And personally, I've never been on the highway, with a semi-truck barrelling down on me from behind, needing to get over to make an exit, and thought to myself, "gee, I really wish I had less acceleration right now".
Acceleration is great, but I don't think in your scenario it matters whether you have a 3 second 0-60 car or a 5 second one. Both of them are probably going to out-accelerate whatever truck that is coming down (unless the truck is trying to rear-end you).
there isn't much difference between a tesla fanboy/fangirl and ... say, for example, a GT-R fanboy/girl.
Why is this a bad thing?
Touchscreens, on the other hand, are just bad for this. You have to look at them the entire time you're operating them, or else your hand might change position and not press what you intended to press. You also need to look at the screen to see that your press registered what you wanted to do. All of this looking at the screen means your eyes aren't on the road where they belong.
We have a car made in 2000, it has knobs and dials for everything, you can configure the AC/heat completely without looking at it after some familiarity with the controls. The radio you can configure the station and volume without looking.
We also own a Prius made in 2014. They've either turned everything into a flat button, or worse it requires the touch screen to configure. And while the Prius does many more things than the 2000 car, the 2000 remains more configurable while driving by a mile.
The Prius largely tries to not have you configure the AC/heat at all while driving by having an automatic mode and you can set the target temp', but this completely ignores other scenarios where people want to be hit with hot/cold and don't care what the actual temp is, or that the temp doesn't measure the sun hitting you on your bare arm constantly making you feel hotter than you actually are.
Ultimately cars were better ergonomically designed pre-touchscreen, when they did less. Maybe in a few years I'll be able to voice control the AC/heat, but until then it is a step backwards.
Exactly! I hate the ubiquity of automatic climate control systems these days. Everyone that has a car equipped with one just uses the "set point" knob like regular manual controls. It's full cold, full hot, or off with "in-between" settings managed via fan speed. They don't work for the reason you've stated even when used "properly".
I've also noticed that most systems refuse to switch off the A/C compressor unless you choose a set point several degrees above ambient. It's a waste of gas, especially when it's 68-70F with low humidity outside.
They're worse, for sure, but they've actually tried to minimize the problems, contrast ratio is high, buttons are clear, and feedback is as good as it gets without being tactile. Some buttons are also located on the edges, which allows you to feel out their position.
One could probably have integrated this into Glass as well, but given the snail's pace of Android Auto (and the raging quality issues of Android in general), no yet again.
I would have loved a HUD manipulated through steering wheel controls. From what I've heard, this was too overwhelming for the previous generation of American drivers. I wonder if the next generation would fare better.
... which is why the HUD (for velocity, navigation) in my 6 years old BMW is my favourite feature. I don't understand why so few manufacturers offer one.
I can see that a HUD for showing animals detected by infrared is something you can't show on a dashboard.
Cadillac Cue is rage-inducingly bad, I would love to see your reactions to that if you think IDrive is an abomination. :-)
There are four buttons and two "scroll wheel buttons" on the steering wheel that control music, the sunroof, climate, etc. The feedback for those buttons is provided on the second digital screen that is behind the steer column, so your eyes just move up/down not towards the center console.
Just saying :)
Source: Just completed my second Portland <-> Yosemite trip in my "legacy" P85 that is 2+ years old now. I love it, but I'm jealous of the goodies in the new cars!
I won't argue that the setup is less convenient than it could be. On the other hand, I always found reaching over to some center console to fiddle with buttons and knobs to be extremely cumbersome even if I learned to find them all by feel.
Yes, but you have to program them to what you want in that moment or have to click a dozen times to reach what you are looking for. You don't have the ONE button at the roof that opens the sunroof every time you press it.
I had the same concerns initially, but they disappeared after trying it out. It's really well done and not a problem in practice.
With touch buttons I need to look at the screen which takes my eyes off the road. Even if it's for 1/2 a second.
1/2 a second is the cause of many accidents. I'd prefer having physical buttons. Ironically, you lose your sense of touch on a touch screen.
First, what functions do you actually need to manipulate while driving? Most of that can be done from the steering wheel.
Second, when positions on a touchscreen are consistent you can learn to touch them without staring at them. I often adjust the interior temperature on the touchscreen even though it can be done on the steering wheel, just because I find it to be easier. It can be done out of the corner of my eye with practice.
The trouble starts when the UI is designed poorly enough to require more than just a glance.
You can also preheat the car before you go, which helps a lot in the winter. And if you're in Canada you should definitely get the cold weather package, which includes a heated steering wheel, so gloves aren't as necessary.
Disclaimer: I've lived in cold climates (Wisconsin gets pretty brutal) but haven't had my Model S in a bad winter.
A physical knob, too, can be sufficiently illuminated with just a tiny sliver of light on the knob to indicate its position.
I (the parent) agree with all of this ... that is, except for preferring the 7 series.
I think the 17" screen is a real abomination - it's a stylistic void, in fact - there's a big black hole in the middle of the dash that has no styling since it's just a screen.
I also really don't like the Tesla interior - specifically the surprisingly lack of seat adjustments.
Disclaimer: Tesla investor.
At this point a Porsche is a glorified garage queen.
EDIT: A Porsche 918 MSRP is almost $845K and it's only 0.6 seconds faster than the Model S (P85D). They've made less than 1000 units.
The point is there are other metrics than 0-60, and in fact 0-60 is --- at least within a given bracket of cars --- a pretty cheap metric to optimize.
Tesla performs horribly on Laguna Lap, but so do all the American Muscle cars. You basically need a low-weight car with high acceleration to do well.
Other raceway times are also interesting. But that's what I look for in high-performance cars.
That website also has links by car (to see how a particular car does across different racetracks). The Tesla P85D page is here:
http://fastestlaps.com/cars/tesla_model_s_p85d.html
Not very many runs yet, but we can get a glimpse of how it is doing from the four tracks listed.
They take very tight corners. I'd imagine that the turn-intensive tracks would be where these smaller cars would do better. Their acceleration leaves a bit to be desired (but what do you expect for $25k?). 0-60 in 6.3 seconds is still reasonably sporty.
Fiesta is too small for my tastes, but I did go with a Focus (non-ST... just normal stock Focus) for my vehicle. For a manual vehicle, its perfectly fine.
From 4000 through 6500 RPM, you can definitely feel the little engine work. Turbo must kick in or something.
---------
In any case, its amusing to see "just" the ST models do decently on these tracks. After all, people who actually want performance go for the RS model.
As a daily driver, the Tesla is easier to deal with than a normal car. With a normal car, you have to worry about how much gas you have, when and where you'll stop to fill up, etc. My Model S is full in the morning every time.
For trips that exceed the range available on a single charge you do have to think a little bit more. But for the vast majority of destinations, it's not hard. If you're going to be regularly driving to a place without adequate charging infrastructure then yes, the Tesla is not for you, but that's a relatively small number of people.
When you say, "range, charging availability, etc." what does the "etc." refer to? I would not even put charging availability on that list. Range is a limitation for sure, although not a terribly bad one, but I can't think of anything else.
The "etc" covers things like not having physical controls for adjusting the climate and sound systems, as well as a generally substandard interior for a $100K car. Not dealbreakers per se, but factors that leaned me away from considering the car.
I don't know if I'm in the minority here, maybe I am. Maybe most people own a house with a garage and never take road trips further than 250 miles (or own a second car with which to do so), but I'm not one of those people. I suspect, though, that there's more of us than you might think.
Lack of charging at home is a big problem for sure. I would not buy a Model S if I couldn't charge it where I lived. Many apartment building owners are amenable to installing chargers, but many aren't.
Note that you don't necessarily need a garage, just dedicated parking somewhere reasonably close to electrical infrastructure. Houses with at least carports or driveways are pretty common places to live.
"Never take road trips further than 250 miles" needs a strong amendment. "Never take road trips further than 250 miles where charging can't be done at the destination and you're outside the supercharger network and away from CHAdeMO stations." Sure, it happens, but it's pretty rare. If you're staying within the Supercharger network, or you stay within one-way range and can plug in at your destination, then trips over 250 miles are no problem.
If you're on a 400 mile road trip, you can drive the first 250 or so on a fully charged Tesla, but then you'll need to stop for a half hour at a Supercharger and let your car charge up to get the remaining 150 miles. If there's no Supercharger around and you need to stop at a conventional EV charger, be prepared to wait an hour or more.
Because of the non-trivial time increase once you go beyond the initial range of the car, I know I'd be less likely to want to take trips beyond it, even if they were technically doable.
Stopping for 20-30 minutes every 150 miles or so isn't a burden for most people. Some people really like to push. But you really should be stopping that long, that often, regardless of what you're driving. People don't always do it, but they should.
As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere, the impact of charging time really depends on what you do in that time. If you can time your charging to coincide with a meal, for example, then the actual penalty from charging is zero. If you're doing a 400 mile road trip and you can make your supercharging stop your lunch stop, then you'll lose less time to charging than you'd lose to filling the tank of a gas car. Obviously that's a big if and it's not at all guaranteed, but the point is that this isn't an absolute, and "30 minutes to charge" shouldn't be thought of as being the equivalent of "30 minutes to fill the gas tank."
Personally I love long trips in the Model S. Part of that is just because the car is extremely comfortable and easy to drive, which makes long trips much less tiring. I'm sure that would come with other cars in that price range too, so not something that's exclusive to Tesla. The extra charging time has not so far been at all an issue. I've made three trips beyond the range of the car in the six months I've had it, and my total time spent waiting for the car to charge is zero. I'm sure that will start to become non-zero when I want to do, say, 500 miles in a day, but I still look forward to longer trips in it more than I did in my previous cars.
BTW, different people have different likes and dislikes about car interiors.
Sounds like you should buy a car you like.
Interior is debatable and subjective. The only concrete thing where it's worse is range. And everybody acknowledges that as far as I can see.
The problem is that a lot of people don't understand how the stuff works, and imagine that the ways in which the Tesla is worse are much worse than they really are.
Edit: range and price, actually. But everybody mentions the price too. Don't mistake "nobody mentions the flaws" with "everybody mentions what flaws there are, there just aren't that many flaws."
- price
- range
- needing to have a charging port at your residence
- charging time
- charger availability
I will note that general availability is extremely good, but it's availability of fast charging that is currently somewhat problematic. If you're patient, you can charge just about anywhere. If you count 120V exterior outlets (and why not, they do work, just slowly) then there are a lot more places to charge an EV than fill a gas car in the US. If your average daily driving is under 50 miles then you can get by on that, although I wouldn't recommend it if there are alternatives.
Okay, people might exaggerate "range anxiety" on the Teslas. But you're definitely reaching here: when and where to fill up a gasoline car? How about 24 hours a day on almost any street corner in the country. Running out of fuel isn't even on the radar.
No, it's not a particularly big deal, but it's a constant low-level refrain. If I'm leaving in the morning for something time-sensitive, do I have to build an extra ten minutes into my schedule for a gas stop? What if I haven't been paying attention and discover fuel is running low when I'm on the highway and the next exit is in 20 miles? What if I pick the wrong street corner and get gouged? (The closest gas station to my house charges $2.49/gallon right now. While driving this morning I passed a station not too far away that charges $3.49/gallon.)
Filling up your gas car from time to time is not difficult. But it is something you have to think about from time to time. If you don't think about it, you'll occasionally find yourself having to make an unscheduled stop somewhere. It's small but non-zero. An EV is easier.
I don't think it's a particularly big deal. It's a nice convenience to have, but it wouldn't make or break the decision for buying a car. But I think it's a useful counterpoint to people who talk about how difficult or inconvenient charging is. 99% of the time it is easier than gas.
Also, just like how you charge your Tesla every night, I think most gas-powered car owners keep an eye on their fuel and will fill up the night before if they don't have time to stop in the morning. That's really a non-issue as well.
Yes, owners of gas-powered cars will need to make impromptu, unscheduled stops to fill up, but EV owners have to constantly be planning in advance to know that they'll be able to hit the next charging point, because if they don't make it their car is going to be making the rest of the journey on the back of a flatbed truck.
But my point is that for a gas car, getting gas and not running out of a gas is a constant thing even when you're not on a long trip.
When I had a gas car, every so often I would get in the car ready to drive 60 miles out to the countryside or something and realize, nuts, I need to get gas on the way.
I never let this happen to myself, but I see friends suddenly realize they need to stop and get gas while on a local drive of maybe 40 miles round trip.
And even if you're on top of things and never let it happen, you're still spending a few minutes every week filling up the car.
With an EV, for any trip that's within the range of the car, it's zero effort and zero thought. EV owners definitely don't have to "constantly be planning in advance." For 99% of drives you don't have to even think about it. Just unplug and go. For the 1% of the time you're making trips, then you have to think about it.
My point is simply that the EV isn't worse in this way, it's just different. It's a tradeoff. If, like most people, you mostly do local driving with very occasional road trips, the EV will be less effort overall, not more.
A Model S will alert you when you're about to drive out of range of known charging stations. If it's 100 miles to the next charging station, it'll start to bug you when you have something over 100 miles left. Not quite the same.
But my point here is, of course, more about the fact that you have to make ~50 (depending on how much you drive and what you drive, obviously) trips to the gas station every year even when you're just local, and thus gas-based range anxiety, while small, is ever-present. In an EV, it's not present at all when local.
Driving from Youngstown, Ohio to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania at 1 AM, I also worried about running out of fuel.
People I know who travel across Wyoming, Nevada, South Dakota etc. say it is worse out there.
Fuel is not available 24/7 on every street corner of the country. On Route 95 from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida it is to some extent. But go a little off the beaten track and it is not.
http://www.caranddriver.com/dodge/charger-srt-srt-hellcat
I personally don't like either of them, but just saying...
http://www.hennesseyperformance.com/2015-dodge-srt-charger-h...
A premium electric car like the Tesla is perfectly capable of being a daily driver for essentially anyone.
EDIT: BTW, I think that electric cars are cool, and even got a garage in my house so that I can go electric some time in the future. But I can imagine that for some people, the lifestyle won't work for them. So for those people... its probably best to admit that Electric isn't for them.
* (second only to the US in total Tesla sales, highest per-capita sales in the world)
(full disclosure I own an 85D and don't find anything you listed very limiting).
Agreed - and that wasn't my point.
My point is, BMW is highlighting a performance stat that it's (relatively) terrible at. I don't know why they mention it at all.
Also it's worth noting that given the very much lower center of gravity that the Tesla has that it is also better at all the other things BMW is good at.
Anyway, they will change their car in 4 years. There is no reason for them to suffer through the early adopter problems (not good enough charging network, only in the silicon valley you don't look stupid if you tell your friend you can go in the south of France buying wine this we because there is not charging station on the way), they will simply buy when the future is there.
Are you counting the sum of all of the time you spend waiting for the car to recharge/refill? If so, and if you're a typical driver, then the Tesla wins. In an average month, you might spend a total of 15 minutes gassing up your car, and zero minutes charging your Tesla (because it's charging while you sleep).
On road trips, it will depend on how well charging stops coincide with bathroom/meal/coffee stops. A supercharger stop is both longer and more frequent than a gas stop, no dispute there, but if you time it to coincide with a break that outlasts the charging stop (easy to do) then the time penalty is zero. It's not practical to overlap gas filling with other stuff, so you can even lose out there.
Now, if you're the sort who drives five hours at a time without stopping then the gas car can win big on charging time. But even if you do that, unless you take those trips pretty frequently, the Tesla can still win on total time spent filling up.
Exterior 120V outlets are pretty common, so another option would be to plug into one of those while at work. That makes for slow charging, but you could add another 40 miles or so of range while you're there. (Understanding this is a hypothetical for you at this point.)
But it is the _only_ advantage left (see disclaimer at the end).
- Reliability should be much higher with Tesla, as the engine is much simpler.
- Ride quality. The 7 is a boat, does not have the agility of smaller, sportier BMW models.
- Looks. Obviously subjective, but 7's styling is very conservative and has not changed much.
Disclaimer: These two cars are targeted at two quite different (though equally affluent) types of buyers. Some people prefer conservative, some sporty.
If you're having any sort of engine failure in an internal combustion car built this century, someone is being malicious and trying to break your car.
Tesla, on the other hand, has had to recall a percentage of their electric motors because they were ripping themselves apart after 10K miles.
All the other parts of the car - the parts that actually still fail on modern vehicles - suspension, electronics, climate control, brakes, drive train, etc. are more complicated in a Tesla than in a regular car. The tesla has an electronically adjustable suspension, remotely upgradable electronics, climate control that doesn't get to run off of excess engine heat and belt driven compressors, two drivetrains (two transmissions and differentials), and regenerative braking. These systems are more complex than normal and only time will tell if they're more reliable than their legacy auto industry equivalents, but my feeling is they won't be.
Repair rates are hovering at 90 repairs per 100 cars for all Model Ss, 2013 - today. 2014's is, ironically, 102 repairs per 100 cars. Compare that to repair rates of 30/100 being average (Minis) for new cars and 1-3/100 being good (Toyotas and their ilk).
Sure a 1980s Merc Diesel might make 500K and the ICE itself might last that long but the surrounding components are not cheap to maintain ....
That's why Lexus (reliability + interiors) is the bees knees. :-)
Get to the point you can deliver 300 to 500 miles per charge at the same price point the average car purchase is at and call me. Its a rich man toy that you have to adapt to live with and don't even get me started on trip planning. I am not routing around my car's limitations.
Declaring a car perfect that has some pretty severe limitations in terms of range, etc is pretty ridiculous, but that's pretty standard fare for them. Or touting 85 equivalent MPG when you can purchase a similar gasoline vehicle at a significant discount vs. Tesla that performs as good or better.
In ye olden times with CR, you essentially lost 10 points for not being Honda.
Keep in mind that when you have 7 people in it, at least two must be relatively small (77lbs or under) children. So the added weight isn't quite as much as it sounds.
The P85D weighs just under 5,000lbs empty. Say your 7 passengers add 1,000lbs of weight, that's a 20% penalty on acceleration. Might be noticeable, but performance will still be extremely good.
As for range, aerodynamic drag dominates at highway speeds, which is where you'll be spending most of your time on a trip. The efficiency hit from extra passengers will be down in the noise. You could probably recoup it by driving 2MPH slower.
I haven't done a long trip with 7, but I did do a reasonably long road trip with 6 in my Model S, and the extra weight was not noticeable. You don't want to be flooring it in a powerful car with small kids most of the time anyway, and the energy use predictions were still spot on.
A few weeks ago (a month ago ?) BMW released the spec sheet / announcement for the new 7 series. And it's just sad.
I'm not even sure who it is for ... people who don't use the Internet ? People who don't read news ? You've got a car that is substantially better in almost every conceivable category (it generates all wheel drive with two different motors, for instance) ... and the press release for the 7 series is going on and on about how advanced their new engine is and bragging about their (laughable, in light of the model S) 0-60 time.
Basically it's 20 pages of "blah blah not electric blah blah". It's painful to look at.
OBLIGATORY: Not a huge Model S fan, at least in terms of size (not really a full sized four door) and interior appointment (which is amazingly sparse and devoid of options compared to 7/A8/S) ... and further, would much prefer a 7 series or Panamera on a fully-electric platform. But we don't have that, so I guess we have to settle for "the best car we've ever tested".[1]
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/27/teslas-p85d-is-the-best-car-c...