Hello! I am a new owner, and a new forum member. This is not so much a first drive review as it is a review of the overall driving experience over the past four days, interspersed with some newbie questions that I have still not found answers to (despite googling, redditing, searching this and other forums, etc.)
I got my car delivered this Tuesday 4/23 evening (dual motor, LR, FSD, 19 inch).
Manual driving: manual driving without any autopilot or cruise is an absolute pleasure. The car is zippy and responsive. Love the HOLD feature. Thank goodness for "creep" mode. I was surprised by how aggressive regenerative breaking was - I had to turn it down when I saw the car behind me almost rear-end me when regenerative breaking engaged.
Comfort and entertainment features: the lack of buttons for basic tasks (radio, switch presets, climate control, phone) is extremely disconcerting. Almost everything I need is hidden 3 deep in a weird menu structure. Finding anything is a major challenge while driving, including finding the hazard light button. Also frustrating is that the car seems unable to find playlists, albums, etc on my iPhone. It will randomly starting playing songs from the iPhone but I cannot find any way to browse the music library on the tesla console. Also - lack of Pandora, Spotify, ... is frustrating. Sure - I can play from my phone - but that means working on 2 screens now while driving which is inefficient, risky, and in some states, can get you a ticket if an officer thinks you are driving distracted.
Another frustrating thing - the menus in my car are missing a lot of options that online articles and videos refer to. I figured that might be due to the fact that I have old firmware. However, it seems like there is no way to update firmware other than wait and pray for Tesla to push the firmware to you. I checked ev-fw.com, and my car seems to be the only one in that database that has a really weird firmware version - 2019.7.105 cc3d741 Not sure if anyone has figured out a way to get software updates quickly, though reddit seems to think not.
Charging: I had to install a NEMA 14-50 socket - other than that, charging has been pretty easy so far: other than the fact that the charging cable is quite heavy and I have to disconnect and pack it up every morning and put it into its bag in the frunk before driving to work, and then take it out every night. Should I get something like:
https://www.amazon.com/Charging-Organizer-Connector-Bracket-Charger/dp/B0799GVJWN to hold the cable? How reliable/effective is this product? Is it safe to leave the Tesla brick hanging in the air like they show i the picture? Right now, I keep the brick resting on a tower of amazon boxes.
Autopilot: I was quite impressed with auto-steering and lane keeping. However, adaptive cruise control was unpredictable on moderate traffic freeways compared to my prior vehicle - it kept braking unnecessarily and aggressively. It also incorrectly positioned a car two lanes away as being in the next lane, and tried to actively steer away from this nonexistent threat. On freeways, I kept having to aggressively oversee the autopilot and "correct" it. On city streets, autosteer and cruise control were far more predictable and usable.
Navigate on Autopilot: Loved the ability to automatically drive through freeway interchanges which worked pretty well. However, lane change recommendations were useless. For the most part, the car wanted to drive in the right lane. If I move to the center or left lanes, within minutes the car wants to move back to the right lane. I had to turn off lane change recommendations due to this.
Overall - love the car and the overall driving experience, but am frustrated with the "quirks". Reading through this review I think I am making it sound like I don't like the car. Far from it - I really love driving my car. Just - the experience has been much more frustrating than I expected.
Thanks for reading!