Hello all,
Thought I would post because this forum helped me allot in making the decision. Thank you very much to all who helped me with this, even if you didn't know it until now ;-)
- 60D, Silver metallic, Pano, 19" standard wheels, black/dark ash/black next gen
- Premium Upgrades Package
- Smart air suspension
- Subzero weather package
- Ultra High Fidelity Sound
Ok, on the stuff I did get:
60D
I love how I have a car with a 75KWh battery, and I can upgrade anytime later. Here is hoping they have a sale or a promotion in the future ;-) My other thought is, you might actually get more life out of the battery pack this way. I don't think they are locking out 15KWh of batteries, they are probably limiting the 75KWh to 60KWh. And I came from a Subaru Outback so I could not see giving up AWD.
Color
I had a tough time with the color, and truth be told I have a few days to change my mind, but the more I look online and ask around, the more I think it is the right choice. I am a lazy engineer who does not polish cars, I am more likely to take it to a detailer and get one of those coatings.
Wheels
Got the standard wheels, I have tons of potholes here in Boston.
Panoramic sunroof
Does anyone seriously not get this?
Premium Upgrades Package
Filtration and power liftgate, everything else basically bonus
Smart air suspension
My driveway is wicked steep to get into my garage, and it might help to have more ground clearance in the snow. And besides, I was reading about "active suspension" in Popular Science magazine probably 20 years ago, believe it or not, Bose (yes the audio company) actually made one of these with transducers (speakers). Back when I first read about this type of thing, the computer power necessary for the calculations was too big for even a gas car, now your smartphone can almost do it. Besides, can't you just hear that James-bond theme start up like it does in the movies when you use this feature?
Subzero weather package
I'm in New England
Ultra High Fidelity Sound
Funny story here, I was NOT going to get this. And I have a home theater that costs more than this car, but I don't spend that much time in cars (which will likely change now). The regular audio is great --- but my wife and I brought a USB key with some songs in FLAC (shame on you blu-toothers, no good audio for you).... Sooo, I went there with the idea of justifying the regular audio and not needing the upgrade. Hah! I slid the sweet spot over to my wife while it was playing her songs, and she said, we're getting it! Ok, then. Actually I started reading the articles about how they designed it, pretty good read.
OK, now the stuff I didn't get:
Autopilot
I am a systems engineer / IT guy, and I have this thing about potentially trusting anything labeled "BETA", especially if it has a distant chance of killing you or others (even when you are not being stupid). That said, I probably will add it later, because my Subaru had Eye Sight with adaptive cruise control, and it was awesome (and not BETA). I really wish you could have just adaptive cruise control without adding full autopilot. I would REALLY like to have the self parking and parallel parking, because I have a very narrow garage. But BETA, and I saw that video of the guy who scraped a pickup truck during parallel parking. So I will feel a little better when this comes out of BETA.... yeah, I know it is going to gnaw on me with the 1-month trial of the thing... sigh.
Rear facing seats
Originally this was one of the reasons for actually getting the car in the first place. I went out for my first test drive and strapped my 4 and 6 year old's into it. Love the idea of 5 adults + 2 children in a sedan. Well, they hated it. They like to be up with us, so out that comes. I was disappointed.
High amperage charger
This is a nice to have, but most of the time I won't need it, charging overnight is fine. And it is really only useful for at home, the public chargers that can use this are rare. That being said my electrician is putting in the 2AWG wire so that I can easily upgrade to it later. I might still end up getting the fancier wall charger vs. the RV plug, because I don't see constantly taking the portable charger out and messing with it on every trip, and pushing an electric-oven sized plug in or pulling it out all the time will probably lead to injury or something. Since there is a $1,000 credit for getting plugs installed, I will probably have my parents on Cape Cod get one too - I don't see running an extension cord to their dryer, but there is a supercharger nearby. I do see that with the 60D on a cold day with heat on, you can get down to almost 150 miles of range, but that will probably be rare. Even here it is not often down to 0 F.
Some other notes:
Solar and powerwall
I have a 7.2kWh solar array (24x 300W panels) and wanted to get an EV since I got them. I have been on the waiting list for the powerwall for over a year, they sent me one e-mail and that is it, still waiting. Not sure if I can get up in the queue now that I am a MS owner. I am hoping to get the powerwall to allow me to have backup power, and produce power even in an outage. But I am also hoping there will be a way to do DC-DC charging to the MS so you don't suffer the inverter losses. It won't be anything close to supercharging speed wise, because on a really sunny day my solar panels put out 6kWh constant, and will get over 50kWh for a good day. And the powerwall is 2kWh output max, so even with 8 of them you could only hit 16kWh. Maybe this will come together at some point.
Further research
- I am currently looking through all the other destination charging options, and figuring out how many adapters I should carry with me beyond the one's they give you.
- I am also thinking of offering my charger up to those who need it through one of the sharing sites, because maybe I might need that myself one day
Well, that is about it. It was a major leap of faith to buy a car this expensive, but I feel good about it.
JCL
Thought I would post because this forum helped me allot in making the decision. Thank you very much to all who helped me with this, even if you didn't know it until now ;-)
- 60D, Silver metallic, Pano, 19" standard wheels, black/dark ash/black next gen
- Premium Upgrades Package
- Smart air suspension
- Subzero weather package
- Ultra High Fidelity Sound
Ok, on the stuff I did get:
60D
I love how I have a car with a 75KWh battery, and I can upgrade anytime later. Here is hoping they have a sale or a promotion in the future ;-) My other thought is, you might actually get more life out of the battery pack this way. I don't think they are locking out 15KWh of batteries, they are probably limiting the 75KWh to 60KWh. And I came from a Subaru Outback so I could not see giving up AWD.
Color
I had a tough time with the color, and truth be told I have a few days to change my mind, but the more I look online and ask around, the more I think it is the right choice. I am a lazy engineer who does not polish cars, I am more likely to take it to a detailer and get one of those coatings.
Wheels
Got the standard wheels, I have tons of potholes here in Boston.
Panoramic sunroof
Does anyone seriously not get this?
Premium Upgrades Package
Filtration and power liftgate, everything else basically bonus
Smart air suspension
My driveway is wicked steep to get into my garage, and it might help to have more ground clearance in the snow. And besides, I was reading about "active suspension" in Popular Science magazine probably 20 years ago, believe it or not, Bose (yes the audio company) actually made one of these with transducers (speakers). Back when I first read about this type of thing, the computer power necessary for the calculations was too big for even a gas car, now your smartphone can almost do it. Besides, can't you just hear that James-bond theme start up like it does in the movies when you use this feature?
Subzero weather package
I'm in New England
Ultra High Fidelity Sound
Funny story here, I was NOT going to get this. And I have a home theater that costs more than this car, but I don't spend that much time in cars (which will likely change now). The regular audio is great --- but my wife and I brought a USB key with some songs in FLAC (shame on you blu-toothers, no good audio for you).... Sooo, I went there with the idea of justifying the regular audio and not needing the upgrade. Hah! I slid the sweet spot over to my wife while it was playing her songs, and she said, we're getting it! Ok, then. Actually I started reading the articles about how they designed it, pretty good read.
OK, now the stuff I didn't get:
Autopilot
I am a systems engineer / IT guy, and I have this thing about potentially trusting anything labeled "BETA", especially if it has a distant chance of killing you or others (even when you are not being stupid). That said, I probably will add it later, because my Subaru had Eye Sight with adaptive cruise control, and it was awesome (and not BETA). I really wish you could have just adaptive cruise control without adding full autopilot. I would REALLY like to have the self parking and parallel parking, because I have a very narrow garage. But BETA, and I saw that video of the guy who scraped a pickup truck during parallel parking. So I will feel a little better when this comes out of BETA.... yeah, I know it is going to gnaw on me with the 1-month trial of the thing... sigh.
Rear facing seats
Originally this was one of the reasons for actually getting the car in the first place. I went out for my first test drive and strapped my 4 and 6 year old's into it. Love the idea of 5 adults + 2 children in a sedan. Well, they hated it. They like to be up with us, so out that comes. I was disappointed.
High amperage charger
This is a nice to have, but most of the time I won't need it, charging overnight is fine. And it is really only useful for at home, the public chargers that can use this are rare. That being said my electrician is putting in the 2AWG wire so that I can easily upgrade to it later. I might still end up getting the fancier wall charger vs. the RV plug, because I don't see constantly taking the portable charger out and messing with it on every trip, and pushing an electric-oven sized plug in or pulling it out all the time will probably lead to injury or something. Since there is a $1,000 credit for getting plugs installed, I will probably have my parents on Cape Cod get one too - I don't see running an extension cord to their dryer, but there is a supercharger nearby. I do see that with the 60D on a cold day with heat on, you can get down to almost 150 miles of range, but that will probably be rare. Even here it is not often down to 0 F.
Some other notes:
Solar and powerwall
I have a 7.2kWh solar array (24x 300W panels) and wanted to get an EV since I got them. I have been on the waiting list for the powerwall for over a year, they sent me one e-mail and that is it, still waiting. Not sure if I can get up in the queue now that I am a MS owner. I am hoping to get the powerwall to allow me to have backup power, and produce power even in an outage. But I am also hoping there will be a way to do DC-DC charging to the MS so you don't suffer the inverter losses. It won't be anything close to supercharging speed wise, because on a really sunny day my solar panels put out 6kWh constant, and will get over 50kWh for a good day. And the powerwall is 2kWh output max, so even with 8 of them you could only hit 16kWh. Maybe this will come together at some point.
Further research
- I am currently looking through all the other destination charging options, and figuring out how many adapters I should carry with me beyond the one's they give you.
- I am also thinking of offering my charger up to those who need it through one of the sharing sites, because maybe I might need that myself one day
Well, that is about it. It was a major leap of faith to buy a car this expensive, but I feel good about it.
JCL