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Opinions after 2 months of owning my P90DL

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Pete90D

Fan of Red Lights
Jul 25, 2015
478
4
Bay Area, CA
Hey everyone,

I've kinda been off the forum lately due to being really busy, but I've met various people and had emails and PMs about my opinions and also heard some of my posts helped people make decisions about upgrading (sorry to your spouses for that :). I wanted to share my opinion on various things after owning my car for 2 months so hopefully it helps others with their decisions.

I'll add that I'm not married, I don't have kids, and I'm very sensitive to how cars feel on the road. I also work in tech, and I think money is best spent on experiences, and I love cars so they are experiences for me. Everyone has a different personal and financial situation, so I'm not saying anyone is wrong for getting what they get. I do think that some of the decisions Tesla made were very good ones, even if they aren't like your S class or 7 series or whatever. You're buying a totally different car, not an S class with an electric motor.

Here's my configuration
- P90D (with Ludicrous)
- Midnight Silver
- Black NextGen/Alcantara
- Premium Interior
- SAS
- UHFS
- AP
- Pano
- 21" Grey
- CF Interior/Spoiler


Overall Impression

I love love love my car. Prior to delivery I was able to drive a P85+ and P85D for a bit, maybe about 2000 miles worth of driving total, and hands down very happy with getting the P90D and Ludicrous. I notice the power quite a bit compared to the P85D and it is significantly better than the P85+ performance, so I'm glad I upgraded last minute.


Interior in General

Personally I like the minimal interior. I don't want a ton of places to put things because it helps declutter the car. I will eventually get around to posting pictures and a review of a lot of accessories I've tried and found helpful. This is of course very different for many people. I don't have kids and I don't usually have people in the back and definitely don't want them drinking things from cups, so I am happy there are no cup holders in the back. The sliding arm rests do add some risk around cups in the front holders, but so far I've just been careful and not had any problems.

As a funny aside, my teammates at work and I have this running prank and they always put crap in my car, like badge clips and random crap. Not having seat pockets and cubbies has helped in my fight against my friends :)

The tiny visors are awesome! I hate sun visors, but sometimes need them. I'm shortish, but they are long enough to deal with the sun most of the time.

Rear seat headrests aren't ideal, but I've never really had an issue. I think it's just different more than anything. I think what bothered me more was the tight rear window. It hasn't caused issues not seeing things that were important, but I had a friend behind me and at a light and I noticed that I couldn't see him very well in the rear view because the size and angle reduce how much can be seen.

Premium Interior/Lighting and NextGen Seats

I really like the seats. I have broad shoulders and a little overweight and they are kinda perfect for me. The bolsters hold you well in turns, and keep you in in place. They are way more comfortable than the classic seats or cloth or whatever they were I tried in the P85+.

I like the all black interior and alcantara. I don't notice the Napa leather as much. The black interior is nice for keeping the interior darker with darker tint, and I have no issues with heat from the sun. I've had black interiors for a long time though and I have heat rejecting tint so that helps.

Power liftgate is a must have IMO. I don't put a lot of stuff in the back, but damnit I'd really hate to have to lift that thing as frequently as I put a gym bag or laptop bag in the trunk.

Cornering lights work, and I notice them, but they haven't been hugely effective with the lighting around here. In some cases I've seen them help a little, but they don't project as much as if the headlights themselves rotated. Fog lights just look better IMO

I get that the lighting isn't the greatest in the world, and the trunk lighting could be improved, but I like that it is somewhat minimal while driving. I don't want my car looking like a rave with color changing lights or tons of light... there are aftermarket solutions for that. I think it's clean and simple, but gives enough light you can see what you need to.

Smart Air Suspension

Overall happy with SAS. I drive with the car always in low except when pulling into my garage. I wish the coordinates were tighter, but right now it is kind of a general area and I wish I could tell it to automatically go back down to low right away instead of always hitting the button to lower or having to exceed 35. I've scraped the nose less in this than my E350... I think it only happened once in the P90D and it wasn't noticeable. Cornering at speed has some float. I don't know tons about the internals of air suspension, but what appears to happen is that in a turn, if you hit a bump, the car lifts up and since you don't have springs that are also keeping the car tied down, it can float around more. This only happens if you hit a bump in the turn, on smooth or smoothish roads, the car just holds and feels really good.

UHFS

This one has been discussed a lot. I love music and spend most of my day listening to music, so it was important to me. I have some hearing loss, but tests don't show a lot of it. I haven't tried standard audio, but there's no way it compares to UHFS, I just can't see it. We drive around listening to music that has a fair bit of bass and you can feel the sub, and you can hear the highs and extra speakers. I have pretty decent ear buds, and the clarity of the sound in the car exceeds them. When you first get the car it's gonna sound like crap... super duper crap with wings. You need to break in the speakers, and a demo car isn't going to have them broken in most likely because people tend not to listen to the music that much during a test drive. I think mine took like 1000 miles (50-XXmph) of driving to sound better. Dolby is hit and miss. It will increase the highs and give better, but reduce the bass in some cases. It is really a song by song choice from what me and my audiophile friend have witnesses.

I look at it this way, yes, it is more money, but you are having additional speakers installed at the factory. If you go standard you can upgrade the speakers, but the positioning won't the same unless you have work done. That means expanding the openings for larger speakers in the front, adding speakers on the back hatch, additional front speakers, and running wires for all of them. So you need a shop to make a custom fit for some things and get it all wired up. If you are a music fan or an audiophile I think you should get UHFS even if you are going to replace the speakers because it will be way better than upgraded standard.

Paint/Calipers/Pano/Wheels/Spoiler

Midnight silver is a great color. It hides general dust fairly well except at certain angles and after buildup. I had an old BMW with a similar color and it has been one of the best colors overall.

I was on the fence about the calipers, but I think they looked good in the end. It gives some contrast and also aligns with the color of the red taillights so from the side it isn't just dark all the way to the back.

Not a huge sunroof person, but even though I'm 5'9, I feel the pano gives a good bit of headroom and openness the P85+ with solid roof didn't have. I have the sunshades in, which reduce the headroom, but it still feels really open. I have every single piece of glass tinted with Photosync so even in sunny CA I don't notice the IR or UV heat. When it is parked it is a little warmer, but you can prep the car before getting in. I recently had to use it to help a passenger. She had a reaction to the smell of an interior cleaner (minimal smell, but she's sensitive), and I couldn't put down side windows because of the wind. Having that flexibility and openness has been worth the money.

I wasn't sure about the spoiler at first, but on the midnight silver I think it looks really good. Also for a P90D/P85D, where you're going for a performance model, it just seems more fitting and I think it makes it look a lot better.

Wheels... same opinion about the spoiler, on a PXXD I think 21s are more fitting, but that's more of a style thing. They might be a little harsher or louder, but I really really don't notice it. 19s must be like flying in a plane because I don't know what the complaints have been about. Also they aren't made of glass, they aren't going to shatter or bend just driving down the road. I'm careful with them, but other than when I'm turning into a parking lot where there's a small lip I don't do anything I haven't done with less low profile tires. It's about how you drive, I see more wheels with big fat tires having curb rash than the big expensive wheels with low profiles. For a 70D or 85D that is less expensive I can understand wanting to save money, but if you bought a PXXD and use the expense of tires as a reason to not get 21s I think it is kind of ridiculous. I'm pretty nice and respectful, but if I hear that in person I will probably laugh and say you just bought a $130k plus car and want to talk to me about expensive tires... sorry :)

Ludicrous

I love having a lot of power and having it all the time. I don't launch at every light or even that often, but onramps, offramps, passing, needing to accelerate quickly, etc, are all fantastic times to have power available even if you don't always need it.


Overall I wouldn't change a thing about my configuration. I think I would regret not picking the things I did.
 
Super, super helpful!

Do you ever feel like you "hit an acceleration wall" at any point? If so, how would you compare that with P85 and P85D's wall?

Sometimes at higher speeds you don't feel the torque, but it still picks up speed really fast. It's not hard to be in the 90s without much effort.

Pete, love your sharing especially the Ludicrous and 21s wheel size. It was dead on. We think the same.

Would love to chat with you when I run in to you in one of the superchargers one of these days. :biggrin:

I'm super busy right now so it's hard for me to suggest times, but if anyone wants to meet up and chat or go for a ride send me an email [email protected]. If you suggest a time it's easier for me to block out the time than me coming up with a time. Several people I still have to meet... sorry to those I haven't met up with yet.

i wondered where you've been--thought you mighta got caught and put in the pokey by the poh-poh.

Not yet. A couple weeks after I got the car though I got pulled over for 22 over and there were a couple other things he could have ticketed me for and he let me go on all of it. I attribute it to the prayers to the karma gods people gave me for giving that guy a ride after he hit me. The officer was really nice and understood it wasn't intentional, which it wasn't. Still haven't had my BelStir installed :(
 
Pete thanks for the great write up. Can't wait to read about some of the accessories you have tried. Regarding the sound system, I spent alot of time with my local Tesla Salesperson who owns a P85+. He demonstrated that if you turn Dolby off, it kind of mutes or diminishes the sound in the rear speakers. Have you noticed that? Also the UHFS is a bit forward cabin biased... for my ears, we played around with the graphic equalizer and sound centering and by placing the centering just behind the front seats resulted in the best balanced sound when sitting in the front seats.

BTW, I was at the SC yesterday and they were prepping a P90DL for delivery. It's 90% charge was showing 242 miles... are you about in that range at 90% ?

It won't be long before I order mine. Same color as yours. It is a very sophisticated color IMO and shows the lines and curves of the S very well.
 
My 90% was at 246 to start, but is now about 242. Maybe it's taking into account my driving habits? When I charged to 100% last week it said 264.

I agree with almost all of the OPs points about the car. Love my P90D! The only thing I do disagree with is the sun visors. I had not read any threads on their inadequacy before, but they seem so short to me! Maybe if I were taller they'd work better? Just not very useful, IMO.

What was useful today was the L mode. I rarely do this, but today some young gun in a BMW 3 series raced up behind me as I was using regen to slow to a light, then pulled quickly around me and stopped just beside me, revving a bit. At the green light, I just let her fly. (I think because I'd been watching too many videos on here of the Tesla leaving Corvettes and Hellcats in the dust).... I could really not believe how far back that car was in just the 2-3 secs. Stunning. :love:

Tesla P90D Ludicrous vs Hellcat
 
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BTW, I was at the SC yesterday and they were prepping a P90DL for delivery. It's 90% charge was showing 242 miles... are you about in that range at 90% ?

I'm at 234 now. I haven't made it to the SC to find out why I can't charge to 100%, but it stopping at 99% gave the same reduction in mileage as the amount I'm seeing at 90. So I think its miscalibrated right now and I can't balance because it doesn't go to 100% anymore.

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding sun visors, I'm not very tall so I adjusted the seat height to compensate. When I first sat in the car the seats were all the way down, and yes, the visors were useless.

I think it's all personal preference. My seats are fairly low I think, but when I've used the visors they have been just enough. I hated the ones in other cars because they blocked too much. I heard that the reason they are small is Elon hates them too so they did a trade off haha. Who knows if that is true.
 
I'm at 234 now. I haven't made it to the SC to find out why I can't charge to 100%, but it stopping at 99% gave the same reduction in mileage as the amount I'm seeing at 90. So I think its miscalibrated right now and I can't balance because it doesn't go to 100% anymore.

I read here in TMC a theory that around 99% or so the batteries internally balance themselves out, and it takes a while at that point if they aren't balanced. If I were me in your place and interested in getting them balanced, I'd look for that discussion and follow its instructions to balance them. The fact that you get this in a way that you say you "can't" get to 100% does suggest something peculiar about your pack (or the new 90), so there's that, too. Essentially the balancing instructions is kind of close to "charge for a very long time" (I forget how long; overnight/day/multiple days/whatever). Or maybe it's broken so this just makes it bleed more. Or just as likely they have had more imbalance activity than balance activity, and just need a good long balancing. ??
 
I read here in TMC a theory that around 99% or so the batteries internally balance themselves out, and it takes a while at that point if they aren't balanced. If I were me in your place and interested in getting them balanced, I'd look for that discussion and follow its instructions to balance them. The fact that you get this in a way that you say you "can't" get to 100% does suggest something peculiar about your pack (or the new 90), so there's that, too. Essentially the balancing instructions is kind of close to "charge for a very long time" (I forget how long; overnight/day/multiple days/whatever). Or maybe it's broken so this just makes it bleed more. Or just as likely they have had more imbalance activity than balance activity, and just need a good long balancing. ??

This is different. I've balanced batteries before and something changed like a month after I got the car where at 99% it shuts off power and unlocks the port. There's no way to balance. I've tried unplugging and plugging back in, rebooting both displays, trying other chargers, etc. I started a thread about it a while back, just haven't made it to the SC to have them look at it.

It takes about 30-45minutes after hitting 100% for the batteries to balance. In my case it hits 99% and unlocks. I've also used Remote S, and the Tesla app, and the adjuster in the car to flip back and forth between 100% and nothing works.