Having searched the internet for info prior to purchasing cars in the past I stumbled across a few journals on forums that I found very helpful in understanding what its like to live with a car over the period of the ownership. I’ve done this before with other cars I’ve owned and hopefully its helpful to people. So I plan to document life with my 2015 P85D.
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A bit of background, it’s a 47K mile 1 owner car that has been looked after really well, seems to be in excellent condition. This was the PO’s 2nd Model S and he said he was going to replace it with another which is a great endorsement. It will be my daily driver for a commute of 40 miles and general trips, it will also be my full time winter driver which means it will have to survive MN winters. I like to wrench on my own cars and plan to do the same here where possible. I love cars, its a hobby/weakness and have owned around 55 and over 50 motorcycles in my time. The closest I have gotten to an electric was a 2007 Lexus GS450h that I ran a few years back, a car that I really liked.
I picked the P85D up 5 days ago and have driven it close to 200 miles so far, should be more but we had a busy weekend . I also gave it a good clean inside and out this weekend. I like doing this with all my purchases, not only because you clean out and wipe down the whole car (I am a bit of a clean freak when it comes to my car, not into detailing and polished but hate a dirty car especially the inside). I also find a good clean and hand wash usually finds a few blemishes/issues to fix.
I have driven a P100D a couple of years ago so don’t have a lot of seat time in a Tesla. Here are my very early impressions:
1. Love how quite it is and even on the 21 inch wheels it rides very well with great suspension compliance (mine is standard non air ride spec).
2. Yes its stupidly fast when you want it to be, however you can run it in Chill mode if you want to take it easy and don’t want the aggressive throttle mapping.
3. Whilst that is a lot of space in the cabin, there is a disappointing lack of storage/cubbys. Not too bad for me but something my wife commented that she didn’t like as she quoted “I have a lot of stuff stashed in my car”
4. I’m really liking the 1 pedal driving technique, I can see how brakes last forever and hopefully the nice alloys stay cleaner longer.
5. Waiting to get an electrician around to fit a 240v socket, plugging it into a 120 socket gives 4 miles/hr charge which is fine for me at the moment.
6. Autopilot with Autosteer is great on the highway but has its limitation on normal roads. I had an issue where on a slight curve the single lane split into 2 for a right turn, the car veered to the right following the lines on the road, so you have to be very careful. Something that concerns me if my kids drive it with the idea “it’s a self driving car”. I totally get that my car is an early AP1 car, however most people have no idea there are differences and think all Teslas are self driving
7. I have noticed what I would class as more than acceptable wind noise from the passenger side, I need to sit in the passenger seat to find the source of the noise, it sounds to me like it is coming from the upper A pillar area. Nothing is obvious however on checking the passenger rear window it sits proud of the seal. As with most frameless windows you can adjust the runners that the glass slides on (to effectively pull in the glass or push it out), if you look at the bottom of the door there are 2 rubber plugs, removing those gives you access to the adjuster, slacken the 10mm nut and slide the bottom of the rail in or out. Mine is on the maximum adjustment, so a little more finagling is needed, there is a YouTube of an Auzzy guy who had a similar issue and with a little perseverance addressed his issue, I plan to do the same in the next few weeks.
8. Sunroof wont fully open, it just cracks open less than ½ inch and stops. On the test drive this worked fine when the PO demonstrated it, so just my luck its playing up now. Tried it repeatedly the weekend and managed to open it once. Doesn’t seem to be a online consensus or fix so I have it booked into a service center next week.
9. The Tesla App seems to randomly struggle to connect to the car, this weekend I completed a screen reset and a power down, its working today so I will see how that goes. I’ve also noticed sometimes the App will open yet it doesn’t show the internal temp of the car. If I turn the climate on then the temps shows after a second or 2. If I then close the app and open it again the temp is there.
10. A few times I’ve gotten in the car and whilst the touchscreen is on the dash hasn’t woken up, I’ve been fixing it by pressing the fob to lock and unlock, today I just waited and it probably took around 10 seconds but it seemed like a long time, maybe there is a trick to waking that I am unaware of.
11. I noticed when I washed it that one of the front sensors seems misaligned to the bumper, so I’ll take the bumper off and fix that, it works fine, I just looks odd on close inspection.
12. Finally a bit of an odd one, I cant access the owners manual in the car, I can open the chapters and pages but they are blank, I haven’t looked into this yet online but if there is no obvious fix I’ll get the service center to look at it.
So in summary I’m really liking the car and hope to address a few of the minor niggles. The weird thing about it is that it feels like no other car to deal with when you have issues. It feels like your fixing a computer more that a mechanical vehicle. Maybe a few of my issues are due to the PO doing a factory reset just before I collected it as it seemed to work fine during the test drive. So more to come as I get to experience this amazing vehicle.
A bit of background, it’s a 47K mile 1 owner car that has been looked after really well, seems to be in excellent condition. This was the PO’s 2nd Model S and he said he was going to replace it with another which is a great endorsement. It will be my daily driver for a commute of 40 miles and general trips, it will also be my full time winter driver which means it will have to survive MN winters. I like to wrench on my own cars and plan to do the same here where possible. I love cars, its a hobby/weakness and have owned around 55 and over 50 motorcycles in my time. The closest I have gotten to an electric was a 2007 Lexus GS450h that I ran a few years back, a car that I really liked.
I picked the P85D up 5 days ago and have driven it close to 200 miles so far, should be more but we had a busy weekend . I also gave it a good clean inside and out this weekend. I like doing this with all my purchases, not only because you clean out and wipe down the whole car (I am a bit of a clean freak when it comes to my car, not into detailing and polished but hate a dirty car especially the inside). I also find a good clean and hand wash usually finds a few blemishes/issues to fix.
I have driven a P100D a couple of years ago so don’t have a lot of seat time in a Tesla. Here are my very early impressions:
1. Love how quite it is and even on the 21 inch wheels it rides very well with great suspension compliance (mine is standard non air ride spec).
2. Yes its stupidly fast when you want it to be, however you can run it in Chill mode if you want to take it easy and don’t want the aggressive throttle mapping.
3. Whilst that is a lot of space in the cabin, there is a disappointing lack of storage/cubbys. Not too bad for me but something my wife commented that she didn’t like as she quoted “I have a lot of stuff stashed in my car”
4. I’m really liking the 1 pedal driving technique, I can see how brakes last forever and hopefully the nice alloys stay cleaner longer.
5. Waiting to get an electrician around to fit a 240v socket, plugging it into a 120 socket gives 4 miles/hr charge which is fine for me at the moment.
6. Autopilot with Autosteer is great on the highway but has its limitation on normal roads. I had an issue where on a slight curve the single lane split into 2 for a right turn, the car veered to the right following the lines on the road, so you have to be very careful. Something that concerns me if my kids drive it with the idea “it’s a self driving car”. I totally get that my car is an early AP1 car, however most people have no idea there are differences and think all Teslas are self driving
7. I have noticed what I would class as more than acceptable wind noise from the passenger side, I need to sit in the passenger seat to find the source of the noise, it sounds to me like it is coming from the upper A pillar area. Nothing is obvious however on checking the passenger rear window it sits proud of the seal. As with most frameless windows you can adjust the runners that the glass slides on (to effectively pull in the glass or push it out), if you look at the bottom of the door there are 2 rubber plugs, removing those gives you access to the adjuster, slacken the 10mm nut and slide the bottom of the rail in or out. Mine is on the maximum adjustment, so a little more finagling is needed, there is a YouTube of an Auzzy guy who had a similar issue and with a little perseverance addressed his issue, I plan to do the same in the next few weeks.
8. Sunroof wont fully open, it just cracks open less than ½ inch and stops. On the test drive this worked fine when the PO demonstrated it, so just my luck its playing up now. Tried it repeatedly the weekend and managed to open it once. Doesn’t seem to be a online consensus or fix so I have it booked into a service center next week.
9. The Tesla App seems to randomly struggle to connect to the car, this weekend I completed a screen reset and a power down, its working today so I will see how that goes. I’ve also noticed sometimes the App will open yet it doesn’t show the internal temp of the car. If I turn the climate on then the temps shows after a second or 2. If I then close the app and open it again the temp is there.
10. A few times I’ve gotten in the car and whilst the touchscreen is on the dash hasn’t woken up, I’ve been fixing it by pressing the fob to lock and unlock, today I just waited and it probably took around 10 seconds but it seemed like a long time, maybe there is a trick to waking that I am unaware of.
11. I noticed when I washed it that one of the front sensors seems misaligned to the bumper, so I’ll take the bumper off and fix that, it works fine, I just looks odd on close inspection.
12. Finally a bit of an odd one, I cant access the owners manual in the car, I can open the chapters and pages but they are blank, I haven’t looked into this yet online but if there is no obvious fix I’ll get the service center to look at it.
So in summary I’m really liking the car and hope to address a few of the minor niggles. The weird thing about it is that it feels like no other car to deal with when you have issues. It feels like your fixing a computer more that a mechanical vehicle. Maybe a few of my issues are due to the PO doing a factory reset just before I collected it as it seemed to work fine during the test drive. So more to come as I get to experience this amazing vehicle.