Tesla owners...should we get one?

[dvcgirl67]

One tool useful to EV owners is A Better Route Planner.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/
As an EV owner, I feel they are not yet ideal for road trips that involve more than 1 charging stop, so in effect trips greater than 300-350 miles. My threshold for driving vs flying is in the 450-500 mile range. So for most trips >350 I would fly anyway.

But how often do most people travel that far?

For now I have one EV and multiple ICE cars. If I need to take a trip that involves multiple charging stops I plan to take one of my ICE cars. That has not come up in the first year of EV ownership but that was a pandemic year.

I assume by the time I own only EV cars that battery technology will have improved so that range is improved and charging time is reduced.

Same...we don't anticipate taking any long road trips that would inspire range anxiety. We'd fly. And as someone else said, any time we've taken road trips in our earlier years, we were pretty chill about it...because we were on vacation.

 

[vikequeen]

You don’t have to stare at the screen if you don’t want to, it’s still a car, you can use your mirrors and/or turn your head.

A lot of these seem like things you just have to get used to. Regenerative braking is jarring at first but after a month or so you become a master of one pedal driving and then going back to an ICE feels very weird when the car doesn’t slow down. It’s a more simple way to drive, it just doesn’t feel right at first because we weren’t taught to drive that way.

exactly. I hated it at first. Now I get confused if I drive a different car!

 

[dvcgirl67]

exactly. I hated it at first. Now I get confused if I drive a different car!

Same...I felt a bit weird driving an ICE car after just a couple of weeks driving the Y. We turned in DH's Macan lease yesterday.....we're officially a one car family at least a decade before we thought it would happen. Honestly could have been for many years. So...we'll be putting the reliability of the Tesla Y to the test.

 

[mrodgers]

exactly. I hated it at first. Now I get confused if I drive a different car!

If I use my ex's Rav4, I have 2 issues. First as I have only driven manual except for 1 year since I started driving, I put it in gear and it doesn't move to back out of the 100 ft driveway. It's weird to have to press the throttle to reverse. Second, I can't see a thing out of my Mazda 3 and use the 7 inch screen with the backup camera after a glance around at the mirrors. I do the same in any other car but the screen isn't there (I don't drive anything new enough to have a camera other than mine.) It's weird to need to turn around to back out of anywhere. My Mazda camera I can see past the car on either side of me and down the driving lane compared to only seeing directly behind either side in the mirros because the cars are blocking my view.

With the Tesla, I wouldn't want a giant TV screen glaring at me while I was driving. I don't like the fact that I can only blank out my screen in my Mazda and can't actually turn it off. I assume you can't turn it off in a Tesla either and it will still be backlit even if you could blank it out.

 

[dvcgirl67]

With the Tesla, I wouldn't want a giant TV screen glaring at me while I was driving. I don't like the fact that I can only blank out my screen in my Mazda and can't actually turn it off. I assume you can't turn it off in a Tesla either and it will still be backlit even if you could blank it out.

No, you can't turn the screen off in the Tesla Y...it's literally where many of the controls are located...on the touchscreen. When it gets dark, the screen gets dark. You can adjust the level of brightness...like a phone or laptop.

I don't know, I don't really get the comparison between a Tesla and a Mazda 3. And I've personally driven every kind of car there is in my 36 years....from the 1974 Nova I had in 1985, to a chevy chevette.....toyoya Camry, then Toyota 4 Runners....one that I had for 15 years, another for 8...then the 2012 Mercedes ML 350 that I just sold. Comparing any of those to the Tesla Y is like comparing Apples to wood. It's another planet. And not necessarily because it's better...it's just completely different. I guess you can compare features....like back up cameras....etc. But it's just a completely different animal.

 

[mrodgers]

No, you can't turn the screen off in the Tesla Y...it's literally where many of the controls are located...on the touchscreen. When it gets dark, the screen gets dark. You can adjust the level of brightness...like a phone or laptop.

I don't know, I don't really get the comparison between a Tesla and a Mazda 3. And I've personally driven every kind of car there is in my 36 years....from the 1974 Nova I had in 1985, to a chevy chevette.....toyoya Camry, then Toyota 4 Runners....one that I had for 15 years, another for 8...then the 2012 Mercedes ML 350 that I just sold. Comparing any of those to the Tesla Y is like comparing Apples to wood. It's another planet. And not necessarily because it's better...it's just completely different. I guess you can compare features....like back up cameras....etc. But it's just a completely different animal.

I wasn't comparing the 2 cars, nothing compares. Just using my Mazda 3 as an example because it has an annoying backlit screen that can't be turned off as I assumed the Tesla does also. As I said, not a comparison here, but the little 7 inch screen because it is prominently in my view based on it being like a tablet superglued onto of the dash is very annoying, I would not be able to drive a Tesla with essentially a full computer monitor backlit right there.

I am very much against all this electronic garbage in cars because I want to drive my car when I'm behind the wheel.

 

[dvcgirl67]

I wasn't comparing the 2 cars, nothing compares. Just using my Mazda 3 as an example because it has an annoying backlit screen that can't be turned off as I assumed the Tesla does also. As I said, not a comparison here, but the little 7 inch screen because it is prominently in my view based on it being like a tablet superglued onto of the dash is very annoying, I would not be able to drive a Tesla with essentially a full computer monitor backlit right there.

I am very much against all this electronic garbage in cars because I want to drive my car when I'm behind the wheel.

Ahhh...gotcha.

Tablets in cars seems to be the way things are going, but I understand it might bother some people. I have gotten used to just having the tablet very quickly. The main thing I need to know is my speed, and that is in the upper left corner of the screen, so I don't need to take my eyes off of the road to see it. We're about 5 weeks in with the Y at this point.....still absolutely loving it. So much that I washed it by hand today in my driveway....granted, it wasn't bitter cold here in NJ today, but definitely nippy. It bothered me that it had salt on it. My husband was like "wow...you must really like this car!" And I do....I'm all in with this EV. So is DH. Hoping reliability holds up....and if so, I can see us never owning an ICE car ever again.

 

[dvcgirl67]

This is pretty big news I'd think....very ambitious.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage