Prius to Tesla Transition Part 4 – Transition complete

It’s been quite a week. I drove the car home, and then did all the things I normally do with a car. As I become more familiar with the car, I like it a lot more.

Summon

One of the big sighs of relief came when I found that the car was able to park itself in my garage, something I found difficult to do myself. Now I can monitor parking from outside the car with a perfect view of everything. Should something go wrong, I can abort the process with a press of the key fob. I just wish I had tried that sooner.

Interest

Within 25 miles of where I live is the BMW factory and the North American Headquarters for Michelin (also an R&D facility). There are lots of car people around, and a lot of BMW’s on the road, a surprising number to me. Whether it’s my peculiar geographical location or something else, my car is turning heads. I drive conservatively, +5 MPH on the Interstate, and when cars pass me I see some rather extreme head turns. One Audi driver turned his head, and I could see him catching me in his rear view mirror. I was at the county recycling facility dumping paper and plastic. The fellow parked next to me said that he had taken a test drive in a Model S, and owning one was on his bucket list. I’ve had at least four people ask me about the car in detail. I had no idea that so many people are interested in Tesla.

Music

In the Prius, even though it had the premium JBL sound system and a 6-CD changer, I rarely listened to music, rather more to news radio (NPR) and audio books on a long trip. This morning on the way to church I asked the Model S to play some songs by Enya, and it dutifully streamed some from the Internet. The combination of the smooth driving, the low noise, and the smooth music was a very pleasurable combination. I own a fair amount of music, mostly classical, and I plan to put it on a flash drive and listen while I’m driving on the Interstate.

Prius compatibility

I turned off Mild Regeneration and Creep, things that make the car drive more like a Prius. I’m starting to accelerate more briskly than I did with the Prius. I washed the Tesla, something I rarely did with the Prius. I’m still interested in mileage, in this case reduced energy consumption per mile. Today I passed 500 on the odometer.  My average consumption is 274 W-hr/mi. That’s better than the EPA combined estimate. I don’t know whether it is just the kind of driving I do, or if I am just an energy-efficient driver having driven a Prius with it’s energy consumption displays for 12 years. Whatever it is, it pleases me. I have removed the Energy app from the Instrument Panel (it was usually on in the Prius unless navigating) as not providing any information I need. I ended up doing what most Tesla photos show: I put the Music app on the Panel, something I didn’t think I would do.

Transition complete

As of today, I declare my transition complete. The only thing I have left to do with the Prius is to find out how much it sold for, and deduct the donation on my taxes. To answer the question I raised in my first post in the transition series: if I had it to do over, I would have not gotten the air suspension, and I would have gotten the all-wheel drive version. Maybe I would have gotten red too, like my old Prius.

Update:

The Prius sold for $4,200.