I was one of the "black hole" cars that entered production on 11/26 and didn't emerge until 12/16. Writing that doesn't entirely convey the degree to which I was obsessed about that delay. I refreshed the "Tracking P85D delivery" thread obsessively, scouring each new post in more or less real time to try to glean what information I could about the delay. Eventually a few of us who were all in the same boat in Raleigh teamed up and exchanged PMs and texts every time any of us heard from our harried, but kind DS folks in Raleigh and somehow managed to endure those days. Transportation was also a bit of a challenge and my car didn't arrive in North Carolina until very late on the evening of 12/23. Due to the holidays, I had to wait until 12/26 to actually fetch the beast. Because no one wanted to ride home in an ICE car, we decided to hop on the Amtrak for a quite civilized 2.5 hour ride from Richmond to Raleigh. We had a surprisingly comfortable bedroom for the trip and I'd actually love to take a longer trip, it was nice to kick back and chill for the duration. We ate dinner with a nice retired couple who also shared my enthusiasm for cars and the wife declared that he favorite car of all time was her 1995 Toyota Supra Twin Turbo, which is one of the cars I promised my wife I would sell when I bought the Tesla. I tried to persuade her that this was a divine sign that I was meant to keep it, but she remains unpersuaded.
We summoned an Uber to drive us to a hotel close by to the Raleigh sales center and spent a mostly sleepless night waiting to be able to claim our new ride. We showed up promptly for our appointment and the car was ready and waiting for us with a welcome sign and a red carpet:
Although I've had my quibbles with the communication and build process, the delivery experience was as smooth and painless as anything I've ever experienced. I only had to sign two very brief documents which took all of 2 minutes. I expressed an interest in a few other adapters and some touch up paint and one of the two DS folks kindly drove down the hill to the service center and brought me back a bag with those items and a receipt while the other did her best to explain all of the features to my wife. I took a back seat during the process, since I've watched multiple entire delivery videos, walkthroughs and read pretty much word that has been written on both forums about the car and didn't think I needed the instruction to the same degree. Despite that, there are some UI things that I hadn't really understood completely and a few that probably could have been done better from the perspective of this software guy, but in general I'm very impressed with the software they've built. Getting the right response from a touchscreen is actually a bit of an art and the Tesla software is generally very responsive and feels natural with minimal lag. My wife and I are in disagreement about the creep setting -- she finds it obligatory and I don't like it. I thought there was a separate hill function to prevent rolling backwards, but apparently that is bundled with creep. If we could have "no rolling backwards" without "creeping forward" we'd both reach agreement. I was also surprised to learn that we actually got our car with next gen seats both front and back, so no replacement worries for us! We posed for the obligatory photo-op and headed off home:
During the first leg of our journey, we covered 84 actual miles, but consumed 121 rated miles (I think, I didn't resolve to take careful notes yet) at a average energy rate of 382 Wh/mile. This included several all-out launches and pretty much a total lack of concern about efficiency, passing people whenever I took a notion to do so and driving at 9 or so miles over the speed limit on average. Since we had a full charge, I knew that we'd arrive at the South Hill supercharger with tons of extra juice so I just drove and ignored it. We had timed it perfectly to coincide with lunch, so we stopped at Kahills for that while we charged. I set the car's charging limit to 89% and it finished well before we were done with lunch, although the supercharger hit a max of 212 mi/hr which was less than I expected, despite us being the only car there. The restaurant even sat us at a table overlooking the superchargers so I could admire the car while I had a very good steak sandwich.
During the next segment, we decided to drive a bit past our house to the Richmond supercharger, which is a trip of 89 miles. I decided since we just a very few feet from the interstate that I would drive as gently and efficiently as I was able to manage. I set the cruise control for 69 mph only had to adjust the speed three times for traffic all of which were quite brief and as efficient as I could. EVTripPlanner reports 2,600 feet of elevation change with a net downhill of 249 feet over 89 miles, so it is relatively flat. For half of the trip, I had the climate control on, which I thought would have almost no effect because the outside temp was 59 and the cabin temp was set for 69. To my surprise even that very modest heat did significantly increase our current draw. When we had the heat on, we ran at 352 Wh/mile and were consuming rated miles at a rate of 11 rated miles to 10 actual miles. Once I switched the heat off, our consumption dropped to 322 Wh/mile and we almost exactly bang on in terms of rated mile consumption. When I hit the Richmond supercharger, the Energy screen predicted 121 miles of range based on the 30 mile average and the rated miles remaining were 122. It seems to me that if I were able to run completely without cabin heat or AC on the 21" wheels at 65, I could exceed the rated range in ideal conditions, but it would require everything to be perfect. We topped back up to 90% in 32 minutes, gaining 100 miles or so in that time. The Richmond supercharger peaked at 240 mi/hr which is more in line with what I expected given that I arrived with a 50% charge already.
We got the car safely loaded at the house:
The afternoon was spent with test drives for friends and family, all of whom have been stunned by the ridiculous acceleration. I've been lucky enough to have driven or ridden in all manner of exotic automobiles and I am somewhat jaded about the kinds of hyperbole you usually read in car magazines about the performance of cars, but the power of the P85D really does have to be experienced to be understood. I've been in faster cars from 0-60 and certainly in much faster cars in the quarter mile, but I seriously doubt that there is a car on the planet which is faster from 0-30. That initial jolt of acceleration, which is delivered so smoothly, feels totally unlike anything I've ever experienced with the possible exception of the magnetic catapult used to launch certain roller coasters. From higher speeds, the car remains very responsive and fun to drive, but no longer exists in the realm of the mythical. You can burst into gaps of traffic from 45 to 70 when merging effortlessly, but I'm quite sure that my 911 does so more quickly. When you factor in the silence and bulk of the Model S, it is still remarkable at pretty much all speeds.
I have driven some SCCA courses and consider myself a pretty talented amateur driver, but I'm not sure what to say about the handling characteristics yet. I drove a P85+ for a moderately demanding test drive several months ago and the handling of that was fairly poor in my estimation (when compared to a performance car), it was so heavy feeling with a pronounced tendency to body roll and understeer. The P85D has significantly better handling characteristics. The suspension seems to be tuned a bit better, although its still pretty clear that you are pushing a whole lot of weight around, I didn't detect nearly as much body roll, especially when changing directions rapidly in S turns. The biggest difference is the all wheel drive. I haven't really pushed the car to the limits, but I'm pretty sure that it is really dynamically adjusting for wheel spin because it wants to oversteer hard coming off the apex of the corner despite feeling like it really wants to understeer going into the turn. I expect that anyone who wants to really drive the car on a rally course will need to spend some serious time learning what it is doing. It might be a challenging car to master. I don't think it will ever be a real cornering beast due to the weight, but I bet you could really surprise some people at your local SCCA event. If it is in the FS class, I think you'd likely crush anything I can think of in that group.
Since I've been perfectly willing to point out Tesla's customer service failures, I have to give them credit where it is due as well. I discovered when I got home that one of the two key fobs we received didn't really work. It would open the trunk and frunk, but wouldn't unlock the car or permit the car to start. I called my DS and mentioned this to him, thinking they'd just mail me a new one or something. I got a call back from the service folks (it was around 5pm on 12/26) and the ranger offered to drive out to me and straighten it out. I'm about 2.5 hours from the service center, mind you. I told him that I really wasn't very stressed about it -- the other key works fine and I'd have no problem with them dealing with it on Monday or whenever was convenient, but he insisted that it was no problem at all and made plans to drive up to Richmond and meet me around 8pm. My dinner with friends ran a bit late, so the poor guy ended up meeting me at the restaurant, where he recoded the keys in the parking lot. The two P85Ds caused quite a sensation parked side by side and we were thronged with people checking out the cars and asking questions. I bought the guy some sushi for his troubles and came out of the encounter with an extraordinary level of satisfaction for how they handled the problem. These might have been the only two P85Ds in Richmond last night:
I'm absolutely delighted with the car. If I've had this much unbridled fun driving anything else, I can't remember it. I've already almost forgotten about that interminable wait.
We summoned an Uber to drive us to a hotel close by to the Raleigh sales center and spent a mostly sleepless night waiting to be able to claim our new ride. We showed up promptly for our appointment and the car was ready and waiting for us with a welcome sign and a red carpet:
Although I've had my quibbles with the communication and build process, the delivery experience was as smooth and painless as anything I've ever experienced. I only had to sign two very brief documents which took all of 2 minutes. I expressed an interest in a few other adapters and some touch up paint and one of the two DS folks kindly drove down the hill to the service center and brought me back a bag with those items and a receipt while the other did her best to explain all of the features to my wife. I took a back seat during the process, since I've watched multiple entire delivery videos, walkthroughs and read pretty much word that has been written on both forums about the car and didn't think I needed the instruction to the same degree. Despite that, there are some UI things that I hadn't really understood completely and a few that probably could have been done better from the perspective of this software guy, but in general I'm very impressed with the software they've built. Getting the right response from a touchscreen is actually a bit of an art and the Tesla software is generally very responsive and feels natural with minimal lag. My wife and I are in disagreement about the creep setting -- she finds it obligatory and I don't like it. I thought there was a separate hill function to prevent rolling backwards, but apparently that is bundled with creep. If we could have "no rolling backwards" without "creeping forward" we'd both reach agreement. I was also surprised to learn that we actually got our car with next gen seats both front and back, so no replacement worries for us! We posed for the obligatory photo-op and headed off home:
During the first leg of our journey, we covered 84 actual miles, but consumed 121 rated miles (I think, I didn't resolve to take careful notes yet) at a average energy rate of 382 Wh/mile. This included several all-out launches and pretty much a total lack of concern about efficiency, passing people whenever I took a notion to do so and driving at 9 or so miles over the speed limit on average. Since we had a full charge, I knew that we'd arrive at the South Hill supercharger with tons of extra juice so I just drove and ignored it. We had timed it perfectly to coincide with lunch, so we stopped at Kahills for that while we charged. I set the car's charging limit to 89% and it finished well before we were done with lunch, although the supercharger hit a max of 212 mi/hr which was less than I expected, despite us being the only car there. The restaurant even sat us at a table overlooking the superchargers so I could admire the car while I had a very good steak sandwich.
During the next segment, we decided to drive a bit past our house to the Richmond supercharger, which is a trip of 89 miles. I decided since we just a very few feet from the interstate that I would drive as gently and efficiently as I was able to manage. I set the cruise control for 69 mph only had to adjust the speed three times for traffic all of which were quite brief and as efficient as I could. EVTripPlanner reports 2,600 feet of elevation change with a net downhill of 249 feet over 89 miles, so it is relatively flat. For half of the trip, I had the climate control on, which I thought would have almost no effect because the outside temp was 59 and the cabin temp was set for 69. To my surprise even that very modest heat did significantly increase our current draw. When we had the heat on, we ran at 352 Wh/mile and were consuming rated miles at a rate of 11 rated miles to 10 actual miles. Once I switched the heat off, our consumption dropped to 322 Wh/mile and we almost exactly bang on in terms of rated mile consumption. When I hit the Richmond supercharger, the Energy screen predicted 121 miles of range based on the 30 mile average and the rated miles remaining were 122. It seems to me that if I were able to run completely without cabin heat or AC on the 21" wheels at 65, I could exceed the rated range in ideal conditions, but it would require everything to be perfect. We topped back up to 90% in 32 minutes, gaining 100 miles or so in that time. The Richmond supercharger peaked at 240 mi/hr which is more in line with what I expected given that I arrived with a 50% charge already.
We got the car safely loaded at the house:
The afternoon was spent with test drives for friends and family, all of whom have been stunned by the ridiculous acceleration. I've been lucky enough to have driven or ridden in all manner of exotic automobiles and I am somewhat jaded about the kinds of hyperbole you usually read in car magazines about the performance of cars, but the power of the P85D really does have to be experienced to be understood. I've been in faster cars from 0-60 and certainly in much faster cars in the quarter mile, but I seriously doubt that there is a car on the planet which is faster from 0-30. That initial jolt of acceleration, which is delivered so smoothly, feels totally unlike anything I've ever experienced with the possible exception of the magnetic catapult used to launch certain roller coasters. From higher speeds, the car remains very responsive and fun to drive, but no longer exists in the realm of the mythical. You can burst into gaps of traffic from 45 to 70 when merging effortlessly, but I'm quite sure that my 911 does so more quickly. When you factor in the silence and bulk of the Model S, it is still remarkable at pretty much all speeds.
I have driven some SCCA courses and consider myself a pretty talented amateur driver, but I'm not sure what to say about the handling characteristics yet. I drove a P85+ for a moderately demanding test drive several months ago and the handling of that was fairly poor in my estimation (when compared to a performance car), it was so heavy feeling with a pronounced tendency to body roll and understeer. The P85D has significantly better handling characteristics. The suspension seems to be tuned a bit better, although its still pretty clear that you are pushing a whole lot of weight around, I didn't detect nearly as much body roll, especially when changing directions rapidly in S turns. The biggest difference is the all wheel drive. I haven't really pushed the car to the limits, but I'm pretty sure that it is really dynamically adjusting for wheel spin because it wants to oversteer hard coming off the apex of the corner despite feeling like it really wants to understeer going into the turn. I expect that anyone who wants to really drive the car on a rally course will need to spend some serious time learning what it is doing. It might be a challenging car to master. I don't think it will ever be a real cornering beast due to the weight, but I bet you could really surprise some people at your local SCCA event. If it is in the FS class, I think you'd likely crush anything I can think of in that group.
Since I've been perfectly willing to point out Tesla's customer service failures, I have to give them credit where it is due as well. I discovered when I got home that one of the two key fobs we received didn't really work. It would open the trunk and frunk, but wouldn't unlock the car or permit the car to start. I called my DS and mentioned this to him, thinking they'd just mail me a new one or something. I got a call back from the service folks (it was around 5pm on 12/26) and the ranger offered to drive out to me and straighten it out. I'm about 2.5 hours from the service center, mind you. I told him that I really wasn't very stressed about it -- the other key works fine and I'd have no problem with them dealing with it on Monday or whenever was convenient, but he insisted that it was no problem at all and made plans to drive up to Richmond and meet me around 8pm. My dinner with friends ran a bit late, so the poor guy ended up meeting me at the restaurant, where he recoded the keys in the parking lot. The two P85Ds caused quite a sensation parked side by side and we were thronged with people checking out the cars and asking questions. I bought the guy some sushi for his troubles and came out of the encounter with an extraordinary level of satisfaction for how they handled the problem. These might have been the only two P85Ds in Richmond last night:
I'm absolutely delighted with the car. If I've had this much unbridled fun driving anything else, I can't remember it. I've already almost forgotten about that interminable wait.
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