I rented a 2016 Model S 75D for a day through Turo a few months ago while on vacation.
I thought it was really nice overall, even for this lowly model, acceleration was impressive. I didn't hoon it too much, but it drove well at normal to brisk speeds. Fit and finish were fine. The interior design was pretty austere for a luxury car, nice materials but minimalist design - which is a plus for me. We got some juice from a supercharger, and that was kind of cool - recognized car, and started charging no credit card or anything needed. It could add 100 miles in an hour of charge - newest version can add about 300 miles in an hour.
Autopilot was fun to play with, pretty effective for interstate use, but not fully baked for surface streets in my opinion. I don't think it was unsafe, but it did have a bad habit of heading for the outside of a lane in a turn before making the turn. Pretty disconcerting in a right hander with oncoming traffic in the other lane - felt like it was driving right for them. Definitely a human would have initiated the turn sooner and not gotten as close to the dividing line (assuming they looked up from their phone enough to notice). One thing I found interesting is it was a bit hard to mentally switch between autopilot and manual control - at least for me, I started expecting the car to do things like brake for slower traffic even though I was driving - just for a split second, but definitely odd how quickly I adjusted how I interacted with the car.
Overall, I think I would love one as a daily driver.
And I have a friend who recently got a model 3 dual motor with performance pack.
He is a very fast SCCA club racer and has owned and driven lots of very cool cars. Driving dynamics wise, he is very impressed, likes it much more than the current gen M3.
He is by no means a Tesla/Elon fan boi - had lots of irritation with the sales and delivery process and has had a few issues like paint quality and other minor items that had to be addressed by Tesla. But as far as how it drives, he thinks it rates very well against current sports sedans, plus full torque at any speed makes it feel much faster than a typical ICE car.
To the OP, if you can, renting one for a day through Turo would be a really good idea if you are seriously considering one.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson :
Hmm. That is interesting.
My wife points out that they may have another supplier, but I'm not sure how that shakes out from a volume-discount-at-one-place vs eggs-in-one-basket standout.
E.g. at any point could Varroc have been a bottleneck?
In reply to sevenracer :
That's very interesting about the drive report. If we go as far as a test drive and are still curious, Turo would be an interesting opportunity for a sanity check.
Ransom said:
In reply to sevenracer :
That's very interesting about the drive report. If we go as far as a test drive and are still curious, Turo would be an interesting opportunity for a sanity check.
Be ready for a delay; Tesla's command are the most requested, especially the Model 3.
Also just now a video on a Model 3 autocrosser has been put up. Score for GRM!
I confess we're equivocating a bit. I mean, it's felt odd to consider it the whole time, so it was always curiosity, currently ebbing. Perhaps oddly, we're mostly cross-shopping CPO A4 Avants, 3-series wagons, maybe Volvo V60s. It feels weird to have concerns about reliability and get scared toward a used Audi... But it's a better-understood set of concerns. "The devil you know" and all...
I'd love to see data for the Model 3 versus, say, the aforementioned BMW for:
- Average number of annual unscheduled trips for service
- Frequency of full-blown stranding roadside breakdown
- Number of initial quality issues and duration to get them sorted
- Frequency of parts availability issues
I get the impression that on at least half of those there's more concern about the Tesla on the internet, but I know other cars aren't immune to those particular problems, and I'd like to know the relative rates. I think our Mini has averaged about an issue a year in the three years we've had it, but all have been minor, so it was just the inconvenience of having to take it in and pick it up.
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Reader
5/16/19 3:18 p.m.
Keith Tanner said:
1988RedT2 said:
I think it's high time one of you Tesla fans ponied up the money for a new Tesla and drove it to Grassroots Motorsports World Headquarters, dropped the keys into the hands of one David S. Wallens on the condition that he drives the beegeebers out of it and writes a review.
Then come back a week later to pick it up.
Win, win!
Tesla gives you a week and 1000 miles to test drive a new one. If GRM wanted to test one, it wouldn’t be hard. But why?
Because we want to know what it does at a place like road Atlanta, in the hands of people that will be honest.
Ransom said:
I confess we're equivocating a bit. I mean, it's felt odd to consider it the whole time, so it was always curiosity, currently ebbing. Perhaps oddly, we're mostly cross-shopping CPO A4 Avants, 3-series wagons, maybe Volvo V60s. It feels weird to have concerns about reliability and get scared toward a used Audi... But it's a better-understood set of concerns. "The devil you know" and all...
I'd love to see data for the Model 3 versus, say, the aforementioned BMW for:
- Average number of annual unscheduled trips for service
- Frequency of full-blown stranding roadside breakdown
- Number of initial quality issues and duration to get them sorted
- Frequency of parts availability issues
I get the impression that on at least half of those there's more concern about the Tesla on the internet, but I know other cars aren't immune to those particular problems, and I'd like to know the relative rates. I think our Mini has averaged about an issue a year in the three years we've had it, but all have been minor, so it was just the inconvenience of having to take it in and pick it up.
You want Consumer Report's annual car issue.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Do they still do anything like that? I cancelled my subscription a few months ago because the last few times I tried for info (on appliances and stuff) there was literally no more info than a list of available items with zero info on effectiveness or reliability. I mean that in the sense before they made "literally" acceptable for emphasis...
I suppose I could be less lazy and look that up myself. Which I will. Thanks!
