I bought my first Prius over the Internet, and it was delivered (driven) to a local parking lot where I picked it up and wrote a check to pay for it. It wouldn’t go. The guy who drove it didn’t remember how he got it moving (push the brake before pressing Start ). That’s all the orientation I got. Tesla has a specialist to go over the features and operation of the car.
This morning I woke up at 2:30 AM and tried to go back to sleep. I gave up around 5:30 and passed the time until daylight watching Bjørn Nyland’s YouTube Tesla videos. I’ve been getting hyper over this Tesla delivery for almost 2 months, and frankly I’m emotionally drained.
When I arrived at the Tesla service center, the auto transport was already there ready to take my Prius. The Tesla service center was kind enough to help me remove the license plate (I brought a screwdriver, but needed a hex wrench). I was focused on delivery of the Tesla and didn’t watch the Prius go. Poof, gone.
In stark contrast to my first Prius delivery (which had a nasty surprise beyond starting the car), everything went super with the Model S delivery. I already knew exactly what was going to happen. Everyone was congratulatory, enthusiastic, helpful and knowledgeable. So hats off to the delivery team: Nick and Michael. Also thanks to Vic in service for getting me a couple of items, and Joe the manager who checked on how it all went. The car was in perfect shape except for one dirty smudge on the headliner that I found later, and will take care of myself.
That said, there were two disappointments: First, I thought that my car had been manufactured late enough to get the rear-seat cup holders. It wasn’t. Maybe there aren’t any cup holders. All I can say for sure is that Tesla never promised me any. The bigger disappointment was that it came with Version 7.1 of the car’s software rather than the current 8.0. Of course, I’ll get the latter eventually, but I was really looking forward to 8.0.
Tesla owners talk about the “grin” that happens whenever they get their car. My grin is a little slow in forming. I’ve been up since 5:30 AM and the drive home was taxing in that it started with a fairly complex set of turns and interchanges in an unfamiliar area—this compounded by the fact that I was trying to get used to the car. I turned on the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and the first time it stopped, it seemed like it waited to the last minute. I was actually expecting that, but it was a little unnerving the first time. It was all I could do not to hit the brake myself.
Since my drive home was on an Interstate highway, I turned on Autosteer for some of the trip. It seemed to wobble around in the lane sometimes (solid blue lines on the display) and I almost started to feel a little motion sick. I am assuming that this is part of the calibration process that lasts a few days. In any case, I’m expecting a different experience once I get 8.0. At the time I thought that Autosteer went out of the lane badly once, but upon reflection I think that it was not on at that moment and it was my fault. (At 8.0 it’s more obvious whether Autosteer is on or off.)
I now know exactly how much space is in the glove box and the center console, and it’s not a lot. The car is huge, but when it comes to places to put something simple things like the umbrella they gave me, it’s not there. There are no seat pockets behind the front seats unlike the Prius. What I think I’m going to do is get something like a small gym bag to keep in the car to hold stuff: boxes of tissue, spare napkins, small tools, device charging cables and other things. The front trunk (frunk) barely holds 4 bags of groceries. The rear is, however, cavernous. I took two large cardboard boxes overflowing with stuff from the Prius.
While the Model S is bigger, it didn’t eat the garage space as much as I feared. One person in a Tesla video says that the car “wraps around you” and I agree. While the car is bigger than a Prius, this is not so much the impression you get driving it.
As I anticipated, the seats were tricky to adjust just because there are so many directions to adjust it in, along with the position of the steering wheel. I have it partly adjusted, but not 100%. One seat/steering problem is getting out of the car. To exit comfortably one needs to move the steering wheel. Some folks do that by creating a driver profile called “Exit.”
I had one very pleasant surprise and that was my energy consumption was 280 Watt-hours per mile for the first 100 miles. That means I’m getting better than the advertised mileage in the kind of driving I do.
On my done list is:
- Pair with my phone
- Pair with wife’s phone
- Connect to home Wi-Fi
- Name car (“New Adventure”)
- Set up driver profiles
- Check charging (40A as advertised)
- Create “Exit” driver profile
- Transfer insurance
On my undone list is (this list was updated October 4, 2016):
- Configure HomeLink (done)
- Attempt to get Summon working (done)
- Validate that Calendar is working (it is)
- Fiddle with the music and set favorites (copied songs to USB drive, and set local NPR station as favorite)
- Install wall cable organizer (installed)
- Figure out how to get a “owners only hat” (found one on eBay)
- Install 8.0 firmware upgrade (it took almost a month)
For more on the ownership transition, see Prius to Tesla Transition Part 3 – Owning.
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