Hi All,
Long time lurker, and wanted to write up my story so far in case it is an inspiration or help to others.
Executive summary, tl;dr: Giving back my diesel to VW and leasing a Tesla. Renting one for the weekend is highly recommended. Get the Autopilot.
I bought a first year Jetta TDI (2009 model year) 8 years ago, and VW is now buying back all of these. In my case I'm getting about $12,500 hopefully within the next 60 days.
Having caught the Tesla fever a while back, this appears to be an opportunity to get into a lease. I'm saddened I missed the 2 year lease terms, but I'm making the 3 year work.
Since even the lease is a big deal financially, I decided to do a deep dive and rent a 2016 S70D with AP from Turo.com for a weekend. I was able to do this spur of the moment and within 30 minutes i took command and running weekend errands from about 11am saturday to 8pm sunday. At $144 per day, I found this to be well spent. I strongly recommend potential owners doing the same. I learned quite a bit with my extended test drive.
Firstly, I wasn't going to even touch the AP, as I didn't think I would use it. I then tried it out a few times as 101 in the bay area did what it did best: turn into a parking lot. In both cases, having the AP cruise along and automatically slow for traffic and manage the throttle made this much more bearable.
Additionally, using just adaptive cruise on a surface street with stop lights can relieve a bit of burden on the driver.
I wasn't aware of the parking features, and I didn't hook up the tesla app, so I did not try to use Summon either.
Charging:
Wow, 120V charging is slow. I was able to get 4 miles per hour charging while visiting a friend, and the tesla complained about 'bad wiring or extension cord', while in my apartment complex garage, and only got 3 miles per hour. I visited the San Mateo SC on saturday night, and the Gilroy SC sunday night before returning the car. These are fantastic. I had a quick bite at Chipotle with a friend, returned to the car with 100% charge after about 30 minutes. Car showed about 40mi at the start.I had to wait a bit to start, as this was a very busy charger. In Gilroy, there was no wait, and also returned to a fully charged car.
There are multiple ChargePoints near my work, though I did not try them out. They are free for the first 4 hours, so while I normally bike to work, I could drive in on Friday to make sure things are topped off as possible for any weekend excursions. Luckily the bay area has lots of SCs as well, and I'll lock in the supercharger access for the car when I put a deposit down this month.
Car only had 7200 miles on it, and looked well put together. This car had cloth seats, which where 'ok', and I'd say worse than my jetta. I sat in a 70D in the dealer with leather, which convinced me to get that upgrade. Also had the Pano roof, and while I did open the sunroof once or twice, I'm not used to it and found I liked it closed better to reduce noise. Even when closed, the sun was still bright enough that I wanted to wear a baseball cap. I'm likely to go with the solid roof. If the glass roof could go opaque electrically, (unlikely) I'd consider it, but a solid roof is also the cheapest option.
Central Console / nav:
I'm left scratching my head as to why they don't allow android auto (or apple carplay) and just left it at that. My OA said it has something to do with making sure I hit superchargers on the way, but that seemed pretty weak.
It only seems to support something called "Slacker", which i suppose is a pandora clone, so I didn't bother. I tethered by phone via bluetooth and piped my own tunes in through Google Music.
The voice directions for the nav didn't seem to duck the audio that much, perhaps this was a setting? I could never hear the instructions unless the music was off.
All in all, the big touch screen was responsive, but I find many of the UI choices a bit bizarre. It uses some poorly designed icons with no captions for some items, and clearly legible text for other things. I'd prefer things to be more clear. There are times I would have liked the center screen to simply be off, as the behind the wheel screen provided enough information for me, and the big screen was simply a distraction. Overall I found this to be the weakest part of the Tesla experience. With everything else putting a smile on my face as I drove, I wondered if Elon is truly satisfied with the center console.
Actually driving the car felt great, the power was always there, pointing up hills, at freeway speeds, at slow speeds, the car simply doesn't care. I didn't do much twisty-turny driving, but the car certainly felt more solid than the jetta overall. Low center of gravity likely showing off here. This model had coil springs, I don't know what the air suspension would be like. I enjoyed that the powertrain was basically silent. There is a slight sci-fi whirring somewhere, though nothing that is annoying.
I decided recently to pull the trigger, with the $2000 increase being confirmed, the super charging being scaled back, and the referral program potentially ending in January, I believe now is time to buy or lease. Unless disaster occurs, I'll be putting a deposit down later this month, hopefully with VW buyback confirmation in hand so I can try to coordinate the vehicle swaps.
Long time lurker, and wanted to write up my story so far in case it is an inspiration or help to others.
Executive summary, tl;dr: Giving back my diesel to VW and leasing a Tesla. Renting one for the weekend is highly recommended. Get the Autopilot.
I bought a first year Jetta TDI (2009 model year) 8 years ago, and VW is now buying back all of these. In my case I'm getting about $12,500 hopefully within the next 60 days.
Having caught the Tesla fever a while back, this appears to be an opportunity to get into a lease. I'm saddened I missed the 2 year lease terms, but I'm making the 3 year work.
Since even the lease is a big deal financially, I decided to do a deep dive and rent a 2016 S70D with AP from Turo.com for a weekend. I was able to do this spur of the moment and within 30 minutes i took command and running weekend errands from about 11am saturday to 8pm sunday. At $144 per day, I found this to be well spent. I strongly recommend potential owners doing the same. I learned quite a bit with my extended test drive.
Firstly, I wasn't going to even touch the AP, as I didn't think I would use it. I then tried it out a few times as 101 in the bay area did what it did best: turn into a parking lot. In both cases, having the AP cruise along and automatically slow for traffic and manage the throttle made this much more bearable.
Additionally, using just adaptive cruise on a surface street with stop lights can relieve a bit of burden on the driver.
I wasn't aware of the parking features, and I didn't hook up the tesla app, so I did not try to use Summon either.
Charging:
Wow, 120V charging is slow. I was able to get 4 miles per hour charging while visiting a friend, and the tesla complained about 'bad wiring or extension cord', while in my apartment complex garage, and only got 3 miles per hour. I visited the San Mateo SC on saturday night, and the Gilroy SC sunday night before returning the car. These are fantastic. I had a quick bite at Chipotle with a friend, returned to the car with 100% charge after about 30 minutes. Car showed about 40mi at the start.I had to wait a bit to start, as this was a very busy charger. In Gilroy, there was no wait, and also returned to a fully charged car.
There are multiple ChargePoints near my work, though I did not try them out. They are free for the first 4 hours, so while I normally bike to work, I could drive in on Friday to make sure things are topped off as possible for any weekend excursions. Luckily the bay area has lots of SCs as well, and I'll lock in the supercharger access for the car when I put a deposit down this month.
Car only had 7200 miles on it, and looked well put together. This car had cloth seats, which where 'ok', and I'd say worse than my jetta. I sat in a 70D in the dealer with leather, which convinced me to get that upgrade. Also had the Pano roof, and while I did open the sunroof once or twice, I'm not used to it and found I liked it closed better to reduce noise. Even when closed, the sun was still bright enough that I wanted to wear a baseball cap. I'm likely to go with the solid roof. If the glass roof could go opaque electrically, (unlikely) I'd consider it, but a solid roof is also the cheapest option.
Central Console / nav:
I'm left scratching my head as to why they don't allow android auto (or apple carplay) and just left it at that. My OA said it has something to do with making sure I hit superchargers on the way, but that seemed pretty weak.
It only seems to support something called "Slacker", which i suppose is a pandora clone, so I didn't bother. I tethered by phone via bluetooth and piped my own tunes in through Google Music.
The voice directions for the nav didn't seem to duck the audio that much, perhaps this was a setting? I could never hear the instructions unless the music was off.
All in all, the big touch screen was responsive, but I find many of the UI choices a bit bizarre. It uses some poorly designed icons with no captions for some items, and clearly legible text for other things. I'd prefer things to be more clear. There are times I would have liked the center screen to simply be off, as the behind the wheel screen provided enough information for me, and the big screen was simply a distraction. Overall I found this to be the weakest part of the Tesla experience. With everything else putting a smile on my face as I drove, I wondered if Elon is truly satisfied with the center console.
Actually driving the car felt great, the power was always there, pointing up hills, at freeway speeds, at slow speeds, the car simply doesn't care. I didn't do much twisty-turny driving, but the car certainly felt more solid than the jetta overall. Low center of gravity likely showing off here. This model had coil springs, I don't know what the air suspension would be like. I enjoyed that the powertrain was basically silent. There is a slight sci-fi whirring somewhere, though nothing that is annoying.
I decided recently to pull the trigger, with the $2000 increase being confirmed, the super charging being scaled back, and the referral program potentially ending in January, I believe now is time to buy or lease. Unless disaster occurs, I'll be putting a deposit down later this month, hopefully with VW buyback confirmation in hand so I can try to coordinate the vehicle swaps.
