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Tesla moments

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Last night, my wife started telling me a parking story. "I went to the Korean grocery store and when I came out, somebody had parked super close to my door. I had to climb in the other side."

Me: "Why didn't you just make the car pull out of the spot by itself first?"

Her: ".......I forgot it could do that!"
 
Great moment today. I parked at a gas station to pick up Powerball Tickets for an office pool and saw a guy parked about to take a pic of my car when I was walked back outside. He looked embarrassed and asked if he could take a picture. I invited him over to sit in the car and ask questions.
 
Great moment today. I parked at a gas station to pick up Powerball Tickets for an office pool and saw a guy parked about to take a pic of my car when I was walked back outside. He looked embarrassed and asked if he could take a picture. I invited him over to sit in the car and ask questions.
That's what I did several times with friends when I first got the car. They would want to take pictures, so I had them sit in it while I took their picture. They would go slack-jawed in amazement.
 
I guess this is a good place to put this. After getting 7.1, I found a use for summon!

I just got home from work, and I was excited to try out summon. Unload the kids out of the car, and as we're going home, I turn on the summon feature and have the car back out down the driveway. I tell my kids "look, the car is driving on it's own"... My kids were astonished (they're preschool aged), my son got excited since he has an RC car that I can now play too :wink:
 
Best one yet for me:

I was waiting at the light at a freeway exit. A homeless guy starts asking me about the car, is it a Tesla, and oh, wow, it's the first one he's ever seen. (I was in far south SD, so I believe him). Started then to tell me that he's so happy Tesla is getting some love with these beautiful cars. "Tesla discovered electricity, you know, not Ben Franklin or any of those others."

Gotta love the CA homeless pop. So much smarter than I.

Not sure I knew who Tesla was before the damn car came out. :redface: My secret is out.

EDIT: Btw, I did not mean to imply here that Tesla "invented" electricity. I was just amazed that the homeless man knew so much about Tesla, the man.
 
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My Tesla Moment for 2015 Happened around 12:30 a.m. Jan 1 2016

I hope people won't see this as self-serving... some of you may know that a nonprofit my wife co-founded, Climate XChange (focused on getting revenue-neutral carbon-fee-and-rebate legislation enacted in Massachusetts), held a raffle from Sep 26 2015 - Dec 31 2015, with the drawing taking place around 12:05 a.m. January 1 2016. The Grand Prize winning ticket was drawn first, so that all tickets had a shot at winning, then saved in an envelope and announced after the other 5 prizes were drawn and announced. The winner was Al Nierenberg of Boxford, MA:

Grand Prize Winner - Al Nierenberg.jpg


Here's a picture of Al's wife Catherine, Al, Jessica (President of Climate XChange) and myself:


Grand Prize Winner - Al & Catherine Nierenberg, Jessica, Alan.jpg


While the whole thing was about awareness for Carbon Pricing, and for raising funds for Climate XChange, and the moment really belonged to Catherine & Al, I confess that this was also MY personal tip-top Tesla moment for the year! Turns out that Al & Catherine have a Prius with >200,000 miles on it, held together with spit (the baling wire has corroded through, apparently), and they've been wondering what they can afford to replace it with. They tell me that they could NOT have imagined buying a Tesla were it not for winning it and winning the goodies and tax payments we built into the "No Pain" raffle. Turns out that they have a solar system on their house and they will configure slightly less than the maximum Tesla configuration we allow ($103K-$110K depending on how you look at it) and get a Powerwall for their solar system along with the car. They figure they can generate enough energy for house and car plus some extra back to the grid for at least 8 months out of the year.

As you might imagine, I feel pretty damned good about this! And you might also imagine how grateful I feel to all the ticket purchasers, who made a huge leap to take a chance on the raffle and to support carbon pricing and Climate XChange!

Alan

P.S. I'm just now catching my breath after all this; a lot of paperwork and loose ends to tie up, and still far from caught up; including email and social forum responses I still owe to people. But while I'm posting this, I'd also like to shout out to Doug and Daniel, the Tesla Motors Club co-founders, who spent hours on the phone with me talking about various issues and specifically about carbon pricing and the forum and Teslas. It's pretty incredible what these guys have built -- Tesla Motors Club -- and I wonder how many people know just how much a labor of love this forum is for them and just how little money is in it for them regardless of the love. I certainly didn't know some of this backstory until I spent time with them late last year. If you're not already a paid supporter of teslamotorsclub.com, you might think about doing just that. They've created a forum that could be described as one gigantic, on-going "Tesla moment". :)
 
The car is just too doggone quiet.

While driving though a typical suburb, I saw teens/tweens playing in a driveway. One youngster starting to push another sitting on a skateboard. As I approached, I slowed from 20mph to 5 mph but they kept pushing - into the street. I came to a complete stop and waited about 10 feet from the driveway. The kids finally noticed me waiting and vacated the street. I shook my head but then remembered that they couldn't hear the car.

Silence can be hazardous. :)
 
The car is just too doggone quiet.

While driving though a typical suburb, I saw teens/tweens playing in a driveway. One youngster starting to push another sitting on a skateboard. As I approached, I slowed from 20mph to 5 mph but they kept pushing - into the street. I came to a complete stop and waited about 10 feet from the driveway. The kids finally noticed me waiting and vacated the street. I shook my head but then remembered that they couldn't hear the car.

Silence can be hazardous. :)

This reminded me of a very early Tesla moment: I work very late shifts most days and will usually come home between 2-5am. In my old Infiniti FX45, the V8 engine was enough to alert our German Shepherd that it was me coming in. The first month of driving the Tesla, he woke everyone up with his burglar-bark in the wee-hours when I'd come in. Now, I call out his name so he knows it is me. It would have been an unusual deal-breaker for the hubs.
 
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Had an odd moment last week.

Was heading home late in the evening and decided to pick up something quick from the drive-thru at Wendy's. Behind me in line was big ol' pickup truck from maybe the early 80s with some loud rumbly motor under the hood. As I'm at the window waiting to grab my food, he revs his engine a few times while in park. Not sure why he did it (don't think it was a sign of aggression, we were sitting in a line afterall) maybe just trying to warm it up it was a cold night.

Anyway, the gal in the window turns back around at me and say "Nice Tesla, I hear ya revin' that engine." The engine comment took me a bit by surprised so kinda stuttered "Wasn't me, this car is silent."

Just struck me as odd that she recognized the car as a Tesla, but didn't realize it didn't make those kinds of noises. Just a reminder that not everyone gets as much exposure to these cars as we're used to, still a pretty rare occurrence for most people to get up close with one... which is why I'm always happy to chat with people when they have questions.