Tesla Y - Month 1 With an Offer We Couldn't Refuse

The Backstory

When my 20 year old son's 2002 hand-me-down car from grandma got totaled a couple months ago, a silver lining for him was that the plan to someday pass on to him my husband's and my 2013 Chevy Volt got fast forwarded to today. Consoling my loathing of leaving our perfectly worn in Volt for a new car I had to worry about someone denting, my husband had convinced me that a new car would be fun and that the VW iD4 was the perfect fit for us. But the night before we signed the lease deal, a closer look at competitors revealed an offer we couldn't refuse. The Tesla Y lease deal came with higher range, more room for the dogs, and a lower price tag. In fact, we'd be paying the same amount as we did with the great 0% financing deal on our Volt a decade before. Although Tesla doesn't offer free charging at its stations like the VW, its ubiquitous fast charging Supercharger network that will remain largely unavailable for other brands of EVs for another couple years seemed worth the few extra bucks to charge on long trips. I did consider our son's long held observation that a disproportionate number of jerks on the road drive Teslas, but joining the jerk club, or being guilty by association was a risk I was willing to take.

Buying the Car

Deciding to get the Tesla Y was easy compared to getting one. Scheduling a test drive was next to impossible, so we resorted to stalking Tesla Y drivers at a nearby charging hub until we could see the interior, confirm our dogs could fit, and verify that people are happy with the car. Notably, 100% of those surveyed were exuberantly happy.

Ordering one was like trying to catch our own shadow. We were on the Tesla app at all hours, seeing the configuration we wanted pop up, only to see it disappear minutes later. Or show up in Fresno, 5 hrs away.

Finally we caught one in Irvine, only 1 hr 45 minutes away, if we timed it to avoid our region's renowned traffic. Our local dealer is 20 minutes away, but Tesla doesn't keep cars onsite at their stores, or deliver between stores, which in the case of the one in our town are sleek concrete spaces with a narrow shelf of Tesla toy cars, some cool posters and an occasional sales person.

On the day of the appointment, I punched "Tesla Irvine" into Google Maps, and off we went to join the future of transportation. When we reached our destination right on time for our appointment and turned right at the street sign marked "Tesla," I was impressed that the city was so into getting a Tesla store that they named the whole street after it. Maybe that's why they have actual Teslas for sale, I thought, and our local store only has toy ones. Strangely though, as we drove up and down the road, we didn't see the Tesla logo or sign. Or any actual Teslas. My husband grew irritated and started blaming me for this, which seemed pretty unfair, as I didn't create the Tesla storefront strategy. Until I checked the bottom of a text from Tesla that I received that morning and hadn't read entirely. The Tesla store was actually 15 minutes away in the direction from which we just came. On a street not called Tesla. Well, this is a mistake that can happen to anyone. And I thought any reasonable person could agree it was pretty stupid on Google Map's part to not give me the option for the Tesla store, when I punched in "Tesla Irvine." And certainly not my fault that Irvine loves their engineering history and names streets after famous engineers. My husband and son saw things differently. I recall their response contained cackling.

When we got to the actual Tesla store in Irvine, the app guided us to a white car with our names on a sign in the windshield, missing only a heart to convince my husband and I that we were newlyweds arriving on our Tesla honeymoon.

We were greeted by an enthusiastic salesperson, which began my husband's new favorite pastime of telling everyone the story about how I took us to the wrong Tesla. He remains amazed that this wasn't as fun for me as it was for him. 

"I am sure this happens to so many people, right?" asked I of the final sales rep to check us out. Apparently not. He was actually astonished to hear there's a street called Tesla in Irvine. It must have been his first day.

The car had that brand new feeling that my mother would have pointed out "you'll never have again," although schmutz on the window and footprints in the trunk suggested the company was in a rush to get the vehicles off the lot. That may have had something to do with the great lease deal.

Driving the Car

It took my son and me Googling to help my husband start the car, get off the lot and drive home safely. Despite the learning curve, we have found the car drives beautifully. 

Mostly.

The windshield fluid does overshoot the window and streaks the side view mirrors blue. and in automatic mode, the wipers go off every time there are a few specks on the windshield.

The voice command has not mastered understanding the German accent, and while trying to figure out how to turn off the excessive windshield wiping, my German husband tried the voice command feature, shouting "Vindshield Viper off!" The wipers kept flapping and squirting the blue fluid like uncorked blue champagne. When he pressed the voice command button and yelled loud and clear, "Viper off!", the screen read, "Viper off. Failed to understand voice command."

One feature my husband loves and has made our two recent work trips to Sacramento particularly relaxing for him is the dynamic cruise control and autopilot features. He reports that these luxuries makes driving long distances easier. With two notable exceptions. One is that sometimes Tesla brakes unnecessarily quickly and hard, a phenomenon called phantom breaking. And what I call almost whiplash. The car acts like a cat who sees things that aren't there and abruptly halts. It makes our dogs fall down. The second is that if the autopilot button gets pressed one too many times, the infamous Tesla "Cowbell Song" starts playing. The only way I could find to turn it off is Tesla's Fart Mode. A little less fun in the functionality would be a plus and probably safer.

We highly appreciate two parking features - the Sentry Mode that increases security as an option when parked, and the Doggy Mode that keeps the AC on and posts a sign on the screen that assures people that the car is cool and safe for the dog. They do suck a lot of energy, however, so we use them as sparingly as possible.

We are also glad that so far we have found no shortage of Tesla Superchargers on long distance road trips, and the cost is a small fraction of what driving with gasoline or a flight would be. Tesla guides the driver where to go and when, which makes it easy to be sure the vehicle is always sufficiently charged.

The charging time, however, is longer than hoped because the highest charging speeds are only available for the first few minutes, which provides enough charge to continue the trip, but not to complete it. So instead of a total of 15-20 minutes of charging to get from the LA area to Sacramento, as we'd hoped, we have needed more like an hour. At least there was good espresso at the Kettleman City stop.

And our dogs love the extra walk breaks.

Our son in the meantime is loving the Volt, but not so much that he's not begging Dad to let him drive the Tesla. So far, I haven't noticed us becoming total jerks. But stay tuned for month two.