I had the same sense on my drive [outside mirrors not very adjustable], and I think part of it was because you still see some of the car in the mirror, so you think you're not adjusted very far out. But, keep in mind that the car flares at the rear wheels, so you may be adjusted farther out than you think. At a later event, I was able to sit in the car and adjust the mirror to verify that the left mirror's field of view slightly overlapped what I was seeing in the rear-view mirror. The only thing I haven't been able to evaluate is whether the field of view goes far enough to the left that a car that's leaving the mirror's view on the left will also be entering my peripheral vision. I hope so!
Agreed. That's why I said the test drive wasn't long enough to see whether or not that was the case. Also the backup camera may provide the same functionality. A longer demonstration ride is really required.
You noted later that it was an overcast day, and I think that may have a lot to do with your impression. [blue and brown colours] These colors really seem to be at their best in bright sun. Even in the shade on a sunny day, they are so dark that you lose a lot of the color information, and they register essentially as black. I would imagine that they will look black at night as well, unless the street lights are bright enough to give you a glint of color.
It did turn sunny about 10 minutes before I left, but I still wasn't thrilled with the brown. The blue was out on a drive so I really never saw it in the sun. This is really a personal preference and because I like light coloured cars better than dark coloured ones It would be hard for me to find a dark colour that really did something for me. (My belief is that dark coloured cars look extremely good in dealer showrooms with artificial light but in the day they never look that good and so they are always a disappointment.)
I was hoping the brown would be more of a copper/gold/root beer colour when I saw it in person so that it stood out. (From the pictures posted by others, I had a hard time seeing what they saw in the brown so I was hoping that in real life it would look far better.) Those who like the dark colours shouldn't be put off by those who favour light coloured cars.
I'm sorry to say I mostly agree with you on this [steering wheel controls], but I hope it's a matter of things needing more refinement and polish. I played around with them a bit the other day, and my impressions were:
- The audio controls on the left side work fine for controlling your current source (pause, resume, volume, next, previous; with the caveat that there need to be more steps in volume, and that pressing and holding the next/previous buttons should fast-forward or rewind on sources that support that). But, there was no obvious way to use them to browse or switch sources. For example, I might want to switch from my iPhone to the FM radio. I guess you're supposed to use the 17" screen for this interaction, which is probably okay.
- The right-side controls were a bit confusing, and somewhat limited. It seemed as though you could assign the function of the wheel to one of a good number of different items, but it doesn't seem to be built so that you could, for example, access any one of those common items while driving. I may be totally wrong on this, but my impression was that it was intended to be set to whatever you thought you would use most.
The problem is that the button functions are too overloaded, particularly the right side like you say. Now overloading functions may be fine in Java or C++, but user controls should be more obvious, or there should be a few more buttons, or (best) one of the buttons should be "menu" accessing a setup menu on the screen.
My belief is that Tesla was limited in what they could do because they used the MB steering wheel to speed up development. I don't say this was a wrong choice, but the contrast of the ease of use between the 17" screen and the steering wheel controls was striking--which probably made it appear worse than it actually was. A cheat sheet would go a long way to overcome this (We geeks read the manual before driving and had there been a manual to study before the test drive the steering wheel buttons might not have appeared to be so unfriendly.). I hope a cheat sheet is included with the car or that a TMC member creates one. The display type buttons in the Model X should fix this early adopter problem.
I've heard people complain about the rear doors, and to be sure they're pretty narrow at the bottom, but I'm a big guy (6'1", 235, with size 13 feet) and I didn't have any trouble getting into or out of the back seat.
I believe whether this is a problem or not depends upon how flexible you are rather than how big you are. I'm not nearly as flexible as I was when I was twenty or even forty:smile:. The lack of grab bars made the problem worse. As an aside, I read that some though the doors didn't sound solid when being closed. I didn't find that. They sounded pretty solid to me.
That's a really interesting comment [steering wheel feel], and not one that matches my experience. Personally, I love the steering wheel. I think it feels great. I wish it were heated, and I wish the turn signal and cruise control stalks were in a more conventional arrangement, but I like it.
I thought a long time before writing that part, and it was really hard to put into words my feelings about it. Now it might be that there just wasn't time to get it really adjusted correctly, although I did spend some time doing the adjustments, and it might grow on me with use, but it just didn't seem to match the feel of the rest of the car.
I agree that the parcel shelf is not worth $250. I think $50 is a reasonable price for it. However, it does not just sit on those rails. At least on the static car in Palo Alto, the shelf had two pins near the front on each side that engage with recesses in the track so that it sort of snaps into place. With the front edge secured, if you push forward on the rear edge of the shelf, it folds in two places so that it sort of stacks up towards the front. It's an okay design, but I greatly prefer the roller-shade style cover in my Prius.
Okay, cool. The one in the brown car didn't seem to have any pins on it (and I looked) so perhaps it was an earlier version. I too like the roller shade design better because it's out of the way when not in use but the one in my Prius has lost the screw that holds the plastic anchor piece in so it no longer functions. (At ~140,000 miles that's not a real surprise, but had Toyota put a drop of Locktite on the screw at the factory it wouldn't have fallen out in the first place. Of course the screw went to that hidden part of every car which holds dropped screws and jesus clips.)
