Why I did not buy a Tesla
At the end of August I went in to buy a Tesla Model S. I had the financing setup, and really was only deciding on new or certified used. After 2 hours with them, I left and did not buy a Tesla. Here is why;
Likes:
- Acceleration, absolutely amazing! Drove the base 70D and I was amazed at the feel of the car.
- Car aware of you, walk up to it, the doors unlock and handles pop out.
- Self Parking was very cool. Backed into a parking spot, that was very cool.
- The ability to hold the remote/key in your hand and have the car pull out. If the car beside you is too close.
- The ability to tether to the car in front of you, keeping (select-able) time spacing, as the car speeds up, and even stops (adaptive cruse control).
- The Autonomous mode on the highway was a bit getting use to, but excellent. Passing cars in the next lane a bit too close for me, but really it had lots of space.
- Tell the GPS where you want to go, and it will find Tesla Charge locations on the route, and how long you will need to stay at each.
- You can use an iPhone app to remote cool or heat the the car.
- You can even set a ‘nest’ like feature that the car will learn when you leave the house, and automatically bring the temperature inside the car to the level you like.
- Car receives upgrades to it’s software adding features. Like recently the car learned how to auto-park into a slanted parking spot. All Free.
Dislikes
- No App Store. One massive screen on the dash and you can not add applications to it. Toyota, Honda, BMW all have the ability to add entertainment and other applications. No support for this on a ‘technology’ car.
- The car has 3 forward cameras, a few facing reverse, and one on each side of the car. All tracking the cars position and where other cars are. If you put the signal light, you do not get the image of the camera on the LARGE center screen. Honda does this. Help you see in the blind spot. You can turn on the rear camera on while driving, but they did not think of turning on the right camera when you put on the right signal.
- No iPhone (or android) phone integration to the dash. No Car Play, you can not even read a text on the LARGE screen.
- One of the apps that you do get is a calendar, and ya, it is not reading your iPhone Calendar.
- The car tracks your drive, distance, speed, power consumption, and many others. None of this data can be downloaded. Just viewed on the screen.
- Has 4G service built in, for google-maps, streaming music and surf the web. No Video, no Bluetooth keyboard, no Hotspot.
- The Second biggest Dislike, to turn on the rear seat heaters, the persons in the front need to navigate through three screens to tap the LARGE front screen to increase or decrease any one of the three seats. (Mom my butt is hot, can you turn my seat down….)
- The first biggest dislike. No rain sensing windshield wipers. The fact it does not have them is a little issue, the fact they forgot to put the software in, and it is on a to-do-list to add is amazing. The earlier cars have it, the hardware is there, they just have it on a future feature list????
- And then there is the charging. If your commuting and the car charges over night, and fully charged in the morning, there is no ‘time’ to change. For me, no matter how you dress it up, for every 280 miles, you need to spend 1.5 hours to charge the car (at a SUPPER charger, longer, much longer, at other chargers). So the 4 hour drive of 280 miles, becomes 5.5 hours.
Other items.
The other items that I found odd.
Q: “How much does the home charger cost to have installed”
A: “ah, good question let me ask some people to know if they know”
Q: “How much does it cost to charge the car from empty, or 25%”
A: “oh, let me look this up on this wall application that will walk you through all of this”
— it was $13, could not just tell me this….
Statement “Look at this feature that the car can postpone charge until late night when SOME power companies give you a discounted rate, and the $13 can drop to $3.”
Q: “do the power companies in Virginia offer this?”
A: “I do not know, but I do not think so”
I am in VA, they are in VA, and tell me a feature that I can not use?
During the test that only the ‘qualified’ person could provide me, they asked me to turn off the autonomous mode before I got to the stop sign as the cal ‘may not see the sign’
They talked more about what the car could do in the future then what it can do now.
It really is a science project on wheels, a very fast, one, but your not getting a $100,000 car, your getting a $20,000 car with $20,000 worth of futures, $20,000 of invovience, and $40,000 worth of cool.
About the Author
Kevin Cossaboon
A networking profesional located in Northren Virginia, USA. My hobbies are Technology and Photography. Love playing with the latest technology, and will try to post reviews of them. Also love my life long journey of learning to capture light, to trigger emotions, through photography.