Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
My son in law just took delivery of a Tesla 3 and I was finally in a car that seems to represent the 21st Century. The all-electric design seems to be the way autos should be designed. The dash board (if you could call it that) is just a large flat screen like a big iPad in landscape mode. It is centrally located to facilitate making right or left-hand drive cars.
There is no maintenance schedule! There is nothing to maintain. The regenerative braking is so pervasive that you don't actually step on the brake unless you are a) forced to make a panic stop, or b) just before the car comes to a halt. In other words, the brakes will last for probably the life of the car. Regenerative braking kicks in the instant you let up on the throttle and begins slowing the car. As you exit a highway, you actually need to keep applying power or else the car will be stopping long before you want it too.
No radiators, no liquid fuel tank, no transmission, no transmission fluid, no differential or drive shafts, no oil cooler or reservoir, no liquid coolant surge tanks, no spark plugs or ignition system. No exhaust system or muffler, and no catalytic converter.
Since there are no gears, acceleration is instantaneous (since electric motors have their highest torque at rest) and acceleration continues linearly without any hesitations as gears change. There are no clutches either. Acceleration on his model, which is not the fastest, was about that of a stock Corvette, but as I described is a much different feeling since it is continuous. We easily went from 65 mph to 100 mph is a very short distance.
You open the doors with you smart phone. You open the charge port with it too, and you set the battery charge level with it as well. If you lose you phone they give you a smart card that serves the same purpose. The charging cable locks into the receptacle and can only be removed with the iPhone on your person or the aforementioned smart card.
In the car, you set up your personal profile which includes acceleration aggressiveness, steering stiffness and regenerative braking effectiveness. The GPS map is huge. Even the air vents are controlled electronically with a touch pad control on the main screen.
The car has one of the lowest drag coefficients of any production car. It can since you don't need any big hunking hole in the front to get air through the cooling system.
In other words, it's like no other car I've ever been in. I was really wanting a Corvette (never going to get one for various reasons which I will not go into here), but now I want a Tesla. BTW: the top model S with AWD does 0-60 in 2.4 seconds. I don't know of any production car that gets that speed that's not purpose built and is on a drag strip.
I am really pulling for Tesla and Elon Musk. The car and the company deserves to make it big.
There is no maintenance schedule! There is nothing to maintain. The regenerative braking is so pervasive that you don't actually step on the brake unless you are a) forced to make a panic stop, or b) just before the car comes to a halt. In other words, the brakes will last for probably the life of the car. Regenerative braking kicks in the instant you let up on the throttle and begins slowing the car. As you exit a highway, you actually need to keep applying power or else the car will be stopping long before you want it too.
No radiators, no liquid fuel tank, no transmission, no transmission fluid, no differential or drive shafts, no oil cooler or reservoir, no liquid coolant surge tanks, no spark plugs or ignition system. No exhaust system or muffler, and no catalytic converter.
Since there are no gears, acceleration is instantaneous (since electric motors have their highest torque at rest) and acceleration continues linearly without any hesitations as gears change. There are no clutches either. Acceleration on his model, which is not the fastest, was about that of a stock Corvette, but as I described is a much different feeling since it is continuous. We easily went from 65 mph to 100 mph is a very short distance.
You open the doors with you smart phone. You open the charge port with it too, and you set the battery charge level with it as well. If you lose you phone they give you a smart card that serves the same purpose. The charging cable locks into the receptacle and can only be removed with the iPhone on your person or the aforementioned smart card.
In the car, you set up your personal profile which includes acceleration aggressiveness, steering stiffness and regenerative braking effectiveness. The GPS map is huge. Even the air vents are controlled electronically with a touch pad control on the main screen.
The car has one of the lowest drag coefficients of any production car. It can since you don't need any big hunking hole in the front to get air through the cooling system.
In other words, it's like no other car I've ever been in. I was really wanting a Corvette (never going to get one for various reasons which I will not go into here), but now I want a Tesla. BTW: the top model S with AWD does 0-60 in 2.4 seconds. I don't know of any production car that gets that speed that's not purpose built and is on a drag strip.
I am really pulling for Tesla and Elon Musk. The car and the company deserves to make it big.
