Ditching Gas - My Personal Story Continues

I rescheduled another test drive. I anxiously awaited and then got my opportunity on a bright sunny day. My experience was totally different. Getting to drop the pedal to the medal and whip the car through some turns proved amazingly satisfying. The car handled great, especially when you consider how much it weighs. The stereo was a little lacking for a premium car of this magnitude, but seemed livable. My concerns over the rear view weren’t completely dispelled, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. I think some of the viewing issue was exacerbated by a non-ideal setting of the seat position which I rectified on the second drive. All that was left was to ensure Jennifer liked it as well and that the view out the back wasn’t concerning to her.

Jennifer test drove it the next week. The test drive started late and she hates to wait, so I was worried she would go into the drive in a less than ideal mindset. We had our dog with us, so I waited in the parking lot and walked anxiously with our pup. When Jennifer pulled up 20 minutes later, she came out of the car with a huge Tesla grin proclaiming how a car engulfing pot hole appeared in front of her and without time to avoid it she hit it dead on. She couldn’t believe at how smoothly the Tesla drove through it.  She said that it wasn’t her fault, that the Tesla rep warned her too late about the pothole. Personally, I think the Tesla rep did it on purpose to show off the Model S’s active air suspension. She was hooked and we were ready to confirm out purchase.

Before I committed, there was one nagging fear. Our commit date was one day before the earning’s call. Could it be that Tesla premeditated the commit date so that a bad earning’s call wouldn’t affect the short term number of people finalizing their orders? I posted to the forums to see how many people had a similar commit date. If the number was large, the cynic in me I wasn’t sure if I was ready to sign. At first, I got the idiot responses from people mocking me for thinking my one commitment was important to Tesla. They clearly didn’t read my post. Fortunately, more intelligent responses followed with a random pattern of dates both before and after the earning’s call. Fears abated, I charged (pun intended) ahead with our purchase.

I am duty bound to skip ahead in the story to provide a final note about efficiency. How you drive and under what conditions you drive greatly effects your efficiency. I don’t think we need a spoiler alert for you to figure out that I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t end up purchasing the Model S and were happy with the decision. Therefore, I will share with you my efficiency ratings after one week of driving her. Of course, she has a name, Joules. J. The average temperature was in the low 40’s. So my drives were in less than ideal conditions from a temperature perspective. The terrain is mostly dead flat, except for traversing the Ben Franklin Bridge twice a day. Most of the driving is between 25 mph and 50 mph as I don’t have highways on my commute. Each day, the initial Wh/mile is in the mid 300’s as the battery pack warms up. However, after 5-10 miles of driving I am routinely getting 260-280 Wh/mile. This shocked me from what I read. Granted I am not stomping the accelerator and am purposely trying to drive as efficiently as possible. My goal is to learn what the car can do if I need to stretch the proverbial tank in an emergency. Overall I have averaged 311 Wh/mile and my last drive averaged 288 Wh/mile. I will try to confirm whether the vampire draw is affecting my overall numbers. Still, that’s far better than the EPA rated 269 miles per charge and very acceptable in my book. In real dollars and cents, even given our high electric rate, that works out to about 5 cents a mile. Not too shabby!

The story continues ...