Worst. Route. Ever. Construction everywhere, 2 sections closed down to one lane with a flagger, pedestrian crosswalks everywhere, 40mph max.
If any Tesla employees, Seattle employees, anyone connected with this event, or George Blankenship are reading this:
PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHANGE THE SEATTLE ROUTE!!
It's the weekend - I5 has very little traffic.
I thought Tesla did a pretty good job of route selection given what they had to work with in Seattle:
1. Mercer street exit on I-5 was closed this weekend (at least Saturday afternoon, pretty sure all weekend). Traffic on I-5 was a mess (stop and go) when I went down to Tesla for my test drive yesterday.
2. Traffic on the next nearest I-5 exit (Denny Way) was being directed by police and Denny was bumper to bumper cars for as far as I could see. Given those circumstances, I-5 wasn't really an option for the test drive route.
3. Running test drives out of Bellevue would have been a challenge as well. You would have to load/unload in the parking garage, tangling with the Valet area. Traffic on NE 8th in Bellevue can also be a real problem which would limit the distance that could be driven.
To get a better route Tesla would have had to have based out of a location other than the two Seattle locations (store and service).
Given those kinds of constraints, having a route that got right out onto a road where you can open up quite a bit (Aurora ave) worked pretty well. I had no problem getting on it as many times as I wanted both on Aurora and the other roads -- but I work in the area, so I know the streets well.
Overall I was really impressed with the car. I drove the performance model. While it's not quite as fast as my Roadster, it's easily faster than any sedan I've driven before, plus it's got all that electric torque. As a Roadster owner/driver, there was absolutely nothing surprising (in a negative way) about the car. Had I not been able to replace my first Roadster after it was totaled, I would be plenty happy to drive a Model S performance model instead.
Realistically the Roadster is a very raw car to drive. It's all sports car, and exposes a lot of "techy" details -- things that hard core enthusiast drivers tend to enjoy. The Model S is a great next step. It's polished, refined, still stunningly fast. I really can't imagine any other sedan that I would even be interested in driving over the Model S.
My wife got to drive the black performance model after I drove the gray one. She loved the loved comfort steering setting (the Roadster's manual steering is not to her liking). She also loves the space between the front two seats that people want a console in -- she loves it as a place to put her purse, and considers it a major selling point to women! I found the middle back seat to be a very comfortable place to ride due to the flat floor.
Obviously I'm a huge Tesla fan, but I didn't feel like I was overlooking faults at the event. The "worst" part of the event was sitting around waiting for my turn to get out and drive the car.... hardly Tesla's fault that I was a bit impatient and excited to get my hands on it.
--Jason