Whew.
Summary: Best Car Ever. It has some issues, but it's still the Best Car Ever.
So I got my car on Monday February 25th around 3 PM! I wasn't intending to give it a name, but it quickly acquired the name Electro.
It's plain white with body-colored roof, grey leather interior, and obeche wood gloss. I promised pictures, and I have them -- showing that Tesla Grin -- but I couldn't figure out how to attach them.
A very nice fellow named David drove the car up from Queens and spent four hours showing me every single control. He acted in Spamalot, so we got a couple of Monty Python jokes. The tires were overinflated so we let some air out, and then did a short test drive around town. The weather was beautiful.
The first thing I discovered is how incredibly well the car maneuvers and handles at extremely low speeds. No gasoline car can match this -- most of them really can't manage to go below 4 mph. But Electro can crawl at 1 mph or less. (I turned creep off immediately.) The car is a narrow fit in my garage and requires a tight turn to reverse in the turnaround spot in my driveway. But this is easy because I could go as slowly as necessary.
I had been worried about the large size of the car, but this has made it very easy to adjust to it. It's much easier to avoid curb rash when you can go very... very... slowly. (While I'm getting used to the size of the car I've been having my fiancee jump out of the car and check my location.)
On Tuesday, I had to take a trip 60 miles away. I had range anxiety before Tuesday, and range charged in expectation of very cold weather, which turned out to be unnecessary. With above-freezing weather on Tuesday, I got pretty much exactly the EPA range. :smile:
This "shakedown trip" is when I discovered the true amazingness of Electro.
Usually, if I've been driving for an hour, I expect to have a certain amount of soreness, stiffness, or general discomfort. This has been true in every car I have ever driven, even after careful adjustment of everything.
In Electro, after driving for an hour, it felt like I'd driven for only fifteen minutes. The same was true on the way back. The same has been true for the rest of the week.
This is the most ergonomic car I have ever driven.
I'm not entirely sure why it's so ergnonomic. The seats are excellent, the best of any car I've ever driven. The air suspension is clearly "muting" some of the (many many) bumps in the road. The lack of the constant vibration from a gasoline engine is probably beneficial as well. And there may be some other reasons.
The handling takes some getting used to. It is uniformly better than the handling of any gasoline car -- which means I have to break some habits.
- The accelerator response is instant. When I need to speed up quickly, I'm used to tromping on the gasoline pedal and then backing off; now I simply push my foot down a little on the accelerator. (This may be another part of why the car is ergonomically superior.)
- The car slows down extremely quickly thanks to the regenerative braking. I have to get used to that too.
- The accelerator response feels linear; the amount I put my foot down is pretty much equal to the amount of force applied to the car (or negative force in the case of regen). This is very simple, but it's not how any previous car behaved.
I found that I had to spend less time thinking about accelerator response, because it is so straightforward. I could use more of my mind to pay attention to the road, and to other things. This is most certainly another part of why the driving experience was so much more comfortable.
In addition, it means I can have an extremely gentle foot on both the accelerator and the brake, which is probably another ergonomic benefit.
Another thing I discovered on Tuesday: I thought I wouldn't like the automatic "touchless" key stuff... but I actually do like it and turned it back on. I'm still keeping the key in a Faraday-cage pouch ($40 from RA Mayes) when I'm away from the car, in an excess of caution in order to avoid RFID cloning attacks.
On Wednesday, the temperature dropped, we got hit with really terrible weather and I spent most of the day scraping black ice off my driveway, so the car stayed at home.
On Thursday, I again spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway, but it wasn't quite as bad as Wednesday. So I got to drive Electro around town. This is when I discovered how incredibly useful the very-low-speed maneuvering is in tight parking lots.
On Friday, I again spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway (yeeargh), and this time took Electro out to a quiet event in the evening. So Electro sat for four hours unplugged at night in the cold. Fair warning to other buyers, it lost something like 20 miles of range just sitting. I got to scrape the snow off the car in the cold at night for the first time. The area which the windshield wipers come out of is not well-designed for snow clearance, but it worked out OK.
The auto wiper settings don't work at all. The auto lights, to my surprise, mostly do work right, though I've already overridden them a few times to force the lights on. Tesla, if you're listening, the car should not revert to auto lights every time I start it.
The front left window and front left windshield do start fogging up very easily. I know Tesla is engineering a fix for that; I need it ASAP. In the meantime, setting the front defroster on full does deal with it, but that makes the car extremely hot very quickly, and burns energy at a tremendous rate. You can see the heater power on the energy meter on the right side of the dashboard. When I don't need to put the defroster on full, the energy usage when just starting the heater is visible, but it soon drops -- the car is clearly well-insulated. (Pretty much every problem with the car is attributable to California designers who don't understand winter. They are all manageable, but I'm beginning to understand why previous carmakers located in Detroit.)
I find it annoying to have to go through the touchscreen to adjust the vent controls. Perhaps a control for directing the air could be placed as an option on the right scrollwheel. Same with the lights.
I do like that the car heats up immediately, especially for the short drives around town. I knew I was going to like that.
On Friday I actually got into the car with sore shoulders and they felt better when I got home. This is unheard of. The ergonomics of the Model S are astounding. Since I have problems with chronic muscle tension, this is huge for me.
On Saturday, going out in the evening, after another two hours clearing ice off the driveway, I got to drive the car for the first time on parking lots and roads which were actually snowy. (The county and city have been very good about plowing the roads, but apparently not that late at night.) The all-weathers handled the snowy, icy flat parking lot with no trouble. On the way back, coming down a sharp slope with snow and ice, the front end started to fishtail and the antilock brakes kicked in twice. But they worked and I managed to get home safely at 15 mph. (I'll want snow tires for next year though.) The two friends who had carpooled with me to the event... could not get home in their car and ended up staying overnight.
My friends liked how silent the car was. Regarding that, I mostly liked how extremely easy it was to hear road noises. (Yeah, I'm a practical driver all the way.)
On Sunday, my friends spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway
wink and then the spell of awful weather finally broke. I took the opportunity to stay home! Monday and today were spent catching up on things I didn't do last week due to the exhaustion of snow clearance.
The energy usage graph has been kind of mesmerizing and I've been keeping it visible all the time (along with the backup camera, which is useful for spotting tailgaters).
The energy usage graph looks like a map of going up and down hills. Tesla, if you're listening: the vertical scale doesn't go high enough or low enough. Ithaca is a town of hills. I have been regularly getting energy use off the top of the chart, more than 900 wh/mile (extrapolating, probably higher than 1000 wh/mile) and I've regularly been getting usage off the bottom of the chart, lower than -300 wh/mile (and extrapolating, probably as low as -400 wh/mile). It's sort of funny -- it really does make it clear what a large effect hills have. I keep thinking about how much energy must have been wasted going downhill (and at stoplights!) with gasoline engines.
In this short week, I've been approached about the car by three strangers: one guy during (!) the drive on Tuesday rolled down his window and said "Nice wheels, man!" while driving past. The parking garage attendant downtown in Ithaca asked what sort of car it was, and when I told her it was all-electric, said "I didn't know they were making those yet!" And a young man shyly stared at the car in the grocery store parking lot until my fiancee told him it was OK to ask about it. :smile:
For my allergy, I still have to coat the headliner and sunvisors with something like Scotchgard, but it's a tight flat weave, unlike the headliner on the Signature model, so I don't think it's bleeding too much polyester right now.
Now Electro sits quietly in my garage giving off an eerie green light. :biggrin: There are various minor things which should be fixed (most of which can be fixed in software). But the astounding, unmatched ergonomics, "no thought required" accelerator response, and extraordinary low-speed maneuverability make it the Best Car Ever.
(Edit: and, of course, not having to go to the gas station and not having to burn gasoline. After a week, somehow that goes without saying! :tongue
Summary: Best Car Ever. It has some issues, but it's still the Best Car Ever.
So I got my car on Monday February 25th around 3 PM! I wasn't intending to give it a name, but it quickly acquired the name Electro.
It's plain white with body-colored roof, grey leather interior, and obeche wood gloss. I promised pictures, and I have them -- showing that Tesla Grin -- but I couldn't figure out how to attach them.
A very nice fellow named David drove the car up from Queens and spent four hours showing me every single control. He acted in Spamalot, so we got a couple of Monty Python jokes. The tires were overinflated so we let some air out, and then did a short test drive around town. The weather was beautiful.
The first thing I discovered is how incredibly well the car maneuvers and handles at extremely low speeds. No gasoline car can match this -- most of them really can't manage to go below 4 mph. But Electro can crawl at 1 mph or less. (I turned creep off immediately.) The car is a narrow fit in my garage and requires a tight turn to reverse in the turnaround spot in my driveway. But this is easy because I could go as slowly as necessary.
I had been worried about the large size of the car, but this has made it very easy to adjust to it. It's much easier to avoid curb rash when you can go very... very... slowly. (While I'm getting used to the size of the car I've been having my fiancee jump out of the car and check my location.)
On Tuesday, I had to take a trip 60 miles away. I had range anxiety before Tuesday, and range charged in expectation of very cold weather, which turned out to be unnecessary. With above-freezing weather on Tuesday, I got pretty much exactly the EPA range. :smile:
This "shakedown trip" is when I discovered the true amazingness of Electro.
Usually, if I've been driving for an hour, I expect to have a certain amount of soreness, stiffness, or general discomfort. This has been true in every car I have ever driven, even after careful adjustment of everything.
In Electro, after driving for an hour, it felt like I'd driven for only fifteen minutes. The same was true on the way back. The same has been true for the rest of the week.
This is the most ergonomic car I have ever driven.
I'm not entirely sure why it's so ergnonomic. The seats are excellent, the best of any car I've ever driven. The air suspension is clearly "muting" some of the (many many) bumps in the road. The lack of the constant vibration from a gasoline engine is probably beneficial as well. And there may be some other reasons.
The handling takes some getting used to. It is uniformly better than the handling of any gasoline car -- which means I have to break some habits.
- The accelerator response is instant. When I need to speed up quickly, I'm used to tromping on the gasoline pedal and then backing off; now I simply push my foot down a little on the accelerator. (This may be another part of why the car is ergonomically superior.)
- The car slows down extremely quickly thanks to the regenerative braking. I have to get used to that too.
- The accelerator response feels linear; the amount I put my foot down is pretty much equal to the amount of force applied to the car (or negative force in the case of regen). This is very simple, but it's not how any previous car behaved.
I found that I had to spend less time thinking about accelerator response, because it is so straightforward. I could use more of my mind to pay attention to the road, and to other things. This is most certainly another part of why the driving experience was so much more comfortable.
In addition, it means I can have an extremely gentle foot on both the accelerator and the brake, which is probably another ergonomic benefit.
Another thing I discovered on Tuesday: I thought I wouldn't like the automatic "touchless" key stuff... but I actually do like it and turned it back on. I'm still keeping the key in a Faraday-cage pouch ($40 from RA Mayes) when I'm away from the car, in an excess of caution in order to avoid RFID cloning attacks.
On Wednesday, the temperature dropped, we got hit with really terrible weather and I spent most of the day scraping black ice off my driveway, so the car stayed at home.
On Thursday, I again spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway, but it wasn't quite as bad as Wednesday. So I got to drive Electro around town. This is when I discovered how incredibly useful the very-low-speed maneuvering is in tight parking lots.
On Friday, I again spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway (yeeargh), and this time took Electro out to a quiet event in the evening. So Electro sat for four hours unplugged at night in the cold. Fair warning to other buyers, it lost something like 20 miles of range just sitting. I got to scrape the snow off the car in the cold at night for the first time. The area which the windshield wipers come out of is not well-designed for snow clearance, but it worked out OK.
The auto wiper settings don't work at all. The auto lights, to my surprise, mostly do work right, though I've already overridden them a few times to force the lights on. Tesla, if you're listening, the car should not revert to auto lights every time I start it.
The front left window and front left windshield do start fogging up very easily. I know Tesla is engineering a fix for that; I need it ASAP. In the meantime, setting the front defroster on full does deal with it, but that makes the car extremely hot very quickly, and burns energy at a tremendous rate. You can see the heater power on the energy meter on the right side of the dashboard. When I don't need to put the defroster on full, the energy usage when just starting the heater is visible, but it soon drops -- the car is clearly well-insulated. (Pretty much every problem with the car is attributable to California designers who don't understand winter. They are all manageable, but I'm beginning to understand why previous carmakers located in Detroit.)
I find it annoying to have to go through the touchscreen to adjust the vent controls. Perhaps a control for directing the air could be placed as an option on the right scrollwheel. Same with the lights.
I do like that the car heats up immediately, especially for the short drives around town. I knew I was going to like that.
On Friday I actually got into the car with sore shoulders and they felt better when I got home. This is unheard of. The ergonomics of the Model S are astounding. Since I have problems with chronic muscle tension, this is huge for me.
On Saturday, going out in the evening, after another two hours clearing ice off the driveway, I got to drive the car for the first time on parking lots and roads which were actually snowy. (The county and city have been very good about plowing the roads, but apparently not that late at night.) The all-weathers handled the snowy, icy flat parking lot with no trouble. On the way back, coming down a sharp slope with snow and ice, the front end started to fishtail and the antilock brakes kicked in twice. But they worked and I managed to get home safely at 15 mph. (I'll want snow tires for next year though.) The two friends who had carpooled with me to the event... could not get home in their car and ended up staying overnight.
My friends liked how silent the car was. Regarding that, I mostly liked how extremely easy it was to hear road noises. (Yeah, I'm a practical driver all the way.)
On Sunday, my friends spent two hours clearing ice off the driveway
wink and then the spell of awful weather finally broke. I took the opportunity to stay home! Monday and today were spent catching up on things I didn't do last week due to the exhaustion of snow clearance.The energy usage graph has been kind of mesmerizing and I've been keeping it visible all the time (along with the backup camera, which is useful for spotting tailgaters).
The energy usage graph looks like a map of going up and down hills. Tesla, if you're listening: the vertical scale doesn't go high enough or low enough. Ithaca is a town of hills. I have been regularly getting energy use off the top of the chart, more than 900 wh/mile (extrapolating, probably higher than 1000 wh/mile) and I've regularly been getting usage off the bottom of the chart, lower than -300 wh/mile (and extrapolating, probably as low as -400 wh/mile). It's sort of funny -- it really does make it clear what a large effect hills have. I keep thinking about how much energy must have been wasted going downhill (and at stoplights!) with gasoline engines.
In this short week, I've been approached about the car by three strangers: one guy during (!) the drive on Tuesday rolled down his window and said "Nice wheels, man!" while driving past. The parking garage attendant downtown in Ithaca asked what sort of car it was, and when I told her it was all-electric, said "I didn't know they were making those yet!" And a young man shyly stared at the car in the grocery store parking lot until my fiancee told him it was OK to ask about it. :smile:
For my allergy, I still have to coat the headliner and sunvisors with something like Scotchgard, but it's a tight flat weave, unlike the headliner on the Signature model, so I don't think it's bleeding too much polyester right now.
Now Electro sits quietly in my garage giving off an eerie green light. :biggrin: There are various minor things which should be fixed (most of which can be fixed in software). But the astounding, unmatched ergonomics, "no thought required" accelerator response, and extraordinary low-speed maneuverability make it the Best Car Ever.
(Edit: and, of course, not having to go to the gas station and not having to burn gasoline. After a week, somehow that goes without saying! :tongue
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