A decade ago, I used to categorize the reactions. As I recall, the main categories were:
- laughing/giggling
- swearing
- screaming
- vowing to buy one (much more frequent now that the 3 is available)
- arm flailing (one grabbed the emergency brake!)
- barfing (fortunately only 1, and managed to get it outside the car)
Of course the first person to have a reaction was my wife. This was early October 2009...back then, "electric" meant "25mph neighborhood electric vehicle", and the most common question I'd get about my car was "can it go on the freeway?" I'd only had the Roadster (0-60 in 3.9...notably slower than the 3 Performance, but it took more people by surprise back in the day) a few days, and my wife hadn't been in it yet. We decided take a day trip over the mountains. It was a long trip, there were no charging stations within 800 miles and she's not a huge fan of acceleration, so I didn't plan to go fast. At one point we were going about 55 up a steep portion of a divided highway with two lanes on each side. I could see that up ahead one of the lanes ended...and there was an 18-wheeler in front of me. So of course, I romped on it. Despite going uphill and already at speed, her head snapped back and hit the headrest; she got a headache and was mad at me for the rest of the day. So I guess "anger" should be another category.
For another year or two I used the story about my wife a lot, whenever people would ask if the car could go on the freeway. Then the "range anxiety" media storm started, and everybody stopped asking about freeways and started asking about how far the car would go and how nervous that made me. It was more fun talking about acceleration.
As for technique, with my Model S Performance the obvious trick was to launch from a dead stop. The pull from 0 in that car was incredible. Once a friend - who was very familiar with my previous cars, but hadn't yet experienced a launch in this one - was holding his water bottle in the passenger seat as we were stopped at a stop light in front of an onramp. I looked at him and said "Ready?", but before he could answer the light turned green and I floored it. He now likes to tell the story of "the time I wasn't ready" when he juggled his water bottle and got a little bit of a shower.
But the Roadster and Model 3 Performance don't launch nearly as hard. So my usual technique there is to talk to them about regen; I will accelerate gently, then let off and let the car slow down. Then - while the car is slowing down, somewhere around 25mph - I floor it. The switch between deceleration and acceleration is delightful.
Oh yeah, my favorite reaction. Again, this was in the Roadster; I took it to a driving course. As a novice, I had to have an instructor ride with me. I drove up to the starting line, and the instructor was finishing a chat with some other people while he climbed in. I made a joke about the hard part being over now that he was in the car, and he (apparently mistaking it for a Lotus) gave a dismissive, "Oh, I have been in a lot of cars like this." He no sooner than finished the sentence, and I was signaled to start. So I floored it, and the instructor (while flailing his arms) yelled "Not like this!"