Testing a Tesla

Before the readers panic I am referring to an event circa Oct 2019.

Pre covid.

Yours truly wanted to get a first hand taste of what the hype was all about.  Sure I have witnessed plenty of these new fangled battery powered appliances silently zipping across the bay area.  In fact my neighborhood might pass for a Tesla Show set (akin to the Truman show).   It appears every able bodied human is behind the wheel doing everything other than driving this thing.

I had a chance to touch and feel the thing when they showed up at work one day too to promote green something or the other.  Whether that is marketing, fake news or what is another blog.

But I decided it was time to experience this behind the wheel feeling of what had become a staple.  Typically (as the readers likely know) I am a reluctant technologist and in no hurry to familiarize myself with things that do not immediately hold appeal.  Let others bleed on the edge I say.  See if they survive.   Then happy to dip a toe or fingernail.

So one Saturday morning I drove my gasoline powered contraption to visit the showroom.  It is not far from home.  Parking lot was not particularly busy. After leaving my car in the visitor spot I walked into a glass paneled lobby with some waiting rooms to a side.

A complimentary coffee bar looked deserted because it had no coffee and the contraption designed to make it had suffered a stroke it appeared.  Perhaps too many visitors had drained the life.

So I strolled to the carpeted section where a top line Model X was sitting with its gull wing doors open.  I poked around not really interested in the piece since I had seen it before but to figure when I would get my business underway.

After approx five min a youngish chap dressed in Tesla branded attire smiled at me and asked what I needed. I said I wanted to test drive the cheapest car they sold.  That would be the Model 3.  With the least frills and in black.

He tried to pretend he was not clear and asked some inane questions.  After confirming that I indeed wanted to drive a low end Tesla Model 3 (translation less profit margins to all concerned) he asked me to wait another few minutes while he got one for us to drive.

Another five min and we went out to drive a white (it was called something more exotic and I cannot remember it) Model 3.  He told me that owners get a credit card size key and can also operate vehicle with an app on one's smartphone.

We used the card to open the door by simply having it in the pocket.  The door handles sit flush inside the door panel and pop out as you put your hand near it.

Pull it and open.  Slide into the seat.  Whoa... first of many issues.  Personally I have developed a bad back and scooping myself way down to sit on a surface that low is like doing an Asana that I could once easily pull off.  No more.  Then the seating itself - not great.  Average.  For something that stickers around $40K this was cheap.

The interior is indeed minimalist with lot of thought dedicated to the UX in the form of an oversized tablet stuck to the middle of the dash.  Screen curves down with the lines of the central pillar between driver and passenger.  The notion of using a glass screen for all functions is disconcerting for someone who is used to knobs and other tactile switches for lights or fan speeds.

While the screen does in fact attend to everything a driver needs to operate the car including playing music from 1000 radio stations from around the world (one at a time of course) and having large camera views for backing up and a massive GPS for navigating around, the best trick is where it autonomously maintains the car in its lane or follows a vehicle in front.

The coolest feature was where given a tap to the right (or left) lane indicator stem in the steering column the car proceeds to shift lanes.  Based on the GPS if there is a ramp to be taken the car goes ahead and takes that ramp all on its own as if controlled by a super power.

That is freaky and impressive.

I can see where it can eventually do things in fully autonomous mode.  

Outside of this cool tech I did come away feeling that I was not cut out to make this my next ride.   High price (for my taste), low overall build quality and comfort (for price) in spite of the no haggle pricing concept which is the best part I think, including the disorienting part of how the car brakes and behaves is too much of a learning curve I do not want to drive on.  Couple all this with ridiculously long charge times (potentially added cost to get super charger installed at home) and having to seek out special locations to charge unlike ubiquity of gas pumps this is not ready for prime time.

Some day there will be no choice but to buy electric at which point all negatives will have been addressed to the point of being a non issue.