The 483 Mile Report: Two Days With My New 2020 Model S LR+

[DBV1]

Agree. Not only that but there are occasional times when on a long trip, say, and you see a road sign with flashing lights say "WHEN LIGHTS FLASHING TUNE TO 1530AM FOR INFORMATION" and you can't because . . . Elon doesn't like AM radio.

Yeah - just makes no sense. I see he had it in 2018. Why they heck would remove that. Can not cost that much. Some of Tesla’s decisions are just baffling, but I think this one is the worst...

 

[LN1_Casey]

They removed it because they replaced it with another component that uses it. Don't recall exactly which, but it's involved with the HW3 module.

 

[tinm]

Did more driving today and I’ve decided having cruise control on if there are any cars behind me is a showstopper. To another driver, I’m aggressively brake-checking, and it must be pretty obnoxious. This S simply cannot figure out curvy roads (and some flat, straight roads!) and drives with a skittishness and lack of confidence more associated with a nervous 15-year old with a driving instructor in the car.

 

[Gr8Barn]

great insight. Thanks for sharing. I too had a 2013 Model S 85+ and will be receiving my 2020 LR+ this weekend.

So I took possession of my second S on Friday in Littleton CO, during an 800-mile same-day round-trip from New Mexico.

Here it is Sunday. The car had 15 miles on it when I picked it up. It has 483 now. Some random observations:

• Went to charge the car yesterday at the Santa Fe supercharger. It went up to 137kw and 553mi/hr for a while, then dropped down. Still, charging was pretty fast. It is nice to past ChargeGate in my old S and the agonizingly slow charges that ruined any hope for driving long distance in that thing. The new S will be a North America machine I am sure!
  
• HOWEVER, I did not get 402 miles of range. Doesn't look that way anyway. I set the charge to 90%, and when the charging finally stopped, I was at 354 miles of range. Which is about 393 miles at 100%. The car was advertised at 391 miles range. So the question is.... WTF, Elon? Why didn't I get more range? A 90% charge should've been more like 361 or 362. I know, not a big difference, but considering the 402-mile hype recently, a pretty big difference. Any other S LR+ owners finding you're not getting the range you expected?
  
• The fumes from the seats are overwhelming and probably will be for a while. Garage absolutely reeks. Car reeks when driving it. Clothes reek of the smell afterwards. Just amazingly strong fumes from those white seats. The curse of the petroleum industry no doubt. I'd rather have leather seats from a cow that people used for meat than have the seats poison me with their polyurethane fumes.
  
• I just noticed the first chip in the windshield. Two days and there's already a tiny pit in the glass! Aaarrgrhhhh.
  
• The doors sound sooo much better than the 2013 S. More solid. More Rolls Royce sounding, I'm imagining. Nice improvement when you open and close them.
• I am astounded Tesla has done nothing in 7 years to improve the buttons for side mirror controls. Dumb then, dumb now.
  
• The sheer POWER on this thing compared to my old S85 is breathtaking. I took it out on the road today, got to a lonely stretch of road, and punched it -- wow. BUT I also notice the rear of the car wiggles, the computers clearly fighting a fishtailing effect in the first second of flooring the accelerator. It's like the car has so much power it can't handle it and you feel it's about to lose control.
• The old Model S had much better cruise control in the sense that it was totally blind, no cameras getting in the way, no brain, nothin, and if you set the speed at 50 on a winding two lane country road, car said ok no prob, and did 50. The new S, you set cruise control to 50, and the computers are constantly getting in the way, with sudden jolts if it doesn recognize what to do for a half-second, and then it resumes once it "sees" where the road is leading. Even on the interstate, where around here the speeds are 75mph, the new S's cruise control hesitates, the car lurching as it tries to slow down suddenly because it THINKS there is something in the road when in fact all there is is a slightly different road surface color up ahead, or a slight rise in incline of the road up ahead... I've had about 10-15 incidents so far, in just two days of ownership, where the cruise control suddenly slowed down thinking there was some hazard up ahead when there wasn't. Meh.
• In my old S, I didn't have a console between driver and front passenger seats, so lots more room for my right leg. In the new S I find my leg is now rubbing against the console all the time.
• I love the new seats, compared to the old so-so seats from 2013. BUT, I don't like how Tesla tried to save money and integrate the head-rests right into the seat all as one, rather than making independent, separate, adjustable head-rests.
• No AM radio!?!?!??!?!?!!?? Grrr.
• No sunroof!?!?!?!?!?!? Grrr.
• The ride is much smoother in the new S. Maybe it's the air suspension? Just smoother for sure. And NO rattles. The first S had so many squeaks and rattles it took several visits to service center to get them all fixed. I have no complaints in the new S.
• I suspect there are some panel gap issues in the new S, but whatever, I don't care, it looks good enough to me, so no complaints.
  
• Also I could find no paint issues, then again, when it came time for me to inspect the car in Littleton, a rain storm started. But I couldn't find anything noticeable. Looks good.
• Oooh: nice surprise, car comes standard with the rear shelf thingie. Always wanted one of those.
• I don't like the way the headrests in the rear seats block the view outside the rear-view mirror. Esp the middle rear seat headrest. I may start knockin' down the rear seat row to get a better view.
• Speaking of rear-view mirror, it's way smaller than my old S. Kinda weird.
• I really like the new sun visors in the S. I know they've been in the car for a while, but the 2013 had notoriously skimpy sunvisors that didn't block much sun if it was coming in the driver's door window. The new visors do that job fine.
• I still have no idea how to do this wireless charging for phones. Is that a built-in thing or something I'd have to buy? I have not investigated.

Well that's about it for now. If I think of more I'll add replies to this.

Congrats! Nice color and agree the wheels look dorky. Something about wheel caps is really unappealing to me personally.

 

[tinm]

And now a NEW issue: was backing out of garage this afternoon and after backing out I have to turn the wheels hard right so the car can head out to the street front-end first.

As I was turning I heard this LOUD grinding groaning friction sound coming out of left front wheel well. Got out to check and the tire is rubbing against the wheel well! The sound was so loud my wife heard it inside the house!

In all the years I’ve driven Teslas I’ve never seen (or heard!) this before.

What’s up w/ that??

 

[Battpower]

View attachment 555059 View attachment 555060 View attachment 555061 View attachment 555062 And now a NEW issue: was backing out of garage this afternoon and after backing out I have to turn the wheels hard right so the car can head out to the street front-end first.

As I was turning I heard this LOUD grinding groaning friction sound coming out of left front wheel well. Got out to check and the tire is rubbing against the wheel well! The sound was so loud my wife heard it inside the house!

In all the years I’ve driven Teslas I’ve never seen (or heard!) this before.

What’s up w/ that??

Is the tire rubbing on the inner wheel arch lining?

 

[tinm]

Is the tire rubbing on the inner wheel arch lining?

Outer edge of tire rubbing against that lining yeah. See the one photo you can see clearly the marks on outer edge of tire. I wonder if tire is overinflated or if the lining is not positioned correctly?

 

[Battpower]

Outer edge of tire rubbing against that lining yeah. See the one photo you can see clearly the marks on outer edge of tire. I wonder if tire is overinflated or if the lining is not positioned correctly?

I bet the latter. Sorry, I couldn't quite make out the scuff mark looking on my cell phone. It's screen protector is also pretty scuffed!

I had exactly that on my other (non Tesla) EV. Quite easy for the lining to not be seated correctly.

Hopefully just a mobile ranger job.

Having said that, the alignment at the lower corner looks OK, but it is quite a tight fit - such that you can only get wire snow chains on 19's iirc.

Try adjusting suspension height to see if that helps in the short term? But remember no lead right foot driving in higher suspension settings.

 

[ngng]

Outer edge of tire rubbing against that lining yeah. See the one photo you can see clearly the marks on outer edge of tire. I wonder if tire is overinflated or if the lining is not positioned correctly?

Rubbing could be caused by:
1. bad alignment with lowered cars
2. misaligned body panels
3. wrong offset wheels for ride height

My guess is 2, then 1? You can over-inflate a tire quite a bit but it won't really change the overall diameter (it will change your tire wear pattern though)

 

[XLR82XS]

Another observation:

Why does the 2020 S LR+ have no “MODEL S” badging on the rear of the car?

It just says “DUAL MOTOR” in small letters on the right. Another time/money-saving measure by Tesla at the factory?

$ saving efforts. I think the less emblems the better - especially on Tesla vehicles where less is more.
BTW: The exterior mirror switch in the S is sourced from Mercedes-Benz supplier. I don't have issues with it.

 

[tinm]

$ saving efforts. I think the less emblems the better - especially on Tesla vehicles where less is more.
BTW: The exterior mirror switch in the S is sourced from Mercedes-Benz supplier. I don't have issues with it.

Understood re Mercedes supplier on the driver's L/R side mirror switch.

Problem with my 2013 S was, for the entire time I owned the car, the L and R selector buttons worked poorly. If I touched the L button, say, the red light would go on, correctly, but nothing would happen once I started trying to move the left mirror. I always, always had to tap it two or three times for it to "engage." And then the latency between moving the actual mirror control and seeing the mirror motors engage and move the mirror accordingly, was always surprisingly long--500 milliseconds? 1 second?

Seems like a minor thing, but it becomes and issue when you're cognitively overloaded in a busy Post Office, say, or shopping center parking lot, backing into a space, and cars are all around, drivers anxious to get past you, and pedestrians and/or dogs or kids or whatever are here and there, and you're trying to be fully aware of all of that while NOT hitting the curb and causing more wheel scratches, and in the middle of all of this you try to use the L/R side mirror controls and they just. do. not. want. to. cooperate. in. real. time. the. way. they. should.

That's why I am dismayed to see these things still on Tesla's flagship vehicle 7 years later.

 

[tinm]

AAAAAAAAUUGGHHHHH . . .

NNNOOOOOOOO . . .

Went out to garage this morning ready to hop in the car and I noticed the right rear tire FLAT and airless, and on the backside a big effing SCREW.

Every effing car I have ever bought, I swear, gets a flat tire within the first 7 days. My previous S? Exact same thing. The Audi before that? Same. The Benz before that same. All the way back.

Now I have to get AAA to come out and it’ll cost $64 even though I’m a 30+ year member and then I have to order a new tire which nobody in this town will have in stock.... AAAAAAUUUUGGHHH

 

[Landen420]

Outer edge of tire rubbing against that lining yeah. See the one photo you can see clearly the marks on outer edge of tire. I wonder if tire is overinflated or if the lining is not positioned correctly?

I just had the same issue with my 2019 MS. You need to adjust the wheel alignment and more specifically the castor angle. I took my MS into the SC for a wheel alignment and they adjusted my driver side wheel castor way off. I took it to a performance shop to get it correctly aligned and was glad to pay to have it done right then take it to SC to waste my time and not fix the issue.

good luck

 

[LN1_Casey]

AAAAAAAAUUGGHHHHH . . .

NNNOOOOOOOO . . .

View attachment 556159 View attachment 556160 View attachment 556161

Went out to garage this morning ready to hop in the car and I noticed the right rear tire FLAT and airless, and on the backside a big effing SCREW.

Every effing car I have ever bought, I swear, gets a flat tire within the first 7 days. My previous S? Exact same thing. The Audi before that? Same. The Benz before that same. All the way back.

Now I have to get AAA to come out and it’ll cost $64 even though I’m a 30+ year member and then I have to order a new tire which nobody in this town will have in stock.... AAAAAAUUUUGGHHH

If there was a sad face, I'd click it.

That sucks.

 

[TravelFree]

So sorry to hear of your Flat. On my list of accessories I added.

 

[tinm]

Here is the screw. Still trying to pull it out.

Based on photo and location of screw relative to tread/edge, do you think this tire is salvagable by getting it plugged at the local tire shop?

 

[Battpower]

Here is the screw. Still trying to pull it out.

Based on photo and location of screw relative to tread/edge, do you think this tire is salvagable by getting it plugged at the local tire shop?

View attachment 556272

Sadly, I doubt it.

 

[tinm]

Sadly, I doubt it.

Yeah I just got off phone w/ Discount Tire after texting them the photo, and they're like, nopers, not gonna be able to fix that tire... so I had to order a new one, which of course they do not have in stock, and the cut-off time from the warehouse 60 miles away was this morning so I won't be driving again until tomorrow afternoon after a flat-bed towtruck ordeal and everything.... sigh

 

[Zaxxon]

Yeah I just got off phone w/ Discount Tire after texting them the photo, and they're like, nopers, not gonna be able to fix that tire... so I had to order a new one, which of course they do not have in stock, and the cut-off time from the warehouse 60 miles away was this morning so I won't be driving again until tomorrow afternoon after a flat-bed towtruck ordeal and everything.... sigh

At least the new tire wont' be too far off, mileage-wise, from the other three.

 

[tinm]

At least the new tire wont' be too far off, mileage-wise, from the other three.

Gee, thanks