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Impressions After Owning a Model S 10 days

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I’ve had a chance to live with the car now for 10 days, take 2 100+ mile round trips and generally, consider how it compares with other nice cars I’ve owned. To give you some perspective, and some context from whence my opinions come, I traded in a Jaguar XJ for the MS, and have most recently owned an Audi S5 (manual trans), Lexus SC300 (manual trans), Infiniti Q45 and Lexus LS. I like to drive, I love technology, I love the world of cars and I do enjoy luxury features, in that order.

First off, I LOVE driving this car, but I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here. That quiet rush to 60 from 0, and the instant ramp from 20-80 is, in a word, exhilarating. The ride is elegant and I’m finding the quiet inside the car very relaxing. The Jaguar was quiet, but having no engine noise is so unusual that I, well, notice it. The suspension is tight and easy to predict and adapt to. The frame is RIGID, even more so than the similarly all aluminum Jaguar construct.
Conceptually, I love what the car doesn’t have: an exhaust system, fluids(oil, power steering fluid, transmission fluid). Does it have hydraulic brakes ? I don’t even know. I love the simplicity of the mechanics.

I love the look of the outside of the car. It’s elegant, has a low drag coefficient, and not since I drove the S5 (got it right after release) have I had so many people looking at my car. I have to admit, I like that. I live in Boca Raton, FL and judging by the number of Ss I see on the roads here, they must have sold 25-50 in this town of 100,000 people already. Now that the showroom opened in Town Center Mall here, these cars are going to be very popular.
Now, for the design and function issues.

First and foremost, the car is seriously lacking in storage space around the driver. For a car that is so roomy inside, I don’t understand why there is no in-door storage and no closed center console storage. I ordered the Tesla center console and 4 months ago, but I understand they have delivered about 1000 of them and I was about 1500 on the list. I’ve looked at the photos of the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] party consoles, and none look better than the standard Tesla supplied ones to me. But it’s really hard to judge quality from web photos. They all seem to have just little compartments for storage in what looks like a pretty big console, which I’m not understanding. But throwing my sunglasses, tire gauge, cables, etc in that tray on the floor is just very unappealing to me.

The web browser is sub-par. This car should have a web browser with at least the functionality of Firefox or Chrome, if it’s going to have a web browser at all. Both are open source, so there is no cost issue. I’m getting a bit tired of seeing the “incompatible browser” message. Not having Flash is an issue I’ve gotten used to (but don’t like) on my iPad and iPhone. But what is more disconcerting is web forms that don’t work. To interact with most data driven websites, you must use forms, and the pull down menus and other features of forms just don’t work well with the webkit browser they decided to use.

As far as advanced sensor features, the parking sensors front and rear are the best ones I’ve ever had on a car. They are accurate and easy to use. I don’t miss the side scan radar that notified me about cars in my blind spot that I had on my XJ. Adaptive radar based cruise control would be nice and I suspect the next model will have it. The visibility is good in the car and I feel like I can see the road well in it.

One nitpicking item I need to call Tesla about – feature to save Favorites in Slacker radio isn’t working. It works for FM and TuneIn. I’d like to see a better feature set for playing music from a USB drive, with the ability to save favorite songs and directories, and a random shuffle play feature that a lot of folks in these forums seem to be asking for. Ultimately, I think all cars are going to let us see our actual phone screen enlarged on their touch panel displays ( a form of AppleTV AirPlay, so to speak), as this is the interface we already are familiar with. I can’t think of a better screen to control my iPhone than…my iPhone, enlarged. With the form factor of the Tesla display, the iPhone screen would seem to fit on it very well.

While I haven’t driven beyond the round trip range of the vehicle yet, I’m planning to next month, and would very much like to see a Trip Planning App, in which you would plot your destination, and it would show you recommendation for where to charge the vehicle. I’ve played with EV Trip Planner – Tesla should license it and include it installed in every MS.

That’s about it for now. To conclude, I’m loving this purchase and look forward to driving…the mark of owning a great car !
 
Congrats on your new Model S, Alan! Just a silly question, why wouldn't you put your sunglasses, tire guage and cables in the cubby directly below the touchscreen? That's where I keep that stuff in mine.
 
Glad you are enjoying your MS. Just to answer some of your questions, yes, the model S does have hydraulic brakes and there is actually a brake fluid reservoir hidden behind the plastic panel in the frunk right next to the washer fluid. There is one other fluid there as well which might be power steering or something else.

Also, regarding the web browser, Elon has already aluded to the fact that they will be incorporating Chrome into the Model S soon as a stepping stone towards allowing app development. It will be interesting to see what they do with Flash because typically, Chrome includes the Flash plugin as part of the Chrome executable. Will also be interesting to see what they do with support for video tags and video in general because Chrome will support all of that out of the box.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh - and regarding the lack of storage space. I thought it was weird at first but now I really like the open area and am not even interested in getting the center console. My sunglasses fit in the cubby under the 17" display. That said, I do understand that people like their space and am glad that Tesla came up with the center console option.
 
…/I ordered the Tesla center console and 4 months ago, but I understand they have delivered about 1000 of them and I was about 1500 on the list. /… [My underline.]
Is this accurate though? I’m not sure there’s even anyone here on TMC that has gotten one of these yet. I only remember reading about someone who posted on the official Tesla forum.

This was posted in this other thread ~eight days ago:

Drop-In Center Console now in the Tesla Model S online store - Page 33

I was on the waitlist in the first 24 hours, haven't heard anything yet. I did ask for the CF version which I can imagine is more complicated.
I was told I am #150 on the list, that I would be getting the console end of Jan - first of Feb. Have not heard anything yet. They are "ramping up", obviously slowly.

I ordered obeche gloss. No CF, so that's not the reason.
 
Just when I thought I couldn't love this car any more, pgitalt just made it possible. Chrome in a Tesla is more than I could have ever hoped for. Being a huge Google fan, and a Google Trusted Photographer means my whole world revolves around my Google account. Now that will include my dream car. Thanks for sharing that, and Thank You Elon!!
 
Wow, 9 replies in less than 12 hours. I love a responsive forum !

Thank you all for your comments. Some replies to your replies:

AmpedUP - My car is a standard 85, blue w/tan leather, tech pkg, interior lights, parking sensors, delivery 2/10/13. I'm going to investigate how you get your car "profile" under your posts.

Btrflyl8e - True, I do keep my glasses in the cubby below the touchscreen. But all my stuff doesn't fit there. Maybe I have too much stuff ?

rlang59 - I like the idea of using the cupholder for storage and closing the armrest. I'm not a big car drinker anyway <hick>. But I do like closed storage, I guess.

pgiralt - That is excellent news that Elon is going to be substituting Chrome for the current web browser. I know Steve Jobs was so adamant against Flash on his IOS devices, but until the world migrates from Flash to HTML 5, not having Flash shuts you out of a lot of functionality that webs sites offer. It is a bit like the chicken or the egg, though. My company felt compelling to upgrade all of our websites to HTML 5 only because we need them to play nice with IOS. If we didn't have that need, we probably wouldn't have upgraded. So Apple is really the big driving force behind that evolution, and if they didn't hold fast on the no Flash issue, change would not have occurred. The current Tesla web browser has other issue besides no Flash, though. Web forms are the biggest issue...I've had trouble with drop down menus and other form elements.

Tempus Yes, we NEED a trip planner. That combined with the car itself makes it an effective transportation SYSTEM, rather than just a car.

Thanks again or all of your comments, guys...we EV guys need to stick together !
 
Also, regarding the web browser, Elon has already aluded to the fact that they will be incorporating Chrome into the Model S soon as a stepping stone towards allowing app development. It will be interesting to see what they do with Flash because typically, Chrome includes the Flash plugin as part of the Chrome executable. Will also be interesting to see what they do with support for video tags and video in general because Chrome will support all of that out of the box.

I think the way Elon was looking at this was to put up some sort of Android emulator that would allow you to run Chrome and possibly other Android apps. I just hope the performance of the emulator won't be bad. And yes, I agree the Tesla web browser is pretty worthless with today's web standards. But then again, I never use the web browser when I'm driving. :biggrin: And when I'm parked, my phone has a better browser, albeit with a really small screen.
 
But then again, I never use the web browser when I'm driving. :biggrin: And when I'm parked, my phone has a better browser, albeit with a really small screen.

This is it. I do use it sometimes when the phone's screen is just too small for the site I'm looking at. About 90% of the hits from my Model S are to the Peacemaker package when showing the web browser at shows.
 
@Chipper...I was able to replace "junior" by mucking around with the profile, and I still have far less than 100 posts. Something's changed recently though, in that the "about me" bio line used to be a place to add a visible profile line. Now, it seems to be available only via a "signature" which I can't seem to find for myself, possibly because I am still considered "junior." I do wish the forum took time into account in assigning status. I think the member that has been around a while, and posts only once a week, is probably much more reliable and "senior" than someone who posts more than a 100 times in a month and thus suddenly acquires full member status. Time as a member should be part of the algorithm, if it is not already.