Nearly two weeks into Tesla ownership, with two big drives under the hood; time for a status update.[1]
The transition has gone reasonably well. There are still moments when I struggle with one-pedal driving. One example is when cruising towards a right turn where I don’t have to stop, just slow and continue. I feel like I’m often either going into the turn too fast or braking too soon. Sometimes when I’m coasting to a stop I find myself going too fast and have to use the mechanical brake rather than rely on the regenerative brakes. Both things that should get easier the more I drive the Tesla. I also find myself thinking about driving rather than just driving, but I think that happens with any new car.
I drove the Model Y back-and-forth to Cincinnati both trips last weekend, using Full Self Driving briefly a couple times. I don’t think I’m comfortable enough with the car overall yet to let it rip, though, and cancelled it after a few minutes, switching over to traditional cruise control. Once FSD tried to change lanes when I wasn’t expecting it – in a totally safe situation – and it kind of freaked me out. I’m going back to Cincy this Friday to move M home for the summer and may give it more of a shot while I’m driving alone on I–74.
I used the self parking function once over the weekend, in a parking lot Sunday morning where there literally weren’t any cars for several hundred feet. Not exactly a tough problem to solve, but it is both impressive and unnerving to sit in the driver’s seat while the wheel turns itself and the car carefully, perfectly backs into a spot.
I also used FSD when L and I were coming home from practice last night. It had rained earlier in the day, so there was some moisture on the ground. When you engage FSD, the windshield wipers and high beams switch into automatic mode. Thus I was able to experience to two of the most common complaints people have about the current Tesla software: the wipers turned on despite it not raining and the high beams turned on too early and off too late. I knew about these flaws, so keep both on manual control under normal conditions. Engineering is hard.
What has been really strange is when I hop into one of our other cars. I took C’s car to fill it up with gas Monday night. I likely looked like I was brand new to driving the way I was jerking around, racing the engine or braking too hard. The obvious thing that worries me is forgetting that I don’t have regenerative brakes and not stepping on the brake pedal, but that hasn’t been an issue. Yet. Right now I’m parking the Audi outside, and when the lawn service comes I move into either S’s or C’s garage spot. I’ve been a little aggressive backing up a couple times, forgetting about its sensitivity. Luckily always with nothing behind me!
To be fair I always struggled going from any of my cars to any of the Grand Cherokees S drove because of their weird accelerator sensitivities.
After driving at higher speeds on the highway I found that the Tesla indeed allows more road noise in than the Audi. You have to turn the music up pretty high to cover it. And apparently the 2024 models are quieter than previous ones. I think it definitely rides rougher than the Audi when there are bumps in the road.
I thought I had one semi-major issue but think I resolved it last night.
Suddenly last weekend I was not comfortable at all in the driver’s seat. There was a constant pressure on my lower back, which caused strain in my middle back, and every few minutes I was fidgeting or adjusting the various seat controls to try to find a more pleasant position. I took a tape measure and took measurements for how my Audi seat was set up just to compare. After a few days I realized that the lower part of the Tesla seat, where the lumbar support is, seemed to be curved differently than any car I’ve had before. I kept messing with the lumbar support buttons but that didn’t seem to help.
Tuesday I tried placing a thin cushion between my upper back and the seat to plug that gap, and it seemed to help, taking some of the pressure off my mid-back.
Later I read up about Tesla seats and learned that the lumbar system is very finicky. I found several Reddit and message board posts about people who had the exact sensation I had: it almost felt like a basketball was pushing on the lower back. The support is comprised of two airbags that inflate based on different actions. When they deflate, they do so passively, and sometimes they don’t release all the air. The posts included a few tips for getting the bags to flatten that I tried, and I think they are now totally deflated. I usually don’t need much lumbar support, so I’m going to do my best to never touch those buttons again.
I still find the seats to be a little constricting. They need to have just a little more width in the upper bolsters.
Another minor complaint. Before I bought, I debated whether to go with the white or black interior. The white seems to really open up the car and looks futuristic. Surprisingly/allegedly it’s not that tough to keep clean. A consistent criticism, though, was how the strip of white trim on the dashboard causes a glare on the side mirrors than can make it tough to view traffic coming up on your left.
The white interior is more expensive so I went with black for purely budget reasons.
I’ve noticed that the wood trim piece that replaces that white strip in black interior models also causes a glare in the driver’s view of the side mirror. During the day at least, you have to really focus to see what’s behind you. Or just turn on your turn signal and look at the blind-spot camera.
I picked a very strange time to get a Tesla.
Two days after I brought mine home Tesla eliminated the inventory discounts that have been in place for over two years. Had we waited two days, we would have spent an additional $1800 over our three year lease. There were rumors that Tesla was going to shift to sub–1% financing rather than discounts. But, three days later, some of the discounts returned. This Tuesday, as the company was reporting its Q1 earnings, the full inventory discounts came back. In a 10-day stretch prices went up anywhere from $3000–5000 depending on model and then fell by the same amounts.
A sign of a well-run company.
We noticed that the sales people we dealt with on pick-up day seemed a little off. Or at least compared to when I had been in for test drives. I chalked it up to Saturdays being busy and them rushing around.
Also two days after I brought my Model Y home, Tesla announced big layoffs, potentially up to 20% of the company when they wrap up. Several sources reported that rumors of layoffs had been circulating through the company over the weekend. So I wondered if folks weren’t stressed because of Saturday deliveries but more because they weren’t sure they were going to have jobs on Monday. I hope the two who assisted me, who were both super nice and helpful, made it through.
I may have found a hack to get support people to stop harassing you when you call to cancel an account. I used the online chat feature to cancel my SiriusXM account. When they asked for a reason I told them I got a Tesla which doesn’t support SXM. The agent then tried to push me into staying subscribed via their app and offered to “get started setting that up for you!”
I declined, saying I had tried it over the weekend and found it dangerous to use when driving.
The agent quickly backed off, cancelled my account, and issued me a credit for the unused part of my subscription.
Next time a subscription service is dragging their feet to cancel, find a way to say that keeping it endangers your safety and see if they dial back the pressure.
I wasn’t lying. While you can certainly stream music from your phone via Bluetooth, there’s no radio-like way to switch channels on the app without digging through its interface. It used to be a lot easier to navigate, but at some point it was updated and lacks a clear listing of channels or favorites that can be selected quickly and safely while driving. I’ll miss SXM.
I did discover last night that there is indeed a traditional radio. I believe at some point Teslas did not include an AM/FM tuner. Not that I listen to radio very much, but I was able to follow to the Pacers game as L and I came home from her practice.[2] I need to take a closer look and see if it supports HD radio, and then if there are any cool, secondary channels in our area for the times when I’m bored with Spotify or podcasts.
A couple quirks with the phone key. Once it just stopped working, telling me to use the key card to start the vehicle. Not sure what happened but about an hour later the phone key worked just fine without me resetting it. Monday landscapers came to do our mulch. I parked next door at my gym’s lot so I could come-and-go freely. Both times I parked over there the car didn’t lock itself automatically as I walked away. It took me awhile but I finally realized the gym is close enough to our house to register as being at “home,” and thus not lock automatically.