Delicate power Trunk, especially for a rental

One of the things noticed during the run-up to purchasing the $15K Ex-Hertz Tesla was that the power trunk worked poorly if at all. You could usually get to open by helping it along as it struggled mightily, and closing was no problem, just hit the button and jump out of the way as it slammed shut.

The general consensus was that having a not-so-robust, nor obvious, power trunklid on a "Hundreds of Newbies" rental vehicle was probably not the best idea. Hertz thought so too as they had (as we later figured out) replaced the power lift strut at least once. 

Basically when someone who has no Tesla knowledge wants to open the trunk they find the right button and pull up, helping it along as needed.
When it comes time to close the lid some will find the button, others will not and will just pull down and slam it shut. As you're probably aware the single sided Tesla power strut DOES NOT like this at all.
Over time it will warp the lid and bend the hinges and make the strut very cranky.

Since we knew about this already we looked into options. One was to have Tesla do it. That seemed to quote around $300 including labor and scheduled out a couple weeks, when we were planning to be road-tripping.
The second option was to just swap the power strut for a 'normal' non-powered unit. About $15-20.  In looking at that option the semi-automatic strut kit from EVANNEX (about $30 with a coupon code) came up. In theory this would provide auto-open and manual close. We ordered one of these kits the same day we picked up the car. About a week later it arrived. Considerable Youtube viewing in the interim.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night! when the trunk failed for good. Darn, and it was working so well too. Trying to get it to open would move the lid sideways and push on the glass. Bad idea. So, we're loading up from the rear seat area instead, while getting very very wet.
The next day the trunk struts moved to the top of the to-do list.

The failures, in repose.

Getting the trunk open enough to pop the strut loose was a chore. One person using a piece of wood to push the strut sideways (to keep it from breaking the glass) while the other jiggled it upward over 10-15 min.
Yay, at last it's open.
Youtube taught us how to pop the strut ends loose. There were also videos about popping some interior trim (one push-pin that's hard to see and a couple clips) loose enough to get at the power strut connector. Once that's loose you just wiggle the wires/rubber grommet out.

In the mean-time you've propped the lid, or, are having a very bad day.

Gorilla Tape Rulez!

Once we popped on the new struts and at least temporarily patched the hole we found that all the bending had caused the lid to be so seriously misaligned that you couldn't close it without seriously endangering the rear glass. And with the trunk held open it of course started to rain again.

There were two issues with the trunk alignment. One is that the entire trunk lid was twisted so one side was about 2-3" (7cm) higher, and the other was that the whole thing was pushed over sideways about 1/2 inch (8-10mm).

In looking at the hinges, and some online material, it looked like the lid bends were beyond the limit of the little adjustments possible with bolts and adjustment holes.

So we put on gloves and grabbed the open trunklid from the side, fingers on the top hinge plate, and tugged it sideways, about a dozen times until the panel gap was close to lining up. Then grabbed the whole lid from both sides and twisted it until it was closing almost evenly. This is probably not the recommended professional approach. ...at your own risk!
However, it worked. We got close enough to let the 'regular' adjustments do the rest of the work.

This is the bottom left hinge plate. That round blank thing is a stud that goes through the body and there's a 13mm nut on the other side. Since you had to pull the interior trim loose enough to unsnap the power strut wiring connector, you've left yourself just enough room to get a wrench in there. Do be aware that you're working right next to where the HV wiring comes into the car. Yes there's a cover, but have a care.
The red line points at the fact that we moved the plate about 1/8th inch (2-3mm) sideways. Don't forget to re-torque the nut.

Here is the attachment/adjustment plate on one side of the trunk lid. You can see how much we had to move the lid relative to the hinge assembly (the lighter areas called out by the red lines) to get the trunk panel gaps all aligned properly. We had to remove the strut to get this adjustment right.

End notes: It was obvious while in there that someone with even less clue/care than us had been in working on it before. None of that section of the interior was put back together correctly.

We still don't have the hinges quite right, or maybe it just needs lube. The lid won't open completely on it's own like it's supposed to. Not EVANNEX's fault. Regardless it's working well enough for now.

Tesla Efficiency part1: Tires/Wheels

The $15K Tesla post, still the most popular recent post on the site, really didn't go into the efficiency or cost to operate or any of that. Obviously it's early days so a lot of that wasn't known yet and anything said would mostly be expectations and/or speculation.   Since it, like previous cars, will probably be doing 15K-20K miles/year, efficiency, along with reliability, are going to be a really important topics. Impatient people can skip all the details to "Yes, it worked!" below.

There is one part(s) on the car that has the biggest impact on noise and comfort and efficiency.
That of course is tires.  The car we got has/had the $1500 optional Sport 19" Wheels. These are targeted at the performance oriented driver without being quite as punishing as the 20" wheels on the Performance Model 3.

18", 19" 20" ... it doesn't sound like all that big a difference, but the tire sidewall, the part that flexes over bumps and road imperfections, is actually twice as tall on the 18 vs. the 20. It ends up being a bigger deal than you'd expect.
Any of the vehicles we saw which had the more efficient 18" wheels were either more expensive or had the wrong battery or no heat-pump or had way more miles.  Things that were much more difficult to change.

The 'Before' picture. 19" Sport Wheels, Junk tires from Hertz

The biggest thing we were looking for with the 'base' 18" Aero Wheels was that the taller sidewall can be (and is) softer, more flexible. As a result the car does not lose as much energy/friction making a short stiff sidewall flex with each revolution of the wheel. As you'll see in a moment this has a larger effect than you might anticipate. The taller more flexible sidewall also results in a slightly more comfortable ride and it transmits less road surface noise into the body of the car. 

There is of course a tradeoff.

Traction, right at the limit of adhesion as the tire is starting to break free and skid is slightly compromised.
Likewise ultimate braking performance on a clean flat dry road may see a couple percent difference.
Note though these are differences smaller than produced by a little dampness or a different road surface or temperature or ...  In other words things rarely perceivable in real world situations. Granted the 19" and especially 20" do really feel 'more connected' especially during hard cornering, but you do give up quite a lot for that 'feel.' As previous owners of Porsche 911, Porsche 928, Audi Coupe GT and SAAB Turbo 3DR we do know a little about driving feel.

Once we had the car with the 'wrong' wheels and tires it was time to look for the right ones.
fleaBay was checked to determine current used Tesla 18" Aero wheel pricing (about $200 ea. including shipping) and then the search widened to Craigslist and FB Marketplace. We're not FB fans, but that marketplace has a lot more of this kind of stuff, as well as being a hotbed for scammers. A couple days on both of those turned up a set of four with completely trashed tires without TPMS (the pressure sensors) for $500. 

We have a car that uses the latest bluetooth based TPMS system. Early (mid 2021 and before) wheelsets would have the wrong sensors in them, so 'without' wasn't a bad choice. OTOH if you buy the sensors from Tesla it's almost $100 each. Fortunately we have good sensors right in the wheels on the car, so it's just a matter of swapping them over. Like any sentence with 'just' in it, this foreshadows trouble to come.

The seller didn't have a good set of Aero wheel covers and since these are about 5% of the efficiency gain associated with this wheel swap, that was kind of important. A little more looking online turned up a set that just happened to be right on the way toward picking up the wheels. $50 for a nice set of four was pretty reasonable. We drove almost 100 miles to get the wheels, brought a brush and a tarp to try and not dirty-up the interior of the car too much. Yes, 4 wheels/tires fit in the back no problem.

Next up was tire selection. There's a lot of history regarding what works best out on the TMC Forums. Each brand, Michelin, Continental, etc. has their fan-boys and detractors. A couple youtubers had done reviews of a new brand of EV specific tires: Sailun eRange. These are made in Vietnam, mostly Chinese owned and are the OEM tire on some Chinese produced EVs. They are looking to make a name for themselves in the U.S. over the last year. It isn't quite as well reviewed as the EV tires from the 'majors' but they cost right at half as much. We'll see how it works out. The low cost (relatively reliable) supplier turns out to be Walmart. Very strange... But hey, $600 instead of $1200.

We know tires make quite the difference. A previous swap of worn Bridgestone EV specific tires for come cheap no-names ($80 ea.) on the Leaf that we turned back in at the end of it's lease period resulted in a 9% drop in range, just due to the tires. Same route, same temp. same pressure. 

Having tires delivered to Walmart Autocare was a new experience. All the high-end Tesla fanboys are losing their shit right about now. Guess they don't have $15K Teslas or live in our 'economic neighborhood.' ;-)
Mount and balance was quoted at $18/tire. and that seemed fine. We brought along the 'Lifting Pucks' that allow normal car lifts to jack up a Tesla without damaging the battery. Good thing too, or nothing would have happened. Walmart doesn't have lifting pucks -or- a car lift the goes low enough to fit under the Tesla. The guys there did have a low profile jack that would fit, on the lifting puck/adapter we brought, but that was only a partial solution.
The team there had to jack up one corner of the car, remove the 19" wheel, dismount the tire, remove the TPMS and replace with a new valve-stem, remount the tire, mount the TPMS on the 18" wheel, mount the new tire on that wheel, balance it, and put it on the car. Then repeat all of those steps for the four remaining corners of the car, since they only had the one jack. Along the way we agreed to pay for the Deluxe mount and balance. That includes lifetime rebalance, free tire rotations and 50K mile road hazard warranty. An extra $10/tire. Which sounds fine until you work out that they have no way to do tire rotations since that requires the car be on a lift and their locations can't do that.
...so they 'compromised' by refunding the entire mount/balance fee, and ended up with $0 for their labors.

Big corporations are weird.   Anyway, so how did it all turn out?:

Yes, it worked!  The previous tires on the car, a relatively cheap ($100 ea.) Ironman iMove Gen3 that Hertz swapped on just before selling (almost no wear on them) were not awful. Not seriously noisy, handling wasn't all that bad. the '380' treadwear indicator on the sidewall did not inspire high longevity expectations, but overall a kinda good average car tire.

Prior to going in for the tire/wheel swap we did our highway efficiency test loop. An out-and-back 20mi. each way plus a little on and off the freeway. ~41 miles total. 42 PSI Cold. 68 deg. ambient. 72 MPH (GPS) speed using autosteer on the freeway during a low traffic lull mid day on a weekday.
Results were 259 Wh/Mi.      

Since this is a route we do a couple times a week we can say 260 is right at expectations since we bought it.

After

After a short supercharge, we took it out for another test loop, 42 PSI cold, same distance, same roads, same GPS speed, 71deg. ambient and got a surprising result. 213 Wh/Mi.

We were expecting a difference of 25-30. We got 46.

The temp. difference could account for a little of it, but this was considerably bigger than expected.

Percentages are slippery, but you can look at this as an 18% improvement compared with the 259 number, or that "259 is 21% worse than 213" depending (as usual) on what point you're trying to make. Regardless it's nearly a 20% improvement.

Basically a 40 mile real world range improvement.

...and THAT is what we were looking for.

Our home electric rate works out to about three cents per mile. Supercharging averages around10-12 cents. 

At that rate it will take approximately forever to pay off the $1100 this swap cost us. 

However we're not done yet.

If the $1500 optional sport wheels and $400 worth of tires actually fetch $1000  on CL or FB-M then it will almost pay off during the first trip (which, 5000+ miles, is coming right up) but if they only fetch $600 then it will take longer, duh.

Either way we'll be using these cheaper 18" tires going forward and risking cheap wheelcovers to the gods of curb-rash. We kinda like the all grey stealth look, although there's others out there who will vehemently disagree.
Hopefully people with $1000 to spare.  ;-)

Notes: 

There will be more later on trip efficiency.

Yes they are maybe slightly quieter in the low frequency rumble range, but there seems to be a slight increase in the higher frequency range. 64db on our test road either way. They are slightly softer on rough roads, but you really have to be looking for it so it may be placebo effect.

There will.of course be commenters saying "It's all the wheels" or "It's all the tires" and "It would have been even better if you had just purchased product X."  Well no, neither just a wheel change nor just a tire change would stack up to 20%, but together....    And doubling the tire price for a 1-2% gain would be folly, at least economically speaking. Noise? Safety? more difficult to say.

One minor note, Before 74 indicated was 72MPH GPS. Now 73 indicated is 72 GPS. Suspect the difference isn't -quite- that large but it probably went from being off by around 1.8% before and more like 1.1% now, based on when we see the mph indicators change over.

Camping Tesla

The $15K Tesla post from a couple days ago, currently the most popular recent post on the site, had within some notice that the vehicle might be used for some camping activities. This post goes into what's required, or at least 'nice to have' to make that happen.
Yes we know the Tesla Model Y is probably a better choice for a camping focused vehicle, there's lots of Youtubes attesting to that, but there's some on the Model 3 as well, which is good because a Model Y would have cost us almost twice as much, and only been a significant benefit on some relatively rare occasions. Nice to have but not $14K more nice to have.

Camping Mode is available on pretty much all Teslas, but works by far the best on 2021 and later Model Y's and 2022 and later Model 3's (yes and later 2021's) because they have the latest, most capable heat-pump systems. The #1 advantage of Camping Mode is the ability to efficiently, quietly keep the temperature stable overnight without draining the battery (~10-14% over 8 hrs)   ...well, and keep the bugs out.

You can of course switch the display to a cozy fire and even play ambient sounds over the audio system. Wave sounds from the beach anyone? We actually put a towel over the display at night and play a little white noise if the background sound in the location is distracting. Camp mode also keeps the 'accessory power' on so your electronics will charge and power remains available from the 12V outlet.

Mattress. The second most important thing is having something to sleep on. Seems like everyone knows that you can sleep in the back of a model Y. What's less obvious is that the sleeping space in the Model 3 is almost identical excepting one obvious dimension. You fit the same 75"x38" 'Twin' mattress in either case and the size of person(s) that will fit is nearly the same. The Model 3's space is about 1" shorter and the shelf above limits the space for rolling over if you're unusually wide in the beam. We have a fix, shown below, for the length issue. Not much you can do about the turn-over height (just over 16") except buy a Y.

                   It is admittedly cozy for two, so choose your partner wisely. 
The biggest practical difference between 3 and Y is that you can climb in on the tailgate end of the Y but ingress/egress is limited to the rear doors with the 3. It does take a few tries to learn how to get in and out without contortionist moves or bumped heads. By the tenth time it's almost natural. 

Tip: If you plant your butt first and take off your shoes you can slip them into the footwell without getting mud all over.

We chose a firm foam mattress from IKEA. That plus sheets and a couple pillows fit into $100.  It isn't the most comfortable thing ever, but if you're tired enough... 

Bed ruffle and Duvet not shown ;-)

We're looking into a memory-foam or gel-foam mattress topper and will probably update this post later.

When you're done sleeping, you toss the pillows just back behind the seat fold-up line and then lift the front of the mattress up and back, tucking it under the shelf leading back to the trunk area. 

Folded Mattress from the trunk end

When you're done it makes kind of a 'C' shape. You stash the extender (if you have one, see below) and flip the seats up for the day. At the rear there's still room for two 'carry on' size suitcases, nestled inside the opening of the 'C' shape, although that makes the access to the under-trunk more difficult. You can take out the suitcases temporarily if full access becomes necessary.
The footwell space behind the front seats fits two similar size suitcases as well so roughly 4X of that size carry space without putting stuff on the rear seats. Not bad.

The sleeping space is wider up near the doors, and to make it seem less like there's an edge to fall off of, just stuff a spare pillow in the space at the side. It is necessary to find the 'right' position for the front seats, making the seatbacks upright enough, but the whole seat just far enough back, to keep head pillows from sliding off.

Any photo: Click to expand.

The Extender Board we made is not really necessary unless you're above 5'10" (or maybe 6' depending on how you sleep) but it does make the bed area seem more spacious and less 'on the end.'

It started life as a 15"x37"x1/2" bit of plywood, with four chunks cut out of it to make a 7 1/2"x1" tongue toward the rear and a 7 1/2"x4" tongue toward the front. See photo. That long rectangle shape then comes out 10"x37".  The front tongue with a 1 1/2" foot attached below rests on the front armrest and the rear edges rest on the rear center headrest (pulled up) and the back of the other two headrests. A little chunk of the cut-off plywood provides a lip that fits just behind the extended center headrest and 'locates' the whole assembly so it won't slide around.

WARNING: PUTTING WEIGHT ON THE UNSUPPORTED FRONT CORNERS OF THE EXTENDER BOARD CAN CAUSE IT TO FLIP UP AND INJURE YOU OR SOMEONE NEAR. It's best to put it in place immediately before sleeping and remove it first thing. Ask how we know ... ;-)

We're still working on methods of strapping it down. This information provided without warranty of usability, safety or fitness for any purpose.

It doesn't really show here but the extender width is tapered slightly on the rear so the whole thing can slide in under the mattress for storage.

Board shown here sliding -not quite- all the way in

Setup or takedown of the mattress and extender takes under one min. with practice.

Note: If it looks a little 'off' in the pictures it's due to the rear seat-backs which squish down about 3" when you put weight on them, then everything, including the extender aligns properly. This does bring up one of the irritations: When you move around the seats squeak and so does the extender. OK in the day, not so much at night.  We're working on it...

Privacy and Darkness are the next topics. Truck stops and rest stops and Walmart parking lots are frequent "Gotta rest right now!" targets. Obviously an actual campground would be a better idea but life doesn't always cooperate. 

There are a lot of sunshades/window-shades or whatever out there. Again, many seem to be from the same Chinese suppliers with different branding tags slapped on. We went once again to vion.com since they were very responsive during an issue with a previous order. Pricing seems middle-of-the-road and quality is 'good average' which matches what we're looking for.

They have sets of seven window shades. 

photo credit: VION

and, another set containing the two roof shades. Total for all was just over $100.

photo credit: VION

Yes this is a lot to set up. Sometimes we don't bother with the roof shades depending on circumstances. The roof glass is pretty dark. That said, with everything in place the interior is pretty dark even in the middle of the day. 
Notice that most parts have a reflective side to keep the heat out during the day and a black side that looks very 'stealth' for use at night or other "Nope, nobody home" situations.

Nobody is claiming that this is a perfect solution, and when all you wanted to do was sleep, fiddling with shades is a pain. Still, works remarkably well.

Charging! Most of the charging will of course be at Tesla Superchargers. However if you have your CCS Adapter (see previous post) along it increases the odds of free fast(ish) charging, especially in California. And, having the J1772 adapter doesn't hurt your chances, especially at Motels.

 
However, you probably won't find either of those in a campground. While some campgrounds have 14-50 sockets that will fit your Tesla Mobile charging cord many have the old style RV TT-30P plug, so having a TT-30 to 14-50 adapter can turn your somewhat expensive camp spot into a free pass as you drive past that $20+ Supercharger session in the morning.

Food:  Two things here.One is a big deal, the other quite minor.

Those lucky dogs with Model Y camping pretensions have a -just- slightly larger rear sub-trunk -and- a 12V Socket right next to it. This makes it relatively easy to toss a mini-fridge in the back. All is not lost however. 

We found a 12-24V capable fridge that will fit behind the passenger seat -or- in the rear sub-trunk. Yes it's only 19 liters instead of 24 but for $150 you can't complain too much. And yeah it's a brand nobody ever heard of, but it does seem to work well.
If you look it up online (Amazon in this case) you'll find it's 1/2" too tall to fit in the back half of the Model3 sub-trunk.
This brings up one of the key tweaks required for a fridge in the back of 3 or Y. 
If you take a pair of 3/4"x3/4"x1.5" chunks of wood and attach some grippy-side Velcro to one face you can attach it to the lip of the sub-trunk lid. This will hold the back of that lid open almost 1" and two cool things will happen. One is that suddenly this (relatively cheap) fridge will fit no problem, and the other is that ANY fridge back there will require ventilation if it's going to work efficiently so having the sub-trunk lid 'cracked open' a bit really helps. The downside of course is that any noise it happens to make will be less muffled.

Since we don't have a convenient plug in the back and the fridge cord isn't long enough, a 12V extension is required. This one from NOCO does at least have fairly heavy gauge wires.

 

The other oddity we picked up was a 12V immersion heater.  Kind of a crap-shoot as about one in three of them just seems to burn up and fail.  Also they're not really safe to plug directly into the 12V socket in the car as they're also famous for overheating there, but it should be safe-ish into the extension cord.

Testing with a 12 oz. Hydroflask shows simmering after 5-6 min. and really near boiling at 10 min. The 16V that the Tesla provides seems to speed up the process somewhat, though at the cost of increased odds of burnout. One key is to only heat water, and to have the water up within about 1/2" of the lip so all the heating element is in the water. Should work well for instant soups and coffee, if somewhat slowly.

Sharp metal. Photo looking up from rear trunk

One small fly in the ointment we found was that some cars, ours included have a metal stud/bolt/whatever sticking down below the rear deck, behind the big cross brace. 

This one is on the passenger side just under the rear window.

We've snagged the comforter and some body parts on it. 

as a more-or-less expedient fix we drilled a hole in half a wine cork and screwed that up on it. Prevents injury or holes in the blanket, things can still snag on it but no damage results.

More later, maybe, as we get more experience.

Accessorizing Tesla

The $15K Tesla post went up earlier (way below). This is what happens after.

We could do 34 separate posts about everything we found and any tweeks worth doing, but how would that fit into our history of incredibly long boring blog posts? Seriously, we pretty much have to do almost all of it here in one post to stay On Brand. Speaking of brand, the stuff below is usually the least expensive option that works well. 

First up is a little item we bought well before getting a Tesla. We weren't sure what location we would be getting it from nor if Tesla's chargers ('Supercharger') would be available. This adapter allows your Tesla to charge from most CCS (the current US standard) DC Fast Chargers -and- slower J1772 AC charging stations.
Since we have LOTS of experience with non-Tesla chargers it seemed like a good idea, and for $50 it's a relatively cheap insurance policy. Tesla sells a similar unit for $250. Better? We'll see.

EVArk is not a brand we'd heard of before but the reviews were OK, much better than the cheaper ones. Seems very well built and so far it's worked well, except on EVGO stations where we had our usual luck (with them, ie: Bad) and the charge speed seems about what we'd expect having used these stations before. Not real fast (50KW) but not awful. We don't think it's the adapter's fault. This could come in handy with all the free chargers in California. And hey, $50 on Amazon, if it didn't work, back it goes.

We did order one of the Tesla Mobile Adapters as well. $250 from Tesla. Well built, comes with both 120V and 240V (14-50) plugs. It's the main overnight charger. It works really well. The 'Wall Connector' from them is slightly faster but costs almost twice as much and requires permanent wiring. 

It's smaller than most competitors, nice case too.

The carpet Floor Mats that came with the car aren't bad, but the unpaved area it parks in results in LOTS of mud and leaves tracked in during the winter. We looked at the Tesla mats (front+rear $225) and they aren't bad, but like with a lot of the Tesla accessories in the game, there are many alternatives. We didn't feel like any of the fancy products ($250-500) were really necessary here. 

It says 'WeatherLiner' and seems to be another generic WeatherTech style knock off from China. There were at least a dozen similar things on Amazon. This one at $89 (at the time, looks like $99 now) including the rear trunk liner. Actually fits and works pretty well. As per the instruction sheet warming them in the sun and weighing down any parts that didn't sit flat, for a couple hours, caused it to fit almost perfectly. One small section at the front corners of the trunk liner required trimming back with some heavy kitchen shears to get it to lie absolutely flat, but that was it for 'big issues.'

On a two year old car the air filters are probably questionable at best.  Add to which Tesla 3 and Y are somewhat famous for not smelling good when the filters go 'off.'
These claim HEPA and Activated Charcoal and... Who knows if any of that does any good, but we'll see. Claims to come with required tools. $30 from Vion.com

On to the smaller less important stuff. Note that window shades will be covered in the Camping Tesla post.

The front center console and flip-up armrest both have deep storage spaces in them and stuff gets lost easily. The 'fix' is a couple fitted trays that allow you to keep small stuff toward the top and bigger stuff (like the CCS Adapter above, yes it fits fine) at the bottom.
The cupholders are very plastic and any cup you put in wobbles around. Some make buzzing or clanking noises. The rubberized insert fixes that nicely.

Another problem, abet pretty minor, is that we still have things with USB-A plugs on them. There is a rather inconvenient USB-A spot in the glove compartment, but that's set aside for the Sentry-cam/Dashcam USB memory stick. The two USB charging ports in the front center console and the two behind the armrest facing the back seat are all USB-C. Among many other vendors VION.com has a fix for that which looks pretty nice and fits just in front of the sliding door on the front console. It plugs into the USB-C's below and brings the charging opportunities up where you can get at them. The one issue we have with this is that the white LED 'watt usage' display does not seem to dim at night. Some here find that distracting. We'll update this if we hear from the Mfgr.

[Update], we heard from the vendor, if you hold the button on the front side of the USB console insert you can get it to toggle the display brightness. Works just as advertised. However it sometimes resets when the car goes to sleep. So we're just going to put a layer of window darkening film on it. Problem solved.

If we recall correctly, all three above were around $60 total after some discount code we found on Youtube. 

No, there are no 'affiliate' links. Not our dealio.

Our $15K Ex-Hertz Tesla

Yep, we have it, and yeah there seems to be some small interest in the whole $15K Tesla thing.
                          See also: Accessorizing Tesla ... and ... Camping Tesla. and Tires
Broken news!: Hertz announced in their Q1 earnings statement that they'll be adding another 10,000
2022 and 2023 Teslas to the 10,000 remaining (to be sold) that they plan on selling during the remainder of 2024.. Deals on used Teslas aren't fading out anytime soon.

And as to how it works?     Really really well.

Edit later in the week: We delayed the announcement here until we could actually be sure we were going to get full control of it. Recall that it's not just a state title transfer, no, Tesla has to weigh in as well, tying the owner, to the app, to the car, to the Supercharger network (not necessarily in that order) or you can't use all the features on the car. That took way longer than expected. More on that below, but rest assured everything is working now. Our #1 bit of advice; Call Them (Tesla) on the day after you send in all the proof of ownership stuff to make sure everything is OK, in process and not hung up somehow.

Grey car on a grey day. At least it's raining.

This post is about the actual end process/progress. Looking for it (overall) was a previous post The Tesla Conundrum and a follow up on finding this specific car: Cheap Cheap. Tesla for Easter? but there was still interest in how the actual buying process went and how 'on-boarding' it worked out; Integrating/usability at home, and transfer of ownership so Tesla recognizes us at the owners, all that 'reality stuff' that happens after the brave hunter-gatherers return from the hunt. Were they   Just Lucky?   We'll see.

Those linked posts do have updates, so if you're also in the hunt, look there. Especially the first one.

One thing up front: YMMV is very real. Your Mileage May Vary ...  is not just an amusing internet thing.
The odds of you being able to reproduce this pricing structure is/are not high.
Prices in the mirror may be larger than they appear (sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)
     How many states have programs that allow lower income folks rebates on used EV's? Very few. 
How many folks under that income cap can actually afford the still not insignificant cost of an EV and/or have a place to charge it? Not very many.
How many EV's worth having make it under the Federal Credit for Used EVs. ($4000 for cars under $25K?)

And there's the even smaller number of folks who have enough federal tax liability to qualify for the federal credit
-AND- are low enough to qualify for this state rebate (400% of the federal poverty level)
-AND- just happen to be buying during the very short period when that rebate is/was available (about two months.)

How do you do all that? If you look back through four or five years of posts here you'll find that, in one form or another, this has been in the planning stages for several years. Granted, not everyone is that obsessive, nor should they be, but some of what we've been through/learned is applicable across a broader audience. Absent being that obsessive, or just lucky, you may pay a bit more, $20K comes to mind, but that's still probably not a tragedy. It's a whole lot of good low cost transportation even at that $$ rate.

OK, on to details you might actually care about. 

If you buy from Hertz, there's no negotiation process. You buy it or you don't. Price is set by some corporate algorithm with little sense nor local control. Sales-persons are not on commission and while that leads to a low pressure sales environment that many people will love, it also leads to 'sales' folks who were perhaps not the top of their class. We contacted many Hertz locations (8? 9?) and about 2/3rds of them gave off a underpaid/overworked or 'Joe barely cares' vibe.
The other third were pleasant, responsive ...and really far away, or, had no useful (under $25K) stock.
Bonita Springs FL and San Diego CA were the standouts, but if you're from out of state we can't recommend buying in California due to a truly punishing tax regime. Florida will at least exempt you from double taxation (they also had the best cars.) Many of the cars Hertz doesn't want to deal with; excess inventory in area, no room on lot, high miles - etc. get sold to external dealerships like:

We bought from Volkswagen of McMinnville (DBA MacVW.com) and they were pleasant, responsive and fun to deal with. Not that there's much 'dealing' since if you come in with the Internet Price (perhaps a grand below the sticker on the lot) it ain't going much lower. Maybe negotiation would work on the higher priced units. We don't know. Regardless they seem to be moving more Teslas than VWs recently ;-) so you may not have much negotiation leverage. Everyone we met there was first rate, but they'll be the first to admit they don't know all the details about Teslas.
DO spend some time on Youtube or wherever educating yourself about what to look for and what the detail differences between the years/models. The 2021 and 2022 Model 3's will look the same to you but they may have very different battery types and possibly heating systems. If you don't know where the information is hidden (Software, Additional Information) you may not be buying what you thought.

A little dinking around in Ye Olde Tesla screen

Still, it is a 'regular' car dealership and they will try to sell you several thousand dollars worth of extended warranties. Accept or don't. They were nice about it. In our case there's still 25K miles of the factory power-train/battery warranty left and paying an additional 25% of the car's cost for a 3rd party warranty seemed excessive.
Regardless this was better than any dealership car buying experience we've had.
Kudos to Jackson Brockie, Michael Watroba, Nick and Lori. Good job.
Note that as of this writing they, and sister-dealership Armstrong VW of Portland still have 12 Teslas, 6 or 7 below the magic $25K mark. Could be worth a look.

In our case the 'Internet Price' was around $24K, subtract the Federal Used EV Credit (for purchases under $25K) of $4000. After that subtract the $5000 Oregon Clean Vehicle voucher if you qualify (see previous post) and we're at $15K, then add taxes, fees, fees and fees ... and you gots $15,835.71 Not bad at all.

Now on to the slightly more troublesome parts of the process, mentioned at the beginning of the post: Yes we had set up our Tesla accounts ahead of time and even set up a payment method on the account. 

The dealer had it nicely charged up and provided a single keycard (which actually worked on the second try) so getting it home turned out to be no problem. Good, because apparently stopping at a Tesla Supercharger wasn't an option. Just because you have an account and go through the process in their app to make the car 'yours' doesn't mean you can actually get that to work,   ... for days!

We were kind of expecting this, and came somewhat prepared. 

In theory you just go into your Tesla App, Menu, My Products, Add a Product, and add a vehicle. You type in the VIN, answer a couple questions, make sure the vehicle is connected to WiFi (through your phone hotspot if necessary) and the app will pop up a new three digit 'name' for your vehicle and provide instructions on how to change the name on the car's screen. Unfortunately this works maybe half the time, at least for ex-Hertz Teslas
If it's still on the Hertz version of the vehicle software it may not allow you to change the name. Even if the name change can be 'Save'd, then if anyone along the chain didn't properly release the car, it may still error out. We actually found a newer more recent method of failing tied to the particular software version we were running. Tesla support knew about it, but apparently it's very recent. We're Just lucky.

So yeah, Tesla support. We knew about that method by reading forum posts on TMC regarding buying ex-Hertz Teslas. Good thing too. Here's an edited excerpt. Sorry we did not get the original author's name.
See note below*

"Make sure you already have a Tesla account. You don't need to have any cars or anything in your account. Just create an account at Tesla.com first if you don't already have one. Make sure you are connected to WiFi (tap the antenna icon at the top/right corner and connect to your home WiFi). Hertz Teslas do not have premium connectivity, so the car will not have access to cellular data. Anything that Tesla does on their side needs to be received by your car. So your car must be on WiFi to receive that.

1. Call Tesla's support line at 1-888-518-3752.

2. Choose vehicle support.

3. Explain that you bought a used Tesla from Hertz or other 3rd party.  You want to transfer ownership of the vehicle from Hertz or other 3rd party to you. 

4. The Tesla agent will ask for your Tesla account email, the car's VIN, and other information. They will send you an email requesting some more information, such as the VIN again, email address, home address, phone number, and you will need to attach photos of your driver license and bill of sale/registration/something that shows you own the car. Tip: Take good pictures with your phone. Don't send dark, fuzzy, out of focus pictures. Do it right the first time so you don't have to do it again. Thank the agent.

5. Reply to the email and send all requested info to Tesla. The case number is in the subject line of the email, so don't change anything in the subject line.

6. The agent should receive it right away and start the process.

7. Somewhere between 5 min. and 5 days later you should get an automated email from Tesla saying that a vehicle was added to your account. You can verify at Tesla.com that the car with your VIN was in fact now in your account.

8. Continue to the next step inside your car.

9. On the touchscreen, tap the car icon at the bottom/left corner.

10. Tap Control - Service - Factory Reset * (you may have to scroll down if your screen is set to Large Text).

11. It'll ask for your Tesla login. Enter the email and password for your Tesla account.

12. The screen will go dark for a couple of minutes. Then you'll see the "T" logo as the computer starts up and eventually you'll see the main screen.

13. Since everything was reset, you will need your Key Card (your phone key was reset) and you can begin to set everything up again. Don't forget to set up WiFi first. During the process, the screen may blink and the "T" logo might pop up like it just rebooted. "

* note: If you have downloaded (it may start as soon as you get WiFi) the newest car software version, we recommend -not- installing it. We did, bad idea. The very latest versions contain the latest revision of Tesla's Full Self Driving (Supervised) software. Since our good friend Mr. Musk really REALLY wants all of us to try FSD, and, since that Free Month of FSD is regarded as a subscription, and, if you do a Factory Reset it kills all your subscriptions ... the Factory Reset option is greyed-out on the Service menu. We don't know for sure that these topics are linked as presented here, but let's say there's a strong suspicion based on comments by Tesla Support.
This 'greyed out' thing makes it somewhat difficult to complete the process as written.

To be fair we didn't know if the '*note' part was going to be a problem. It is a almost certainly a problem for cars gotten directly from Hertz and still running their software. Some of those have Factory Reset unavailable as well, which you would expect for a rental vehicle. But it's not clear that we're on that version. We're still waiting for Tesla support, day 7 and holding...

No problem though, the key card works (just the one, don't lose it!) and we bought an official Tesla J1772 charging adapter so we can plug it in at home. Who needs Supercharging anyway?

...Except the adapter doesn't work. Plug it in and the screen says "Communications Error" Oops. Just Lucky.  It doesn't seem to like the EVSE (charging cord) we've been using since 2012. 

We know EV people, so managing to borrow a different EVSE (the charging cord thingy) was no great trick, and it works! ...on the side of the house where our car isn't. The 240V plug-in/receptacle we had put in years ago where the car needs to park is of course a different type than the one on our short term charging cord. 

We did however note that the borrowed cord uses the same AC plug as one of the two (14-50) that comes with the Tesla Mobile Connector we have on order, so anything we can do to make the borrowed EVSE work might have future application, in a couple weeks when the Tesla Mobile thingy gets here. The downside is the previous EVSE (the one that didn't work with the car) was like 15A on a 20A 240V circuit and all the newer stuff expects at least 32A (40A circuit).

However, since Tesla allows you to set the max.charging amps on a per-location basis, we'll probably be OK. More later as we get out and TRAVEL! ya know, ... when the car is actually ours and fully charged ... some day. [Edit couple days later. Got the Tesla Mobile Connector charger, built an adapter and it works great.]

In case you're wondering, none of the ex-Hertz cars we saw came with a charging cord. MOST of the ones you get directly from Hertz seem to include the cord though, so as usual YMMV.

Update: Yay, calling Tesla again, long phone tree, bad (long) music on hold. and within ten min. of someone knowledgable picking up the phone ... we're in business! Apparently the process stalled out a week ago as the automatic email forwarding thingy  (yes, that's the technical term ;-) did not recognize that we had included the document attachments they were waiting for, and then sat on it for a week. Until someone looked at the whole process and said "Hey, that's not right." Thank goodness for actual people.
Step 10 above? It turns out you don't have to reset the car -IF- it's already been done, which seems to be part of the process when Hertz is moving a car out to a dealer or auction.

Anyway, as stated it's all working now. New profile in the car (it saves ALL your settings and preferences) tied to your phone app and/or key card. We now have our phones connected, we have the spare keycards we ordered ($35 for two) pared up. The new ($250) Tesla charger works well.
We went out almost immediately on a 240 mile road trip and tested Tesla Supercharging (works!) and the CCS charging adapter we bought 'just in case' (Works! and the topic for a future post, also, EVGO still sucks.)
On a cold rainy blowy day, starting from 100% charge at home we could have gone the whole 240 mostly highway miles without stopping to charge if we'd done all of it at 65 mph, but part of the point was to test on-the-road charging. We haven't found anything on the car that doesn't work properly except the power trunk lid that we already knew about.

There will be future posts about the various charging adapters, other accessories we got camping options  and swapping out the inefficient 'sport' wheels and grossly inefficient non-EV tires that Hertz put on it.

We do want to offer kudos, good job! to Erica Timm and the Oregon DEQ Charge Ahead Rebate team. They were pretty quick with feedback about navigating the process.
Keep in mind that the Oregon rebate ($2500 for new vehicles plus up to $5000 on new or used vehicles if you meet a low-moderate income test) only runs through the beginning of June.

Up at the top of this post there are links to everything else we did/needed for the car.

First post on the actual 6500 mi. road trip is here.