In Part 1, I discussed my decision to get a Tesla; this is what happened after the order.
I know that when I was deciding on whether to take the big purchase, I read as many owner accounts as I could, and when I was enduring the long wait for the actual car, I read through all of the reports on TMC of production and pick up as part of therapy. So this is my tiny way of giving back.
How To Survive the Waiting, the Waiting...
- You've already figured out that you should refresh My Tesla every few minutes, right?
- And you can also obsessively read TMC or the Tesla Forums.
- And you can search YouTube for "Tesla"
But you should also be sure to:
- Look at and fill out the Delivery Spreadsheet, which will help you get a more realistic sense of when your car might go into production, be completed, and be delivered.
- Read the Delivery Thread: Enjoy the anxiety and angst and joy of fellow buyers. You are not weird. Or rather, you are weird by there are many like you.
- This might also sound weird, but it is helpful to find someone on the Delivery thread who ordered just a few days before you did. I had a one-week ancestor, and as long as their car hadn't gone into production, I knew that I couldn't get too excited, and when theirs did going to production, I expected mine to follow a week later. My scheduled tracked theirs pretty well offset by one week.
- Name your car. Here are some unused names we had: The Wattmobile, Watilla (from Dreamfall) , Watty, Joules / Jouley, Tess of the Chargerville. I tried calling her Watty with the family for a few days, but no one else would go along with it. They insisted on calling her Tezzy. I tried migrating them onto Tess of the Chargerville, and that got a laugh, but no traction at all.
More practically, you will:
- Get Financing (if applicable). I went with Alliant Credit Union because how can you beat 72 months at 1.49% ?? I applied one evening, the next morning I got an email acceptance. Your loan terms will be good for 30 days through pickup, so get your delivery specialist (DS) to give you a conservative likely date. I also got GAP insurance for $400 for the 6 year loan. I did have to do a little dancing getting the final price sheet (MVPA) from my DS to my agent, and then at the last minute getting signed up as an Alliant CU member. This was because Tesla started firing out the orders in September (to pad out Q3 results), so the car was ready earlier than I was expecting.
- Get Insurance. You should search TMC to see the latest leads. I already had GEICO and when I first got a quote, they said $1,500 / year. When I sat down to actually finalize the addition of the new car, I entered the VIN, which they couldn't parse, and then got to choose between two similar makes like "Model S 60 and "S 60KWH". I tried them both and one of them was cheaper! (~$1,300/yr)
- REMEMBER TO USE A REFERRAL CODE TO SAVE $1,000. You can see mine in my signature! I forgot to use one on my initial order, but you can talk to your Delivery Specialist about adding a referral code.
Last Minute Twist: New AP? Cancel Or Not?
Just in the last two weeks before delivery, there were a few twists and turns that made me consider cancelling my order. As you may recall from Part 1, Autopilot was possibly my number one reason for getting a Tesla. Well, Elon Musk announced a great new AP was coming and he would write a blog post about it. So this caught my attention. What if he announces something about AP2 and retrofit compatibility? I figured I would keep my order unless either EM said AP2 was coming within a year or that AP was generally being nerfed due to dangerous use.
Well, as you may recall, the day he was supposed to release the blog post, SpaceX blew up a rocket. That delayed everything. Then Elon finally said he'd have a press conference Sep 11. I remember the day well, not just because of 9/11 but because I was picking up my car on the morning of Sep 12, so I would have to absorb the implications very quickly.
As we now know, he said nothing about AP2, but suggested that AP 8.1 was more or less maxing out the software on AP1 hardware. I figured between the breakup with Mobileye and the big push to collect radar data, that AP2 hardware is at least a year away. So I decided AP 8.1 was good enough and decided to accept the car. At some point, you have to just live a very good life instead of waiting endlessly for the greatest life.
Next
In Part 3, I'll comment on the long awaited pickup and my car experiences after the first few weeks. But from the name of this series, you can guess how I feel about the car.
I know that when I was deciding on whether to take the big purchase, I read as many owner accounts as I could, and when I was enduring the long wait for the actual car, I read through all of the reports on TMC of production and pick up as part of therapy. So this is my tiny way of giving back.
How To Survive the Waiting, the Waiting...
- You've already figured out that you should refresh My Tesla every few minutes, right?
- And you can also obsessively read TMC or the Tesla Forums.
- And you can search YouTube for "Tesla"
But you should also be sure to:
- Look at and fill out the Delivery Spreadsheet, which will help you get a more realistic sense of when your car might go into production, be completed, and be delivered.
- Read the Delivery Thread: Enjoy the anxiety and angst and joy of fellow buyers. You are not weird. Or rather, you are weird by there are many like you.
- This might also sound weird, but it is helpful to find someone on the Delivery thread who ordered just a few days before you did. I had a one-week ancestor, and as long as their car hadn't gone into production, I knew that I couldn't get too excited, and when theirs did going to production, I expected mine to follow a week later. My scheduled tracked theirs pretty well offset by one week.
- Name your car. Here are some unused names we had: The Wattmobile, Watilla (from Dreamfall) , Watty, Joules / Jouley, Tess of the Chargerville. I tried calling her Watty with the family for a few days, but no one else would go along with it. They insisted on calling her Tezzy. I tried migrating them onto Tess of the Chargerville, and that got a laugh, but no traction at all.
More practically, you will:
- Get Financing (if applicable). I went with Alliant Credit Union because how can you beat 72 months at 1.49% ?? I applied one evening, the next morning I got an email acceptance. Your loan terms will be good for 30 days through pickup, so get your delivery specialist (DS) to give you a conservative likely date. I also got GAP insurance for $400 for the 6 year loan. I did have to do a little dancing getting the final price sheet (MVPA) from my DS to my agent, and then at the last minute getting signed up as an Alliant CU member. This was because Tesla started firing out the orders in September (to pad out Q3 results), so the car was ready earlier than I was expecting.
- Get Insurance. You should search TMC to see the latest leads. I already had GEICO and when I first got a quote, they said $1,500 / year. When I sat down to actually finalize the addition of the new car, I entered the VIN, which they couldn't parse, and then got to choose between two similar makes like "Model S 60 and "S 60KWH". I tried them both and one of them was cheaper! (~$1,300/yr)
- REMEMBER TO USE A REFERRAL CODE TO SAVE $1,000. You can see mine in my signature! I forgot to use one on my initial order, but you can talk to your Delivery Specialist about adding a referral code.
Last Minute Twist: New AP? Cancel Or Not?
Just in the last two weeks before delivery, there were a few twists and turns that made me consider cancelling my order. As you may recall from Part 1, Autopilot was possibly my number one reason for getting a Tesla. Well, Elon Musk announced a great new AP was coming and he would write a blog post about it. So this caught my attention. What if he announces something about AP2 and retrofit compatibility? I figured I would keep my order unless either EM said AP2 was coming within a year or that AP was generally being nerfed due to dangerous use.
Well, as you may recall, the day he was supposed to release the blog post, SpaceX blew up a rocket. That delayed everything. Then Elon finally said he'd have a press conference Sep 11. I remember the day well, not just because of 9/11 but because I was picking up my car on the morning of Sep 12, so I would have to absorb the implications very quickly.
As we now know, he said nothing about AP2, but suggested that AP 8.1 was more or less maxing out the software on AP1 hardware. I figured between the breakup with Mobileye and the big push to collect radar data, that AP2 hardware is at least a year away. So I decided AP 8.1 was good enough and decided to accept the car. At some point, you have to just live a very good life instead of waiting endlessly for the greatest life.
Next
In Part 3, I'll comment on the long awaited pickup and my car experiences after the first few weeks. But from the name of this series, you can guess how I feel about the car.
