The Yorkie Claire accompanied me to a Supercharger today in Hadley Massachusetts, conveniently located just a mile from the Paradise City Arts Festival, a favorite event of my wife Darlene's. Fun for everyone.

We drove about 100 miles from Cambridge to the festival, near Northampton. This was my longest drive yet, and it gave me a good chance to settle into familiarity with AutoSteer, automatic lane changing, and enhanced cruise control. At one point I realized that I was driving less well than the AI could. Not always, and not in every situation. But on a stretch of road without exits that puzzled the Autopilot, with average traffic--that's when the Autopilot seems safer than my own driving. 

I also met a guy Miles Andrew Chilson at the charging station who is an administrator of the Tesla Owners New England group on Facebook. My application to join is pending. 

Our Tesla Model 3 was briefly plugged into a 110-volt outlet in my parents' garage in Cambridge, Mass. But after about a day of charging, I received a notification on my iPhone via the Tesla app that the charging had ended. 

We turned to ace electrician Pat Flaherty, who has looked after my parents' electrical equipment for decades, to figure out what happened. His diagnosis suggests that if you are going to charge a Tesla in your garage, you should set up a separate circuit for it, lest the combination of the car and, say a garage door opener or two, might trip the breaker.

I had fun popping the front trunk from 2,000 miles away, so Pat could put the charging cables away when we determined they wouldn't be needed in the garage for the next week while we're in Denver.

The app shows that, without the charging cable attached, the car lost 5 miles of range the first day and 2 miles the second. So that's close to what the Tesla guy in Dedham had predicted--a drain of about 1 percent of the battery's range for each day it's unused and unplugged.

In this episode, we go looking for the Tesla Supercharger station in Cambridge, Mass., and learn there is a charge for topping off the battery on a Model 3. 

Also, a friend of mine in Maine suggests Kennebunk's new Supercharger station, now under construction, may contain even faster next-generation Superchargers. Here's hoping!

I am in Denver for a couple of weeks and left Tess charging from a 110-volt outlet in my parents' garage in Cambridge. This was working well until the outlet tripped itself off with a built-in circuit breaker. 

Also, how come Tess would not unlock the door when I approached with the Tesla app on my iPhone the other day. Naturally, it happened during a downpour. I figured out that I needed to wake up the phone for it to send a Bluetooth handshake to the car. 

If you have comments or questions, please email them to me at PodChronicles AT gmail DOT Com. Thanks for listening!

Above: Tess, our Model 3, this morning at St. Camillus Church in Arlington, Massachusetts.

In this episode I consider a lapse in my attention this morning on the way home from a meeting.

Tess was moving me through stop-and-go traffic, inching along safely, stopping when appropriate, then waiting for a gap before resuming forward motion. I might have been inclined, if driving a traditional car, to take advantage of the low-risk driving conditions to add a few favorites to the radio stations list. But with Traffic Aware Cruise Control and AutoSteer running, I noticed that I felt a little safer paying a little more attention to the radio than to driving. This set off a flashing yellow light in mind that I want to remember as I become increasingly confident in Tess's ability to take over tasks I've been doing myself for 50 years.

How will I recalibrate my level of attention as a result of this new technology? I don't think it makes sense to pay exactly as much attention as I did when everything in the car was controlled by me, the driver. That would be like demanding the same mindfulness watching a Cuisinart food processor slice carrots as you'd employ slicing them manually with a sharp knife, right?

That said, I don't want to train myself to apply "just enough" attention driving the Tesla. I want my normal driving to be based on quite a bit more mindfulness than necessary. Where is that level of mindfulness? To be determined. 

If you would like to share your experience with a Tesla or similarly equipped car, please email me at podchronicles AT gmail.com. Same request if you have any questions about the car or something I've talked about. 

My grandson Jake, 4, helped charge the Model 3 this afternoon at a ChargePoint charging station in Watertown, Mass. In about 20 minutes we added about 12 miles of range to Tess. It cost $10 to set up an account with an iPhone app, but the electricity was free.

Also in this episode, I will try to explain what it feels like to drive in an entirely new way using AutoSteer. The car's steering wheel moves to track the road at low speeds and during highway travel. My hands hold the wheel just as they have for 50 years, but now they move where the wheel moves itself. Except--and you need to be VERY ready for exceptions--when the car decides to exit the highway before you intended. It's all fascinating to me, and I hope you will enjoy this episode all about a day when a couple of notable firsts were experienced thanks to our new Tesla.

Today I picked up our Tesla Model 3, named Tess, at the dealership in Dedham, Massachusetts. This episode captures the orientation session I received from a very sharp Tesla rep who used to work art Apple, as well as my observations at the end of the day after driving Tess to Cambridge. 

I have not yet tried the auto-driving features, self parking, and other capabilities. But I love the way the car handles and the magic-carpet silence and power of the ride. If I could wave a wand I'd eliminate the sunroof, which has just one filter setting that lets a lot of sunlight into the car on a sunny day like today. But that's about my only quibble. 

A Tesla Model 3 we saw in a Boston showroom in January

After a six-year hiatus, I am dusting off this podcast in order to share with you our experience with the Tesla Model 3 that I will pick up on Tuesday, May 9, 2018, in Dedham, Massachusetts. Darlene stood in line outside the Denver Tesla showroom on a cold day in March two years ago, which put us in line to receive one of the first non-employee Model 3s to be delivered.

I am studying a Model 3 Owner's Manual that I found online and watching YouTube videos created by enthusiastic early owners of the car.