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.