New Fleet - Phase 1 complete

I had the exact opposite experience at my local BMW dealer last week although they knew my car was in for a service so possibly assumed I was wasting their time with the test drive.

Enjoy the Tesla, I'm not a fan of their styling although the updates to the 3 help.
The one I like the most (dislike the least?) is the X!

That is a good colour and the facelift has improved the looks - it sounds perfect for what you need it to do and allows you to get a weekend toy, then ithas to be a good thing.

Delivery date is the 19th June, although Lindsay is pretty busy that day so she is going to try and move it to the Friday. She’s excited about getting ‘the space ship’ and I have to admit that I’m looking forward to getting it and not just because it’s a shiny new car….a good example of ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ as I’ve been quite unkind about them. Although in my defence it looks a lot better than it used to and having been a passenger in one a couple of times, they really have improved both the way it drives / rides and the interior quality.

I’ll partially disagree with Alex as two petrolheads have chosen one, but we wouldn’t have (any EV) if it was our only car

I need to start thinking about selling the Golf.

You probably don't get that with anyone else.

Might be missing out on the free miles which is super annoying. Due to payroll cut offs cars can only be delivered between the 1st and 14th. I’ve tried to switch delivery on the 19th to collection this Friday but the car hasn’t arrived yet so the 19th is the earliest. Lindsay is going to try and get an exception, but isn’t hopeful.

They are easy to knock/criticise (I’ve done it!), but they are surprisingly good.   The dilemma is whether you take the cheap deal or wait for the new model.  If the changes are in line with the Model 3, it will be quite a step forward. 

Lindsay has had some fun and games over the last week.  To cut a long story short, she has found a way to sort out the payroll challenge (who you know and all that) and has had another car allocated to her order (original was sold as delivery couldn’t be made in June).  Delivery is the 25th, so she will get the free 15,000 supercharger miles. 

It arrived this morning, on a trailer towed by a Discovery.   The colour looks great in the sunshine, will be even better in a couple of days.

It is a good colour, reminiscent of nightfire red from Rover

We only went out on Sunday as my youngest was ill Fri/Sat.   EV bit first….  As we have 15k free Supercharger miles we haven’t plugged it in at home so first stop was the Kettering Supercharger which was only a small diversion.   It’s one of the sites which has been open to non Teslas, but had 2 of the 6 chargers available and a Model X was pulling out when we arrived.   So easy to charge, the button on the charge handle opens the flap, plug it in and away you go.   We’d entered the Supercharger as a destination in the navigation so it had pre heated the battery and it quickly went up to 180kw.   It didn’t stay that high for long, dropping to 80kw as it got close to 80%, but it added 43kwh (189 miles) in 21 minutes.   Not bad at all, even better as it was free, although the cost would only have been 33p / kWh which is cheap for a fast charger.

Interestingly, it used 134 mile credits, so the 15k free miles will be more like 20-22k based on the expected efficiency.   We did just under 100 miles, mix of country roads, town driving and the A1 and didn’t try and drive economically, but it achieved 222 watt hours per mile which is 4.5 miles per kWh.  Really impressive efficiency, especially with the aircon and cooled seats on.

It’s really nice to drive, super quiet and the ride is very good, better than the Golf in comfort but still feels firm with not much roll which we both like.   I haven’t pushed it on a decent road yet, but it has a ‘sporty’ feel in normal driving and is comfortable, so even if it all falls apart when really pushed it doesn’t matter.  It’s no surprise that it’s quick, even in ‘chill’ mode it’s as quick as you need, but in standard (only the performance has insane mode) it’s a quick car and feels even quicker with it being instant but even more than that it’s because the only sensation you get is the acceleration rather than noise to go with it.   I’ve got the Autocar road test and the 30-50/40-60/50-70 times match the in gear performance of a 992 GTS to within a tenth.

There are a few things that will take some getting used to.   The steering is very direct, even in the middle of the 3 settings which is not a problem but I might try the comfort setting on the motorway.   Regen braking is great, but for the first 10mins it was difficult not to get a level equivalent to braking when all you wanted to do was start slowing down, I haven’t fully adjusted to it yet but was much smoother in the last 10mins so nearly there.  The indicators on the wheel is another one, it works fine most of the time but exiting large roundabouts takes some thought when it wouldn’t with a stalk, we’ll see whether that gets easier with time.  The lack of buttons in general isn’t a bad thing, you can add shortcuts to the bottom of the screen in addition to the climates ones that are already there and the voice control works really well. 

The tech is super easy to use, you don’t need to read a manual.   Going through all the settings is much easier than in any other car I’ve had as there aren’t sub menus / multiple options menus to go through.   Just work down the list on the left, set it up how you want and everything is linked to your profile, from the obvious things like seat/wheels/mirrors through locks/lights/security etc to the position of the vents.  It even uses a different Spotify (or whatever service you use) login in for each profile (can be the same) which will save locking Lindsay out when I use the car.   There are loads of thoughtful / useful features as well, from being able to set exactly where you want the seat/wheel to move to for ‘easy entry’ to being able to set the child locks individually on each side and/or just lock the door rather than door and window.  I don’t know how they’ve got away with it, but turn off the speed limit change chime and it stays off for good, no submenus to do it either you just touch the current speed limit in the display to turn it off/on.  Approach the car with your phone in your pocket and it unlocks when you touch the handle, it auto locks when you walk away and stand at the back for a couple of seconds and the boot opens, no waving of your foot under the bumper.   You phone and/or key car links to your profile, so when the car unlocks all the settings change to how you want them, not just the seat/wheel/mirrors.

The interior quality is surprisingly good.   The vegan leather (pleather / polyurethane) is nice and soft and covers everything, there aren’t any areas of plastic at all, even the steering wheel centre, door bins etc are covered it in.  It makes a big difference.   The cooled seats are to American spec, similar to the Mustangs I’ve rented and more powerful than BMW/JLR/Porsche.   The stereo is superb, it had 17 speakers which includes 2 x subwoofers although that means the bass was way too much initially, but once turned down and the rest of the settings adjusted, it sounded great.  

in summary, all good so far and Lindsay loves it, which is the main thing.

First trip on the motorway today, from the centre of Northampton to the outskirts of Birmingham.

There’s a fair bit of 50mph roadworks, but even so, 4.92 miles per KWH is really impressive, especially as I had the aircon and cooled seats running plus wasn’t trying to be economical.

Just stopped at Rugby for a quick top up while I have a comfort break.  Superchargers are so quick and easy to use, you don’t even have to press the flap to open it was the charger does that.