Thanks to a year end drive event, I have the opportunity to test drive a Tesla Model S for almost 2 full days. My test drive is not quite half over yet, but I have enough to report to do a first review post on it. I'll add another followup review post after the test drive is over.
For my test drive, Tesla was generous enough to loan me a near top end model, a Tesla Model S P85DL. I'm not going to go into detail about all of the options on the car, as I don't want to make this review excessively long. There are plenty of other reviews out there already, so for the remainder of this review, I will just focus on things I personally found surprising or unusual, be it good or bad.
First, I'll cover a few glitches/problems I've encountered. We put in both a toddler car seat and a booster seat. The toddler car seat went in fine, attaching with the LATCH system. There doesn't seem to be a top tether on the car, but the seat seemed perfectly secure with just the lower points, so I don't see this as a problem. However, the booster seat did present a problem. Because of the design of the seat and the position of the belt buckle latch, the booster seat we have covers up the belt buckle latch making it very difficult for our older child to buckle the seat belt. We will need to do some investigation to see if there are other booster designs that maybe don't suffer from this issue. It's hard even for an adult to buckle it with the booster in place.
Another issue I had was with disconnecting the charge cable. (as a side note, I am using a GE Wattstation with a SAE standard J1772 plug fitted with the matching Tesla adapter) The charge cable locks into place. I think you can tell from the charge ring color whether or not it's locked on, but I haven't learned what the colors mean yet, so I'll need to do some reading on that. Knowing what all the colors mean would help. The problem is, I had an issue trying to get the charge cable to unlock so I could remove it. I've read you should be able to remove it when the door handles auto present, but the door handles auto presented, and I still couldn't remove it. I tried hitting the door unlock, and it still wouldn't come out. It wasn't until I got into the car and pressed the Stop Charging button on the charge screen that I was finally able to remove it. This wasn't a huge problem, but the whole experience just felt glitchy.
Another minor issue is that it appears you cannot play music off of Apple devices plugged in through the USB port. I would assume this is probably because Apple and Tesla can't agree on what this capability should cost Tesla. However, while I haven't tried it, supposedly you can play music off your phone by connecting it through Bluetooth. Beyond that, it will require copying all of your music from your Apple device to a common USB stick. I think I undestand this issue, and I don't fault Tesla if Apple is being unreasonable, but it is a minor annoyance that the other major automakers don't seem to have a problem with.
Getting in and out is a little more awkward than some other cars, in my opinion. I think it's because of the steep rake of the windshield, that it doesn't give a lot of space to squeeze your head in if you try to get in with the one-leg-first approach. I can be done one-leg-first, but it takes a little adjusting. It also works to put your butt in first and then swing your legs in. But once in, it is very roomy and confortable.
Another oddity is that the car turns on and off automatically. This is fine, and could even be described as a positive feature, but it does take some getting used to. After years of cars with keys you turn or buttons you press to turn them on and off, it takes some getting used to just putting it in park and walking away. The maintain an appropriate level of safety, the car doesn't turn on unless you have the break peddle pressed and the key in the car. Also, it seems you must do it in the proper sequence. The key must be in the car first, then the break peddle pressed. At one point, I pressed the break peddle and it gave a message about the key not being in the car. Then my wife stepped into the car with the key, and it then had a message saying the car was off. Then I was briefly confused about how to turn it on. However, all I had to do was take my foot off the break peddle, then press the break peddle again, and it was ready to go.
Some positives. The whole driving experience is very good. But lets just say that was expected and move on to other less expected things or things of greater interest.
It's a little different that the voice recognition system doesn't talk to you, but it does work exceptionally well compared to other cars we have used. So far, it has understood both my wife and I flawlessly, something we have not experienced in other cars with voice recognition. I'm really impressed by this.
The configurability of the informational displays and buttons is also a huge positive. I love that you can change the function of the steering wheel controls, in addition to being able to change what is shown (and where it's shown) on various parts of the dash and center console displays.
The pano roof is awesome. I am impressed by how far it can open.
I was also impressed by the proximity seasors and display when in tight spaces. In tight spots, it will show you a line pretty much all the way around the car that shows how close all of the obstacles are. I've never seen a system provide so much detail before.
The rear view camera is also awesome. The display is huge and the picture is good. The back up lines curve with the turn of the steering wheel and they seemed pretty accurate to me.
I also tried out the auto-pilot. I still don't trust it, but I was reasonably impressed with it so far. The road I drove on was a curvy 4 lane divided. It had tons of those black squiggles where road crews had filled cracks in the pavment, but the auto-pilot was never confused by them. There was a also a couple of places where the side line was either broken or suddenly shifted in or out, but the auto-pilot handled these situations gracefully. A nice first outing.
For my test drive, Tesla was generous enough to loan me a near top end model, a Tesla Model S P85DL. I'm not going to go into detail about all of the options on the car, as I don't want to make this review excessively long. There are plenty of other reviews out there already, so for the remainder of this review, I will just focus on things I personally found surprising or unusual, be it good or bad.
First, I'll cover a few glitches/problems I've encountered. We put in both a toddler car seat and a booster seat. The toddler car seat went in fine, attaching with the LATCH system. There doesn't seem to be a top tether on the car, but the seat seemed perfectly secure with just the lower points, so I don't see this as a problem. However, the booster seat did present a problem. Because of the design of the seat and the position of the belt buckle latch, the booster seat we have covers up the belt buckle latch making it very difficult for our older child to buckle the seat belt. We will need to do some investigation to see if there are other booster designs that maybe don't suffer from this issue. It's hard even for an adult to buckle it with the booster in place.
Another issue I had was with disconnecting the charge cable. (as a side note, I am using a GE Wattstation with a SAE standard J1772 plug fitted with the matching Tesla adapter) The charge cable locks into place. I think you can tell from the charge ring color whether or not it's locked on, but I haven't learned what the colors mean yet, so I'll need to do some reading on that. Knowing what all the colors mean would help. The problem is, I had an issue trying to get the charge cable to unlock so I could remove it. I've read you should be able to remove it when the door handles auto present, but the door handles auto presented, and I still couldn't remove it. I tried hitting the door unlock, and it still wouldn't come out. It wasn't until I got into the car and pressed the Stop Charging button on the charge screen that I was finally able to remove it. This wasn't a huge problem, but the whole experience just felt glitchy.
Another minor issue is that it appears you cannot play music off of Apple devices plugged in through the USB port. I would assume this is probably because Apple and Tesla can't agree on what this capability should cost Tesla. However, while I haven't tried it, supposedly you can play music off your phone by connecting it through Bluetooth. Beyond that, it will require copying all of your music from your Apple device to a common USB stick. I think I undestand this issue, and I don't fault Tesla if Apple is being unreasonable, but it is a minor annoyance that the other major automakers don't seem to have a problem with.
Getting in and out is a little more awkward than some other cars, in my opinion. I think it's because of the steep rake of the windshield, that it doesn't give a lot of space to squeeze your head in if you try to get in with the one-leg-first approach. I can be done one-leg-first, but it takes a little adjusting. It also works to put your butt in first and then swing your legs in. But once in, it is very roomy and confortable.
Another oddity is that the car turns on and off automatically. This is fine, and could even be described as a positive feature, but it does take some getting used to. After years of cars with keys you turn or buttons you press to turn them on and off, it takes some getting used to just putting it in park and walking away. The maintain an appropriate level of safety, the car doesn't turn on unless you have the break peddle pressed and the key in the car. Also, it seems you must do it in the proper sequence. The key must be in the car first, then the break peddle pressed. At one point, I pressed the break peddle and it gave a message about the key not being in the car. Then my wife stepped into the car with the key, and it then had a message saying the car was off. Then I was briefly confused about how to turn it on. However, all I had to do was take my foot off the break peddle, then press the break peddle again, and it was ready to go.
Some positives. The whole driving experience is very good. But lets just say that was expected and move on to other less expected things or things of greater interest.
It's a little different that the voice recognition system doesn't talk to you, but it does work exceptionally well compared to other cars we have used. So far, it has understood both my wife and I flawlessly, something we have not experienced in other cars with voice recognition. I'm really impressed by this.
The configurability of the informational displays and buttons is also a huge positive. I love that you can change the function of the steering wheel controls, in addition to being able to change what is shown (and where it's shown) on various parts of the dash and center console displays.
The pano roof is awesome. I am impressed by how far it can open.
I was also impressed by the proximity seasors and display when in tight spaces. In tight spots, it will show you a line pretty much all the way around the car that shows how close all of the obstacles are. I've never seen a system provide so much detail before.
The rear view camera is also awesome. The display is huge and the picture is good. The back up lines curve with the turn of the steering wheel and they seemed pretty accurate to me.
I also tried out the auto-pilot. I still don't trust it, but I was reasonably impressed with it so far. The road I drove on was a curvy 4 lane divided. It had tons of those black squiggles where road crews had filled cracks in the pavment, but the auto-pilot was never confused by them. There was a also a couple of places where the side line was either broken or suddenly shifted in or out, but the auto-pilot handled these situations gracefully. A nice first outing.
