The car largely performed beyond expectations. Autopilot lived up to its name working almost faultlessly on main highways, two way roads, ramps and in cities - within its limitations of good road markings. In France and Spain it even worked through roadworks, but not in Germany and Belgium where they leave the existing road markings and just add temporary yellow markings. Not surprisingly that confused autopilot as at times they were not even clear to me as a human. It once refused to continue in very heavy rain after the road markings had become invisible even to me. I mainly had to disengage autopilot due to the actions of other road users, such as just wandering into my lane perilously close, or cutting in when I had already indicated to pull out. I cannot see how full self driving can ever work when the roads are shared with human drivers doing silly things. I rather think for safe ‘Full Self Driving’ all cars would have to be so fitted and compulsory to use - so I really can’t see FSD becoming reality for some years while Tesla’s share the roads with ‘lesser cars’. The one thing I don’t like with Autopilot is the continue nags - about every 30 seconds, but seems to depend on speed (less frequent slow moving). The nags happened even when I was holding the wheel, except on some curvy roads and sometimes took up to three attempts to even cancel requiring far more turn force than would normally be applied driving on fairly straight road. Worst of all on four occasions although paying full attention and having hands on the wheel I obviously failed to notice the nag while concentrating on driving and the screen turned red and cancelled autopilot while at speed on highway - the first time happening unexpectantly I drifted into the next lane before regaining control. I think this is just plain dangerous! I never thought I would, but I have ordered a Autopilot buddy to try and stop the nags and these disconnections. It is not like I am doing anything stupid or not paying attention. I have driven 35 years without an accident.
Throughout the roadtour we stayed at hotels with destination chargers and used Superchargers in between at no charge, so travel costs were confined to Eurotunnel across the English Channel and tolls on French, Spanish and Switzerland high-roads. The prize for the best Supercharger visited I give to Burgos in Spain. The 6 charging bays are covered and in the car park of the Landos Hotel and restaurant - what a Spanish Tesla driver called the “best restaurant in Spain” and I can believe it. Highly recommended if you are driving through Spain, even if means a detour!
Something discovered going on Eurotunnel is the Tesla is too wide to go on the normal car train, and both ways we travelled with the vans and coaches on the single deck trains. That width became very apparent driving narrow roads in some Spanish cities with me annoyingly scratching three of the sonic carbon wheels on curbs so close together, difficult to avoid touching occasionally for even the most careful driver
The car gave 282 miles, or 454 km (I had the car set to km while in Europe to make it easy to know speed limit) on 100% charge and that seemed pretty accurate as the percentage was rarely more than a couple percent different on arrival to predicted, although I tried to not let charge go below 20% for my piece of mind - I think 14% was the lowest we ever got. On the overnight destination charge I usually set to initially charge to 90%, then increase to 100% (via the phone app) an hour before leaving the hotel, so the car would never stand with 100% for any length of time, but we would have maximum charge for the journey.
A very scary incident travelling through Germany was going at 150 km/h (about 95 mph) on unrestricted motorway on Autopilot when we came around corner to find stationary traffic only about 150 yards ahead with no prior warning. Autopilot spotted first and started applying breaks, but I was not going to risk it stopping in time so jammed on the break myself. We came to a safe halt about 20 yards behind the traffic to the screeching of burning rubber. A testament to the Model X breaking ability and maybe Autopilot’s quick reaction made that 20 yard difference?
A now funny incident was after going over a bump in the road my wife in back of car swore I had a rear puncture hearing escaping air. The dashboards showed otherwise, but then she screamed there was a fire in the trunk, she could see the smoke. I immediately pulled onto shoulder and opened trunk. The source of the escaping air sound and the smoke was a canister of hair spray which was jammed open after other luggage had shifted
It was great to meet some other Tesla drivers at the Superchargers. In a way they are assembly points for like minded people - and I think are Tesla’s trumpet card - I don’t see how any other car company can really stand comparison with Tesla without such a wonderful network of chargers.
