One day with Tesla

My family and I live in Paris and, in view of the fact that children go through all kinds of sections and circles, and they need to be constantly transported / taken away, we have before us the question of choosing a personal vehicle. When we lived in Moscow, the car was always. In Paris, it seemed, he was not particularly needed. However, it turned out that it seemed.

Prices for new cars in France are very high. In my opinion, + 30-50% to the Russian. When I used to pay much less for a car, I simply feel sorry for the money for a car. With electric cars, the picture is different. In Russia, they are much more expensive than here. In addition, environmental restrictions are sometimes imposed in Paris, when cars with ICE in the city cannot be moved (rarely, but sometimes), and after a few years they promise to ban sales of cars with ICE.
Thus, the question naturally arises about buying an electric car.

However, despite the fact that electric cars are increasingly found on the roads of European cities, and a decent amount of charging points has already been created, the network of superchargers has covered almost all of the main highways of Western Europe, and the requirements for "environmental friendliness" of the car are increasing day by day, the average man in the street is still wary about buying your own electric car.

There are several reasons for this.

1. Cost. Electric cars are expensive. For example, the Tesla, the most accessible for today, 75 kW Model C, stands in France, after all deductions, about 80 thousand euros. More budget eletromobili, such as the Nissan Leaf, or Renault Zoe, anyway, much more expensive than their fossil classmates. It so happened that a higher wealth - among the population living in large cities, such as, for example, Paris. Both manufacturers and city administrations understand this, and build charging stations in cities. However, charging an electric vehicle is not filling the tank in 5 minutes. This is a long time. It is easy to imagine that, with a significant increase in the number of electric transport in the city, free charging will not be found. Of course, you can charge it everywhere, it’s not a gas station, but simply a “socket with a current”. But still, an electric car is certainly good when it can be charged at home. And for this house should be a garage. And it is with this in European cities, where there are many old houses without underground parking lots, not very much. In the villages, where the garage is not a problem, revenues are usually lower, as are privileges for electric vehicles.

2. Autonomy. If you run out of gas on the highway, the support service will bring you fuel so that you can get to the nearest gas station. Next, you refuel and go again. The electric car will need to be carried before charging on the tow truck, which is certainly more expensive. And then wait for charging too longer (and if charging is busy, then much longer).

3. Repair. Everyone has heard that electric vehicles do not break, but this is not quite so. Yes, the engine, transmission, everything is simple and reliable. The battery, in the case of Tesla, also does not cause any particular fears, however, suspension, brakes, electric drives of everything in the world, trivial accidents ... Repair the car will have to. And if in the case of Renault or Nissan, this does not raise any additional questions, then in the case of Tesla, which is constantly at a loss, everything is a bit more gloomy. If the company goes bankrupt, the service will be harder to find.

With all these fears, my wife and I went to the local salon Tesla. And Tesla had the answer, and, in my opinion, very correct in terms of marketing.



The manager gave us the key to the new 100 kilowatt Model X and said:

- Take a ride a couple of days, take a trip out of town, take a ride around Paris, then decide whether you need an electric car or not.

The attraction is completely free, except for the fact that 4 thousand euros of prepayment must be paid for the order of your Tesla. But, if after the test you decide that you do not want to buy Tesla, all the money will be returned to you completely. Insurance at the time of the test is also fully paid by Tesla.

Naturally, we could not refuse such a thing.

Of course, 2 days is very little to answer at least 1 of the above questions. But the goal of the test drive for Tesla is different. It is necessary to make the first injection. If the victim’s immunity is not strong enough (until I have met people with sufficient immunity), the trap is shut. That's it, the victim is caught. Because it is very difficult after that to drive another car. But why?

I tried to understand the reasons for a long time, and it seems I have found the answer. But first things first.

The first thing the tesla meets you is the key.



In my opinion, the key is inconvenient. He is more than necessary. Probably a little smaller than the flagship BMW, but, all the same, it is too huge. In addition, it is aesthetically strange. This is not a model Tesla, it's just a remnant machine. In general, it’s not for nothing that Tesla abandoned it in Model 3. This is an ugly key, but ... you can not use the key. That is, you can just keep it in your pocket, and then the machine will open when you walk up to it, or touch the door button (there are no handles on the Model X, only the buttons. All doors, including the front ones, with servo drives), and closes when you walk away from her. Inside the car, you do not need a key in any case, there is nothing to do with it. There is no ignition lock and no button. The car is always ready to go.

Moreover, the key can be with you and not have. The machine can be unlocked and blocked from a smartphone. From the smartphone, you can and slightly push it, if the parking is tight and the door does not open. Like a radio control machine. Funny. In general, the key is scary, but it's not scary.

After you have dealt with the key, you sit in the salon. Yes, I read a lot about tesla salons, and expected to see something of very mediocre quality, but Tesla is working on the bugs. Armchairs in model X are comfortable. They have enough adjustments and sane lateral support. Inside there is a lot of space and, unlike the Model S, there are enough pockets and drawers. Although competitors still have more of them. Even competitors have normal sun visors, and in the X model it can be hard in the morning or in the evening: it’s far from the fact that its visor can protect you from the sun. And the wheel is strange. Strange in mersedesovski. If you try to rotate it quickly, it seems to be "stuck", there is a feeling of clay resistance. It is unpleasant. But everything else is nice. Good leatherette, nice Alcantara. And, most importantly, the screen.



The screen blinds both literally and figuratively. And if in a figurative sense this is a really dazzlingly good screen, on which navigation maps and music page are conveniently located (in the car there is its own SIM card with free unlimited internet), where you can find almost any composition (the subscription to the spotify service is free for the machine), from which It is easy to control any car settings, and in which there is even, albeit a very slow, Internet browser ... in the literal sense, it unpleasantly blinds. For some reason, on our machine, the screen did not switch to night mode in the tunnels. And unpleasantly hurt my eyes



But you forget all this, you should go by car. Yes, the suspension works out the irregularities very loudly, the body shakes a little, but we weigh 3 tons! And it is worth pushing the gas pedal, the acceleration scares. In less than 5 seconds, the car reaches a speed of 100 km / h, which is very worthy even for a sports car, and for a 3-ton crossover, it is shockingly fast. But this is not the main thing.

To control the Tesla is enough one pedal. If you press the gas harder, the car accelerates. Let go - it is very significantly slows down through the recovery. Before I tried it in practice, it seemed to me that it was inconvenient. But no, it is incredibly convenient. I touched the brake pedal only to stop completely at the very end of braking. For everything else, there was enough recuperation. This is really convenient.

It can be more convenient only if you don’t need to touch the pedals at all. And this Tesla can too.

The autopilot system in Tesla is very much advertised. In my opinion, overly. Yes, he rides perfectly in his row on the highway, and can even change lanes to the next one, if asked, but he will not take you from point A to point B, and he will not stop at red, he will not miss a pedestrian. There is a video on the Tesla website, where the car travels all by itself, and even the price of the option is fully autonomous driving, however, at least in France, you will not be able to order this option.



For two days of games with Tesla, we managed to discharge the battery by almost half. And this is taking into account the fun starts, however, up to 50 km / h, the limit in Paris, and not up to 100. On the track at a speed of 120 km / h, the battery is consumed fairly quickly, but we did not get far. It didn't matter to us. Something in this car just stuck to us.



Perhaps this is silence in the cabin, although on the go the car is far from the quietest of what we moved. Tires are heard clearly, the mirrors at high speed (on the track) sing. Nothing critical, but not a Mercedes. However, when I was maneuvering in a narrow underground parking in the center of Paris, the car moved absolutely silently. Perfectly. While lying, parktronic constantly worked, but not with a nasty squeak, but with “airplane” triads. The dashboard at this time displayed the distance in centimeters to the nearest obstacles around the car.



Perhaps it's crazy for such a heavy car acceleration. Yes, this is not a sports car, although at the beginning of its acceleration it can easily compete with most sports cars, and it will not go further in the city. But the control of one pedal, and so responsive, is a very special experience, inaccessible in fossil cars.

Perhaps this is an autopilot, which, although not completely autonomous, still works much better than those I came across earlier.

Perhaps this is a fantastic ergonomics salon, where everything is controlled by a huge tablet.

But, most likely, it



This is just a wow factor. We, like the faithful hamsters, swore allegiance to the Mask cult and carried it all our savings.