OMG! Thank you so much for this, especially for a renter and not purchaser, AND in Florida! This gives me peace and surety for renting for my weekend in FL.
As a Tesla owner, it is still interesting for me to hear about someone's first experience driving one. With your background, you sure come across as a natural! To the naysayers, I share my wife's story. My wife had zero interest in the Tesla when I bought it and it was well over a year before she even drove it. She finally did take it for a spin and now steals it every chance she gets and bugs me relentlessly to buy her one and her gas car now gathers dust for the most part - lol!
Thanks for the review. Very interesting. I was going to rent a model 3 last year for vacation, but I ended up buying a Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid instead. The Volt has an 18 kilowatt hour battery and 4 KW hours are not used to prevent charging it too high or running it too low. You'd think the other manufacturers would do something like that.
I have a question regarding privacy when renting one of these. I'm gonna be with my gf will anyone be able to see us? I heard they have lots of cameras. Please let me know, i can not find any information about this. I watched one video where some guy who rents these said something about seeing other people's dash cam video but that was all he said. Thank you.
That $25 "recovery fee" is slimey. Of COURSE they can keep these things charged to 100%, because they charge them IN PLACE. If you charge it to 100, then drive it back to the lot, it's going to drop below 100%. Something to keep in mind when deciding when and how much to charge it yourself. Thanks.
So all the "gauges" are in that center readout. And we all are concerned with distracted drivers, who are looking (even frequently glancing) at something other than the road in front of them, correct? How about speed and GPS next turn being on a HUD?
great review.....for me its too much of a waste of time with these high tech cars and the charging....who wants to waste 20 minutes of their life every week to boost up (lol). Plus I like the mechanical switches...easy and fast , no messing with some screen
Ha! Thanks. I didn't really mean for this to be a review though. Just a PSA for people who might be thinking about renting one. I really didn't know how I'd like it. But I think if you have a home base to plug it into overnight, the charging thing is a complete non-issue. And while I'll admit that I DID very much enjoy this car during our short 4-day getaway, I completely agree with you on the physical buttons sentiment. The Tesla minimalist controls seem unnecessarily inconvenient...minor as it is. And the door handles...ugh...not a fan. 😆
Awesome! Thanks and now I know more on how the controls work aka the turn signals and gears. Now in Australia we use 240v 10a wall plugs and I have an outside 15a plug, does the 240v make any difference in charging speed?
It's really all about the total power (watts x amps) so yeah should be a bit faster at 240v given comparable amperage. Still slow compared to L2/L3 charging, but about 2x faster than what I was getting at only 120v
Hi David, Neat car. I like the looks of it, really can't say that about the Cybertruck, just my opinion. If I wanted a electric truck and could afford one, I would probably go with the F-150 Lightening. It, at least looks like a pick up. LOL. I know GM had been working on an etruck as well as Toyota but don't know if they are yet available. Maybe Tesla will release a truck that looks and can be used as a traditional pickup truck? I hope you had a chance to learn all the ins and outs of that car before you had to return it to the rental. That's a technical machine for sure. Just wondering, if you ran out of charge and had a, let's say, Oupes Mega 2 or 3, stored in that rear trunk space, could you use that to give the car enough charge to get to a charge station? The whole concept is kinda funny to me. The days of carrying a gas can to the filling station may come to an end, now people will roll their power station to the nearest outlet to get a charge. Take care and if you are still down in Florida, enjoy the nice weather, Steve.
