(Wife approves too, but she did not join us for today's outings.)

The funniest reaction though was when I took our daughter to a play date hang out with a friend (since as a worldly young lady almost 14 yrs old "play dates" are in the distant past).
After pulling into what turned out to be a driveway shared with a neighbor, I lingered in the car to play around with various functions.
That ended up taking an entire hour.

The neighboring family emerged. I was worried I might be blocking their driveway, and I was worrying that the car stood out too much in this type of middle-class progressive neighborhood.
I apologized to the mother, who was quite friendly, and turned out I wasn't blocking them, as they were going to their street-parked car.
Which was -- of course -- a Prius.

And then her daughter, maybe about nine or ten yrs old, exclaimed:
"I LOVE YOUR CAR!"
I tried to play it down, but she repeated it just in case the point had been lost on me.
I responded, somewhat apologetically, with, "It's an EV!" to confirm my lib credentials.
I noticed that on the other side of the shared driveway was our daughter's friend's family car, which was -- of course -- also a Prius.

Pictures, let's see ...


After all the Amazon reviews said these parking blocks would stay in place only by screwing them into a concrete floor, my add'l double-stick tape and load o' duct tape meant that even after a year with lots of winter snow/slush/water, removing them to reposition them slightly back took quite some effort!

They are now repositioned with VHB tape plus even more duct tape, and fortunately repositioned correctly on the first try, such that the Taycan now has just the right amount of space on all four sides (with the front being important for opening the door to the backyard).

Parking at a grocery store (seeing if I could find a low-profile tissue box to fit in that interesting under-console storage area) near a Macan -- should I learn the secret handshake for such situations, or do we have a special bond only with other Taycan owners?

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

@Jonathan S. re “OMG is this f'ing awesome!!!!”
Yes, correct. On all accounts.

Re placeholder parking things: pay, forget all that, find your parking position and apply a marker on the side wall. And if you happen to get it wrong once or twice, the front bumper may scratch or bend, but won’t brake when met with your garage rear door.

Re reactions: I don’t know why, the only reactions I’ve gotten to this car were in less that pure-blue areas. I guess it’s a sign of weakness to look and nod around here, but as soon as I venture a bit further out East folks are a bit more open. (Haven't gone to Seattle in a while, I’m afraid it’ll get keyed.)

Re snow: come out here West some time. We’ve got snow. We don’t have the heights (of CO) (but neither do you ?), but we’ve got the steeps. The Taycan is a great skiing car.

 

[snstevens]

@Jonathan S. re “OMG is this f'ing awesome!!!!”
Yes, correct. On all accounts.

Re placeholder parking things: pay, forget all that, find your parking position and apply a marker on the side wall. And if you happen to get it wrong once or twice, the front bumper may scratch or bend, but won’t brake when met with your garage rear door.

Re reactions: I don’t know why, the only reactions I’ve gotten to this car were in less that pure-blue areas. I guess it’s a sign of weakness to look and nod around here, but as soon as I venture a bit further out East folks are a bit more open. (Haven't gone to Seattle in a while, I’m afraid it’ll get keyed.)

Re snow: come out here West some time. We’ve got snow. We don’t have the heights (of CO) (but neither do you ?), but we’ve got the steeps. The Taycan is a great skiing car.

I second the recommendation about a marker on the side wall. I used a parking block in the past and grew to hate it.

First, it collected all the winter grime and made the garage floor much harder to clean. Also, they sometimes move unexpectedly, and you only find out when you've touched up to a post or wall. Third, putting a piece of Blue tape on the wall doesn't move and it's super easy to work with. You simply drive in until the tape aligns with your normal eye position when looking out the window - done!

 

[Jonathan S.]

Re parking position, for left-right, I line up the speed on the HUD with a marking on the wall. For pulling into the garage enough, I tried using a location on the right wall, but I’d often get it wrong and hence would be unable to open the door to the backyard or have enough room to walk behind the car with the garage bay closed. Maybe I’ll revisit this, but the blocks have worked out perfectly since last summer.

Re PNW snow-covered volcanoes, I’ve skied from the summits of all them that are over 10k with two exceptions (Jefferson where we bailed a little over a thousand feet from the summit in August 2011 since the Jefferson Park Glacier was getting sketchy, and North Sister since all of it is permanently sketchy).

But now I just ski Hood and Adams, one trip each June and July, leaving my gear with my Beaverton ski partner in between. Last summer I came out again for a trip straddling August and September, then again for a Veterans Day Weekend trip when a big snowstorm was followed by a good weather forecast.
(I also usually come to Colorado for some skimo racing in December, although given the altitude, more about having an excuse to visit friends there.)

Taking the 4CT up the notorious dirt road to the Cold Springs trailhead on Adams would be a hoot…although despite all the dire warnings, something is still passes the Prius Test.

Back to the evolving love affair…
…more slow driving today, app even reported an 8mph avg at some point, half of even a modest road biking speed!
But still so enjoyable even in those conditions.
Lots of progress in learning features, often finding the answers in old threads here. (Many thanks to all those posters!)
Also charged up last night just to confirm I had everything set up correctly.

At an extended family brunch today, our daughter took her cousins out to gawk.
Many questions over brunch, especially from father-in-law, who grumbles when he sees my wife’s oat milk in the fridge at his house.
When I pulled up, my sister-in-law announced, “This car is too fancy for Amherst and Northampton.” She was smiling when she said it, and I was pulling in behind her X1, but still, the 4CT just looks outrageously…outrageous.
But in a good way!
Family consensus though that the Mamba Green would have been too much for New England.

I tried to keep the car somewhat out of view when I dropped off our daughter at the house of a new friend.
The street did have a Model S, which might have cost more depending on when it was purchased. But any Tesla out here is still Saving the Planet regardless of price. So glad I got the EV plates to display my environmental self-righteousness.

 

[whitex]

The street did have a Model S, which might have cost more depending on when it was purchased.

A brand new Model S Plaid today is cheaper than your previously enjoyed Taycan. MSRP starting at $89,990. Evidently they are just not selling, so Tesla keeps on discounting them. How long before Elon realizes the yoke (rounded or not) is killing his sales? My wife and I would have bought at least one more each if they didn't do the yoke (we stopped after 4). Perhaps if the new stalkless Model 3 sales drop like S/X did, after the initial rush of die-hard fans upgrading to the latest.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Can you imagine being the engineer tasked with explaining to Elon that race cars with a yoke have only a small fraction of the lock-to-lock degrees of a street-legal car?

Meanwhile, passed inspection today!

 

[Jonathan S.]

The famed hairpin turn on Massachusetts Route 2.

 

[Jonathan S.]

All sorts of good Taycan happenings since Monday:

• Mysterious error message: https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...ror-right-charger-port-flap-cover-open.17093/ … went away just as mysteriously as it had appeared, so we’ll count that as Good (so far at least).
• Yesterday’s roundtrip drive to Mt Greylock followed by some garage idling for features fiddling and then a short roundtrip drive to dinner provided my first meaningful data for a range extrapolation. Lots of hilz, no interstate, many secondary highways, with ~20% city mileage. Went from 85% to 32% from 91 miles, so full-battery range would be 285 miles, nice! And entering it into: https://www.porsche.com/international/aboutporsche/e-performance/models/ … yielded (in Freedom Units) a nearly identical 289 miles:

• Just in case I need a L2 home charging back-up, discovered that my alma mater L2 stations are free, and – far more importantly -- I can get a free year-long parking permit for the gym parking lot that has one of the three stations only a short jog from my house (where I’ve often parking w/o a pass when using the gym, but parking at the EV charger for a few hours might be pushing my luck w/ a permit)
• After my Sunday evening MA driver’s license on-line renewal was rejected for an unspecified issue with unpaid citations (what?!?) from a reporting state (of my home state of MA?!?) with my request for an appeal taking up to a week to review … oh, never mind “our bad”:

Only downside was that I took what I thought would be a striking picture yesterday, but … as you can see, Mt Greylock despite looking impressive in person from that vantage point, with my photography skills it’s just kind of too far in the background, and also obscure by the tree and utility poles. (Will try again next week from a slightly different location!)

 

[violuma]

Only downside was that I took what I thought would be a striking picture yesterday, but … as you can see, Mt Greylock despite looking impressive in person from that vantage point, with my photography skills it’s just kind of too far in the background, and also obscure by the tree and utility poles.

I think you're selling yourself short. You chose a lighting angle that really highlights the Macadamia Metallic accent color on the power pole transformers.

 

[Jonathan S.]

I think you're selling yourself short. You chose a lighting angle that really highlights the Macadamia Metallic accent color on the power pole transformers.

Hah!
The sad part though is that the state probably paid lots of $ for something like that at the $12m visitor center currently under construction near that trailhead.
(Even just a $12k yurt would have made a big difference. Or a $120k building. But instead they went totally overboard.)

 

[violuma]

The sad part though is that the state probably paid lots of $ for something like that at the $12m visitor center currently under construction near that trailhead.

Here's the part where I spit in the face of "tone can't be conveyed over text" and make a leap of faith about how much news from the eastern half of the state filters out to you (and how old you are), so here goes nothing.

The state government can afford to splurge on a few little visitor centers, in light of the diligent way that they controlled costs on the I-93 arterial undergrounding project that came in so far ahead of schedule.

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