We have finally crossed the 100k miles milestone. I figured I'd give some insight to what our experience has been. We bought this car as a inventory model for $72,500 before any tax credits. We were able to max out the tax credit thankfully getting this car for essentially $65k. We love our car and look forward to driving it every day.
Pros:
Drives very smooth even after 100k miles
Other cars can hardly compete in terms of passing or off-the-line power
VERY hard to get the car to lose traction
minimum 200 miles of range in the worst conditions
Navigation assist
Software updates still
Battery still charges at 100% 248 rated miles as of yesterday.
It's so Quite
Cons:
We've had 5 door handles go out on us. I fixed one and Tesla fixed the other 4
12v battery replaced within 3 months of delivery
Major battery failure a month after delivery
Drive Unit has been replaced due to noise 3 times.
Pano Roof stuck closed about a month after delivery
Few months ago we had a coolant leak that only cost a couple hundred for Tesla to fix
Unable to get to Diagnostics menu even this far after warranty
Unsure if Tesla will ever allow upgrading our battery
At the time we lived near Omaha when we first purchased the car and Superchargers were basically nonexistent on our routes to family mine in Jefferson City, MO and Humboldt, IA. We had to Charge for the first few trips to Missouri using the Topeka Supercharger which resulted in a 215 mile stretch. We were very excited once Independence opened up and made that stretch MUCH easier. Still we are hopeful for an eventual St. Joseph, MO supercharger due to the distances between Council Bluffs, IA or Lincoln, NE to Independence. We stop every time at the CHAdeMO at HyVee in St. Joe to make the trip comfortably. We now live near Grand Island, NE and even though it added 2 hours to our trips to see family we really enjoy the car. We are NEVER getting a ICE vehicle again. We just have our Tesla and our 2000 Ford Expedition that we hope to replace in ~3-5 years with a Model X. AutoPilot was available when we bought ours but it would have resulted in a ~3 month wait plus over $20k more in costs. The price of our configured car through the Design Studio at the time was around $95k so to us it was a no brainer. Do we wish we had autopilot? Yes. Would we go back and do it over again and pay over $20k for Autopilot? No way.
This car is fun enough to drive to not "need" autopilot. And when it comes to AWD we haven't experienced a time where AWD would have helped us (other than for acceleration). Winter time comes and we put on our winter tires and that more than makes up for no front motor plus we are able to keep a full sized spare tire in the frunk. We have had only one flat tire on this car and it was due to hitting a pothole. We have 19" btw. After that long experience of having to be towed from Mound City, MO to Council Bluff, IA due to no one being in stock of that particular size between the two places we don't ever leave without our spare tire.
Getting to the Battery Failure Tesla couldn't have been any more accommodating if I remember correctly it ended up being a blown fuse within the main traction battery pack which had to be sent to California to be repaired. My wife had drove it to work that day and go off work to find Several alerts on the main screen. 12v battery issue, Car won't Start, and one other alert that I cannot remember. My wife called Tesla and they paid for a uber to take her home and the next day they had a tech from the service center in Minneapolis bring a loaner down to drive and they took ours back up to diagnose and fix the issue. They found the issue sent our pack back to California and gave us our car back with a loaner pack. Once our pack was back the again brought us a loaner car and took ours back to swap packs out. They no longer do this but we were amazed that Tesla went so far to do that for us and to make sure we were happy. We have very little to complain about when it comes to Tesla. No other company comes close in our experience to keeping their owners happy. Tesla is the reason that owners will keep buying their cars.
In summary for those who are still on the fence and are afraid of missing out on some cool new feature that will be implemented the day after you take delivery this is what I got to say. Don't wait. Any Tesla even a classic like ours is MUCH more fun to drive than any other car on the streets today. You get free supercharging to be able to drive long distances (assuming you get a CPO car anyhow) and you don't ever have to hear that engine noise or feel that vibration anymore.
Our Gateway Drug to Tesla was a Nissan Leaf and while the Leaf was inferior in many ways it still had some features that Tesla doesn't (my favorite of which was it showed your energy consumption split between motor, HVAC, and accessories). Don't bash other EV's just because they aren't a Tesla. Tesla has the charging infrastructure and that's the big reason we didn't wait for gen 2.0 of the Leaf. Tesla in my opinion will have no problem selling cars because of this huge benefit even if new owners may have to pay for the electricity.
