I drove a brand new Tesla Model S 100D 3,000 miles in a week. Here's what I found.

I just bought a brand new Tesla Model S 100D and drove it over 3,000 miles in a week.  While the experience is fresh in my mind, I thought I would take a few minutes to share my thoughts with others.

A little preface.  I already own a Tesla, a 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport with the R80 (80kwh battery upgrade).  I have owned it for about two years and I absolutely love the car.

A top down view of my 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport R80 with my sports car dog in the passenger seat

That said, driving a Tesla Roadster doesn't really prepare you much for the experience of driving a modern Tesla Model S.

This post is going to sound somewhat critical, and it is, but to be clear I love the car.  In fact, I have very little criticism of the physical car itself.  It's everything I expected.  It's a phenomenal luxury car and I'm very happy with it.

I am still a huge Tesla fan boy though. I not only  own two Tesla's and a lot of Tesla stock, but I'm also a reservation holder for the new Tesla Roadster.  I plan to keep all three cars, all in red.

A screen capture of my 'My Tesla' page

Almost all of my criticism is about the user interface experience of the software.

To be generous one would have to describe the user interface as 'quirky'.  I was a bit surprised that Tesla does not have a better more refined user interface than they present.

I sort of impulse bought this car.  I have had a Tesla Model 3 reservation for some time now.  It was fully my intention to patiently wait until I could get that vehicle.  The Tesla Model S is a bit too large for my taste, I prefer smaller vehicles personally.  However, I recently went through some life changes and that pushed me to cancel the Model-3 and just buy the Model S instead.

My wife and I just recently bought a home in Colorado.  We are in the process of relocating there over the next 8 months.

The last time I drove back from Colorado I passed a guy in a Tesla Model S using the auto-pilot feature and that kind of did it for me.  I couldn't see waiting two more years for the Model 3 when I could just have the Model S right now.  Another factor is that Congress was working on the new tax bill and in at least one revision they had removed the $7,500 federal tax credit for a new electric vehicle; so I wanted to buy the car before the end of of 2017 to lock in the tax credit.

I decided to push the trigger and buy the Model S now.  I got an inventory car which came with an $11,000 discount, plus the $7,500 federal tax credit and a $5,000 state tax credit from Colorado all of which made it seem like 'a deal' at the time.

I flew out to Colorado to take delivery of the vehicle and then immediately drove it back to St. Louis.  Once I arrived in St. Louis, just a day later, my wife and I drove the car all of the way back to Colorado again.  We spent a week in Colorado doing sight seeing and just finished driving it back  again.

All told we put over 3,000 miles on the car in a week, almost all highway driving on interstate 70 back and forth.

While I remain enthusiastic about the physical car, there are a lot of concerns I have with the software and user interface.  Some of my thoughts are as follows.

Regenerative Braking

I wanted to make a very brief comment about the regenerative braking feature of the Tesla Model S.  Regenerative braking is a feature in most electric cars where the car will regenerate energy to slow the car down when you take your foot off of the accelerator.

This is pretty much my favorite feature on my Tesla Roadster.  On the original Tesla Roadster the regenerative braking is extremely strong.  So strong in fact that I have virtually never touched the brakes on my Roadster.

I was a little bit disappointed with just how often I actually have to use the brakes on my Model S then.  Either because the regenerative braking isn't as strong on the Model S, or because the car is much heavier, or maybe a combination of both, but you do actually have to hit the brake pedal frequently to stop the car.

The Battery Icon

On the main dash you will see a battery icon.  Next to it will be a mileage range.  While the battery icon is useful to give you a visual indication of how much charge is remaining, the mileage range is worse than useless.  I say worse, because it's incredibly deceptive.

Whatever number is printed next to that battery icon, you should simply ignore it.  The number displayed there is what is known as the 'ideal' range.  It's some theoretical hypothetical unicorn range that the car could travel in under ideal conditions which virtually never exist in the real world.

If you drive your car at 50 miles per hour, on a warm day, with climate control turned off, on a flat road, and with no wind, then you will, in fact, be able to achieve the range displayed on your dashboard.  Otherwise, it's just meaningless.  It could easily display a range of 300 miles when, in fact, you can only travel 220 miles under your current driving conditions.

Frankly, I don't know why Tesla displays this number at all.  At the minimum, they should display both the 'ideal' range *and* the 'projected range' side by side; or provide a way to toggle it.

I know why they do it though.  They advertise that your new Tesla can go a certain distance so if they don't display that 'ideal' number front and center, they would get a lot of criticism.

The main point here is that the number is worse than useless because it's is extremely deceptive.

WHEN DRIVING YOUR CAR

IGNORE THE IDEAL RANGE NUMBER!

Now, to be fair, this range issue isn't Tesla's fault.  It is simply the nature of electric cars.  The power consumption of an electric vehicle varies so wildly based on driving conditions that there is no real absolute range.  It's highly variable and that's all there is to it.

There is an easy solution to this problem however.  Tesla provides on their main console an 'energy' page.  On the energy page it will show you the projected range based on your current driving conditions.

This number is correct and also highly accurate.  It's the only number you should look at, period.  Just ignore the number on your dashboard next to the battery icon.  That number is meaningless.

If you are driving down the freeway at 65 miles per hour and the energy page says your projected range is 212 miles; well you can take that to the bank.  You will get exactly that range so long as your driving conditions stay the same.

Disconnecting the Charging Cable

A brief note about disconnecting the charging cable.  There are two little things that will get you.  First, to disconnect the charging cable you must press **AND HOLD** the button.  Do not 'tap' it.  You must hold it, and hold it until it turns white.  If you tap it, it will not work properly.

Second, if you hold it and it never turns white, that is probably because you haven't unlocked your car doors.  The car doors must be unlocked to remove the charger.

Maybe both of these things seem obvious, but it's a mistake I made myself.

Don't call it 'Auto-Pilot'!

Probably the main reason I impulse bought the Tesla Model S was for auto-pilot.  I had a fantasy of my car driving me back and forth from Colorado while I just sat back and relaxed.  

I had never used the 'auto-pilot' feature before.  My old school Roadster certainly has none of these advanced features and every time I have gotten a Model S as a loaner car, it has always been disabled.

Now that I have used auto-pilot for 3,000 miles of highway driving, I think I know a little bit about it.

Probably the worst thing about auto-pilot, I think, is the name.  The name is deceptive.

Here is what it should accurately be called:

"Fancy Cruise Control"
or
"Auto Steer Cruise Control"

Referring to it as 'auto-pilot' is deceptive and sets your expectations too high.  What it is, is highly enhanced or advanced cruise control.  This is a more accurate description and it does function generally pretty well.

If you set your expectations about what the car can do more realistically, then it works quite well and is a great feature.

If you think you are going to just engage auto-pilot and then go off and read a book, you are going to be terribly disappointed.

Even with auto-pilot engaged you have to actively keep your hands on the steering wheel almost all of the time, and you have to watch the road all of the time.  You also have to be ready to take over the steering wheel at any moment at any time.

You might wonder, if I still have to do all of that, what's the use?  Well, what I found is that over the course of driving for hours on end, using auto-pilot is far less exhausting.  Most all of the time the auto-pilot steers fine.  You are only having to make sure you don't need to take over which, most of the time you do not. 

I would advise only using auto-pilot on the freeway when you are going a long distance and only on roads with very clear lane markings.

The very first time you engage auto-pilot you are going to find it really weird.  You are not going to be happy with how the car is driving itself, mostly because it's not driving itself the way you would.  This is just a learning experience you will have to go through.  Over time you will grow accustomed the driving style of the car and it will seem more natural to you.  

Auto-pilot drives primarily by looking at the lane markings on the road.  What this means, is that if at any time while you are driving the road markings are missing or confused, the car will scare the absolute living shit out of you.

For example, say there is an off-ramp without clear lane markings.  The car will likely start to turn the wheel and veer off the road, as if it had suddenly decided to exit, before it will realize it's 'mistake' and correct.  This happens frequently and is always disconcerting.

Now, let's say a left hand turn lane opens up and the lane markings are confused, the car may suddenly veer into the middle lane because it thinks that is where the road is going. 

Let's say there's been recent road resurfacing and there are two sets of line markings around recent construction.  The car will get confused as shit and start weaving back and forth.

Since any of these situations can occur at any time with little warning, this is why you have to constantly watch what the car is doing so that you can take over at a moments notice.

The car's heavy dependence and highly literal interpretation of lane markings is far from perfect.

Future versions of the software will likely fix this.  Using deep learning cars should be able to be less literal and know the 'right thing to do' in these more ambiguous circumstances.

For now, I would strongly recommend you be watchful at all times.

What I do is I keep my hands resting lightly on the wheel, feeling what the car is doing, and be always prepared to correct it if it tries to do the wrong thing.

Also, I had at least one occasion when the auto-pilot, with zero warning or notice, just turned itself off.  I had gotten into some heavy traffic going though Kansas City.  For whatever reason, the car decided it could't handle the situation and just handed steering back to me without any notice at all.  This is why you must always be ready to take over at any instant at any time!

Lane Changes

The first time you let auto-pilot do a lane change it's going to freak you out.  That said, it does a really, really good job.  Lane changes are highly precise and somewhat aggressive.  

To change lanes in auto-pilot all you have to do is turn on the blinker.  The car will make sure it is clear to change lanes and when it is, it will execute the lane change quickly and with precision.  As I said, the first few times it changes lanes it will be freaky.  However, over time, you will gain confidence that it knows what it's doing and will execute it well.

On a few occasions I put on the blinker and the car just refused to change lanes.  I really don't know why.  I then would just turn off the blinker and turn it on again and it was ok.

The one thing that will get you with lane changes is if you try to disable the blinker before the lane change is completed.  You must wait until the lane change is fully completed before you turn the blinker off.  If you turn off the blinker before the lane change is complete the car will interpret that as meaning 'I don't want to change lanes after all' and the correction is highly aggressive and will freak you out.

It's simple, just wait until the lane change is completed before turning the blinker off and you will be fine.

The Most Mystifying Missing Feature of the Tesla
Why is there no indicator that is is safe to change lanes!?

I simply cannot fathom this.  All decent luxury cars today have a visual indicator when you activate your turn signal which tells you if it is safe to change lanes or not.  Most of them display a little indicator in the side mirrors.

The Tesla Model S simply does not offer this feature.  I cannot figure out why.  When auto-pilot is engaged, clearly, the car with all of it's cameras and other sensors, is well aware whether it is safe to change lanes or not. 

However, when you are driving yourself and engage the turn signal there is no icon, signal, display, or any feedback indicating if it is clear to change lanes or not.

There are some small symbols which get displayed if you have a car on either side of you, but those are very unreliable (I've been driving right next to a semi-trailer without those symbols showing up).  And, even if they were reliable, it's not sufficient information because there could be car coming up on your left at a high rate of speed and you wouldn't know about it.

I am completely baffled by why Tesla has not included this in a car that costs upwards of $120,000.  With all of the sensors and advanced features on the Tesla to not have blind-spot detection enabled is a complete and total mystery and a major missing feature.

The Entertainment Center

I have mostly positive things to say about the media center of the car.  You get free streaming audio, which I love.  My only criticism is this.

I cannot figure out how to make the media center play music by a particular artist or album. On the media center you can search for an artist or album, but when you hit play it will always play a random selection of music similar.  So, let's say, you want to listen to 'The Beatles'.  You search for the Beatles.  You select 'The Beatles' and it will play a song by 'The Beatles'.  However, as soon as that song has completed, rather than playing another Beatles song, or another song from an album you selected, instead it will randomly select a song 'similar' to the Beatles.

Sometimes, this is what you want.  But, most of the time, it isn't.  Maybe I'm just missing something and it can do this, but I haven't found it yet.

Other than that, the music selection is great.  The radio works great.  The ability to stream from your blue-tooth devices works great.  

If anyone knows how to make it play music just by a specific artist or album, please let me know.

The Console User Interface

The Tesla Model S has a huge touchscreen interface. The most generous way to describe the user interface is 'quirky'.  It's not that the user interface is hard to use.  Once you learn it's idiosyncrasies, it's easy enough.  However, it's just not intuitive to begin with.

The user interface can be in either 'split screen' or 'full screen' mode.  The icon to switch between the two is virtually invisible.  It's an extremely tiny little gray wireframe rectangle that is almost impossible to see with the naked eye.  If you didn't know it was there to begin with, you might never find it.

Once you know where to look for it and recognize it, it's fine.  But, why they made it almost impossible to see is a bit of a mystery to me.

The other bizarre thing about the user interface is the magical, mystery, invisible main menu.

If you got your brand new Tesla and drove it for the first time, and the screen was defaulted to, say, navigation full screen mode, you might never figure out how to use it.

You might think, hey, I would like to play the radio.

Good luck with that.

Start searching for an icon or button or anything.

It doesn't exist.

In fact, the only thing which looks like an icon/button is a little Tesla logo at the center top. 

So, you click the Tesla logo and that gets you an pop-up that just tells you about your car.

Great, but still no radio.  Or anything else for that matter.

It turns out, to bring up the menu you simply have to tap somewhere on the top of the screen.  

Once you know it, you know it, and that's all there is to it.  However, the fact that there is absolutely no visual indicator that you need to click there is a bit odd.  Likewise, if you want to find, say super chargers, you do so by clicking some random spot on the navigation screen.

I don't know who made these user interface design decisions, but they are certainly not particularly intuitive.

Saving the worst for the last
The Navigation System

The Navigation system on the Tesla, probably one of the singular most important features in an electric car, is simply abysmal.

Let me start with the most obvious failure.  If you want to go on a long trip in an electric car it takes a fair amount of planning.  

When you try to navigate with your Tesla the navigation system will automatically plot a route which includes places you need to stop to charge your car.

Sounds great right?  That's how it should work, right?

Well, here was my initial experience.

I was traveling from Colorado to St. Louis, an 850 mile drive.  I entered my destination address into the navigation system, it told me how long it would take, plotted my course, and displayed where I would need to stop to charge my car.

Everything looked great!

Then, I started driving. I wasn't on the road for very long, travelling at exactly the highway speed limit, no faster, when an alert popped up that said, "Slow down or you will not reach the supercharger in time!"

I was really pretty freaked out!  I slowed down to like 60mph (even though the speed limit on was 75mph and people were zooming past me so quickly I felt I was putting myself in danger).

Now I had some serious range anxiety and I had only been driving the car for 30 minutes!

I recalled that there were a lot of super chargers along my route, so I was surprised that, out of the gate in a 100D I didn't have enough range to get to the next one on my trip!!

So, at this point, I opened my Google cell phone and searched for super chargers.  I was amazed that there were plenty of super chargers available along my route.

The problem was that the navigation system had plotted a route that my car couldn't make if I drove at the speed limit!

So, I cancelled my current route and instead plotted a route to the nearest super charger.  It was only later that I found that if you just magically tapped somewhere on the navigation map window you could see a lightning bolt icon which would, in turn, show you available superchargers.

The user interface failure here is that when the navigation system plots a route, it shouldn't just show you superchargers you might *possibly* be able to reach at if you nearly completely deplete your battery, but also intermediate super-chargers along the way.

The navigation system does not show them, nor does it provide a way to select which superchargers you might want to stop at.

So, when traveling, rather than navigating to your final destination, you instead have to *manually* plot out a course from just one supercharger to the next.

This is like such basic user interface 101 I'm kind of shocked Tesla hasn't long since addressed it.

How to actually drive cross country without any range anxiety or using up too much time

To drive from my home in St. Louis to our new place in Colorado, door to door, without ever stopping and driving at the speed limit, takes right at 12 hours.  When I drove it in my gasoline vehicle, it took me 13 hours with only very short stops to gas up, grab a snack, and get back on the road.

Before I bought the Tesla Model S I researched how long it was going to take me to drive the same distance including stops to charge the car.  The Tesla website showed me that it would take 15 hours, two hours longer than in an ICE.  I had decided that the extra 2 hours was an acceptable trade off for auto-pilot.

However, the first time I drove from St. Louis to Colorado in the Tesla it took *OVER 17 HOURS*!

The reason it took this long was two fold.  First, it was literally only 5 degrees outside almost the entire trip, and the cold makes a significant impact on an electric car.  The second, and main, reason was that I wasn't using the superchargers correctly.

On my drive back yesterday, I was able to do it in 15 1/2 hours, which was much closer to being acceptable.  

Here is my advice on how to use the superchargers to do a very long cross country trip:

• Stop at almost every single super charger! Do not drive as far as you can possibly go between super chargers.  At least along the main highway, there is generally a supercharger every 90-110 miles.  Stop at every single one!
• Don't charge your car full.  Ever.  In fact, only charge enough to get you to the next supercharger.
• The navigation system will tell you your estimated battery remaining to reach the destination.  It's probably safe to only charge such that you will have 20% battery remaining to reach the next supercharger.  However..like all things on a Tesla, that's an 'estimate' and if you charge to '20% estimate' the reality is you will be closer to '10%' when you get there.  That's cutting it too close for my own personal comfort level of range anxiety.  I charge to '30% estimate' and then continue on the trip.

That's really all there is to it.  Your trip should be supercharger to supercharger.  Each time you reach a supercharger, navigate to the next one, charge just until it shows you will have 20-30% power to reach it, and continue on.

You will be driving like an 1 1/2 to 2 hours, stopping for 15-20 minutes, and then continuing on.  It's a little bit slower than in an ICE but, one would hope, that auto-pilot makes it worth it.

For trips that only require a single supercharger stop, most of this advice is not needed.  But, if you plan to drive many hundreds, if not over a thousand miles, this is my recommendation.

The Flawed Navigation System

While Tesla uses Google maps to serve their navigation system they do not use Google to plot driving directions.  In my experience over the course of a week, I have found the Tesla navigation system's driving directions to be simply awful.

On one occasion it literally just sent me to a dead end.  When I pulled out my cell phone and used Google maps, it took me directly to my destination without a problem.  On another occasion when I used voice directions, the Tesla navigation system just utterly failed and I don't know where it was trying to take me, but it was just plain wrong.  Once again, I had to use my cell phone to navigate.

On several other occasions it looked like it was taking me a very bizarre route to go somewhere and I had to use my Google cell phone to get correct directions.  I now simply do not trust the navigation system to give me correct directions and always have to verify using my cell phone.

Even when the Tesla navigation system does give accurate directions, it's time estimate for how long it will take is usually wildly off base.  It might say a 25 minute drive is going to take 50 minutes.  Google maps time estimate is always extremely accurate, while the random guess given by the Tesla navigation software is way off.

Here's a screen capture of a case where I was only 1.1 miles from my destination and the Tesla navigation system said I had another 13 minutes to go!!!

It's all just software, so they can fix it.

So, that's about it.  These are just some of my first impressions and experiences driving a brand new Tesla Model S over 3,000 miles in a week.

The car itself is amazing but there are a lot of issues with the software and user experience.  Fortunately, all of these software glitches can be fixed and, hopefully, they will all be addressed soon.

I am most optimistic about radical improvements to the self driving features.

I hope these observations are useful to other new owners.  If I think of any more, I will update this post.