Charging the Car
Jess’s post on Reddit:
We just came home yesterday and we had rented the Tesla Model Y. Charging stations were easy to find but I also had to download 4 apps. The Isorka app never accepted any of my credit cards so I didn’t end up using it – just drove to another station. I also found out – if you don’t have good internet/data service, you can’t use the apps. One station I went to on the way to Diamond Beach – my phone said I had some signal but I wasn’t getting enough data and the connection kept failing. The coffee shop had wifi but it didn’t reach to the charger!
I eventually had to download an e-sim for a different cellular carrier to get signal enough, but it took me 90 minutes walking from the charger, to the shop, and back a zillion times to figure it out. That was really frustrating. I plan to yell at MINT mobile for selling me crappy service. Maybe I can get my “minternational plan” money back. MINT worked fine in Reykjavik, this issue happened down south.
These charges are places at local businesses but those businesses don’t seem to have any information on them or ability to help. It’s not like a US gas station where the attendant can take money – You mostly need the app. There are at least 4 different brands. One of them let me pay at the charger as a guest, the rest did not. There are no gift cards or cash pay anything – you have to link your credit card.
The instructions are in Icelandic. Google translate doesn’t support Icelandic. Some of the apps had a help section with most of the words in English but it was hard. The locals were nice and tried to help but I guess they had good internet service from their own carrier and had never had the same problems.
There aren’t many big US-style gas stations with stores – the store, the charger, the fuel pumps were all different brands sometimes. The fuel pumps seemed to work with apps as well – not sure if you could pay inside.
Once you got the charger working, the Tesla told you how much charge you could get (80% mostly) and how long it would take (30 minutes mostly). That was easy. The Tesla navigation systems was not as good as Google maps. But mostly adequate.
My thoughts on charging:
Going over our experience with them, I offer this advice:
- Get an eSim for a local ISP
- Use a debit card, not a credit card (I recommend not on your regular account, but it needs to have several hundred dollars in it for the hold that gets put on it)
- Use Tesla branded chargers when possible (assuming you rented a Tesla)
Range anxiety shouldn’t have been a thing in a place as densely provisioned with chargers as Iceland, but it was. These fast chargers will only take you to 80% (due to how the battery reacts to these fast charges). If you have access to a slow charger (like you would at home if you owned a Tesla or at some hotels), you can charge to 100%. We never had one, so that 480 km range was never more than 384 km (in theory). However, you don’t want to run the battery too far when driving across desolate terrain that can plausibly be confused for Mars. I got nervous going under 20%. That cuts the range down to a net 60% of capacity or 288 km (in theory). The other factor to consider is that the battery runs everything: the heater, the lights, the computers, the wiper blades, etc. Oh, and the battery is sensitive to low temperatures, further lowering the range.
In practice, we averaged 4.5 km / 1% of charge, effectively covering a 250-270 km range. The only area that really worried me was crossing Skeiðarársandur, the vast glacial outwash plain between Vik and Höfn. Nothing grows there; it’s all sediment washed out in glacier melt floods. It looks solid, but it’s not stable soil. It also features the longest bridge in Iceland, the 904m one-lanehat crosses the Skeiðará. That’s also a pretty boring drive, long views of…silt.
Given all this, would I rent a Tesla again? Sure. The next trip will be much smoother since we’ve learned how not to do it. The next section to explore is the West Fjords, which may call for a true 4WD vehicle with ground clearance. We’ll just have to suck up the $8/gallon gas.
Other thoughts about the Tesla
For this trip, I reserved a Tesla Model Y. I wanted to see what it was like driving an all-electric car for a few days to see if this is a practical option for us at some point in the future. In Iceland, hot water and electricity are practically free courtesy of sitting on top of a pocket of magma and getting rained on a lot. Given 100% green energy, they are all in on electric cars there. Every 4th car is a Tesla or the equivalent Kia, Dacia, BMW, or Honda.
This one was the dual-motor AWD with grippy winter tires. A thousand-pound battery on the floor creates a low center of gravity, so it handled amazingly well. Electric motors are insensitive to your current speed, unlike a conventional ICE-Transmission setup, so you have the full torque available at ANY speed. Punching it while already doing 60 kph will throw you back into your seat and get you to 110 in 2-3 seconds. Even on the best stretch of Route 1, 110 kph is aggressive.
I have long considered the driver’s seat in my RAM far and away the best chair I own. Even in that, after 4 or 5 hours my hip or back will start to hurt. That was not a problem with this car. Very comfortable.
It has a million cameras. My RAM has a fancy backup camera, handy for a pickup truck. This thing gives you a crazy panorama. There are NO blind spots. Plus, it accurately represents the car and its relative position to obstacles (other cars). You can park this thing on a dime. It’s also handy in the small world of a European city.
Now, the bad. Three things were a problem (aside from charging): Steep learning curve, nanny mode, and inaccurate maps.
Learning Curve: Coming from 4 decades of driving “normal” American cars, there’s a lot that’s different with the Tesla’s controls. Not necessarily bad; it’s like the difference between Windows and macOS. MacOS isn’t wrong (probably), but it does things differently. I was unprepared for how much rethinking they have done with car controls. It took me 20 minutes to familiarize myself enough to be ready to pull off the rental lot. Obviously, if you buy one, you’ll get training and have everything set up nicely. But, Iceland is a very self-serve culture, and there was no one we could even ask how to get off the lot, much less how to turn the wipers to intermittent.
Nanny mode: The car really does have 26 cameras, and it generates a very accurate cartoon of the real world on the console, including lane markings (when they exist). It didn’t have Autopilot or whatever they called it. I wouldn’t have used it in any case. What it did do was decide if you were too close to something (in any direction), drifting (in its opinion) out of your lane, or a host of other tedious judgment calls. When one of these events occurred, there would be beeping, a voice telling you (in a tone you would use on a four-year-old) what grave error you were making, and a flashing red message on the console.
In the case of lane departure, it would attempt to correct your steering and sometimes apply brakes. Oh no, you don’t. As soon as I could stop safely, we dove into the menu system and turned ALL that crap off. I am driving, full stop. In addition, Icelandic roads are crap. If I want to swerve to avoid a giant pothole, I do not want the car pulling me back into it.
Even with nanny mode completely disabled, the lane departure warning would go off at least once an hour for no apparent reason. I was driving along the middle of the lane, doing nothing “dangerous.” Clearly, the car’s sensor suite got confused and flipped out even though it should have been off anyway. This. This is why I will NEVER trust full self-driving from any car maker, ever. I have been in IT for 40 years. I know how hard it is to get software right. Trusting your life to a sensor suite and a program that is easily confused is lunacy.
Navigation Errors: Generally, the navigation system was OK. It handled us butchering Icelandic place names well. It knew where all the charging stations were (for all the good that did). On a large scale, the routes were reasonable. In Iceland, there’s often only one or at most two ways to get to any particular place. However, there were a few glaring issues. Twice, we were routed over a bridge that was no longer in service. Once, I was told to turn onto a road that was pedestrian only (complete with concrete posts), and once, I was sent down a road that did not go through. Lack of updates? Not keeping up with Icelandic road changes? Not all of these changes were new. We started double-checking routes with Google Maps.
Road Conditions
Packing
You’ve packed too much. Really, you have.
I don’t travel a lot. By travel, I mean fly. Over the last 10 years, I’ve had to make quarterly(ish) visits to Dallas for work, and during the previous 3 years, I’ve flown to Vancouver once and Reykjavik twice. Each trip, my packing gets tighter. Jess and I just reviewed our packing from this trip, and we both concluded we could have taken fewer clothes and other items.
For this trip, we both checked full-size suitcases, and I carried a photography backpack with all my camera gear and small personal items I am unwilling to check (e.g., medicines). I also had a photo shoulder bag as my “personal item.” On the flight, it had snacks, chargers and cables, an iPad, and a Kindle.
On the ground, it had the camera items I expected to need for that day’s shooting. The backpack stayed in the car with everything I didn’t need. The reason? My back. Even a mirrorless system adds up. I will go into this more in the photography section.
In addition to her checked bag, Jess carried a backpack of many pockets that held all her essentials for a six-hour flight. On the ground, that stayed in the car, and often, her purse did as well. She just needed her phone.
We didn’t plan on any fancy dinners, and it’s not that cold in May (45°F ± 5). Layers are the way to go, and wool is the best base layer. Artificial fibers stink quickly, but wool doesn’t and keeps you warm even when wet. Add additional layers as needed and have a wind/water-proof layer.
I took a pair of large waterproof hiking boots that I could have left at home. I didn’t have them on at Skógafoss, where I needed them to get the shot I wanted. I did wear them to two other stops, but I could have gotten by just fine with my trail shoes. I would still take a spare pair of shoes, but these boots took up a fourth of the suitcase.
Photography
To do serious photography, you need at least three lenses. You need a wide-angle lens for those open vistas, a long zoom to get those puffins and other critters, and something mid-range. In Nikon parlance, the holy trinity. For pros, that’s 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm all in f/2.8. I had that set when I had my D810, which was heavy.
In Nikon’s Z system, fewer pieces of glass are needed for the same optical performance, so the lenses are shorter and lighter. I made my kit even lighter by opting for the prosumer f/4 lenses. They were way cheaper and lighter, and the newer sensors more than made up for that one stop of light lost.
For this trip, I took my 14-24mm f/4 S wide-angle zoom, my Tamron 70-300mm f/5.6-6.3 telephoto, and my primary lens, the 24-120mm f/4 S.
I took my Peak Design Aluminum Travel Tripod, a Pixel TW-283RX Wireless Remote Trigger, a K+F Concept CP filter, and adapter rings—none of which I needed. I left the graduated ND filters at home. I could have used those at the ocean. If I had them, I’d have needed the tripod and release. The tripod is very compact, but it does weigh 8 lbs.
If ocean shots are an option next time, I will bring it all; otherwise, that stuff won’t make the cut. I also have a 24mm f/1.8 as a budget astro lens. If Aurora is possible, I will bring that, the tripod, and the trigger.
I worked out of my new ThinkTank Retrospective 7M shoulder bag in the field. I like this a lot. It’s smaller and squishier than my previous bag, both good things. It holds the camera with a lens on it and has room for two more. But that’s a bit heavy, I usually only took one extra lens and had extra batteries in the other pocket.
The backpack is a LowePro Fastpack BP 250 AW III, which I also like very much. It has lots of pockets. It holds my laptop, the camera body with the 24-120 lens on it, and both of the other lenses. In addition, there’s a top area for all the little junk you might want. It’s well-padded and comfortable to wear, even fully loaded.
What I would do differently:
- Leave the tripod, CP filter, and the remote at home
- Maybe bring the ND filters.
- Bring a second body (Jess’s Z5 that we use for eBay product shots) to reduce lens changing in the open.It would also give her the option to take better photos than an iPhone can.
Each night, I copied the day’s photos from both cards to my laptop (but did not erase anything) and synced that with Google Drive. That’s three copies; even if I lose everything on the trip, the photos are safe.
Both cards. My Z6II has two card slots, a CFExpress slot, and an SD slot. I shoot RAW (NEF) to the CFExpress card and JPG to the SD card. So that’s really four copies of every shot.
Beds
Iceland is in Europe, and there’s just one size of bed, which we would call a double. It’s wide enough that you can comfortably sleep in any orientation by yourself. If you want a “double,” what we would call a queen, they just shove two of these together. Well, they must hook together in some fashion. They never separated on us, but it was two separate mattresses. So, in practice, this was no big deal.
What was a little odd was that you had the fitted sheet, this body pillow thing, and a regular pillow—no top sheet or coverlet or anything. This setup assumes the room temperature is comfortably warm, you don’t need any covering, and the pillow supports your preferred sleeping position. Weird.
Oh, but this is Iceland. Heat is free. We enter the hotel room and set the temperature to what we would at home when it’s 40 degrees outside, and that’s probably cooler than most Americans would set, so we are used to blankets. The locals always have the heat on full blast and moderate the temperature by how much arctic wind they let in the window.
Once we figured all this out, we started setting the room temperature closer to Icelandic “normal” and were comfortable with this body pillow thing.