derekt75 is now the proud owner of a Model S. Has been for a while I think.
Yes indeed.
Sorry I didn't reply after I took ownership on 12/31, but I didn't realize the thread was going to get revived.
Anyway, I'll never know if I made the right choice. The car is mostly as expected. It's tremendous fun to quietly accelerate. I like not having to worry about the car downshifting when you punch it (although, if you've never driven a car with a dual clutch transmission like the S6 or M5, you should know that those cars shift in a small fraction of a second unlike most automatics). I love that my car is never low on fuel.
Plugging in / unplugging the charger takes less time than I expected. I estimate it costs me about 5 seconds each morning and night, or about one minute per week, which is much less than the time I used to waste going to gas stations. It could be faster if there weren't various flaky issues related to charging.
My Model S has more issues than I was hoping for. I figured it would likely have more things wrong than the Audi, but I was hoping I'd get lucky. The car runs well, though (except for the time it went into limp mode for 20 seconds or so).
The air suspension provides a very smooth ride [at least compared to my SLK32], but the car does sometimes feel a little unsettled to me when the accelerator pedal is floored.
The touchscreen is not as easy to use as I had hoped. Even though I'm somewhat used to it now, my eyes are still off the road longer when I switch radio stations, or change the fan speed than in a car with physical buttons. I still think it was a good choice by Tesla to go with a simple screen than a panel of buttons, but it does take me longer to do many common tasks.
The huge screen will hopefully have more benefits in the future. I'm looking forward to Tesla allowing 3rd parties to develop tools for it. Once they do, it won't be long before someone has parking guidance lines integrated with the backup camera, and someone else has a radio program with 12 presets instead of 6, with the steering wheel controls cycling through the presets instead of scanning.
Anyway, I'm not sure that Jalopnik's "Beta test" characterization is off the mark, but I can say that even in its current state, this car is a ton of fun.
Derek
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MSP kills the S6 in terms of straight-line acceleration to 60MPH (at least) - both in absolute numbers and feel. The twin turbo doesn't punch you in the stomach when you mash the pedal.
However, I felt the S6 was superior in terms of steering feel, handling, interior quality and comfort, backseat headroom, exterior size, and available technology/convenience features. Yes, the 17" touchscreen is cool, but that doesn't make up for missing heads-up display, night vision, multiple exterior cameras, electrically folding exterior mirrors, normal size wheels/tires etc. - at least in my mind. It'd be interesting to see how the cars compare in a slalom run.
I decided to put some money into our existing car and wait to see what EVs come out a few years from now. I don't want to buy another gasser, but I'm not ready to settle for the Model S v1, either.
Well, since you're talking "feel", I thought the S6 felt faster. It has higher peak acceleration, and I think that's what my stomach & tukhus are most sensitive to (rather than the average acceleration over 4 or 5 seconds).
The touchscreen right now is a negative to me, so I don't expect that to make up for any of the missing features in the Model S. What I think could make up for it is the car getting energy at home, the silence when accelerating, and never needing to shift.
Waiting for Tesla to polish their offering would be nice, but my roadster was inappropriate for transporting my baby.
