I thought you guys might appreciate this. On Tuesday I picked up my brand new Tesla P90D "Ludicrous". She's the new facelift model which means the following:
I hadn't paid any real attention to Tesla until late last year when Autopilot was made available via an over-the-air update to all cars with the appropriate hardware. At that point I had to have one. I borrowed a demo car, almost identical to the one I ordered, just to check I was right and I was sad to give it back. Order was placed back in Feb and they've been building my car since then. There's no European factory so the cars are built in the USA then shipped over.
Why did I buy this overpriced, poorly built car?
Bad points?
That's about it. I love this vehicle.
Ask my anything!
Edit: It only looks so high in this pictures because the air suspension was in its second highest setting. It normally sits beautifully on the 21" wheels.
- Revised front end to match the Model X
- HEPA filtration
- New centre console
- Probably some other minor tweaks I've missed
I hadn't paid any real attention to Tesla until late last year when Autopilot was made available via an over-the-air update to all cars with the appropriate hardware. At that point I had to have one. I borrowed a demo car, almost identical to the one I ordered, just to check I was right and I was sad to give it back. Order was placed back in Feb and they've been building my car since then. There's no European factory so the cars are built in the USA then shipped over.
Why did I buy this overpriced, poorly built car?
- Autopilot. It's far from perfect but it's better than any other system on the market. It handles stop-start traffic and motorway driving almost faultlessly and completely hands off. In urban driving it struggles but it's early days and I fully expect it to continue to improve.
- "Ludicrous" mode. The acceleration is painful, it hurts. 2.8 seconds to 60 and it feels every bit as quick. There are no gear changes so it's unrelenting. It makes your passengers light headed. It'll do that all day long.... well until the battery runs out. The traction control is calibrated perfectly.
- The range. It looks like "real world" it will do approximately 250 miles to a full charge. The range is greatly affected by how you drive, far more so than a petrol car. But in any case that's more driving than I ever do in a day which should mean most of my charging is done at home, I'll rarely need a public charger. It's in a different league to an i3 for instance.
- This is a no compromise, full on EV. No hybrid BS.
- It's quirky, unusual, different, a bit nerdy. It's very cool. Everyone wants to talk about it, it even appeals to non-car people. Every other Tesla I've seen on the road has given me a wave or a thumbs up and I have reciprocated.
- The huge screen in the dash which dominates the whole interior
- The Spotify integration is the best I've seen in any vehicle
Bad points?
- The build quality is so-so. The panel gaps are terrible, it's worse than my TVR. The steering wheel stitching is horrible. It doesn't feel like a > £100k car but, considering it's from a tiny startup car manufacturer it's nowhere near as bad as the reviews make out.
- The first time I demonstrated Autopilot to my wife it tried to swerve onto the pavement which scared the **** out of her.
- It's not going to save the planet until renewable energy infrastructure improves. At the moment it's still (party) fossil fueled.
- Even the "high fidelity" stereo with its tiny little sub isn't great. It's on par with the HK in my M5.
- It was really expensive and is likely to depreciate like hell when the Model X hits the steets and even more so when they start building Model 3s. It's expensive to insure too.
- The steering is precise and accurate but lacks feel - however the same can be said of any other car in its class besides the M5
- The Google maps based sat nav only works when there is 3G/4G available.
- When you're frustrated sitting in a traffic jam there's no V8 to rev.
That's about it. I love this vehicle.
Ask my anything!
Edit: It only looks so high in this pictures because the air suspension was in its second highest setting. It normally sits beautifully on the 21" wheels.
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