The Oatmeal calls it The Intergalactic SpaceBoat of Light and Wonder. I just call it Pretty Red Supercar. I got my Tesla in June 2014 (a little over a year ago), and I’ve always loved it. And every time I try to drive another car (for example, because I flew to California to visit my family and didn’t bring my car with me), that I was reminded of just how awesome the Tesla really is.
Driving
The three features that really stand out about the Tesla Model S are the power, the smoothness, and the quietness.
To be fair, I drove a Camry for many years, and my family has a lot of low-end cars (Accords, Altimas, Camries, Corollas), so the difference between a low-end car and a pretty red supercar are huge. (The difference between a Tesla and a $90k sports car? I’ll let you know once I’ve driven the $90k sports car.)
The first thing is the power. And by power, I mean raw acceleration. For the longest time, I was wondering why people would sit at the line when the light turns green. At first I thought it was because they were timid. This is only half true. I later realized it’s because they didn’t have the power to just shoot off the line. And not just at the starting line. If I’m driving down the road, and I want to pass somebody, I can just press on the gas (which really doesn’t involve any real gas), and just shoot up ahead of them. Or if you’re not an aggressive Californian driver like me, if you just want to merge onto the highway, the Tesla brings you from local road speed to highway speed effortlessly. Contrast this with my Camry, which struggled just to hit 35 mph.
Not just the power, but also the smoothness. I don’t know if there’s something about the suspension that absorbs all the lumps in the road, but I rarely have a bumpy ride in my Tesla, even when I’m driving. But I’m more concerned about a different kind of smoothness. Since the Tesla doesn’t have any gears, any transmission, or even an engine, the power curve is really smooth. When you step on the gas, the Tesla quickly and smoothly comes up to speed. There’s not a sudden bump as the engine revs. There aren’t any gaps when the gears shift. Just a smooth curve from zero to whatever your preferred driving speed is.
While we’re on the subject of power and smoothness, driving a Tesla teaches you to be very light-footed. Since the Tesla has so much power, you rarely have to push on the gas. The Tesla also has R-braking (regenerative braking), which for the laymen means that when you let off the gas (slightly or fully), the system saps energy from the motor to recharge the battery. This has the effect of slightly braking your car, which means you rarely have to step on the brake. (And since you rarely use your mechanical brakes, it really extends the lifespan of your brakes.) This means when you’re driving, you usually lightly press and hold the gas pedal. As opposed to many heavy-footed drivers, who hard press the gas pedal to get up to speed, then coast, then hard press the gas to get back up to speed.
This is a really long-winded way of saying that the Tesla trains you to drive in a much more efficient light-footed way, and when you drive a non-electric car, it totally throws you off balance. And since you’re driving light-footed now, not only is the Tesla itself driving smoothly, but you’re also a smooth driver. Everybody wins. (And it only took me a day to adjust to the light-footed one-pedal style of driving. So unless you’re the most stubborn of heavy-footed drivers…)
Finally, the quietness. The loudest part of driving is always the road noise. That’s sadly never going to change. The second loudest part is the sound of the engine running. Some people like loud engines. I don’t. And since the Tesla has no engine, there’s no engine noise at all. (That said, there’s a tiny bit of motor noise that you can’t hear except in the quietest of situations.) I’ve managed to sneak up on people with my Tesla because they couldn’t hear me coming. (Courtesy honks are common when someone’s blocking you in a parking lot but doesn’t realize you’re there.)
If you like driving and have only ever driven cars in the $20k range, you’ll definitely love driving a Tesla.
Charging
The 85 can go 265 miles on a full charge. If you have a home charger (and you really should, more on this later), you can drive around during the day and not have to worry about charging, then when you get home, you can plug in at night and start all over again. (Unless you’re a professional driver that racks up more than 265 miles in a day, or unless you commute more than 130 miles away. But let’s be honest, who does that?) Hell, if you spend most of your time in a 100 mile radius of your home charger, you’ll never have to worry about so-called “range anxiety”.
Like I said before, you definitely want a home charger. Even though the Tesla has the power and the range, it still takes a while to charge. Even the superchargers take 30-45 minutes to get you a decent amount of charge. (More on the superchargers later.) Contrast this with gas stations, which take 10 minutes top to fill your tank. And not only that, superchargers don’t exist in most big cities. They only show up in small towns, spaced out about every 100 miles or so. So if don’t own, or if you don’t have permission to alter your garage, don’t bother getting a Tesla.
Traveling long distances in a Tesla is fine. (Ish. What you do once you get there is a different story. More on that later.) Like I said, there are superchargers every 100 miles or so, so there’s always a place to charge. That said, waiting at superchargers will slow you down slightly. A 13-hour drive from Seattle to San Jose will take about 15 hours. That said, unless you’re the most hardcore of road-trippers, you’ll definitely have to stop and take a break, so you might as well take a break at a supercharger. Most of them are located in a small town strip mall or a motel, near a coffee shop or a fast food joint, so you can take a break and grab something to eat or drink.
There’s a trick to using superchargers, though. The more empty your battery, the faster your car charges. So the strategy is to charge just enough to make it the next supercharger (or to use the spaceship analogy, make the next jump), plus whatever amount of buffer you’re comfortable with, and then go. Waiting for the car to fully charge will really drain your time. As you get more experienced with taking road trips in your Tesla, the buffer will get smaller and smaller, and the so-called “range anxiety” goes away.
What about driving in a city away from home? Well, here’s where the Tesla falls behind a traditional gas car. Most major cities are 30-60 miles away from the nearest supercharger. And if you’re away from your home charger, you don’t really have a place to go to charge your car. Sure, the Tesla can charge at any old EV station (they have adapters and everything), most of the public ones are either crowded or expensive, and either way, they’re slow. So if you’re visiting family in San Jose or going on a shopping day in Portland, you’re gonna have to budget your battery carefully, or find a charging station and hope that you can get enough charge out of it to keep going.
Basically, if you spend almost all of your driving within 130 miles of your home city (like I do), then the Tesla is a great car for you. On the other hand, if you tend to go on long road trips and like exploring other cities by car… Well, the Tesla can certainly get you there, but you might not enjoy rationing your battery. (That said, the recent software updates supposedly help with that.)
Miscellany
The Tesla doesn’t have a key. It has a remote with a proximity sensor that detects when you’re near your car. You can configure your Tesla to automatically unlock when you’re near and lock automatically when you walk away. Or if you’re more security minded, you can manually unlock the car (either by pressing on the door handle or by clicking the remote) and manually lock the car (with the remote).
Since there’s no ignition and no key slot to turn to start the car (and really, no concept of “starting” the car), when you want to drive, you just switch from park to reverse (or drive) and just start going. And when you’re done, you put the car into park and walk away. This has led to some hilarious incidents this past holiday season, while driving a borrowed Accord, where I parked the car, and then just walked away, and I had to be reminded that the keys were still in the ignition and the engine was still running.
As mentioned in the Oatmeal comic, there’s also an app (for both Android and iOS) that talks to your car. You can lock and unlock your car from your phone (and even “start” it, though I never tried it). You can also turn the A/C on and off, adjust the temperature, pop or close the sunroof, and (as the Oatmeal loves to mention) remotely honk your horn to freak out gawkers. The Tesla also reports its location to the phone, so if you ever lose your car at a parking lot (like the Gorge Amphitheater), you can zero in on your car very quickly.
The onboard display is also a huge boon. Passengers are usually impressed by the big display in the middle of the car, but the real winner is the minimap on the dashboard behind the wheel, which gives you turn-by-turn directions and local terrain without pulling your eyes away from the road. Navigating with Google Maps on my phone is just not the same.
The sound system is also pretty amazing. (At least compared to a low-end car like an Accord.) Music comes through with clarity that you just don’t get from low-end cars. There’s no CD player (because according to Elon Musk, CDs are outdated tech), but you can get music from a USB drive (or over bluetooth from your phone, I believe), and you can get internet radio from Slacker (along with, you know, traditional radio). The only downside is that there’s no playlist option when you play MP3s over USB. (Originally, there was no shuffle option either, but they patched it in. Hopefully, playlists will come in a future patch.)
My only real complaint about the Tesla is that the web browser is too slow. But hey, most cars don’t have web browsers, so it’s not even a real complaint.