Major Tom: Month 5 — The Data Starts Talking
Five months in, the numbers just don’t lie. I’m not going to use the word boring because this is anything but, so how about…predictable?
That was always the point. I was getting fatigued from always having some sort of maintenance to do on my Tahoe, and a high mile car with my driving style wasn’t really a great decision looking back on it now.
I didn’t buy this car because it was interesting. I leased it because I had a long commute and wanted to spend less money doing it. Lower cost per mile, predictable expense, something that just works.
And to its credit, it does. It does it really well.
5-Month Snapshot (Real World Data)
- Odometer: 25,141 miles
- Miles driven since delivery: 7,405
- Energy used in car: 2,023 kWh
- Energy used from the wall: 2,356 kWh
- Average efficiency: 273.2 Wh per mile
- Real cost per mile: about $0.031
That’s the honest number. Not what the screen says, but what I actually pay.
What the Car Says vs What It Costs
The car reports about 273 Wh per mile.
The wall says closer to 318.
That difference comes from charging losses, conditioning, and everything else that happens in the background.
It’s about a 17 percent gap.
The car tells you how efficiently you drive. The power company tells you what it costs to live with it.
The Tahoe Math
This is why I did this in the first place.
If I was still driving the Tahoe, I would be averaging about 15 miles per gallon. At 4 dollars a gallon, here’s what that looks like over the same 7,405 miles, about 493 gallons of fuel. Just under $2,000 in gas.
Major Tom so far has used about 234 dollars in electricity.
That’s roughly 1,700 dollars saved in five months. That’s real money.
That’s the whole selling point (plus having a warranty).
And so far, it holds up.
Lease Math Is Still Math
This is a lease. That matters. This isn’t my car, and its not a permanent part of the family.
Everything I do with this car runs through that lens.
Cost per mile matters. Mileage pacing matters. What I turn on and pay for matters.
Which brings us to Full Self Driving.
FSD and Lease Math
Full Self Driving (supervised) a.k.a. FSD is a 99 dollar a month subscription. Its in the news a lot with Tesla lovers and haters.
From a lease math standpoint, it makes no sense. The good news is that you can turn it off/ back on from one month to the next.
It does not reduce my cost per mile. It does not help the economics. It is a pure add on.
If I spread that cost across my current mileage, it adds roughly:
About 495 dollars over five months.
That works out to about 6.7 cents per mile.
On top of the ~3 cents I’m paying for electricity.
Yikes. That’s when the math starts to fall apart.That puts me right around 9.8 cents per mile all-in. Still cheaper than gas., but no longer the “this is insanely cheap” story.
Which is exactly why I turned it on anyway.
A Full-Circle Moment
I’ve been a Star Trek nerd since I was a kid.
When I was nine, my dad took me to see William Shatner, he used to do speaking tours around the US in the 70s..
This was the first time I’ve had the chance to do that again. I saw an ad for an upcoming Shatner Live event and signed my reluctant wife and I up for a Wednesday date night.
The event was a screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, followed by Shatner speaking.
And yeah, this part was intentional, I decided to let the car drive us there.
A car named Major Tom, driving my wife and me to see Captain Kirk.
Nine year old me would have thought that was science fiction, and it is.
FSD in the Real World
I really enjoyed the free trial for the first month of the car, until it was cut off early by a glitchy pillar camera. I haven’t spent much time with the newer version of FSD, but my “one generation behind” version is really good. At least in my driving environment. It’s not perfect, its not magic, but its very good. I did some videos for my Youtube showing the difference between the Auto Lane Centering/ Smart Cruise Control (formerly know as Autopilot).
Its good enough that I stopped thinking about it for parts of the drive.
There were still moments where I would have done something different. You are always responsible.
But it handled the job.
That is where it sits for me right now. Functional. I can’t justify keeping it on for the duration of the lease, but I will treat myself for special occasions, trips, etc.
HW3, HW4, and Reality
This car is running Hardware 3 (HW3) with the AMD Ryzen chipset.
Mid 2023 cars moved to the newer/ faster/ stronger Hardware 4 version (HW4). Better cameras, better low light performance, more processing headroom.
On paper, it is a real upgrade.
In practice, it does not change my daily experience in a meaningful way..
Right now, HW3 works.
The bigger question is how long that remains true as the software keeps evolving. We are expecting a new software version in June of this year that has a lot of the HW4 software’s features.
This Was Not Supposed to Be This Interesting
I bought this car to solve a cost problem.
Now I am letting it drive me to a Star Trek event.
That was not part of the plan.
I'm still not a Tesla fanboy. I still call out the flaws. There are inconsistencies. There are moments where it does something that makes no sense.
But I have a growing respect for how much is built into it.
The Toybox
There is more here than I expected.
Some of it is serious. Some of it is ridiculous.
Actually Smart Summon is a perfect example.
It sounds like a joke.
Then you watch the car move through a parking lot by itself.
Not perfectly. Not every time.
But enough to make you stop and think about what you are actually looking at.
The Car Keeps Changing
At some point this month, the car updated itself again.
Software version 2026.8.6.1.
No service visit. No appointment.
It just changed.
That is still a strange thing to get used to. Most manufacturers plan obsolescence.
This thing updates like an iPhone.
The Unexpected Test Case
Originally my wife was not sold on this at all.
She expected it to be slow and boring. She came from Porsche and Corvette experience and did not expect to be impressed.
She did not care about the tech. She did not love the idea of EVs being pushed.
Then she drove it.
The turning point was the fart lock chime.
Which is ridiculous and completely real.
After that, she started noticing how fast it actually is. Sport mode changed her perspective. She realized how easily it blends into traffic.
It is a sleeper.
Now she wants to drive it every chance she gets.
Mileage Check- Here’s the catch
This is where the lease reality shows up.
At five months, I should be around 6,250 miles.
I am at 7,405.
That is about 1,150 miles over pace, or roughly 290 dollars in projected overage.
So yes, it is cheap to run.
I am just using it more than I planned.
The Part I Have Not Had to Do
This month, nothing broke.
No service visits. No warnings. No time in the garage.
That is a big change.
Because with the Tahoe, this is the phase where I would be fixing something. On my back in the garage on a weekend, staying ahead of the next issue. I can get used to this kind of boring.
Where It Gets Interesting
Now it is about what happens next. I’m technically responsible for the “maintenance” on the car, which consists of cabin/ HEPA filters, tire rotations, and wiper blades/ washer fluid. I’ll get to those and shoot some videos. I’m tracking tire wear and will do a full 5000 mile report (coming soon).
Wear. Seasonal changes. Long term cost. What actually breaks.
This is where the real story starts.
Final Thought
I leased this car for the math.
Now my wife and I fight over who gets to use it for everything else.
What I did not expect is that it would turn into something more than that.
And I'm still figuring out what to do with that.
