Why I Love Tesla
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Back in 2011, when Tesla presented the Model S, everyone talked about how cool and modern it was, the excellent performance, technology, and style it rocked. Then came the Model X, a now well-known product of musk’s company. Everyone talked about the “Chunky Model S,” and it’s fantastic features like the gullwing doors.
Then came the Model 3… Oh boy the Model 3…
I remember liking everything that I had seen about Tesla, but the model 3 just blew my mind. It’s not the best in the brand’s line up. Still, the amount of innovation that a relatively affordable car could have inside it was what grabbed my attention. Of course, still way out of my price range, but it was a car that I could aspire to have in the future while keeping both of my kidneys.
Then I saw the incredible launches that the Model S did with the ludicrous mode, that raw power of the electric engines that only completely overkill drag cars have. In a luxury daily driver. With a decent range per charge and an added bonus: it doesn’t kill you every time you drive it like some sport or drag cars, and managing to be safer than every production car sold today.
I love to death the raw feeling of a track or rally car, that lower back pain every time you drive it in the street, the vibrations, and the car’s unrefined nature. But having the same kind of performance with no inconvenience at all (yeah, only the price) is mind-blowing.
You can already tell that I love these cars and their technology. Let’s dive in and see what makes them so good and why I think they’re the future of the automotive industry.
Power
These engines are different in every way, the power and how it’s delivered are just different.
There’s (as expected) no noise, no roaring American V8 propelling the car forward, no import turbo noises, just 770+ silent horses gluing you to the seat when you push the pedal. Instant power.
Even the lowest power Model S with 320 horsepower feels a lot faster due to the instant response. That’s one advantage of going electric. Any car with a given power is going to feel faster than a combustion engine on a vehicle with the same peak horsepower and weight. It’s always on its sweet spot.
Safety
Going fast is cool, but what if you crash?
Safety is one of the priorities of these cars. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see a five-star rating on crash tests. Achieving this perfect rating at each and every test is beyond rare, let alone do it on every car in the brands line up.
Of course, no car is “death-proof,” but these come really close to it as no other company has a perfect crash rating, not even Subaru, which has great cars in terms of safety (and they’ll let you know in every chance they have).
Autopilot
A big thing in Tesla is innovation, and what better way to innovate in the car industry than having your car drive itself.
Tesla is the first company to offer this level of autonomous driving in production cars, reducing crashes by a substantial amount while doing so. In the United States, there’s a crash for every 479,000 miles driven, as the NHTSA’s most recent data reveals.
Teslas managed to drive up to 4.34 million miles on autopilot without a single crash. The worst record is 1.82 million autopilot miles without a crash, almost 4 times safer than human driving.
As this technology improves and eventually makes its way down into other brands and price ranges, it’s going to save millions of lives (and cars).
The autopilot is primarily for highway use as it requires you to be fully aware, or so they say. Most people aren’t that aware after a long drive, now imagine how unaware would be the people that “drove” 300 miles on autopilot, doing almost nothing to drive the car. If the statistics are this good, I can only blame it on the car, and it’s well-planned hardware and software. Avoiding a crash is hard and, in some cases, impossible even if you saw it coming. As you rely on the autopilots reaction, your inputs to make the car avoid it are just too late to do the trick.
Range
Tesla recently did an advancement in its range. These cars were already the best in terms of all-electric range, but they kept going, achieving just over 400 miles on a single charge in the Model S.
For example, a Volkswagen e-Golf can do up to 174 miles with perfect driving and climate conditions, it’s not that bad, but still a small range out of a full charge.
If you compare it to gasoline or diesel engines, then the electric cars fall short by a lot. Most combustion cars sold these days can archive the 400 miles with ease, most do over 600 miles in a single tank, some diesel cars can even do over 1000. With EV’s it’s a different story. Even with this disadvantage, Tesla beats cars like the Mustang GT, that can only go 372 miles with a full tank, let’s not talk about the Hellcat’s range.
Even I as the big petrolhead that I am (petrol head, get it?) I can’t say I would pass on buying one, I’m in love with these cars and would give almost any gas or diesel car to have one of these EVs. I would miss the sound of a combustion engine, but the truth is that I wouldn’t miss it that much having all that power under my right foot, or having my car drive me to where I’m going. For a daily commuter, I can’t think of a better car.
The only way these cars are leaving my dream garage is by being less of a dream. That’s the next step.
