Tesla: Early Days

Leaving the Service Center

 I have just finished wiping down my new Tesla. Earlier I hosed it down to get the dirt off it because I had to drive it in the snow on Monday (which was supposed to be sixty degrees and sunny) and the mud on Tuesday (because the damn snow melted.) Then Laurence took it out  and said it looked worse with all the water spots on it, so I grabbed my new car washing spray that I had previously purchased and went to work. It looks much better now but not as great as if I had hand washed it.

This is not good. I am not one to regularly clean my car (although I keep vowing to, I don't really mean it.) My van would go months before I'd drag it to the car wash and run it through the express wash. I think of cleaning my car as a chore unless it is a hundred degrees outside and a water fight is involved. Somehow, though, with this car I feel compelled to do it. I am not sure I enjoy doing it, but it feels wrong to let it sit in the garage all dirty.

Part of the reason I want it clean is because people notice this car. This is not a complaint, everyone loves to hear how cool and lovely their baby is and I am no different. The point is when someone notices your baby and she has jelly on her face and a dirty diaper you feel like a bad parent (even though she was spotless and smelled great not five minutes before, I swear!) So I cleaned my car.

Now it's not like I did not know people would notice the car. I did. I read the Tesla forum and the owners comment on this all the time, I just thought that they were, perhaps, just a bit, exaggerating. For the record, they were not. It is ridiculous the amount of attention the Tesla gets.

A sampling:

Half a block from the service center, where I had just picked up my brand new car, I stopped at a red light. A man in the passenger seat of an SUV rolled down his window and motioned me to do the same. He wanted to know what kind of a car it is and told me, "It is a beast!" (Which it is.)

At the grocery store a man came up to me in the check out line and asked if I liked my new car and how did it drive? (This was a bit embarrassing because I had parked it on the far side of the lot and, because I wasn't used to it yet, had kind of slammed on the brakes and parked it at a weird angle.)

Driving with my windows down a guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, "Nice car!"

Another time at the grocery store Laurence and I were in the car, about to pull out, when a pickup truck drove by and the driver took a picture of the car.

Driving down the road a young man with a beard and tattoos driving an old beat up car pulled up even with me, got my attention, and gave me a big grin and a thumbs up.

Waiting to pick up Stephen from school four young teenagers told me how cool my car is. Of course, I let them sit in the car and showed them some of its tricks.

At the car shop to buy some mats for the car the clerk asked me what kind of car I have and when I told him I had a Tesla, two of the three on duty clerks immediately left the store to check out the car.

An older man and woman in a car next to me turned their heads as they drove by to look at the car. I was afraid he was going to drive off the road.

I have owned this car for only twelve days.

Luckily, I have enjoyed showing people my car and answering questions. I just hope I become immune to the attention and don't feel bad about not washing the car. Now excuse me, I have to go put on nice clothes and fix my hair so I can drive my Tesla to the grocery store.

A Very Good Day

While at the barn today Laurence called to tell me Tesla had contacted him about the delivery of my new car! (I really am not an exclamation point kind of person, but it really really needed one.) I handled it pretty well, I screamed at my friends, Tracy and Devon, "MY CAR IS HERE!"  (Several weeks ago when I went onto my Tesla account and saw the scheduled delivery window I could barely breathe. So, you know, improvement.)  Luckily, the horse Devon had turned loose in the arena did not seem bothered by the outburst.

My lovely (that adjective is directed at you, Laurence) green Model S has left Fremont, California, the only home it has ever known, on a truck heading for Colorado. It will arrive this week and I get to pick it up on Friday afternoon. I'm not sure I will be sleeping between now and then. I have calculated the hours until the appointment (65 hrs and 45 min) but that cannot possibly be right. It feels much longer than that. 

The only drawback is that our outlet for the car has not been installed in the garage yet. I can plug it into the regular outlet with an adapter so it isn't a huge problem. Unfortunately, I will have to back my brand new scratch free perfect Tesla into the garage. (The outlet is on the back wall and you plug the cord into the back of the car.) Maybe Laurence will back it in for me. Of course, then I run the risk of never getting to drive my car again. I've been on the Tesla Forum. You would not believe how many people have begged their spouses to try the car just once and then regretted it because now they have to share. I'm sure Laurence will give it back, I think. Perhaps I'll just practice backing the van in. I have nothing else to do till Friday.

Meanwhile, back at the barn, I had a horse to saddle and a riding lesson with Devon. Poor Raymond, the horse, I'm sure he thinks he is going to be forgotten once I get my new car, which will not happen. (Although, I do have to admit, I did toy with the idea of changing his show name to Tesla, but since he does not accelerate nearly as well I dropped it. Tracy did point out that he probably jumps higher than the car can, so that's a point for Ray.) I got Ray and myself all ready and then went into the arena (which is indoors) and started warming up. 

My lucky day continued. Instead of working on transitions or jumping or whatever else we always do,  Devon saddled up Dot the school horse and we went outside to ride in the snow. We had had a big storm on Sunday so there was lots of snow on the ground plus it was snowing again. We went into the little field next to the outdoor arena.  I have never ridden in the snow before and in my mind's eye I kept seeing the Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales galloping through the snowy field. We were much less spectacular. Ray was his usual self and simply lifted his feet high to step calmly over the snow. No high spirits or beautiful slow motion running for us. We did trot a bit and I was just getting up my nerve to canter when Devon mentioned she'd seen a horse hop through the snow like a big dog once so I figured trotting might be good enough. As it was after about half an hour I could feel Ray's gait change from nice high steps to more of a trudging sensation. Devon and I called it quits and took the horses back in. Ray, after being unsaddled and brushed, was delighted to find more hay had been added to his stall in his absence and I left him contentedly chewing away.  

Then I had lunch, ran some errands, returned home and now I am just waiting...

64 hours and 45 minutes to go.

Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born in Serbia, moved to America, invented and promoted alternating current, became a nemesis of Thomas Edison.

Elon Musk was born in S. Africa, moved to America, co-founded PayPal (made a fortune), co-founded SpaceX (sounds like what it is, develops space vehicles, currently making runs to and from the Space Station), co-founded Tesla Motors (named after Nikola, see above.)

Tesla Motors, based in Palo Alto, California, designs, manufactures, and sells electric cars. So far they have produced a roadster and a sedan (Model S) and will be starting deliveries in 2014 of an SUV (Model X.) They are not a subsidiary of another car company, they are a brand new company. Tesla is not the model name, it is like Ford or Honda. (I may be over-explaining here, but people aren't really sure what I mean when I say Tesla. After all, when was the last time there was a new car company that wasn't from Asia? Never mind, just googled American automobile manufacturers, at least eleven have been started since 2000. Apparently I am just not in the know.

The point of all this, though, is that Tesla cars exist and I will be getting one!! And it will be dark green, for those of you who care about such things.

Laurence put down a deposit before Christmas (as a gift) so that I could test drive one, which I did in early January. Now, unlike other car manufacturers, Tesla does not have a lot of dealerships. They have one  in Palo Alto. In Colorado their equivalent is a storefront inside (yes, inside, near Stride Rite and the food court) the Park Meadows Mall. They have a white Tesla Model S sitting there plugged in. To test drive you go out into the parking lot and in the covered area there is a charging station and a silver Model S plugged in and ready to go. Of course it was the performance version (I will be getting the regular model) and can go from 0-60 mph in 4.4 seconds. (The regular model does it in 5.6 seconds. I do wonder if I might need that extra 1.2 seconds one day, but Laurence is fairly emphatic that I won't. Sigh.) It is an amazing car. Quick and nimble. I fell in love with it, despite Laurence heckling me from the back seat, and I quote, "Oh my God! You're driving one of the fastest sedans in America at 30 mph!" In my defense, we were on regular roads and I was driving someone else's car. Highway driving was crowded and moving at 50 mph so what did he expect me to do? Of course the person from Tesla was also urging me to go faster, so maybe Laurence had a point.

Anyway, even at 30 mph it's a fun car. And, with the back seats folded down it has enough room for my horse show trunk. And with a 300 mile range I can make it up to Estes Park (for the big show) and back. And when you approach the car with fob in hand the door handles, which have been retracted for aerodynamic reasons, slide out. And when you open the hood it is just like a Volkswagon Bug, no engine! Just trunk space. See? Even when not moving the car is fun.

So after driving the car and loving it and tallying up the pros and cons and adding in a healthy dose of why not? I opted to get one. Of course, nothing in this world is straight forward. I had to configure my car. This entailed a trip back to the mall to talk to the ever helpful Tesla personnel and figure out if I needed the bigger battery (yes, major range anxiety here) or the Active Air Suspension (again yes, you push a button and the car raises up two inches!) or the Sound Studio Package (no, not sure I could hear the difference in quality and also do the Car Talk guys really need to be on 12 separate speakers?)

But then we had to figure out the color. Here is a major problem with Tesla not having a dealership, there are no cars on the lot to check out the colors. All they have are these color panels. We knew what the white and the silver (actually a lovely soft grey) looked like, but what about the blue or the red or the green? A paint chip does not tell you much about what your wall will look like once painted and that's how we felt about the color panels. The Tesla person who was helping us handed us several panels and pointed us towards the door so out we went to the parking lot to see how the colors looked in the sun. Then Laurence had the brilliant idea of matching the colors to actual cars in the parking lot. We found a Mazda that was close to the dark grey, and a Honda that was similar enough to the red, and several makes that had a very close match to the blue. We couldn't find the green and we'd probably still be looking if security had not driven up and wanted to know what we were doing. We explained but he still looked at us funny.

Back inside we returned the panels and sat in front of the computer to configure the car. We settled on (and by settled on I mean I chose) green (Laurence preferred the silver) and picked out all our options. Then we pushed the button and waited for the estimated date of delivery. Everything we'd read and everyone we'd talked to had a waiting time of at least six months, but it came back Feb/Mar. Yippee!!!

So then I went home and waited and waited and waited for Tesla to call. This weekend I logged onto the web site and they had posted my delivery window dates. Between March 2nd and March 16th the car will arrive!

So now I'm at waiting and waiting and waiting. Laurence and I already cleaned the garage in preparation for the electrician (to install the outlet needed) and in anticipation of the new car. I have gone on the Tesla web site and read all the forums. I have looked up who Elon Musk is. I have annoyed my brother by pointing out that I will have a Tesla soon and he will not. I really must find something constructive to do.

I think my car will never get here.