I got a Tesla for Christmas…

...sadly only for the week of Christmas, borrowed it last Tuesday and giving it back tomorrow. I'm a member of Ecurie25 hence having the car, thought I'd share a few thoughts on it!

Picked it up and in the flesh it's very much like an Elise but slightly less pretty to my eye. The interior is of a slightly higher standard than Lotus' own, though instantly recognisable. The door inners are slightly different to the Elise and more 'luxurious' but otherwise no different (though they're all LHD). It obviously is very quiet and weirdly so from the outside; inside it it sounds like a jet on takeoff as you spin up the engine; by 40 or so the wind and tyre noise are enough that it's not much quieter inside than a normal Elise (without silly bits anyway).

Took it for a spin briefly around London, then drove out to Silverstone where I have a house. This is where the first problem was highlighted, and the one which defines the whole experience.

I left at about 3.30, and it's a 72 mile journey. The screen said it had an 'ideal range' by that stage of 156 miles, however this is meaningless and when you press the estimated range button, it was more like 88 miles. Since it was a) very cold, b) wet/snowing and c) going dark, I was going to have to use the heater, wipers and lights, all of which obviously sap the batteries' power....

Half way up the motorway it was down to a 45 mile or so range and I had to turn off the heater and so on to be fairly sure I would make it, which didn't make for a great experience. You should note that the conditions were pretty bad and I rarely ventured up to 70 never mind over it, so this was driving in a serious eco-challenge style, not giving it the boot. I did make it, as I got to the village it came up with a '10 miles remaining, power reduced' notice, and I got home and plugged it in. I appreciate as an aside that the 0 degree conditions aren't the optimum for battery performance but it had given me 100 miles of useful-ish range driving it like it was a G-Wiz, not a 'sports car'.

Just made it but I now fully understand 'range anxiety' people talk about with electric cars - you simply have to be able to complete your full journey with one charge, and then also know that a) you can plug it in where you're going and b) you can leave it for 12 hours or more to charge again. Not an ideal setup with just 100 miles of running....

I charged it from 7pm until 9.30 the next morning on a normal household socket (i.e. at 12 Amps - you can install an industrial socket if you like for considerably more current and thus faster times), but it still hadn't full charged - it had recovered to about 155 miles 'ideal range' - as opposed to about 190 when full.

I drove it about 4 miles to go and have a go on a snow bound rally stage (not in it) and by the time I was back it didn't really have enough charge left to be sure I would get to London, so I had to plug it in and take another car to London, then come back again in the morning and swap back, which was a tad annoying.

Basically, it's pretty impractical unless you keep it say in Silverstone and only use for wanging around the local roads. It is good around town, as it's small etc etc and loads of torque to boot about (plus no congestion charge and free parking which is a boon) but it's an exceptionally expensive toy at £100k for this sort of thing.

In terms of the drive itself, the first thing I noticed before I got in it was if you press on the front of the car you can easily bounce it - the suspension is incredibly soft for an Elise derivative. It's also a very heavy car (for an Elise...) at 1250kgs.

The defining drive characteristic is the torque of the thing; there's just one forward gear and it performs like an auto with creep at low speed etc. Shove your foot in at any speed and whoomph, off it goes! You'd have to have a go to appreciate it, but trust me it is quite addictive. One particularly unusual thing is that whereas in a combustion engine the torque is proportional largely to engine speed rather than throttle opening, so once you've got say 30% throttle it doesn't make any difference whether you press any harder, in the electric motor it's directly proportional throughout the range which takes some getting used to.

The next thing is that the regenerative braking is very noticable; it provides (according to the screen which tells you these things) -57 ft lb of torque at maximum, which is provided when it can generate 81A of current. It gives less torque at higher speeds to ensure the current is limited, so as the car slows the engine braking increases, rather oddly. It's so strong that you rarely need to touch the brakes in town except to actually bring the car from crawl to a halt.

This can be a problem though; I very nearly crashed it on the way to the rally course which was on an airfield. To get there you had to drive down a snow packed road, and in order to get the car to move at all I had to turn off the traction control, which just stopped the wheels spinning at all and thus you couldn't even pull away on the snow. Somewhere down the (long straight) road, I swerved a little round a big pothole and slid a bit. Lifting slightly in a way that say in my Exige would have been fine was like slamming on the handbrake in this, and round we started to go, so I had to bury the pedal again and shoot off the side of the road into a field (no hedges etc - this was an access road onto an airfield remember) but metal posts all down it, very lucky not to collide. Only doing 20mph in the first place but without the TC the engine braking can cause a lot of difficulty I learnt! Drove back onto the roadway anyway and all was well.

Since the weather's been a bit crap I can't really give you a full handling breakdown but it's basically like a very heavy Elise setup for American customers; it's softly sprung and rolls and pitches a lot. The seats are also very wide and unsupportive as an aside.

The steering for reasons I cannot fathom is exceptionally heavy throughout the speed range. In the Exige on much wider tyres, the steering is light over say 5mph, but at all speeds in the Tesla it requires a decent shove to turn the wheel. I don't know how it's setup but this seems pretty odd to me, and it makes parking it rather harder than it might be. The brakes are also terrible, standing on the pedal to the stop from 40mph on a wet slippery road wasn't able to lock the wheels at all until we were practically stood still, and it felt very mushy. I don't know how/why they don't seem to work but I wouldn't want to have to do an emergency stop. Since you tend anyway not to use them and plan to use the regeneration to slow you (and keep the range up) it's not a problem in everyday use but still...

Anyway, going back tomorrow, it's been fun but I wouldn't personally want to buy one I don't think, you'd need a lot of money and to already have every other toy before it seemed a sensible choice; that the real range is more like 100 miles is just so limiting that it is basically useless

Anyway thought it might be of interest!

Happy chrimbo and new year to everyone

Pete