Howdy folks, here are my rambling comments after test-driving a Performance Plus:
I've had all kinds of cars before now, the fastest being my Infinity Q45 and Chevy Camaro Z28 - those are going back a while. My current car is a stock 2002 Honda Civic EX which I have owned since new! So... totally different ballgame here!
I've been watching youtubes and other videos for months, while reading TMC forums and enjoying my pile of TSLA increase in value since April when I bought it. The config I've been settling on lately is a white P85 w/ 19" wheels, white roof, tech package, sound studio package, air suspension, rear parcel shelf, tan or grey leather, lacewood and no spoiler. I'm close to ordering it, so last Sunday I visited the showroom in Austin and scheduled a test drive, which was today.
My two friends and I were led to the ground floor of a multistory parking lot where the Tesla team keeps their fleet. My test car was a dark blue Performance Plus version, with child seats/Sound Studio/Pano Roof/Tan interior and those beautiful grey wheels. Car looked incredible. The salesman wasn't that happy that we'd been handed this demo car though, as it was the only one without the tech package, thus he would not be able to demo the navigation. I asked him why they had ANY demo cars that were less-than-fully loaded - his response was that demo cars sometimes start off as customer orders, that get cancelled or sent back. I was simply happy to drive any Tesla Model S - wasn't going to get picky about differences between the test car and my order. And, I'd been wondering how the top-of-the-line version rides and performs. Honestly I cannot give you a racing driver's review of the handling, because I didn't get to do too much driving anyway, and my senses are numbed from 11yrs of driving the Civic
I'm an audio nerd and before driving anywhere I determined with some Level 42-on-a-stick that the Model S sudio system plays the following file formats (this may already be known elsewhere) -
FLAC lossless -yes
MP4 lossy movie file - it plays the file, just no video but you hear the sound (cool!)
OGG lossy - yes
PCM 11K 8-bit file - NO played with lots of clipping/distortion
PCM 11K 16-bit - yes
PCM 22K 16-bit - yes
PCM 44K 16-bit - yes
PCM 96K 16-bit - yes
PCM 192K 16-bit - yes
Apple Lossless file - NO - it simply hung the media system up with a little rotating "thinking" icon (rather disappointing error handling, and disappointing altogether)
I had a 24-bit file prepared but can't remember if I played it, dang!!! :|
My comments on the Studio Sound system based on the very rudimentary testing that I did, was that it is good... just not THAT good. Not a "rocking" system. While mid and high frequencies sound good, it seemed to have "adequate but not stellar" bass, that's about the heart of it. It's certainly awesome to have an ultra-quiet car to listen in, though. The lack of bass can only be good for drivers humble enough to want to keep their music to themselves.
I asked him about the 3G data plan... he said it's provided by AT&T and is basically free until Tesla decides to start charging for it. Nice!
SO on to the driving! Tooling around in the roads of The Domain shopping center in Austin felt rather like taxiing a jet. The anticipation was massive. The car was buttery smooth and quiet, very impressive. (I type this knowing you all have read the same stuff hundreds of times, but it's here for completeness) The turn signal/cruise control stalks aren't intuitive - shrug.
We finally got out to Burnet Road, a relatively quiet road with a 45mph limit. The sales chap said "OK, you can nail it here, should you wish." I proceeded to gun it in a southbound direction and the rear of the car felt like it was squatting a lot more than what I have read - but only because of the huge surge of power. Maybe there was no squat at all, I can't remember 'cos it was just a blur. I was thinking "I'll get it to 60 and then quickly hit the brakes" but I got nowhere near that... as the car was really getting into its stride, an enormous CLUNK came from the back! It felt like a piece of the car had fallen out onto the road. Also the car was slowing down, there was no acceleration, only braking. Luckily there was a side road coming up and I was able to idle down into that and stop. The sales chap, who was now even more disappointed by this car, explained that it was probably the inverter, and we would just have to "reset the car" which he walked me through and didn't take long. So we tried this again.
On the second attempt, in the same place in the road, flooring the pedal caused the exact same CLUNK from the back of the car around 40mph and we had to idle into the side road again. At that point I knew this test drive was a total bust - any uneducated non-follower of Tesla would have been throwing their hands in the air, wanting to get out and walk away, but since I am one of The Converted already, I knew I still wanted it! This car was just busted, and not good for test drives. The sales chap indicated that they had a similar problem with another P85+ which led me to wonder why this one was out on the road without prior testing. Can't believe I was the driver to uncover this car's massive and easily reproduced problem!
We reset the car again and proceeded out to the nearby MoPac expressway. On the frontage road at about 50mph, the sales chap said "OK, take that onramp, and you should be able to get it up to a fast speed." I ended up getting it up to 80mph without even realising it and had to take my foot off the pedal. 580-to-80 literally took a second and a half or something - if you floor the pedal. The inverter did not break this time, luckily, in fact, there were no more problems from the car.
Standing start acceleration to 30mph is all done in about a second and a half, if you want it to, and doesn't make any noise. The biggest problem you have is alarming your surrounding drivers and pedestrians! It is great that I can accelerate fast and not attract anyone's attention that isn't looking at the car. Generally you can hear a powerful ICE car accelerate, and to me it's not always classy. I can keep my driving habits to myself a bit more and reduce noise pollution.
Overall, the ride quality, comfort and quietness for such a fast car with such speed and tires is nothing more than STUNNING. The car is virtually silent at most speeds below 30mph, certainly while taxiing around in parking lots. Absorption of road bumps was amazing, way better than my current car (a rhetorical comparison, perhaps) especially considering the huge width and low profile of the tires. I guess the absence of heavy mass over the front wheels plays a role?
I did 5mph donuts in this car The turning circle for this car is super-small... VERY impressive considering the wheelbase and tire width.
Any cars that have this sort of speed - Cadillac, Porsche, Audi, BMW & Merc I suppose - are going to be loud and more complex to drive. I got the notion this car strips all hard work away from you and gives you very simple controls to achieve what you need (speed, turning, and stopping). None of them have the interior calm of the Model S. The lack of drama inside is a "feature." It's like blood pressure medication on wheels! There was not an ounce of "harshness" about my entire driving experience, despite being their top of the line sportiness configuration - just buttery smoothness and calm. Even the clunk from the inverter was relatively undramatic. I love one-pedal driving, and my current manual transmission car is pretty capable, but the aggressive regenerative braking in this car gives you so much more capability at your disposal, especially with Creep disabled. It's so darn useful in normal city driving, I look forward to getting used to it and enjoying it in my new Model S.
The downsides:
But I can totally recommend the car, and still hope to place an order next month. (improvements to my garage interior are being done first)
I hope this review has helped someone... perhaps stepping out of a 2002 Honda Civic EX and into this car guarantees an easy victory for the Tesla, I dunno...
I've had all kinds of cars before now, the fastest being my Infinity Q45 and Chevy Camaro Z28 - those are going back a while. My current car is a stock 2002 Honda Civic EX which I have owned since new! So... totally different ballgame here!
I've been watching youtubes and other videos for months, while reading TMC forums and enjoying my pile of TSLA increase in value since April when I bought it. The config I've been settling on lately is a white P85 w/ 19" wheels, white roof, tech package, sound studio package, air suspension, rear parcel shelf, tan or grey leather, lacewood and no spoiler. I'm close to ordering it, so last Sunday I visited the showroom in Austin and scheduled a test drive, which was today.
My two friends and I were led to the ground floor of a multistory parking lot where the Tesla team keeps their fleet. My test car was a dark blue Performance Plus version, with child seats/Sound Studio/Pano Roof/Tan interior and those beautiful grey wheels. Car looked incredible. The salesman wasn't that happy that we'd been handed this demo car though, as it was the only one without the tech package, thus he would not be able to demo the navigation. I asked him why they had ANY demo cars that were less-than-fully loaded - his response was that demo cars sometimes start off as customer orders, that get cancelled or sent back. I was simply happy to drive any Tesla Model S - wasn't going to get picky about differences between the test car and my order. And, I'd been wondering how the top-of-the-line version rides and performs. Honestly I cannot give you a racing driver's review of the handling, because I didn't get to do too much driving anyway, and my senses are numbed from 11yrs of driving the Civic
I'm an audio nerd and before driving anywhere I determined with some Level 42-on-a-stick that the Model S sudio system plays the following file formats (this may already be known elsewhere) -
FLAC lossless -yes
MP4 lossy movie file - it plays the file, just no video but you hear the sound (cool!)
OGG lossy - yes
PCM 11K 8-bit file - NO played with lots of clipping/distortion
PCM 11K 16-bit - yes
PCM 22K 16-bit - yes
PCM 44K 16-bit - yes
PCM 96K 16-bit - yes
PCM 192K 16-bit - yes
Apple Lossless file - NO - it simply hung the media system up with a little rotating "thinking" icon (rather disappointing error handling, and disappointing altogether)
I had a 24-bit file prepared but can't remember if I played it, dang!!! :|
My comments on the Studio Sound system based on the very rudimentary testing that I did, was that it is good... just not THAT good. Not a "rocking" system. While mid and high frequencies sound good, it seemed to have "adequate but not stellar" bass, that's about the heart of it. It's certainly awesome to have an ultra-quiet car to listen in, though. The lack of bass can only be good for drivers humble enough to want to keep their music to themselves.
I asked him about the 3G data plan... he said it's provided by AT&T and is basically free until Tesla decides to start charging for it. Nice!
SO on to the driving! Tooling around in the roads of The Domain shopping center in Austin felt rather like taxiing a jet. The anticipation was massive. The car was buttery smooth and quiet, very impressive. (I type this knowing you all have read the same stuff hundreds of times, but it's here for completeness) The turn signal/cruise control stalks aren't intuitive - shrug.
We finally got out to Burnet Road, a relatively quiet road with a 45mph limit. The sales chap said "OK, you can nail it here, should you wish." I proceeded to gun it in a southbound direction and the rear of the car felt like it was squatting a lot more than what I have read - but only because of the huge surge of power. Maybe there was no squat at all, I can't remember 'cos it was just a blur. I was thinking "I'll get it to 60 and then quickly hit the brakes" but I got nowhere near that... as the car was really getting into its stride, an enormous CLUNK came from the back! It felt like a piece of the car had fallen out onto the road. Also the car was slowing down, there was no acceleration, only braking. Luckily there was a side road coming up and I was able to idle down into that and stop. The sales chap, who was now even more disappointed by this car, explained that it was probably the inverter, and we would just have to "reset the car" which he walked me through and didn't take long. So we tried this again.
On the second attempt, in the same place in the road, flooring the pedal caused the exact same CLUNK from the back of the car around 40mph and we had to idle into the side road again. At that point I knew this test drive was a total bust - any uneducated non-follower of Tesla would have been throwing their hands in the air, wanting to get out and walk away, but since I am one of The Converted already, I knew I still wanted it! This car was just busted, and not good for test drives. The sales chap indicated that they had a similar problem with another P85+ which led me to wonder why this one was out on the road without prior testing. Can't believe I was the driver to uncover this car's massive and easily reproduced problem!
We reset the car again and proceeded out to the nearby MoPac expressway. On the frontage road at about 50mph, the sales chap said "OK, take that onramp, and you should be able to get it up to a fast speed." I ended up getting it up to 80mph without even realising it and had to take my foot off the pedal. 580-to-80 literally took a second and a half or something - if you floor the pedal. The inverter did not break this time, luckily, in fact, there were no more problems from the car.
Standing start acceleration to 30mph is all done in about a second and a half, if you want it to, and doesn't make any noise. The biggest problem you have is alarming your surrounding drivers and pedestrians! It is great that I can accelerate fast and not attract anyone's attention that isn't looking at the car. Generally you can hear a powerful ICE car accelerate, and to me it's not always classy. I can keep my driving habits to myself a bit more and reduce noise pollution.
Overall, the ride quality, comfort and quietness for such a fast car with such speed and tires is nothing more than STUNNING. The car is virtually silent at most speeds below 30mph, certainly while taxiing around in parking lots. Absorption of road bumps was amazing, way better than my current car (a rhetorical comparison, perhaps) especially considering the huge width and low profile of the tires. I guess the absence of heavy mass over the front wheels plays a role?
I did 5mph donuts in this car
The turning circle for this car is super-small... VERY impressive considering the wheelbase and tire width.Any cars that have this sort of speed - Cadillac, Porsche, Audi, BMW & Merc I suppose - are going to be loud and more complex to drive. I got the notion this car strips all hard work away from you and gives you very simple controls to achieve what you need (speed, turning, and stopping). None of them have the interior calm of the Model S. The lack of drama inside is a "feature." It's like blood pressure medication on wheels! There was not an ounce of "harshness" about my entire driving experience, despite being their top of the line sportiness configuration - just buttery smoothness and calm. Even the clunk from the inverter was relatively undramatic. I love one-pedal driving, and my current manual transmission car is pretty capable, but the aggressive regenerative braking in this car gives you so much more capability at your disposal, especially with Creep disabled. It's so darn useful in normal city driving, I look forward to getting used to it and enjoying it in my new Model S.
The downsides:
- By 40mph the car was NOT TOTALLY SILENT OMG!!!! (this is minor) You hear quite a bit of tire noise. Tesla has not figured out how to provide tires that make no noise... but neither has anyone else Again, tire noise would be only one part of the cacophony of exhaust and engine systems in a gas-powered car... the Model S is still supremely quiet for what you're doing. In this test car, I also think the glass roof and lack of rear cargo shelf increases noise.
- Austin weather often gets up to 110F during the summer, and today the temperature outside was about 92F with the sun directly overhead. Despite the car being parked in the shade of a multistory parking lot between tests, my rear-seat friends said within minutes that they could feel the "heat" coming from the glass roof and were unhappy that there was no method of covering it up. (guess they didn't like that option, huh) I'd read dozens of accounts on this forum about the hot glass and was sure to ask the sales chap about it when we first visited. Unfortunately he totally downplayed it and insisted it was not an issue. During my test drive, the same guy conceded "yeah, the roof gets hot... just don't touch it." Dude... it radiates heat at you! I was disappointed by that change in his story, when confronted by the reality. I was not particularly troubled by it... it's not in my plan to order it.
- I am unhappy that they allowed this broken car to survive in their rotation until 1pm in the day without pulling it. No-one should get to drive a busted car like that. For most people who test drive a Tesla Model S, there's gonna be a lot of excitement and anticipation... this problem destroyed my excitement, and took up time during the test-drive that prevented doing more things with the car.
But I can totally recommend the car, and still hope to place an order next month. (improvements to my garage interior are being done first)
I hope this review has helped someone... perhaps stepping out of a 2002 Honda Civic EX and into this car guarantees an easy victory for the Tesla, I dunno...
