This update post is intended for a variety of audiences; 1) Current owners of the Model X 2) Anyone considering a model X, and 3) All those of you who enjoy sneering at all those who took the plunge and bought one. I hope you all consider this packed with useful, entertaining and realistic bits of info from over 10K miles of experience with one.
First let’s get right to the reference to Maslow in the title. There’s something very soul searching that comes from driving a car capable of 0-60 MPH in 3.2 seconds and 50-100 in 2.5 seconds, that you spent a ridiculous amount of money on, but most of your long distance driving time is spent in the far right lane (you know that lane referenced in the signs posted that say “slower traffic keep right”) being passed continuously by every four cylinder car on the road. To make it all even more humiliating the passengers in these cars are always looking at you like you should have your hazard lights on due to the obvious malfunction the car is experiencing. Either that or they’re just outright laughing at you as they zip by, many times with a speed differential of at least 20 MPH. This is all due to the inverse correlation of the speed your travelling and the range efficiency of the Model X and the spacing of the Supercharging stations along my most frequented trip route (SF Bay area to and from Central Oregon). By my calculations, for every 5 MPH you drive above ~55 MPH you take roughly a 10% hit in range efficiency. At 55 MPH you roughly get the published range (in the model X that’s 250 miles) per full charge. Not counting the fact Tesla almost forces you to only charge to 80% of the capacity or 225 miles. This to “preserve the battery life”. Yikes!! With charging stations positioned from 85 miles to 125 miles apart along major freeways like I5 in CA this leaves you either stopping at each one or trying to skip one and do the white knuckle drive hoping you have enough range and just sit in the right hand lane like your towing a 18 wheel shipping container, while watching the Prius’s and low end Korean cars zipping past you like you’re standing still. If you’re not well up Maslow’s needs hierarchy you will be likely looking for the next bridge to just drive off and put yourself out of your misery. Then try this trip with Kidney Stones and see how much fun it is. Uh Huh!!
Speaking of the Super charging experience…
Last week when I was driving back from Oregon to SF I stopped at the charging station in Corning CA. It was 109 degrees cool when I got out of the car and placed the charging connector into the car. The connector had been resting in its holster in the shade. When I returned 20 minutes later to pull it out and go on my way it was so hot (thanks to the electrical current and the 109 degree temps) you literally could not touch it. There were 4 of us at this bank of charging ports all looking at each other wondering what we’re going to do now. We could wait until the sun goes down… Even if you wrapped your shirt around the handle it still burned right through it. Finally I went into the local restaurant and said to the owner “listen, there are 4 of us with Tesla’s parked at the charging ports and we can’t get the port connectors out of our cars. Do you happen to have an oven mitt we can borrow”. YES you guessed it this was Maslow moment number 2!!
Oh before I forget to mention these charging stations are wired in pairs (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc.) the 170 miles per 30 minutes charge (claimed by Tesla) only goes to the combined pair of 1A and 1B. So, if cars are parked and using both 1A and 1B simultaneously you’re only getting 85 miles per 30 minutes charge. Try finding that little fine print detail anywhere on the Tesla website. I would guess 90% of the Tesla owners I chat with while our cars are charging are unaware of this. They just concluded the charging port was malfunctioning. As more Teslas fill the roads and the stations get busier this will become more of a problem.
Now let’s get back to what the Tesla Model X is and isn’t…
Everything it shares in common with the Model S and with SpaceX is well tested , brilliant and works as advertised. This includes most of the really breakthrough aspects to the Car (calling it a “Car” is a real stretch) like the engine, the handling, the braking, the seats, the panoramic glass, the auto-pilot/cruise control, the air conditioning, etc.. It’s all the little things that you’ve grown accustomed to after 20+ years of driving high end “cars” that are woefully missing or lacking. I’ve experienced over 25 issues just with exterior moldings, fittings, weather stripping, etc. To me the exterior of the car looks like it was hand assembled as an 8th grade shop project. Pretty much anywhere two outer body pieces come together they do so with no alignment. Looks like someone just eyeballed each piece and where it should be positioned and attached it. Many of these have now been fixed after two separate trips into the factory for about a week each trip. Some still remain outstanding while we wait for re-engineered parts to come from suppliers that meet the spec. Another very annoying feature missing is any way to hard wire connect media devices to the Car stereo system. No Aux cord!! They expect all media devices to connect via Bluetooth. This means every time you have a passenger who wants to connect their iPhone it has to be paired via Bluetooth then I need to remove it from the paired list later on (more on why this removal needs to happen later). There is no way to simply plug it in quickly and hit play. There are USB ports all over the interior of the car but are only good for charging or if you happen to have a thumb drive (do any of you carry your music around on a thumb drive) with music you can play the music. Really!! Also the car microphone was located assuming the driver was sitting about 12 inches away. When the driver seat is all the way back the microphone works very poorly and the fidelity is not sufficient to leave messages on most voicemail recorders or communicate via speech to text conversion apps like Cortana or Siri.
The next major area lacking is seating capacity for 6 adults. Just can’t be done if the adults are all 5’10” and above. Or everyone is willing to sit side saddle on the middle and rear row seats with their legs hanging out into the middle isle. I have the 2 captains chairs configuration in the middle row. Thank goodness I chose that configuration or there would be absolutely now way to get anyone with legs into the back row seats. Maybe that’s why they did not configure any arm rests in the middle row towards the middle of the car. 🙂 In fact to be honest it seems like the back row of seats was an afterthought. Moving the back row of seats up and down is as inconvenient and problematic as I’ve ever seen. Getting them to drop down from the upright position is fine once you learn the double click feature on the release button. It’s getting them back up that’s the back breaker. There is virtually no way to do it from the back. You have to come around to the front and open the Falcon door and do it from there. Opening the falcon wing doors is always an experience. No telling what’s going to happen or how long it will take or how many people will come watch. Sometimes they sense obstacles in the way that aren’t there and just start acting like a 2 year old that will not accept “NO” for an answer. They simply won’t open or close. Then there are the times they don’t sense an obvious obstacle like a human being (my daughter for one) and they open anyway pinning my daughter up against the car next to us. Yikes! hate it when that happens. That drew some ooo’s and ahhh’s from the crowd to say the least. All the doors operate exclusively via electric motors. No manual option. To initiate the door opening process you have to press on the external embedded chrome strip in the door. you need to press right in the middle and hard. My mother is not strong enough to depress the strip enough to activate the door opening. I’ve now taken to getting in the car first and opening the doors exclusively from the touchscreen. After of course making sure everyone is clear of danger. Not easy to do once you’re in the car. I think you get the picture. Once the doors are all open getting in and out is a breeze and very enjoyable. Opening and closing all the doors safely is always an adventure to say the least.
Let’s quickly hit on the computer that sits at the heart of the electronics. Last week I was noticing the NAV had drastically slowed down to the point it was issuing turn commands well after we had passed the turn off then taking 30 seconds or more to re-calculate the route and give us another turn command. I called Tesla support only to find out the memory had filled up and was (like any computer) not able to run the major apps properly. They said “well have you cleared the browser cache recently?”. I said “what???” Turns out I had left the on board browser on the ESPN site and it was continuously updating the PGA scores taking up more and more memory until it squeezed out the NAV. It was then a Microsoft like experience. Hold down the two wheel buttons simultaneously for 30 seconds to reboot the display, then go into the browser and delete the cache and make sure it was set to the Google start page. Does this sound like something you would expect to do in a car?? Then I needed to hold down two other buttons simultaneously for another 30 seconds to reset the dashboard which runs off the same computer. After all this the NAV was back in action. By the way, overall I love the NAV.
I can’t finish this blog post without recounting the now infamous key story. When I was first delivered the car and handed the keys I have to say my reaction was “REALLY!!”. this is the key. It’s a cheap plastic model replica of a Model X. Looks shiny and cool but also looks like it will last about one or two good drops as you get out of the car or leap for your daughter as the falcon Wing is about to pin her against the car next to you. anyway, I was just finishing up a round of golf up in Central Oregon a month ago on a very hot day and walked up to the car and stuck my hand in the pocket where I had put the key only to pull my hand out with a fist full of 12 pieces into which the key had broken into. As the gravity of this situation sunk in it was as I call it a “Martian moment”. OMG! How am I going to grow enough potatoes to fix this problem. I have no spare key up here in Oregon. I called the Tesla roadside assistance and they said they can unlock the car remotely but aren’t legally allowed to start it. They said just use the iPhone Tesla App and you can start it and run it until you get a new key. Welllll, this would be great except as all of you know by now I don’t have an iPhone and even this will not motivate me to get one. Hmm. Well after more contemplation on how I would grow all these potatoes we came up with the idea that one of the kids working behind the desk in the pro shop who had an iPhone would download the App, I would give him my login credentials and he would be on call to start my car when needed until I got a new key. It worked!! Got the new key the next day and to this day the kid in the pro shop has not decided to track my car and quietly remove it from my garage never to be seen again. I hope he does not read this blog and get any new ideas.
Last major issue of note is the Spare tire. Rather the lack of one. I realize they’re not the only car to ditch the spare tire so maybe this one is in the trend line of where cars are going. I spend enough time on stretches of road in areas of the country that have no cell coverage that riding with no spare tire just gives me the Willies. So I bought an extra wheel. Not knowing how huuuge (as D Trump says) this thing was. With the two rear seats down it literally takes up the whole back area leaving no room for anything else. So I ended up buying a spare tire rack to mount on the hitch I included in my configuration (fortunately as it was not intended for this purpose). Bought the following rack (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009YIE1O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and extender (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BROATE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) since without the extender the rear lift-gate does not clear the attached wheel. I then bought 3 quarter inch bolts and first bolted them to the rack in the proper position to be able to drop the wheel on, then set the wheel on them and used locking nuts to bolt the wheel on the rack and leave the whole thing assembled when I take it on and off when needed. Actually works very well. Haven’t had to use it yet and hopefully won’t have to but my mind is at peace…
So where does all this leave me in terms of my enthusiasm to carry out this early adopter journey. Well, I’ve taken some body blows and my ego has definitely been put in a new place but I’m soldiering on. Tesla remains committed to making everything right. August 10th I’m taking it in again for the third time and they seem committed to fixing the remaining dozen or so issues. I really think we’re getting to the end of the long trail of fixable issues. I’ve had it for 6 months and have over 10K miles on the car. There will undoubtedly be some things I will just need to live with and work around but the technology advancements are still so overwhelmingly breakthrough I feel I have to get to the end of this journey and see where it drops me off.
Stay tuned..
Kent Godfrey 