Model X Reviews From the Launch

[jeffhre]

Reveal could have been better

Venture Beat decided to write something different to get more clicks. Writing yet another glowing review of the actual product being revealed didn't interest them. They chose to write about stuff that will be quickly forgotten and will make no difference to X sales. And then in the closing paragraph the writer comes out and admits that what he is writing about doesn't matter, quote:
"Tesla will go on. The Model X will sell well. And Elon Musk will continue to be an outrageously successful individual. But it could have been much better."
Hilarious.

He's right of course: "The Model X will sell well" - But it could have sold weller-er; except it's sold out for the next year at maximum production capacity. "And Elon Musk will continue to be an outrageously successful individual." - could have been an even outrageously "successfuller" individual! If only the Model X reveal had, "been much better." Too bad that insight wasn't available earlier - Well, some good news though, thanks to that informative blog post, I can now spell outrageous correctly, since I hadn't actually written the word in many years! So it's not really a fluffy, tripe, waste of virtual cyber-ink at all.

 

[larmor]

just my 0.02: under promise and over deliver. Lots went into MX design and they have enough orders. Most in attendance in the audience were likely teslaholics, so lots of features presented were no surprise.

The most telling part of the presentation was how they started, not with the car, with safety and crash testing. IMHO potential purchasers of MX are getting an suv for 'safety first' purpose....

 

[ajay]

As others have said, the Venture Beat piece was a review of the event, not the car, and frankly I thought it was pretty fair. I've decided that Elon is either not aware of the East Coast, doesn't care, or actively hates it. By the time we got a shuttle back to the offsite parking lot, it was 4am EST, and we still had to drive back to our hotel.


Realistically, the event was geared for people who are already interested in Tesla and the Model X and will therefore be pretty tolerant of stuff like that. Folks from the media had the day to spend more quality time with the car, drive it, etc., before they even saw the presentation.


I can't imagine anyone would make a decision whether or not to buy a Model X based on the reveal event. Just maybe, years on down the line, when Tesla can make more Model 3s than there are current customers lined up to buy them, maybe then stuff like how they handle press events will be an issue. Maybe.

 

[wdolson]

As others have said, the Venture Beat piece was a review of the event, not the car, and frankly I thought it was pretty fair. I've decided that Elon is either not aware of the East Coast, doesn't care, or actively hates it. By the time we got a shuttle back to the offsite parking lot, it was 4am EST, and we still had to drive back to our hotel.


Realistically, the event was geared for people who are already interested in Tesla and the Model X and will therefore be pretty tolerant of stuff like that. Folks from the media had the day to spend more quality time with the car, drive it, etc., before they even saw the presentation.


I can't imagine anyone would make a decision whether or not to buy a Model X based on the reveal event. Just maybe, years on down the line, when Tesla can make more Model 3s than there are current customers lined up to buy them, maybe then stuff like how they handle press events will be an issue. Maybe.

Having lived my entire life on the West Coast I've had to put up with the eastern-centric media culture in the US. Most live events are scheduled for times that are most convenient for the eastern time zone and the rest of the country just has to deal. If you're a sports fan it isn't that bad because east coast sporting events end early evening, but I'm not so I don't really care about that. A lot of eastern media outlets don't really even acknowledge the west coast exists most of the time, even though it has the most populous state in the US. When they do acknowledge the Pacific Time Zone, it usually is only California. Oregon and Washington don't exist.

I don't think Elon hates the East Coast at all. The event's original start time was scheduled so local people could come after work. If it had been scheduled to be 7 PM on the east coast, that would have been 4 PM local time and a lot of local people would have had to leave work early or not go at all. There are more Tesla owners in the Bay Area than anywhere else on Earth, so there probably were a lot of local people invited.

The event then was late getting started. Having put on events, nobody likes starting late, but sometimes it happens due to factors outside of your control. We don't know the cause of the delay, it may have had to do with the press event before the event and difficulty wrapping that up and herding the journalists into the auditorium. Or it may have been due to some technical hitch. The article from VB criticized the quality of the visuals, maybe they had a failure of something more high tech for the visuals and had to go with plan B?

After the event, there was an opportunity for everyone to go and sit in Elon's car on stage. That caused a big unstructured time for people to mill about. If people were tired and wanted to leave at that point, they could have. If enough people started accumulating at the shuttle stops, even if the shuttles weren't running, they would have started up. However, I suspect most people wanted to get an up close look at the Model X, so there was a delay in getting out of there.

 

[MikeInFL]

I thought the MX reveal was going to be "meh" so to speak. While the presentation was not the best, I am really thrilled at the final product and actually would like a MX now. (before I thought it was just an oversized MS but the thing is rather big when you factor the height of it next to Elon)

 

[ajay]

wdolson, fair points on the Eastern media bias. My comment about Elon hating the East Coast was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there's no font for that.

We chose to stay for the test ride because it was important to us and a big part of why we went. There was a bit of a delay getting the test rides started, too, and they ended at maybe 12:30-1:00. I assume there was a lot of attrition. Actually getting to Elon's Model X was nontrivial, since the least crowded I ever saw it was about 4-5 people deep around the car and folks weren't exactly orderly about taking turns on the two occasions I was willing to hang out on stage for a good length of time. I did get a chance to check it out briefly, but it took a bit more aggressive action than I prefer to apply to actually sit in it. I think there was a bit of a feeding frenzy attitude (around the food tables and around the car) which of course isn't something Tesla can do much about. At one point early on, I stepped to the right to snag a canape, and as I stepped back into the spot I had just been in, someone else had already moved to that place and sharply elbowed me out. I don't know if people were crabby about the wait time after standing in line or what.

After the presentation and away from the stage, things were more pleasant. I noticed that Chris Poritt hung around and talked with a lot of people, and I saw Franz von Holzhausen talking with people, signing the Model X sketches, and thanking people for coming. I'm sure there were plenty of other Tesla VIPs I didn't recognize. There were, of course, plenty of Tesla employees who were fun to talk with, and many other event goers from all over with great Tesla stories.

I guess we all have different expectations or are irritated by different factors. For example, Elon's awkwardness in presentations has never bothered me. I get far more annoyed with the presenters who read their power point slides verbatim, and I see that all the time. Sure, more details would have been nice, but honestly, we'll get all that in time and I can't see getting up in arms about those details *unless* you have a low number and you've configured or are configuring soon.

 

[NeverFollow]

Opening the falcon doors if two model X are parked next to each other?

Looking at the video of the Model X parked between two other cars,
when the falcon door are opened, the doors overlap the roof of the two other cars.

http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/how-the-tesla-model-xs-falcon-doors-handle-a-tight-park-1733788435

I wonder if it would be possible to open the falcon doors if two model X are parked next to each other?

 

[ecarfan]

There is a thread about what happens if two X's are parked next to each other and how the Falcon Wings might behave.