Renewable Revolution

Kirsten Oulton, Model S owner and evangelist

Updated Feb 17, 2016

I could probably have made a much longer list, but I'll leave you with a few of the more memorable differences that have nothing to do with the driving (which would require a huge post  just to cover that):

Purchasing: I have bought quite a few cars in the past, and dread the dealership experience. I've never been able to buy a new car in under two hours (I have managed as little as an hour on a used car). I particularly can't bear how they make it as hard as possible to understand how much you are paying for each item, while subjecting me to a salesperson, his/her manager, and sometimes (for added fun) the dealership owner while we get various things approved. I've enjoyed dental surgery more. Here is my purchase experience for the car: 1. Test drive in the middle of a snow storm (4" of fresh snow) before it was plowed (the rep challenged me to try and make it spin out... I failed) (20 min.), 2. Discuss the 1 feature that was unclear to me before making my selections (5 min.), 3. Register the order online (4 min.)... and DONE. 29 minutes. Now, to be fair, people often test drive one or more times... so the only part we really need to compare to get an apples-to-apples comparison to my best ever dealership time (1 hour for a used car) versus the Tesla time ( 5 + 4 = 9 minutes). I could have done it from home, but I was coming in to the dealership anyways because I wanted to test the car under the hardest conditions I could find. And while the price range was steep, I at least know that every single other purchaser pays the exact same price, so I didn't fail to negotiate the imaginary best possible price for once;

"Filling up": Some people discuss range anxiety. I haven't had this problem. I drive 4,000+ km (2,485 +mi) a month. On my busiest day (not counting road trips between provinces), I did 370 km, which was less than the 80% charge I normally have on the vehicle in the morning. (Important note: many owners don't even charge their vehicles to 100%, allowing the battery usage to rotate.) What does this mean? I don't have range anxiety. I come home at night, I plug it in and when I wake up, the car has more than enough to get me through my day. Actually, when I'm being a bit more conservative, I can go days in between charges, but this is the real worst case: if you're not driving cross-country, you're not going to "fill up" during a day again. I live in Canada, and after last winter's "polar vortex", I can't say I miss standing outside filling up my car with expensive gas while my extremities were freezing solid;

Capacity: To be honest, when I bought the car, I hadn't really seriously considered how much storage space there is in a Model S. But a crowd actually assembled around the car at the hockey rink. Why? You go to the back and open the trunk. There's this great big flat expanse. My husband loaded two full hockey bags, 4 sticks and some overnight bags on top. Still not full. There was a compartment under the flat bit where he'd stored an emergency kit, some blankets and other odds and ends, but the crowd hadn't seen that part. They were mostly amazed but the fact we got two hockey bags in at all... let alone kept going. It got funnier. He then went around to the frunk (front trunk) and proceeded to fill it with cases of beer and a small cooler. Then you stuff 3 adult males in the back seat in winter jackets. There was a guy driving (I kid you not) a Lincoln Navigator staring at our 4-door sedan with a frown on his face, trying to figure out (I imagine) why he was paying so much for a gas-guzzling beast with similar storage;

Cell phones: My husband and I share the vehicle, which means that often one of us is on public transit or waiting to be picked up as we navigate our lives. We used to phone each other, checking to see when/where we'd meet and why are you late and so forth. That's pretty much stopped entirely. Why? I have an app on my phone, iPad and both my home and work laptops. I can see where he is in the car, and how fast he's going, and there's no point in calling to ask why he's late... I can see the traffic and him crawling along the highway. I know where he is, and when he'll turn up (or vice versa).  During a flash flood that took out a number of sections on a highway I knew he was driving with accidents and floating vehicles, I was perfectly calm, and didn't have to call him. Why? I could see that he'd diverted to side roads uphill of the flood, and was driving slowly along. He's fine... no need to bother him;

Sharing a car is easier: My husband and I have very different proportions. In other cars, if I wasn't paying attention, I would bruise assorted bits trying to get in before I remembered to pull the seat back. The Tesla switches the seat, side mirrors and steering wheel all around to "my" settings at a touch of a single button. I believe that this will get only better over time as Tesla continues to update the GPS, radio, Internet and other features to recognize the difference between my driver profile and his; and

Service: On three distinct occasions, my husband has made a comment on a Tesla-themed (but not owned) message board that could be construed as a complaint. He didn't send it to Tesla, and it wasn't bad enough to make it worth while to call the local service centre. Ironically, this didn't matter: in less than 24 hours, each time, the local service centre called us voluntarily to book an appointment to look at the issue at OUR CONVENIENCE. What? Huh? Since when does the manufacturer care how I feel, let alone go out of its way to make me happy? That on it's own is hard to imagine, and when you add to it that they picked the car up, fixed the minor annoyances for free, and brought the car back all at our convenience? I'm blown away.

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