Update:
One month into ownership and the initial excitement has not diminished one bit. Yesterday Nashville got hit with a lot of snow (from what I heard most in 90 years) and gave me an opportunity to see if the Tesla was indeed what everyone was extolling of as a great winter driver.
I still had the original all season Michelin factory tires on so I was much more nervous driving back from work after the bulk of the snow had fallen.
Observations:
I had preheated the cabin from my office about 20 min prior to leaving so the inside was perfect temperature. The keyless entry really does make a difference so you don't have to fumble around with your gloves (also love the feature for same reason when it is raining). Because of the preheating, I really had most of the front windscreen defrosted which was an added bonus. I quickly brushed off some of the remaining snow from the windshield before I jumped right in. However my entrance into the cabin was a bit premature as when I was trying to drive, I had the driver display come up bold in red "STOP" as if I was about to hit something in front of me. I realized it was probably a false reading due to the nosecone and ultrasound sensors being covered in snow/ice. So I had to again leave the cabin and then brush away majority of the snow/ice with my gloves. My advice is therefore to do this prior to entering the cabin to minimize multiple trips.
As for the drive, it handled amazing, even with just all season tires. Although I didn't want to push it to see how good the handling was, I am sure I was no near the envelope and could have gone much faster. As was advised by other members, I took off the regenerative braking (apparently to prevent possible skidding due to much more forceful slowing down). Not once during the drive (including driving on roads that were completely covered in snow near my house going down curved roads) did I ever feel even a bit of traction loss.
The cold temperature definitely had a prominent effect on range, even going much slower than I usually drive on normal days. However even with preheating off the grid and having seat warmer on as well as cabin heat of 69, I made it back with 100 miles to spare.
One interesting thing about having no engine is essentially the snow that you have on the front hood stays there pretty much entire time as there is no engine heat to melt it (which left my garage floor with a fairly large pool of melted snow which I never had to deal with previously with my gas cars). My suggestion is to take the time to brush that off as well.
Driving home I did raise the air suspension to high on the highway, and there were several chunks of ice that came out of nowhere that would definitely have hit hard if it would have been in the low setting at normal highway speeds (I do have a question about this to any members with air suspension, I know it is GPS specific so it remembers to raise or lower it depending on location, however in instances like this where it may be a one time thing, how do you make sure it doesn't raise the suspension on the highway each time during normal road conditions because I set it for this one time (is there a way to erase this, or do you erase the entire history of GPS points it has?).
This morning I decided to handwash the car in the garage and really loved how the full body coverage Xpel worked. Even without doing a thing and all the snow melted off, I would say the car looked fairly clean from about 2-3 ft away. I used a pressurized 1 gallon sprayer with some car shampoo mix and sprayed the car and then dried it off. Car looks exactly like the day I picked it up, and I credit the Xpel film for that (no swirl marks, nothing).
Anyway, that was my first real winter experience with the Tesla and it definitely outperformed by 4x4 Jeep liberty which was my previous go to vehicle for these conditions. This car continues to amaze me.
