I would love to hear what your honest reaction is to the interior, and how the car overall feels and fits you. Give us report when you come up for air.
Well? What fun, reliving that initial excitement through the "newbies"! Although I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow so I get to drive my Tesla. My better half bought a new Camaro convertible last Monday, and the weather has been incredible so... I've been having him chauffer ME around for a change.
Please let us know how your test drive was!
Basically just got home, as the test drive was in Natick, Massachusetts, and we hit traffic on the way home.
I was definitely impressed.
I was nervous about whether or not I'd easily be able to pick up this "one-pedal" stuff, but as it turned out, it wasn't much of an issue. If anything, I wound up rolling through a couple of stop signs at first, in an attempt not to use the brake pedal at all, but I think that was largely due to the fact that we had creep mode on. If I do wind up taking another test drive in two weeks, I'll see if we can turn creep mode off and try things that way.
I was driving a P85+. I didn't get to play around too much with hard accelerating, but I did try a couple. One was getting onto the Mass Pike. I guess by the time I had some room in front of me I may have already been going 40 or 50...I'm not certain. I was looking for a chance to really test the acceleration, but there were a lot of cars around, and I had to merge with the traffic. When I finally did hit the Go pedal, the car absolutely took off, but not for long, and I looked down and saw 81 on the speedometer. I basically would have backed off at about that point anyway, as I was approaching other cars, and, obviously, going pretty fast, but I was also surprised that I felt like the car had kind of cut out. The Tesla rep quickly told me that the test drive cars were set to limit the speed to 80 MPH. That made me feel better. I think if you had asked me how fast I thought we were going I probably would have guessed 70.
The only other time I accelerated in any meaningful way was when we were going to get off the highway. The rep said we were going to exit in about a mile. I got into the right lane, and with about half a mile to go decided to change lanes and pass someone, and then change back to exit. I wanted to see how easily I could pass, knowing that it would be easy. My wife, who likes to get ready to exit miles before she needs to, basically asked me what the hell I was doing. I considered doing it again, but thought better of it. I have no doubt the Tesla could have handled it easily.
I had been concerned about whether or not the arm rest would be comfortable or not, and while I forgot to explicitly pay attention to it, I did not notice any issue. I'll have to remember to specifically check if I do get another test drive in two weeks.
I didn't mess much with the controls on the display, as I wanted to focus on driving and not crashing Tesla's Tesla. I did notice the pretty limited view through the rear window, but of course there's the rear-view camera to make up for that.
My wife drove the Tesla too, as I didn't want her first driving experience to be with our Model S. She did fine as well, and enjoyed it.
I had not realized that any of the new autopilot-related features were functional yet. The car can currently read speed limit signs and warn you if you are over the limit or any limit above the limit that you set. It also can currently warn you if you are deviating from your lane without indicating a lane change. (It vibrates the steering wheel.) I've read a lot on these forums, and I don't think I've seen that mentioned. Perhaps most importantly, the rep said that in two weeks there would be a software update that will allow for adaptive cruise control. (I'm actually going to start a new thread about this.) So that was exciting.
All in all, it was a very positive experience, and I am even more excited about getting my P85D!
