I really disliked the Tesla for the first few months. Hated the bland interior after the colourful red leather of the BMW, found the lack of a speedo dead ahead annoying, nearly crashed the car trying to work out where the windscreen wipers were and lack of any sound quite dull.
Once I stopped directly comparing it to what I was used to, it slowly wormed its way into my affections. It drives really well (it's very good up to about 7/10ths which is about as hard as I'll drive on the road), has a nice relaxed demeanour and lack of sound oddly became quite nice over time.
It's big plus is the performance you get for not much money. Autocar timed a long range at 10 seconds to 100mph which is quicker than my old M240i. It's quite fun racing other cars off the lights down dual carriageways. You realise that all the noise a combustion car makes trying to keep up is like a skinny guy screaming at the gym benching single plates. What's all the fuss about
. I'm averaging about 16k miles per year and yet in my tenure I've had no servicing costs, no road tax until this year and about £50 per month in home charging. If I still had the M240i the fuel costs alone would be over £300 per month.
I've done holiday trips to Scotland and several to Wales without any issue. The supercharger network is incredible and just easy (they recognise your car, so no need for direct payment, comes straight out your account). If anything getting parking is better because there's often spaces reserved for electric cars which are rarely full.
It does about 300 miles in the summer on a full charge which drops to about 250 in the winter. Not as advertised obviously, but more than enough for what I need.
Boot is huge which has always swallowed everything we need, very spacious in the back, plenty of glass area so visibility is excellent. Nothing has gone wrong in the 60k miles it's done and it feels pretty well put together regardless of what you read online. In fact it feels pretty much the same as it did when it was new.
Not having physical buttons is still annoying, I would much prefer climate control buttons. The wiper thing is just stupid and the triple bongs it makes when it thinks you've gone over a line has had me invent new swear words (although you can turn this off).
Lease deal ends in November so now comes the problem of what to replace it with. I can't go back to petrol with the miles I do as the cost to get this kind of performance would be significantly more. I have considered another Tesla as some very cheap offers currently. A 2 year old second hand Performance is only about £25k which is incredible value. This is also under consideration.
I've got a test drive in a A290 this weekend as something a bit different but other than that, it's a bit sparse out there for fun electric cars (I'm aware of the 5N, but too rich for me currently).
