I recently came across a Road & Track article about the best electric sports cars and it got me wondering whether my next car should be an EV. For a long time I've assumed electric vehicles were for people who just want to get from point A to point B, but maybe I've been too quick to dismiss them. Only one solution - time to test drive some electric vehicles myself! Yesterday I drove a Tesla Model S - my first time driving an electric car of any kind. Some things went just as I expected, but there were some interesting surprises for me too.
The first surprise came before I even got in the car. I chose the Model S because, to me anyway, it has the sportiest looks of any Tesla. The thing I didn't realize until seeing it up close is just how big the car is though. Sure it has a sporty shape, but the size makes it look more like a Porsche Panamera. In fact the dimensions bear this out - 197.7" long for the Tesla compared to 198.8" for the Porsche, and both identical "width without mirrors" of 78.2".
Inside, everything feels high quality and comfortable, except for the visual weirdness of having that huge screen dominate the center of the car. Ergonomically, it was also weird having to use the touch screen for so many functions that would otherwise be one-touch buttons or knobs in a normal car. Even choosing between forward, reverse, and park was done via the touch screen! You don't realize how much all the little knobs and things are a part of the normal tactile sensation of driving until they're all gone and all you have is a screen.
Once on the road, the two immediate things I noticed were how quiet the cabin was and the odd feel of the regenerative braking. The silence without the engine noise was to be expected but it gave the weird sensation of having my my ears clogged and needing to pop at first. One surprising thing about the lack of engine noise, though, was that it made it hard to tell what my speed was at any given time. I had to constantly keep my eye on the speedometer and frequently found myself accidentally going 10+ MPH faster than I thought I was going. As for the braking, the dealer told me the whole idea with EVs is letting the regenerative braking slow the car for you (while converting the kinetic energy to charge the battery) without you ever having to touch the brakes. This means that as soon as you come off the gas pedal, the car starts slowing down quite a bit. It was a little weird at first but I actually got used to it quicker than I expected.
One thing I really liked about the driving setup was how configurable it was. I could change the ride height, suspension stiffness, steering feel, and acceleration profile. Any car I'd be using as my daily driver serves as both my commuter car and my back roads fun ride so it would be great to be able to switch back and forth between comfort and sporty settings.
After getting used to the car a bit, I made my way to some curvy roads where I could get a better feel for the handling and acceleration of the car. This is where the biggest surprise of the whole day came in - the "insane" acceleration mode is freaking fast. The Tesla takes off like a rocket ship and just keeps pulling harder and harder until you reach the limits of your own bravery. I've been fortunate to drive some pretty fast cars - Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches - but this was a face-distorting mind-bending level of acceleration I had never experienced before. There was also plenty of cornering grip. I'm sure the amount of grip you need to launch that car 0-60 in less than 3.5s means getting it around a tight curve is a piece of cake.
However, for all this abundance of torque and grip, something was missing. Driving curvy back roads just wasn't that fun in the Model S. It's possible that one culprit is actually having too much power. Exiting a corner and getting on the gas was reduced to the briefest jolt of acceleration and then, once pegged at whatever max speed I was comfortable with on that road, waiting around for the next corner to eventually come. It also didn't help that the braking and turning were lacking of any real "feel" of connection with the road. It started making the Tesla seem a bit like a one trick pony. It was great at the jaw-dropping acceleration, but nothing else really inspired any joy of the driving experience.
As I headed back toward the dealership, I tried out Full Self Driving for the first time. I was ready to spring into action if anything went wrong, so I don't know that it really saved me any mental energy compared to just driving myself. There was also a moment where a rookie driver was in the shoulder doing who-knows-what and I would have changed lanes to steer clear of them. The Tesla instead just happily carried on passing directly by the rookie driver before changing lanes. It's a little thing, but it was interesting getting some first-hand experience of what it feels like to hand those decisions over to the car. The Full Self Driving did get me all the way to my destination without any intervention on my part, and I have to admit I arrived back at the dealership feeling like it was a pretty cool piece of tech.
In the end, the Tesla Model S felt like just that - a cool piece of technology. It felt like a car made for people who love cool tech, not a car for people who love driving. It was like driving an iPad - the fastest-accelerating iPad you can imagine, for sure, but still an iPad nonetheless. The big open question for me now is - are these just Tesla problems (or even just the Model S? Should I have tried the lighter-weight Model 3 instead?). Or, are they problems with sporty electric vehicles in general? Fortunately, there are now quite a few sporty electric vehicles on the market to help answer this question. I'm hoping to try out as many of them as I can get my hands on. Watch this space.
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