Tesla Diary

Since donating my Mustang a few years ago, I have been renting cars for long trips instead of buying one. Driving a variety of different models and types, I've come to appreciate some of the subtle design features in modern vehicles. For the first time last month, electric vehicles were available to rent at my local Hertz. Naturally, I had to try it out.

Of course, Tesla was my only option. I guess they've made some deals in the past few years with rental companies that have finally trickled into the Midwest. It will likely be a few years still before I can rent, say, a C-Max or an F-150 Lightning. (Why am I such a Ford stan?)

Electric cars make sense. At least, that's what I'd like to believe. My enthusiasm for environment and technology influence that opinion heavily. Even accounting for issues around resource extraction and poor industry practices, electric still seems more sustainable than gasoline.

The clerk at Hertz sounded amused as she handed me the keycard. "You know how to use this thing?"

I shrugged. "Well, I read the instructions!"

Even so, it took me a moment to enter the car. Subtly, the key must be swiped under the sensor rather than on the sensor. This would confound me throughout my Tesla experience, though I'd gotten used to it by the return trip.

Climbing into the vehicle, I thought first of my roommate's advice: "Make sure you look up where the manual release is. You wouldn't want to get trapped." Ah, yes. No visible door handles on the inside---just an electronic release and a subtle mechanical button built into the arm rest.

At this point, I synced my phone to the car and called my friend to gush: "Clinton. I'm calling you from the future."

"Ooh, so you're driving the iPad, eh?"

As we chatted, I tapped through the icons in the main screen interface, lamenting the ongoing design trend of pictures without words. For a moment, I hoped the joystick icon stood for Autopilot. Nope---it's for video games. Glad we have our priorities straight.

At this point I found a display of general car information. The thing was brand new: manufactured in December 2022, and only 2,866 miles on it. Excellent. In principle, fewer miles should mean greater battery capacity... Right?

I mapped the trip on my phone and gave Clinton an estimate of my arrival time the next day. I zipped home in the car of the future.

A dumb Jarvis with clever butt jokes

Snow fell overnight, so the car was covered when I went to set off in the morning. The handle was difficult to jiggle loose in the frost. I pondered at what extreme low this flimsy-feeling mechanism would just break. Clearly, these cars were not designed with frigid Midwest winters in mind.

I didn't see a defrost button anywhere, but after fiddling with the dials on the steering wheel for a moment, I discovered the voice interface. Worth a shot. "How do I defrost my windshield?" WHOOSH! Immediately, the heat was on full blast. Helpful, but a little startling. 

Encouraged, I tried another: "Turn on rear defrost." This activated my seat warmer. Hilarious, and technically correct. But not useful.

Most other questions/statements seemed to confuse it. I hoped it would make up for the clunkiness of the interface, and perhaps give access to It didn't understand "cruise control" and told me that Autopilot was unavailable in this car. And Tesla seems to have a butt thing? Every time I said something that might be construed as a reference to a butt, it turns on the seat warmer. I could almost excuse it for "rear defrost," but interpreting "driver assist" this way seems egregious.

Touchscreen is touch and go

When driving, the touch interface felt clunky to me. It has a few useful features, but it obscures crucial options like battery statistics and driver assist within layers of menus. Instead of understanding any of it intuitively, I had to memorize a few specific button sequences. 

Worse still, I had to look every time thanks to the lack of physical buttons. That's not just an eyeball glance, either. With the only screen in the middle of the car, it's more of a head-cocked-to-the-side display. After a while I started to feel like a confused dog.

Screen access to the different camera views is helpful, but I had to adjust my driving habits to use them effectively. The graphical display that shows nearby objects can also be a bit misleading. If someone were to take the representations too literally, they might swerve to avoid someone they think is driving more erratically than they actually are. It's more just a visual representation of local conditions as interpreted by the Autopilot system. 

Sometimes it's the little things

It didn't seem that quiet on the highway until I noticed the clarity of the bass in my music. 

Up to this point in history, a car stereo's main challenge was to cover up the chaotic engine noise with the better defined pitches of music. The result was always muddy and inconsistent, since the engine's frequency (and thus pitch) varies with its RPM. Essentially any music in the low to mid frequencies, 50 - 600 Hz or so, would get sonic interference from the sound of the car itself.

Not so in an electric car. This almost made me giddy. 

Taking charge of charging

Let's talk about the battery life. Suffice it to say, I was not prepared for the implications of a long trip through Illinois in winter.

Mapping the trip on Google, the drive from here to St. Louis is about four and a half hours. I reasoned that leaving at 9am should get me there well before 2:00, which was what I told Clinton. The battery indicator suggested I had around 240 miles, which would be just enough to get me there without charging. When I mapped the trip on the Tesla navigation, I did a double take. Fuck you, four o'clock! 

Turns out the battery life estimate doesn't factor in the weather, although the navigation system evidently does. It added three supercharger stops along the way, putting the trip closer to seven hours. Perhaps I could make up some time the old-fashioned way...

After a few miles going 80+ MPH, I realized my battery estimate for the next stop was going down. I guess it estimates battery life based on the recommended speed? Anyway, even at legal highway speeds, I was only getting about 1 mi per percentage of battery.

It wasn't so bad. I'm a patient person. But it did make me late for my suit fitting appointment. 

When driving around St. Louis, I made another amateur mistake. I searched for "charger" without specifying "supercharger." It took several eight-hour estimates from standard chargers before I figured out what I was doing wrong. Charging stations are abundant in the St. Louis area; supercharging stations, not so much. 

Also, I didn't realize until way too late that there was a standard household adapter in the trunk. I could have charged the thing overnight at Clinton's.

Autopilot, engage!

Illinois is flat and windy, and it really emphasizes how light this car is. Unfortunately I don't have access to autopilot, but I'm curious how well it would deal with these weather conditions.

Finally figured out how to use the autopilot on the way home. I probably should have read the manual. It still isn't a full autopilot, but I now have steering assists and cruise control. You'd think that's telling the voice command module I want cruise control would have gotten me there, but no matter. I am now happy blaring Green Day and allowing my Tesla to drive me. Grasping to control, so I better hold on.

This thing really doesn't seem to like how I drive. Every time I turn the autopilot on it swerves me toward the middle of the lane rather than the outer edge where I tend to hang. And at least a couple times, I forced the autopilot to disengage because I felt uncomfortable with where it was going. But it does a pretty good job, honestly. Once I get past my insecurities about the whole thing, I have no complaints with its driving. That said I'm not yet ready to trust it in too complex a situation.

Fun toy, wouldn't buy

Driving the Tesla Model 3 had its bright spots, but frankly I wasn't impressed with the overall design. In trying to be revolutionary, it forces a new rule set for operation. It's a bit much.

But never mind the car. Elon Musk is deplorable, and I'd like to do as little as possible to support him directly. Even if Tesla made a model that made sense to me, I'd pass.