24 hours with my first Model S

[spc]

• No spare tire: this is my first vehicle without a spare tire. I hear roadside assistance is great, but I'm fearing being stuck in Alabama with a flat tire or damaged wheel with my wife and two kids and a deadline to meet.

• I was told that people by one of the store gurus that buy this car do not change tires.

• I was unloading groceries from my car and making several trips. Each time I opened the door the A/C started up, then when I closed the door it stopped. Seems inefficient, would be nice perhaps if it just kept running for a bit after leaving the car? But I do like that I can open the door for my wife or kids and the A/C starts before I'm in the car.

This is one of my biggest annoyances, I can not open the doors for my wife and close it, the instant the doors close all goes OFF and that is not nice. Give us a setting to turn ON/OFF this feature and if ON to sense if there is people in the car or leave it on for a presetable amount of time. IF OFF show a button on the console to turn the car on when WE are ready to go.

• With traffic-aware cruise control, the vehicle starts braking too late IMO. I'd like to see it ease off the gas earlier and use only regenerative braking whenever possible. It makes me nervous too, but perhaps I'll get used to it.

YES, great idea, it makes me very nervous and I dont trust it.


Be aware that once you put the car in park the doors will unlock, and the handle goes out, I heard that in some firmware one needs to press park twice for the handle to extend but it is unlocked and one can touch it to open.

One feature that sure would be nice is NOT to unlock all doors at once, Turn ON the screen only give us a button on the screen to lock/unlock the other doors at the same time a button to turn the rest of the system ON. This to me is a safety issue to be able to lock the doors as fast as I can get into the car and not allow anyone to get in from one other door.

 

[MartinAustin]

Be aware that once you put the car in park the doors will unlock, and the handle goes out, I heard that in some firmware one needs to press park twice for the handle to extend but it is unlocked and one can touch it to open.

One feature that sure would be nice is NOT to unlock all doors at once, Turn ON the screen only give us a button on the screen to lock/unlock the other doors at the same time a button to turn the rest of the system ON. This to me is a safety issue to be able to lock the doors as fast as I can get into the car and not allow anyone to get in from one other door.

I've seen this mentioned quite a few times here over the years, from myself included. Why they can't do the driver-door-first behaviour, I don't know. They ought to be able to change it. Hopefully it's on the list and just hasn't bubbled up to the top yet.

No-one at Tesla has ever said anything to me about a time limit on the free, limitless cellular data connection. This includes looking around their web site before and after the purchase, and what the delivery folks said (and it was a full-fledged delivery, not some quick throw-the-keys job). The way I read this, it's going to be free until they say something. This could be any time... I just don't think about it. No-one has had to pay anything yet, including those new folks with LTE cards. I've heard unsubstantiated claims that it's a 7-year plan, and a 4-year plan.

Finally - kirkbauer, great post! You missed out grab handles... and so did Tesla Maybe as the driver we don't miss them as much, but passengers don't have much to hold onto while we're demonstrating what the car can do.

 

[kirkbauer]

Finally - kirkbauer, great post! You missed out grab handles... and so did Tesla Maybe as the driver we don't miss them as much, but passengers don't have much to hold onto while we're demonstrating what the car can do.

Thank you! Actually my wife noticed the lack of handles yesterday, I just forgot to mention it here. Yeah, in a P85D they should definitely be there.

And good point about the auto-unlock/present handles. This morning I stopped to pick up my wife and realized she opened the passenger door without me having to do anything, then realized I had shifted to park. It would be nice to have a bit more control over things like that.

 

[kirkbauer]

Thank you! Actually my wife noticed the lack of handles yesterday, I just forgot to mention it here. Yeah, in a P85D they should definitely be there.

And good point about the auto-unlock/present handles. This morning I stopped to pick up my wife and realized she opened the passenger door without me having to do anything, then realized I had shifted to park. It would be nice to have a bit more control over things like that.

And I forgot one more surprise: no vanity lights? My wife was unpleasantly surprised by that...

 

[evkbns]

• With traffic-aware cruise control, the vehicle starts braking too late IMO. I'd like to see it ease off the gas earlier and use only regenerative braking whenever possible. It makes me nervous too, but perhaps I'll get used to it.

With 6.2.236, this has gotten a lot better for me. I used to have to brake when catching up to a stopped car because TACC would react too late; I let it do its thing now. It's also smoother speeding up/down under other circumstances.

 

[freelancer]

This information is old. It's from the Q4 2013 Shareholder's meeting.

To further enhance the driver experience, new Model S customers will now receive free data connectivity andInternet radio for four years. As an added benefit to our existing Model S customers, the free four year periodstarts on January 1, 2014. To be fair to all, in rare cases a customer may be charged for extreme data use.

Source letter

 

[mbaier]

great review kirkbauer ! I have the same issues with the traffic aware cruise control braking too late and then braking with a vengeance : ) I'd much rather have it work like you described by slowly easing off the accelerator.

 

[csr19us]

You're kidding.... right?
Actually, please tell me you're serious. :scared:

- - - Updated - - -

You have good ideas.
To share them with Tesla, press and hold the Voice Command button and say "Note," followed by twenty seconds or so of your input. Some people like to say "Bug Report" and according to the manual, both work.

Sorry for the no-context "reply" I made above (new member)...
I meant in reply to that ^^

You're kidding.... right?
Actually, please tell me you're serious. :scared:

 

[kirkbauer]

You're kidding.... right?
Actually, please tell me you're serious. :scared:

- - - Updated - - -



Sorry for the no-context "reply" I made above (new member)...
I meant in reply to that ^^

You're kidding.... right?
Actually, please tell me you're serious. :scared:

Yeah, you can do this, although is it intended for actual bugs or also feature suggestions? That I don't know.

 

[W0QR]

Vanity

And I forgot one more surprise: no vanity lights? My wife was unpleasantly surprised by that...

There is sort of. Just push the little dome light and it's almost exactly correct.

 

[AB4EJ]

Note to kirkbauer: very nice original post. You should consider writing an occasional blog.

 

[kirkbauer]

Note to kirkbauer: very nice original post. You should consider writing an occasional blog.

Thanks, I'll consider it!

 

[beeeerock]

The original post in this thread is spot-on in my opinion. A good detailed list!

The items noted that have also struck me as being important (to me at least) are:

• Blind spot warning. As noted, next to useless in its current form. The lack of an indicator on the mirrors is probably the biggest issue and one that I don't see getting solved with subtle dashboard indicators. Given how well the rest of the car has been though out, this feature seems like an afterthought (much like the poorly-placed cupholders... LOL)
• Charge to be finished by... Perhaps there is a way to do this, but I haven't found it. I'd *really* like it to be incorporated! Ideally, in the app. I'd like to be able to wake up on a weekend, see the sun shining and decide to take a jaunt somewhere at, let's say 10 AM, and be able to tell the car to top up the battery from my normal overnight 80% SOC for that time. I don't want to leave the car at 100% for any longer than necessary and I don't want to divert to the local Supercharger to top up before I leave. Same sort of scenario when using destination chargers at hotels... better to tell it in advance that you want to hit the road at 8 AM and have it reach 100% then, instead of at 2 AM!
• Pre-conditioning. I played with this a bit. Perhaps with an extended period of learning it would do better, but I found that if I nipped out of the office for an hour once mid-afternoon, the car decided that was a 'pattern' and stared the AC the next day. I think it would work better (and be better accepted) if enabling the function added a status notice to the setting, indicating 'learning', until it thought it knew enough about your patterns to define them... then it would tell you it had some idea of what you like to do and give a list of days/times that were possible 'regular' driving times. You would then be able to accept or reject the offered ideas and thus eliminate the random stuff I saw while keeping the good stuff (like 'to work', 'return home', 'home for lunch on Wednesdays' etc.). The idea is a good one, but the execution appears to be quite immature so far.

I'd also like some thought given to how low obstacles (curbs for example) are treated in the warning screen. Once too low/close to be seen by the sensors, the obstacle disappears from the screen and might be replaced by the next one (if there is one - a wall for example). It's not clear to me if the system is able to track the continued motion of the car and warn of the obstacle anyway. Sometimes I think it does, but I've haven't been able to confirm it. If the car is continuing to estimate the position of the obstacle even when below view of the sensors, perhaps that obstacle should remain on the screen, but in a different colour, or ghosted or something... with the next one appearing in the typical way at the same time?