My ride in a Tesla...

[jvclotus]

I have a friend at the company, and today he gave me a call at work and told me to come out front... there he was in a bright orange Tesla - specifically Validation Prototype #13.

As a committed car guy who lives in Tesla's backyard, I've seen lots of these about, but never been in the right seat (left seat was not happening...)

Impressions:

1) Wow.

2) More wow.

3) Midrange. Everyone talks about 0-60, but, of course, midrange is more useful and this thing has it in spades. Going on to the highway, we went from 40 to 80 in about a second. No muss, no fuss, just gone.

4) Well put together. This has one had 35k hard, engineering, miles on it and while it has a couple of small rattles, it was nothing you would think about.

5) Nice brakes. The weight does make a difference here, but not as bad as you think. Small trivia - the engine braking is so strong they have it programmed to activate the brake lights when it's fully kicked in.

6) Best traction control ever. It was wet today in the Bay area, and we basically blasted out of the parking lot and into a hard right turn with the "throttle" pegged. Compared to every other internal combustion traction control I have ever experienced, this was on another level. No glitches, no stuttering, just amazingly smooth power delivery and no spin. Again, theoretically this is a huge advantage of the electric powertrain, but they really got it right.

7) Small touches. A/C controls moved to the console, electrically operated doors, bigger "trunk".

8) Carbon fiber is beautiful and amazingly light

9) Range. Despite all hard starts and stops, we were looking at 100 miles plus, easy.

10) Tires were the 180 Wear rated version of the AD07s. Hard to judge based on wet weather the effect on handling

Yes, there are issues, of course, but as a pure sports car, this is the real thing.

Highly recommend to all you startup millionaires, trust-fund kids and those eating ramen to support their car habit.

[...m...]

...those torquey electric motors are truly a revelation...

[ivan1]

Originally Posted by jvclotus

Small trivia - the engine breaking is so strong they have it programmed to activate the brake lights when it's fully kicked in.

just wondering -would this make it even more disastrous to lift in a turn? not sure what the weight distribution is in the Tesla...

[jvclotus]

According to the test in this month's Road and Track, it's 35/65% front/rear.

The 2005 Elise is 39/61% from the same publication.

As with the traction control, theoretically you could manage the stability more easily, but not sure if that's being done or not.

[British_Marques]

I would love to test drive one, but the styling seems so much better on the Elise and I have owned an S1 and and S2.

I could dig the conversion kit, maybe.

Then I could tilt my rear clam and show off that stacked battery pack; instead of that beautiful supercharger and exhaust manifold, cup box, and those widened wheels.