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I picked up my PTD yesterday

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ZsoZso

Active Member
Supporting Member
Apr 24, 2014
2,310
16,163
Mount-island
I picked up my S85 Sunday (28th Sept.) morning, drove to a friend in the next city for a BBQ party and drove around town today - a total of about 320km (200miles) so far. I am very happy with it so far. One thing I already realized, it is not really a car, it is a PTD ! :love:

PTD = Personal Teleportation Device

When I want to switch lanes and I see a gap, step on the 'Go', move over, quickly back off the 'Go' or even break to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me. The instant torque from whatever cruising speed is freakish...

Some notes on my delivery:
  1. Originally scheduled for 25th Sept., but got delayed to 28th, no big deal (it was more convenient to pickup on Sunday than would have been on Thursday when I was working).
  2. I am happy about the switch of the left-side stalks on the steering wheel (indicator higher, cruise control below)
  3. I am not so happy that I do not have the sensors behind the mirror and below the nose-cone that some people got already.
  4. The SW version is 5.14, not 6.0 and I do not see any indicator that the new vesion would be available for download. Should I be worried about that or just wait patiently ?

A few things that surprised me that I do not like so much:
  1. The car is HUGE ! I used to drive a Nissan Murano and thought that was big, but when I tried to park the Tesla in my garage I was having some real difficulties. I had to re-arrange some drawers and shelfs to make room for the length and was worried that the mirrors may not fit in the doorway -- they did but with very little room on the sides of my 7' garage door opening. I checked the specs, it turns out the Tesla is 206mm longer and 83mm wider than the Murano! :eek:
  2. The parking sensors are not as accurate / useful as I expected. E.g. they did not indicate the distance from the garage door frame, only from the side-wall (which is wider) so they do not help to center the car on entry. I dont have a side-wall from one side because it is double garage, but with separate doors and a column in the middle -- which is ignored by the sensors. Furthermore at the back end they went from yellow+distance to red stop sign when there was still about 20cm left and I actually need to use about half of that distance to bring the car inside enough for the door to close -- which means the sensors are useless for the most important last 10cm movement, when I would really need to know how much space I still have left.
  3. While I love the idea of the voice commands -- really cool feature, I have a rather hit-and-miss success so far. Maybe it does not like my accent (I'm not native English speaker), or my timing is not right, but it only works about 1-in-5 tries so far. I only used 3 commands: Navigate, Play and Call, I do not know if there are any others that should work.
  4. Today in my lunch-break I tried to use a level-2 public charger with the J1772 adapter and I was puzzled how to open the charging port and then again how to pull out the plug when I wanted to leave. Both times I managed to achieve it from the touch-screen inside the car, but that is kind of cumbersome, there must be a simpler way...
  5. When I try to accelerate from standing (e.g. from a traffic light when it turns green) and floor it, there seems to be a little bit of delay, the car starts rolling slowly for a fraction of a second, and then I feel the full tourque push. So it is not as instant as the acceleration from rolling. Is it because of traction control ? Or am I just imagining the delay ?
  6. When the car is locked and I approach with the fob in my pocket, the car unlocks and the handles present themselves only when I get pretty close (few feet), which is good I like that. On the other hand, when I get out of the car and leave it in a parking lot, I need to walk pretty far away (30+ feet?) for it to lock and retract the handles. Even if I double-click the fob for locking, the lights flash but the handles do not retract so I am not sure whether it is locked. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm afraid somebody could just jump into the car and drive it away before it locks when I am walking away from it. But if I stay close, then it stays open because I am there with the fob. Am I just misunderstanding the whole mechanism ?

Overall, I am very happy! These little things are just stuff I need to learn / get used to.
In terms of energy use, on the highway I got around 200Wh/km average, while in the city I got around 170Wh/km. Is that good / bad / average ?

ZsoZso
- a driver with a fresh Tesla-grin :biggrin:
 
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6. Unless you leave the fob in the car, anyone jumping in and trying to drive away would not get very far....it's not like it will continue to run just because they got in while the fob was nearby.

Actually, it will. The key is only needed to "start" the car. The car says "Key not in car. Car will not restart" or something like that. But the car will drive fine without the fob if the fob disappears after it's started.
 
Parking -- I park my car in two very small garages with very little clearance at the door and back wall with no problems and without any parking sensors! I do use the rear camera and just watch for the same spots on the floor or wall, and then I know I'm good. In on garage I always back in and I know when I'm just about to touch the back wall, I'm actually about 6-8 inches away, so that works every time. When backing in, I also use the side mirrors to judge centering. It's all very easy and better than relying on inaccurate parking sensors which my car does not have.
 
3) While I don't own a Tesla, one error that it sounds like many people make on the voice commands is to press and release the button on the steering wheel. I'm pretty sure the correct operation is to press and hold the button on the steering wheel while you're talking. I think I picked that up on Bjørn's video thread. Maybe that's the only problem here.
 
Wow, really? Is there a use case for allowing this? On the face of it, it seems like a big boo-boo. Sorry for speaking from ignorance.

Assume you are talking about the car staying running if it loses contact with the key fob. First, this is the same behavior as the Nissan Leaf. This is also the behavior on a friend's Ford Edge and I'm assuming most vehicles with a keyless ignition (typically implemented as push button start). The main issue would be that you don't the ignition shutting down if there was a temporary communication error (low battery, radio interference, etc....). Much better to just let the car continue to operate in the eyes of Tesla, Nissan, and Ford.
 
Parking -- I park my car in two very small garages with very little clearance at the door and back wall with no problems and without any parking sensors! I do use the rear camera and just watch for the same spots on the floor or wall, and then I know I'm good. In on garage I always back in and I know when I'm just about to touch the back wall, I'm actually about 6-8 inches away, so that works every time. When backing in, I also use the side mirrors to judge centering. It's all very easy and better than relying on inaccurate parking sensors which my car does not have.

You are right, I found out myself on the second night that backing into the garage is much easier using the tilted-down side mirrors + rear-view camera. The first time I was going in with the front and that was hard.
 
  1. The car is HUGE ! I used to drive a Nissan Murano and thought that was big, but when I tried to park the Tesla in my garage I was having some real difficulties. I had to re-arrange some drawers and shelfs to make room for the length and was worried that the mirrors may not fit in the doorway -- they did but with very little room on the sides of my 7' garage door opening. I checked the specs, it turns out the Tesla is 206mm longer and 83mm wider than the Murano! :eek:

I am a little surprised at this comment. I think the vastness of the car is pretty well advertised and many folks here have commented on having to get used to the size. A few have asked the all important "will it fit in my garage" question. However, it sounds like it fits in the garage, so I guess you are good to go.

For others who are reading this thread and thinking about buying a Tesla, if you schedule a test drive, try to get Tesla to come to you so you can check the garage fit. I did this and it was well worth it -- mostly for piece of mind. Turned out there was plenty of room in the garage, but the garage door opening is just a little tight, but manageable.
 
4. The SW version is 5.14, not 6.0 and I do not see any indicator that the new vesion would be available for download. Should I be worried about that or just wait patiently ?

Just wait patiently. You'll get it, eventually. The car stealth downloads it; when finished downloading, you get a popup on the main screen notifying you an update is ready and allowing you to choose immediate or a later timed install.

4. Today in my lunch-break I tried to use a level-2 public charger with the J1772 adapter and I was puzzled how to open the charging port and then again how to pull out the plug when I wanted to leave. Both times I managed to achieve it from the touch-screen inside the car, but that is kind of cumbersome, there must be a simpler way...
Your car needs to be unlocked to remove the adapter, if unlocked then the J1772 release will allow you to remove the nozzle and adapter as a unit. If locked, you can remove the J1772 nozzle, but your adapter will be staying with the car. So that means you either *double-click* :) your fob to unlock while walking up, or do the unlock dance by continuing a few feet past the charge port toward the driver's door until the car recognizes the fob and unlocks, then back to the port for removal.

To open the charge port initially, the screen or the app are your only choices. At a supercharger or a tesla HPWC, the charging nozzle's button will open the port. But nothing else AFAIK.

Overall, I am very happy! These little things are just stuff I need to learn / get used to.
In terms of energy use, on the highway I got around 200Wh/km average, while in the city I got around 170Wh/km. Is that good / bad / average ?

ZsoZso
- a driver with a fresh Tesla-grin :biggrin:
Yeah... And I think you'll find the very happy feeling actually grows over time. Have fun!
 
Assume you are talking about the car staying running if it loses contact with the key fob. First, this is the same behavior as the Nissan Leaf. This is also the behavior on a friend's Ford Edge and I'm assuming most vehicles with a keyless ignition (typically implemented as push button start). The main issue would be that you don't the ignition shutting down if there was a temporary communication error (low battery, radio interference, etc....). Much better to just let the car continue to operate in the eyes of Tesla, Nissan, and Ford.

I would think the standard logic would be "if no fob is inside the car, don't start moving" unless there is some real use case for doing so.

I haven't really tested my Volt in this regard....guess I'll have a small activity this evening.