Hey guys, I’m happy to say that I am at 150 miles with myModel S. Here are some of my experiences.
Sales experience. I changed sales advisors once a dedicated CPO SA role was created. Both were very helpful and the process was very much “no pressure”. In fact the latest SA even encouraged my not to take a car that I wasn’t 100% thrilled with since he would find me the right one with enough time. I really felt like I got exactly what I wanted at a fair price.
Waiting. It is after all, a Tesla, so you have to expect to wait. Wait for the right CPO to show up. Wait for the car to ship and clear CPO certification. Wait for parts to come in and get swapped. All in it took 6 weeks to get my car and even then, there are replacement items that they are waiting on parts for today. I told them to give methe car with a punch list for later. In fairness I did order at the end of December, just as they were pushing for deliveries on new cars, so it wasn’t the ideal time for them to work on CPO cars when they had to work on $130,000 new cars.
CPO. The CPO certification process was very good. To date they, put in 4 new tires, 3 new rims, 1 touched up rim, performed paintless dent repair on a door ding (I give it a 9/10 for the repair), replaced the DU, will replace interior leather parts that showed excessive wear, will replace parts of the headliner that showed excessive wear, will repair side mirror that was not folding, will replace the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] row seats, detailed interior and exterior. Like any 2.5 year old car, it does have small signs of wear, but overall it’s in great shape. I thank both Tesla and whoever the first owner was for taking such good care of it. One thing of note is thatTesla puts the car back to the original window sticker specs (Monroney?). This means that any aftermarket items get taken out (tint, rims, even a center console!). In addition, if it has something that you don’t want you still get it. Mine was supposed to have a Yacht floor but it was missing. I tried to swap it for a center console, but was told that they couldn’t since the CC wasn’t on the original sticker.
Range anxiety. I haven’t taken any long trips yet, but will have one in a few weeks. I’ll have a better sense afterwards about range anxiety. I did download Plugshare to scope out options outside of the supercharger network. Surprisingly more than I thought. If anything, I am more anxious about the lack of a spare tire. Run flats would have been a good alternative, but I know from by other car that those add to the replacement cost and have their own issues.
Controls. I thought that the center control panel would be a bit daunting to figure out, but I can say thatafter about an hour playing around with it during a supercharging session, it is fairly intuitive. There are obviously things that I would like adjusted, but overall it’s very good. In addition, the responsiveness of the touch screen is very good. The screen, not the CPU or the 3G signal. The latter 2 are not very good. Tesla must be throttling down the download speeds. I thought about the LTE upgrade, but will wait a bit for that. The phone APP is great, with room for a few enhancements. I was literally able to unlock and start the car from work so that my wife could shift it in the driveway when it started to snow.
Driving experience. Driving the car is a lot of fun. Getting instant torque really makes a difference. My prior car was a Mustang GT and even that car doesn’t match what you feel with the Tesla. The interior feels great and is very comfortable. The sound is super quiet. So quiet that I rarely turn up the music volume. The music is no longer competing with the engine or outside noise.
The so-so. As mentioned above, slow 3G or CPU speed. Makes me wonder if my 11K vin car can get a CPU upgrade in the future. If Tesla does APP mirroring on the screen then it won’t matter. No center console. $110,000 (new price) car and it has no center console or wheel locks. I think that these should have been included, worst case I’ll break down and buy them. No spare tire. No rear cup holders. No door pockets. No lighted vanity mirrors. These aren’t the end of the world items. For about $1,200 I can get most of these addressed. I’ll wait to see how much they bother me before deciding.
Tesla community. The other intangible is the community. Great forum and people that love to talk about their cars.
That’s it for now, as you can see I’m very excited.
Sales experience. I changed sales advisors once a dedicated CPO SA role was created. Both were very helpful and the process was very much “no pressure”. In fact the latest SA even encouraged my not to take a car that I wasn’t 100% thrilled with since he would find me the right one with enough time. I really felt like I got exactly what I wanted at a fair price.
Waiting. It is after all, a Tesla, so you have to expect to wait. Wait for the right CPO to show up. Wait for the car to ship and clear CPO certification. Wait for parts to come in and get swapped. All in it took 6 weeks to get my car and even then, there are replacement items that they are waiting on parts for today. I told them to give methe car with a punch list for later. In fairness I did order at the end of December, just as they were pushing for deliveries on new cars, so it wasn’t the ideal time for them to work on CPO cars when they had to work on $130,000 new cars.
CPO. The CPO certification process was very good. To date they, put in 4 new tires, 3 new rims, 1 touched up rim, performed paintless dent repair on a door ding (I give it a 9/10 for the repair), replaced the DU, will replace interior leather parts that showed excessive wear, will replace parts of the headliner that showed excessive wear, will repair side mirror that was not folding, will replace the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] row seats, detailed interior and exterior. Like any 2.5 year old car, it does have small signs of wear, but overall it’s in great shape. I thank both Tesla and whoever the first owner was for taking such good care of it. One thing of note is thatTesla puts the car back to the original window sticker specs (Monroney?). This means that any aftermarket items get taken out (tint, rims, even a center console!). In addition, if it has something that you don’t want you still get it. Mine was supposed to have a Yacht floor but it was missing. I tried to swap it for a center console, but was told that they couldn’t since the CC wasn’t on the original sticker.
Range anxiety. I haven’t taken any long trips yet, but will have one in a few weeks. I’ll have a better sense afterwards about range anxiety. I did download Plugshare to scope out options outside of the supercharger network. Surprisingly more than I thought. If anything, I am more anxious about the lack of a spare tire. Run flats would have been a good alternative, but I know from by other car that those add to the replacement cost and have their own issues.
Controls. I thought that the center control panel would be a bit daunting to figure out, but I can say thatafter about an hour playing around with it during a supercharging session, it is fairly intuitive. There are obviously things that I would like adjusted, but overall it’s very good. In addition, the responsiveness of the touch screen is very good. The screen, not the CPU or the 3G signal. The latter 2 are not very good. Tesla must be throttling down the download speeds. I thought about the LTE upgrade, but will wait a bit for that. The phone APP is great, with room for a few enhancements. I was literally able to unlock and start the car from work so that my wife could shift it in the driveway when it started to snow.
Driving experience. Driving the car is a lot of fun. Getting instant torque really makes a difference. My prior car was a Mustang GT and even that car doesn’t match what you feel with the Tesla. The interior feels great and is very comfortable. The sound is super quiet. So quiet that I rarely turn up the music volume. The music is no longer competing with the engine or outside noise.
The so-so. As mentioned above, slow 3G or CPU speed. Makes me wonder if my 11K vin car can get a CPU upgrade in the future. If Tesla does APP mirroring on the screen then it won’t matter. No center console. $110,000 (new price) car and it has no center console or wheel locks. I think that these should have been included, worst case I’ll break down and buy them. No spare tire. No rear cup holders. No door pockets. No lighted vanity mirrors. These aren’t the end of the world items. For about $1,200 I can get most of these addressed. I’ll wait to see how much they bother me before deciding.
Tesla community. The other intangible is the community. Great forum and people that love to talk about their cars.
That’s it for now, as you can see I’m very excited.
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