Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
The Model 3 is the future. Not for everyone and expensive.
But it is an amazing vehicle.
I was a pretty fun ride. I guess I said that I would give a more detailed writeup.
When I made the appointment I was given two locations - San Francisco (Van Ness) or Walnut Creek (Broadway Plaza). I frankly didn't want to deal with bridge/commute traffic, tolls, and parking in San Francisco, so I chose Walnut Creek even though it's a bit further away. I wasn't quite sure where it was, but it's kind of a small space, with only 3 cars there in the showroom - a Model X, Model S, and Model 3. The other odd thing is that they're virtually paperless. No brochures and no business cards. However, my kid did get a coloring page, which was about the only thing that had that was printed on paper. When I asked the Tesla employee said that all contact info should be obtained through the email confirmation I got. The test vehicles were all in the garage about a block away.
I was given a look at the front trunk (rather large actually) as well as the front trunk. The front had a bag that contained the charging accessories, including an adapter as well as the cables to charge off of 220V and even 110V. I was kind of surprised that there was really no way to see any of the mechanicals of the car. I suppose it's probably better since there's stuff there that could be pretty dangerous.
The interior was minimalist almost to a fault. No dash and everything from the center touch-screen display. I don't know if it was just this version, but there was a strip of wood along the length of the dash. I didn't really play with the radio, self-driving features, climate control, etc. I really just concentrated on driving the car. I asked the employee what would happen if the display failed, and he indicated that it should still drive, but you kind of have to know all the controls. I suppose it would be like driving with no speedometer. I had to adjust the mirrors with the center display, but at least the windows were all traditional rocker switches on the door. It was raining too, so the wipers actually started automatically. There was also a press in on the turn stalk to manually operate the wipers for a single cycle.
Initially I was kind of scared that it might have something like a hair-trigger accelerator. The employee went over the basics of the gear selector (down for D, up for R, push the end for P) before we left, and noted that we would have about an hour since there would the next appointment. It was actually kind of easy. If you've ever driven the Autopia cars at Disneyland, the accelerator works somewhat like that. Obviously it gets moving with with the accelerator, but letting off of it automatically kicks in the regenerative braking. I wasn't really paying attention earlier, but eventually the employee pointed out the line where it indicates the rate at which it's using/generating power with a green (regenerating) or black (expending) line that grows longer/shorter with the amount of use. There was apparently three steering modes (from soft to performance) which the employee helped me select. There was also a braking mode where one could select more aggressive regeneration or a less aggressive mode where it would be closer to coasting in a traditional car.
It felt kind of heavy, but that's probably because I'm used to driving my wife's 2002 Civic or my 2004 WRX which is light (and for my WRX) tossable. This was a heavy car with a beefy suspension to get it to handle well. We took a route that the employee recommended that included freeway driving, city driving, and kind of a residential/semi-rural road with a lot of twisties. I only tried flooring it once, and believe that it could go 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. However, it doesn't really behave like that unless the driver really wants to. In traffic it was extremely well behaved. It was also odd seeing the display show symbols of roughly where all the surrounding vehicles were. I guess that's tied into the self driving and emergency braking system. He said that emergency braking only operates at over 5 MPH, so one could possibly intentionally rub another car at low speed.
I guess it wouldn't be complete without something going wrong, which was on the return where the employee suggested testing out the self-park feature where it sees the space and then backs in. I was supposed to drive past the space where a park symbol was supposed to come on the screen, then select it. I tried it and nothing. Then I tried another space, and nothing. Then I backed up and tried the previous space, and nothing. So I ended
Not sure if it's the car for me though. I'd miss driving a stick. I kind of thought that my WRX was kind of heavy, but the Model 3 was definitely not light, which I'm guessing comes from the batteries. It also has a fairly low center of gravity with the batteries under the floor, and didn't have a whole lot of body roll when I tried to whip it through corners.
