It is exactly a month after taking the delivery of my Model 3 LR Dual motor. Before buying decision, I researched, read many blogs and watched youtube videos. It gave me a clear picture of what to expect and how to adopt. But there are many more niceties that are not covered. Thought I will jot down few of them which are subtle but satisfying.
No Gas anxiety:
Many complain about the electric range and it is one of the primary reason many put off buying an electric car. It is actually the opposite for me. With my gasoline car I was not able to set a schedule. Often i pump gas at Costco when I go there. This means it exactly goes to empty the morning I run late to the office. One of the best advice I got from the delivery advisor is to charge the car every single night. With long range battery I charge 80% to get to 250+ miles every single day. Without fail I charge it every single night. This is more than enough for me to get around during the day. With proximity to superchargers in my area i do not look at the battery or energy graph. It is completely out of my mind. The bigger plus is to not waste 10 mins at the gas station twice a week in cold winter. More than anything I do not miss "Gas Station TV"...
API & data:
At heart I'm a techie, nerd and a developer. I automate and optimize many things in my house from thermostats to light switches. On day 2 I signed up for data service at www.teslafi.com which uses the unofficial APIs to poll and get data from the car. They have nice graphs to show the trip report, energy savings and much more. I drool over this data and see for ways to optimize my energy savings. When my wife uses the car, I can check on her driving pattern as well.
Traffic aware cruise control:
While the autopilot feature is fancy and the car drives itself, i do not engage it often. My work commute does not include freeways. But traffic aware cruise control saves me every single time. Almost all the time I have a car in front of me to follow. The TA cruise control follows the car in front to the dot. This takes away the pain of moving the leg from brake to accelerator and pressing each pedal. This saves me at least 50-100 times each day.
Proximity distance alerts:
I've used reverse camera in many cars before. Even with camera it is always a guess work. it always feels like I'm too close to the wall or the car behind me. But when I get out and actually see it there is at least 2ft distance between them. Each car's camera is different and the lines drawn inside the camera is even more confusing. Every time my brain is calculating the distance between the car and obstacle. Tesla solved that exact problem of calculating the distance. It actually show the distance between the car and the obstacle in inches. When parking in my garage I stop when it shows 18 inches because a feet and a half is the safe distance in my mind. The guess work and brain calculation is completely gone and I park like a pro every single time.
No more fighting with physical A/C vents:
Look back 20+ years and the A/C vents functionality has never changed. Always it comes with left-right and top-bottom knobs. But they never work the way I want the airflow to come. With version 9 of software there is a visual way of controlling the airflow. After playing with it few times, I mastered the way I want the air flow.
I'm sure many of you have similar experiences in owning a Tesla. Feel free to add your best feature that gets little attention.
No Gas anxiety:
Many complain about the electric range and it is one of the primary reason many put off buying an electric car. It is actually the opposite for me. With my gasoline car I was not able to set a schedule. Often i pump gas at Costco when I go there. This means it exactly goes to empty the morning I run late to the office. One of the best advice I got from the delivery advisor is to charge the car every single night. With long range battery I charge 80% to get to 250+ miles every single day. Without fail I charge it every single night. This is more than enough for me to get around during the day. With proximity to superchargers in my area i do not look at the battery or energy graph. It is completely out of my mind. The bigger plus is to not waste 10 mins at the gas station twice a week in cold winter. More than anything I do not miss "Gas Station TV"...
API & data:
At heart I'm a techie, nerd and a developer. I automate and optimize many things in my house from thermostats to light switches. On day 2 I signed up for data service at www.teslafi.com which uses the unofficial APIs to poll and get data from the car. They have nice graphs to show the trip report, energy savings and much more. I drool over this data and see for ways to optimize my energy savings. When my wife uses the car, I can check on her driving pattern as well.
Traffic aware cruise control:
While the autopilot feature is fancy and the car drives itself, i do not engage it often. My work commute does not include freeways. But traffic aware cruise control saves me every single time. Almost all the time I have a car in front of me to follow. The TA cruise control follows the car in front to the dot. This takes away the pain of moving the leg from brake to accelerator and pressing each pedal. This saves me at least 50-100 times each day.
Proximity distance alerts:
I've used reverse camera in many cars before. Even with camera it is always a guess work. it always feels like I'm too close to the wall or the car behind me. But when I get out and actually see it there is at least 2ft distance between them. Each car's camera is different and the lines drawn inside the camera is even more confusing. Every time my brain is calculating the distance between the car and obstacle. Tesla solved that exact problem of calculating the distance. It actually show the distance between the car and the obstacle in inches. When parking in my garage I stop when it shows 18 inches because a feet and a half is the safe distance in my mind. The guess work and brain calculation is completely gone and I park like a pro every single time.
No more fighting with physical A/C vents:
Look back 20+ years and the A/C vents functionality has never changed. Always it comes with left-right and top-bottom knobs. But they never work the way I want the airflow to come. With version 9 of software there is a visual way of controlling the airflow. After playing with it few times, I mastered the way I want the air flow.
I'm sure many of you have similar experiences in owning a Tesla. Feel free to add your best feature that gets little attention.