Living with a car from the future: Tesla Model 3

Keith Tanner said:Those racks of tiny buttons in old German cars didn’t work from an interface standpoint either. I expect that any modern car is going to have a touchscreen with nested menus. 

Those annoy me too.  I'm okay for this for the hill for me to die on, or the cloud for me to yell at in my old age, or whatever metaphor you choose.  My cell phone has buttons, too

I’ll get a photo that shows the tint level of the glass. If you don’t live in a 5000’ desert, it may not be a problem. 

Any kind of light streaming in from above bothers me.  People driving behind me with trucks lighting up the inside of the car bothers me.  It's one of my migraine triggers.

There's a good reason why these things piss me off...

What was the sticker price, and how much off did you negotiate? 

Steve_Jones said:

What was the sticker price, and how much off did you negotiate? 

MSRP or Total MSRP?

Slippery said:

Steve_Jones said:

What was the sticker price, and how much off did you negotiate? 

MSRP or Total MSRP?

I upvoted you for that, love it. Seriously though, can it be negotiated? Everyone calls regular dealers crooks, stealerships, etc. I’m just wondering if everyone pays sticker on Tesla, and is ok with doing it? I assumed there would be negotiating like traditional car deals. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

The price is the price.  There are sometimes perks and even discounts but they are the same across the board.  Keith got free supercharging for 2 years as an incentive to purchase and take delivery by the end of September.  That is available to everyone purchasing a Model 3 this month.

I want to hate Teslas. I really do. I am absolutely convinced that Elon Musk is a supervillain that would live in a Volcano if he could. That being said-

These things are REALLY cool. I saw a feature tonight on a youtube video that had me looking at what I could do to own one- the whole "summon vehicle" thing. YOU PRESS A BUTTON AND THE CAR COMES TO YOU. Yes, that is exactly what Elon will do when he starts the robot uprising, he will press the buttons and summon a Tesla Army. But the idea of pressing a button to get the damn thing to come to me instead of walking ALL the way to the ass end of Disney, or when it's 3pm and raining... or any number of silly things I would do just because I could, man that is some Jetsons level awesome. Plus from a practicality standpoint, a Tesla absolutely makes sense for me. I go through a tank of gas about every two months right now. I order pretty much anything I need, and the grocery store is halfway between work and home- which is a healthy 5 mile round trip. 

I am absolutely hesitant on the future of EV technology as is- while there is a shocking number if super high mile priuses out there- I don't have a lot of faith in current batteries- and I honestly haven't looked into the long term viability of said Teslas. But if Nissan and Toyota can do it with success, maybe we have something here. 

Or we have a real life bond villain. 

There is no negotiation on a Tesla. You pay the price. Which, I have to say, I really like. No stupid games, no artificially padded prices (seriously, F150s are $10,000 off permanently), no worries that you didn't negotiate hard enough against a pro. Just a price like any other consumer durable. 

Want to know what I paid? Go to Tesla.com and configure a car the way you want it. Sticker on mine was just under $50,000, and as I mentioned I'll get $7,000 back on my taxes. So it's about the same price as a BMW X3 and considerably less than ay BMW with an "M" prefix. There's a "standard range" RWD version that is a fair chunk less and has a maximum range of about 240 miles. There's also the performance AWD version that's able to do ridiculous things, although I have to say that this car is already probing the limits of accessible street performance. 

So, Janel drove the car for the first time today.

She suggested that I get a bucket of soapy water and a squeegee for the garage because she won't be stopping at the gas station anymore :) She's still getting used to driving a car instead of a truck or SUV, she's convinced the Tesla is tiny and will get run over. Doesn't happen with the almost-identically-sized M5, but hey. It'll take a while. She is a fan of instant torque and I suspect she's going to wear that black paint right off the car washing it constantly.

Here's the amount of tint on the roof glass. That's the windshield at the top and the roof at the bottom. It's fairly heavy, not enough to shine light in your eyes. Doesn't really look green in person, that's the HDR doing dramatic things.

After Janel drove, I jumped in to drive home and the car recognized me. It reconfigured itself to the way I like it, including the heavy regen while Janel likes it more subtle. Cool. I will admit that I'm still coming to grips with that heavy regen and being smooth, but one-pedal driving is definitely possible.

Also - my time behind the wheel tonight was after dark. Somehow, the complete lack of any lights behind the steering wheel is really disconcerting. No gauges. Obviously that's the case during the day but in a dark rural night it's really obvious. Weird.

Batteries: Supercharging at a high rate constantly will erode the battery capacity. That's physics, and it's acknowledged in the Tesla literature.

The peak charging rate of the Battery may decrease slightly after a large number of DC Fast Charging sessions, such as those at Superchargers. To ensure maximum driving range and Battery safety, the Battery charge rate is decreased when the Battery is too cold, when the Battery’s charge is nearly full, and when the Battery conditions change with usage and age. These changes in the condition of the Battery are driven by battery physics and may increase the total Supercharging duration by a few minutes over time.

But Teslas have been out for about 7 years now and it's becoming apparent that battery life is pretty spectacular. 90% capacity after 160,000 miles and a probable lifespan of 300-500,000. Let's just say that an internal combustion engine would need a rebuild by the time a Tesla battery pack drops enough capacity to need a replacement. The battery maintenance system is pretty smart.

Network: I added a Wifi extender to the garage so the Tesla has its own network and can play online games with its friends or whatever. I have told it not to share driving data for the same reason that Girthquake has mentioned. I'll look into network configuration changes to see if I need to do anything there. I don't have any IoT components in my house because I'm not a big fan of sharing my info with profit-driven megacorps, but I do want the Tesla machine learning to be as good as possible because a huge data set will benefit us all. I'm torn there.

Of course, I had to test the network connection.

Also, the two adult cars have moved into the garage together. That's a lot of speed and a lot of black. A very interesting comparison in a lot of ways, even down to the way that the 2002 M5 requires you to go through several menus on a screen to make configuration adjustments. The interaction complexity is actually pretty close - things that are buttons on the M5 are permanent icons on the touchscreen, and stuff that needs menus on one requires menus on the other.

A couple of interesting features of the car:

- if you format a USB drive in a certain way and put it into one of the slots, it'll keep a rolling video record of the last 1 hour of driving. Front camera, side cameras, rear camera. Built-in super dash cam. 

- there's a valet mode that will let you lock the car down. You can limit speed but also access to information such as your programmed home setting and the glovebox won't open. I don't pay other people to drive my cars, but if I did that would be a good idea.

I'm sure I'll find more. It's still weird driving this thing in that you never really turn it on or off. If you have your phone in your pocket, it'll recognize you on Bluetooth and unlock the door when you grab the handle. Then you get in, put your foot on the brake and nudge the steering wheel stalk up or down for R or D. Then press the go pedal and it goes.

When you're done, you press the button for park, get out and walk away. It locks when you leave. There's no turning the car on or off. No transition from inert to "ready to drive" and back again. I keep feeling like I've forgotten something.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

There would be no stupid games if everyone paid full sticker at any Dealership. Somehow paying retail for a Toyota is dumb, but retail for a Tesla is "no games"

Enough on that point from me, I’d rather keep your thread positive. How is the road noise? With no engine noise, does it seem louder? I like the idea of them, but like a previous poster, doesn’t seem to make sense for me because I only put 3500 or so miles a year on my daily, so gas expense is almost nothing. 

The difference is that you're buying a Tesla from Tesla, not from some guy who bought a Tesla from Tesla and wants to sell it to you and make as much extra money as possible on the deal. Toyota could fix it as well but it's saddled with a huge number of dealers that won't let them. Saturn tried. Tesla had the chance to start over and the dealerships are fighting it hard. You can't even buy a Tesla in NY because of this. The dealership model is completely screwed up. Don't ask $60,000 if you really want $50,000 and want to see if you can screw me over with a bunch of high-pressure tactics, and don't force me to become a car buying and negotiating expert for the one time a decade I walk into a new car dealership. If you're the sort of person who puts value on how much you saved over a random "before" price, you won't get any joy from buying one of these. Setting prices artificially  high and marking them down is a standard sales tactic - you'll notice that Flyin' Miata doesn't do that either, although some of our competitors do.

If I said I'd bargained Tesla down from $55,000 to just under $50,000 with an extra $7000 cash-back from the government, would that be better? 

You hear more tire noise in this car than you do in other cars because there's no other background noise. I think this will become more obvious as the tires wear. You're more aware of road surface and how it affects tire noise. The aero is impressively quiet , the engineers did their work well there. If you're holding a conversation, it's at a quiet level. I have heard from other owners that you're also more aware of odd sounds like HVAC gurgles because they're not masked.

The car also makes the best spaceship noise in reverse. I don't know why, but there's this crazy high voltage technical hum/whirr that I find very entertaining.

Keith, how easy is it to change from heavy regen to light regen? I'd be thinking that is something that I would want to change between city (heavy) and highway (light) on the fly.

Well dammit.

Making me take a look at used Model S'.

 

Couple of questions:

1. Does the car come with a spare wheel?
2. I built one and it came out to $49900 + taxes and fees. What fees where you charged besides license plates and all that? Do they charge shipping/delivery or dealer prep fees?

Just trying to run some numbers here. 

Keith Tanner said:

There's also the performance AWD version that's able to do ridiculous things, although I have to say that this car is already probing the limits of accessible street performance. 

I drove a performance model (on 200TW autocross tires no less) on some windy roads recently. It seemed like either the controls were super vague or the grip limit was so high I was never going to get anywhere near it on the street. The only time I got it to do anything bad was in a roundabout that turned off camber right as I was rolling into the throttle. I think another factor is that being full electric the stability control integration is much more seamless than a ICE car making it harder to tell how much of the work the car is doing. So your assessment of even the lower trim cars pushing the limits of street handling sounds about right.

mtn said:

Keith, how easy is it to change from heavy regen to light regen? I'd be thinking that is something that I would want to change between city (heavy) and highway (light) on the fly.

Four taps: Settings -> Driving -> On -> Close. The last is optional, you could leave the screen up so you could switch back and forth with a single tap if you're micromanaging.

Slippery said:

Couple of questions:

1. Does the car come with a spare wheel?
2. I built one and it came out to $49900 + taxes and fees. What fees where you charged besides license plates and all that? Do they charge shipping/delivery or dealer prep fees?

Just trying to run some numbers here. 

There's a $1200 "destination and documentation fee". That's it, I believe.

It doesn't have a spare. According to the owner's manual, you are supposed to call Tesla roadside assistance and they'll take care of it! You can get an $80 optional tire inflation/sealing kit like the one that came with the M5. I guess I'll be ordering one of those.

I was allowed to drive the car to work today after some negotiation. Janel's original position was that none of my coworkers were allowed to sit in it, but she did agree to allowing them to sit as long as they didn't have sharp things in their pockets and they clean off their feet. She is very protective of her very clean new car.

I also tried Autosteer. That's the self-steering part of the assist programs, and the one that allows people to make porn videos or watch Harry Potter or take a nap while the car deals with the mundane task of driving until it suddenly can't. It's clearly marked as being in beta when you turn it on, and on the slightly curvy two-lane road that approaches Flyin' Miata it did very much feel like beta. Here's the road:

The car was lane-keeping well enough, but wasn't slowing for the first 90 degree left so I took over. The lines are pretty much worn off the road there, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and let it try again for the right. Same deal. I didn't have the nerve to see just how deep into the corner it was willing to go before it figured out there was a problem.

The twisty bit is down through a wash. The initial right is over a blind crest, then the long left descends down. The open right-left are climbing. The car reacted a bit late to the right over crest, it didn't take action until it could see the road surface but it did stay in the lane and didn't have to be too abrupt. The downhill left had it shedding speed and maintaining a reasonable lateral g. So I'd give it a passing grade on that - the first corner was probably smoother than my sister would have done it and the second turn was basically perfect.

But still, the car felt like it was sniffing around. It might be more competent on the interstate but it's very much an assist program. A Model 3 owning friend of mine who is a car enthusiast (track days, serial Miatas, etc) says he finds it takes just enough of the mental load on trips that he is free to concentrate on other things instead of lane-keeping. If you approach it that way, I can see the value - the same way that setting the cruise control to the speed limit allows you to stop scanning for speed traps. You get to free up that part of your attention for other things...but those other things should still be driving-related.

The Autopilot (adaptive cruise only, remember, not the Autosteer) is good in traffic. Keeps a reasonable gap and will come to a full stop at a traffic light if the car in front also stops. It'll accelerate normally back up to speed once the car in front moves, too. Haven't had the opportunity to find out what happens if it's first in line :) If you have to deal with heavy traffic every day, I can see this becoming your new favorite toy. Lucky for me, I don't. 

I did discover that, unlike the 2019 Miata, this thing doesn't read street signs. At least, it won't display the speed limit on a sign but instead depends on its programming. The Miata will override or supplement the programming with what it reads, so it knows about construction and about the speed limit on my little tiny road.

Paying MSRP plus a $1200 fee, and driving 9 hours to get a car is somehow revolutionary, but holding a little profit and a $300 processing charge at a regular dealer is somehow getting cheated. Amazing. For $1200 delivery, you'd think they would you know, deliver it to you.

Steve_Jones said:

Paying MSRP plus a $1200 fee, and driving 9 hours to get a car is somehow revolutionary, but holding a little profit and a $300 processing charge at a regular dealer is somehow getting cheated. Amazing. For $1200 delivery, you'd think they would you know, deliver it to you.

Define “a little”. 

I've worked at a dealership. Don't try to convince me they're just trying to make an honest living. 

I did have the option of having it delivered to my house. If you read my first post, you'll learn that was my original plan and it wouldn't have cost me any extra. But it wasn't going to arrive in time to qualify for the free Supercharging, so I elected for the road trip. Hell, I suggested it. Ironically, it was the most dealership-esque part of the whole experience that led to the road trip.

And as noted in my first post, I was able to change from CO truck delivery to UT pickup by simply requesting it. There's no way I could have done that in a dealership system.

Looking back, that road trip was actually an excellent way to get over range anxiety. We proved to ourselves that the car is a viable road tripper, and Janel is now considering it for her next trip north of Salt Lake. She wouldn't have the comfort level to do that without the SLC road trip. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

BTW, don't get me wrong, I am all for paying MSRP. I just hate all the add on stuff that they like to throw on top of what the manufacturer puts on the car. 

Dont get me started on the finance guy and all his extended warranty/service BS. 

Slippery said:

Steve_Jones said:

Paying MSRP plus a $1200 fee, and driving 9 hours to get a car is somehow revolutionary, but holding a little profit and a $300 processing charge at a regular dealer is somehow getting cheated. Amazing. For $1200 delivery, you'd think they would you know, deliver it to you.

Define “a little”. 

Less than the markup on the Tesla.  Dealer cost to MSRP on a Honda Fit is $400, is that too much for someone to make?  How much does FM make on a car?

I like the Tesla, and I get it, I just do not see how one guy is a crook for trying to make a profit, and one guy is not because you can use apple pay.

Steve, you apparently have some baggage. You work at a dealership and you're tired of being told you're screwing people over, or you paid MSRP for something and were told you were an idiot? 

What makes the one guy a crook is that he'll charge different amounts to different people depending on how he's able to beat them down. It's a game, try to squeeze as much as possible out of the buyer. If the buyer is a guy who buys one car per decade (ie, me) and doesn't know all the tricks and gets tired in the four hour back and forth process of confusing numbers scribbled on bits of paper, he gets screwed. Ever seen the panic on a dealer's face when you pull out a calculator? Ever seen the high fives after they take advantage of a rube?

Or you set your price and that's the price. Doesn't matter who you are or if you're a bargaining master or a little old lady. That's fair.

FM doesn't make anything on a car, because we don't sell cars. But when we're doing work for people, we quote a fair price up front and there's no haggling.

NOT DEALERSHIP TALK FOLLOWS

I was looking at the tires while showing the car off,and noticed the production date was 3119. That's the end of July. Opened the door and our car was built in September. This is one very new car, it has not been sitting on a lot somewhere! My 2010 Dodge 2500 was nearly a year old when I took delivery.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

Because the franchise laws that dealerships work under prevent normal people like us from buying cars wholesale for their actual price- it's why in states like the aforementioned New York and Nebraska there is no ability to buy them. I call it out-and-out corruption; what other system works like this, where a buyer is prevented from buying a product from it's manufacturer? The closest thing I can think of is the movie industry, and even then streaming has forced some new paradigms.

And there's no control over that price, either. Where is the markup on a Fit *just* $400? Do you have a picture of an MSRP that's only $400?

In reply to Steve_Jones :

In a traditional dealership, you don't just have one person trying to make a profit. You've got New Car Sales, they want to make a profit off of selling you a new car. You've got  Used Cars, they want your trade-in as cheaply as possible You've got Finance who wants to make a profit off of loaning you money. And you've got 'Rust'n'Dust ' who want to sell you crap at ridiculous prices. Each of these separate little fiefdoms wants to make a profit off of you.