Forewords
I’ve been wanting to purchase a Model S for a very long time, and when Tesla finally released the refresh in 2021 i took the plunge and ordered one. Tesla stated it would be a 6 month delivery time, but in the end i ended up waiting 26 months before the car being delivered. To be honest it was sort of an emotional rollercoaster ride not knowing when the car would arrive. We already had a VW Passat GTE that served us well, and having another car was more of a nice to have, than a need to have, but if the Passat was leased, i would have almost been able to go through another 3 year lease of a car due to the delays…
Tesla are very good at a lot of things, but EXTREMELY optimistic when it comes to timelines.
I’ll try cover a lot of things, but if i don’t specifically mention a part of the car, just assume that it’s either working as expected, or so well that i didn’t really think about it.
Delivery
I’ll write the topics in the way i experienced them, so first of after waiting 26 months was delivery. After finally getting a time appointed i drove out to the outskirts of the industrial area being Huddinge. I mean… OUTSKIRTs, like.. the very last building, that except for having 100s of Teslas parked in front of it looked abandoned. The “road” was so filled with potholes i was concerned about driving out with a 2.2 tonne car with 21″ wheels.
As i hate being late, i was there a good 35 minutes before my appointment which ment they hadn’t opened delivered yet, so i strolled around looking at all the parked Teslas. Again this was an industrial lot with just a huge building that they had converted to a car wash, and small white container like building with a small Tesla logo on. After 30 minutes a woman came walking with a HP laptop that looked like it had seen 3 wars, and sat down at a table in the container, on the only chair. I walked in, she asked my name, called someone on the phone, and within 2 minutes my car was parked outside of the container. She gave me a tiny black envelope with 2 key-cards in and asked if i had watched the instruction videos sent to me a few weeks ago? Of course i had, multiple times, so she wished me good luck and said after i’d started the car to please look in my email inbox for the Tesla email asking me to agree on delivery, and that was it.
This might surprise people who have purchased a brand new car before. Usually you meet your sales rep at the dealership, there’s a curtain unveiling and a personal walkthrough of the car and how it works, before being waved of.
I’ve had both, and personally i actually kind of like the “no fuss” ordering online, without being able to choose among the 400 options that double the price of the car. Do i mind picking up my expensive car in a industrial location? If it keeps the price down, not really.
Do i want someone to show me around the car? The videos did a super job to be honest, and everyone will get the exact same, correct, tour. I think this is the future.
Apparently shipping boats don’t want electric cars to be charged more than 50% due to hazards. Tesla apologised for the inconvenience for this since my car was at 36% and gave me a voucher to use at the superchargers to put another 150KM into the car. To be fair most combustion cars are never filled with more than 15L of fuel. Before picking the car up i thought why don’t they just charge the car at the pickup point? but then realised they deliver a car every 10 minutes there, and that would have just been impossible.
Interior
One of the reasons i waited for the refresh was that the old Model S interior was over 12 years old. I gotta say the new interior is REALLY nice. And i’ll dig a bit deeper into this. I chose black interior, which comes with some dark wooden highlights. I’ve never liked wood in cars and i thought i would be replacing them with aftermarket carbonfiber or similar, but to be honest.. it works.. it blends in well.
The build quality is really good, everything fits together well (this hasn’t been the case with most teslas historically) and it looks quiet premium, yet minimalistic.
Seats
Tesla make their own seats, this was… not perfect at start, but they really seem to have gotten the hang of it now. The Model S front seats are wide, and very comfortable. They’re both heated and ventilated, which was really nice on a hot summer day with black “leather”.
The seats, steering wheel etc are changed depending on who the driver is, which is nice since Malin’s a bit shorter than me.
The back row, as is common in most electric sedans is a tad bit low, but still very comfy.
Screen
The screen is quite massive, 17″ to be exact. Tesla don’t have carplay or android auto, and instead have built their own operating system. I think they’ve done a really good job. It’s incredibly easy to use, and you find stuff where you expect it. I would like to see an appstore though to get 3rd party applications. I’m missing SoundCloud, so currently i stream it via bluetooth from the phone which works really well.
There’s a 10″ screen in the back for passengers, this is my first gripe. It’s got YouTube, Netflix, Disney etc. But the Audio can’t be paired with a bluetooth headset. This means when my daughter wants to watch Frozen II for the 862nd time.. we get to listen..
Whats even worse is that the audio only plays from the rear speakers, and for some reason the audio quality is absolutely horrible. I really hope they fix this so that you can pair one or two headsets to the back screen.
Yoke steering wheel
Tesla know how to push peoples buttons, and the move to only offering a Yoke steering wheel, with no levers divided people. So here’s my take.
The Yoke is 90% perfect, honestly i wouldn’t want to purchase a car again with a round steering wheel. After a few minutes you feel like one with it and it offers so many positive things. So first a picture for people who have never seen it before.
As you can see there’s no stalks, so indicators, and changing gear is done differently.
Many people have griped about having to swipe a icon on the touch screen to change forward/reverse. I don’t see this as an issue, thats just complaining for the sake of it. The icon is located in a good spot, easy to hit, just move on with life.
The indicators however, it takes a few turns to get used to the indicators being buttons on your left thumb, however i disagree with how they did this. I get that they wanted to mimic how you usually indicate with up=right, down=left. And in most cases this works perfectly, on highways, in crossings etc.
When it’s downright dangerous is exiting round abouts, when you’re going in to a round about you can easily indicate since the steering wheel is level, however when your about to exit the round about and want to indicate right, the steering wheel is now vertical. Getting your brain wired to know which button to press has after a few months of ownership proven to be almost impossible.
Another thing is that the horn is not the central airbag, it’s a small button on the topmost right part of the wheel. This is also quite dangerous, but Must tweeted in Nov 2022 that the airbag now has a sensor under it, and a software update will allow it to be used as a horn. I can confirm that my airbag seems to have a sensor under it, but it’s been almost a year and no software update yet 
In an emergency, most people will find themselves bashing the airbag, so i think this isn’t bold re-thinking, just dangerous.
How could the Yoke become 100% favourable? by swapping the right indicator button, with the voice assistant. In my mind this would completely solve the brain wiring with being able to exit a round about, and be easy for people to understand and get used to, hoping for the option in the future to re-map these.
Aside from the horn and right indicator, i love the Yoke. It offers great visibility of the front screen that shows speed, navigation and other things, along with not obstructing the view of the road. Some people have raised concerns that when you have to turn the wheel multiple rotations this may be problematic, but i’d say 99% of the time your never turning more than 90c, and in the rare cases you’re doing a 3-point turn, it works flawlessly. Again, people on the internet hating for clicks remarking on this.
Audio
Tesla uses their own hifi system. It’s 22 speakers distributed in the car and it sounds AMAZING. The “soundstage” sounds really large, the high and mids are crystal clear, and the bass is insane! the infotainment system has Spotify, tidal and a number of other services built in, and if you’re missing anything the bluetooth streaming quality from your phone doesn’t seem to degrade quality much. I do like it loud, but at 7 out of 10 in volume i made the grown up decision that louder would cause hearing issues, so there’s plenty of umpf 🙂
Range
This is an electric car after all. I got the Long Range (LR) model which claims 652km. I opted to upgrade to the 21″ Arachnid wheels which reduces range around 50km, which should leave me at around 600km. Recently i charged up the car to 100% for a long roadtrip, the car then stated a 599km estimated range remained. the trip was 452km so i expected to get home but the car stated that i would have to drive at max 95km/h to get home with a 5% remaining in battery. I have to add, it was raining (HEAVILY), and i was doing mostly 120km/h, so i don’t think Tesla is cheating on the EPA ratings. If i where doing 100km/h in dry conditions i don’t think it would be so far off 600km.
SuperCharger
Since we did have to make a stop, the car automatically finds a suitable place to charge on the way. Just before arriving it pops up a message saying its pre-heating the battery for optimal charging speed. We arrive at the location and find that 10 out of 20 chargers are available, pick a suitable one, reverse in, just plug in the cable and voila… it’s charging.
No creditcard, no fuss, since you have a creditcard assigned to your vehicle it just starts charging and bills you afterward.
Inside the car you see a countdown timer until when you can proceed on your journey, in our case it wanted us to charge for 6 minutes. At 250kW this toped up the battery to 25%, and ensured we had 15% left when we got home.
I gotta say this was smooooth, and is probably the largest difference between electric cars, Teslas charging network is readily available, dependable, and super quick.
Performance
People who know me know i do like quick cars, my previous performance car was a Porsche 997 Turbo, so this is mainly what i’m comparing to.
The acceleration in the Model S is insane, and this is “only” the LR version. Claimed performance is 0-100km/h in 3.2 seconds, which is similar to my old Porsche. What’s different is the 0-50km/h which is SO fast.
The handling is really good, with the batteries being under the entire floor, the center of gravity, it’s actually really good around corners.
Enhanced Autopilot (EAP)
I first ordered the car with FSD (Full Self Driving), but after waiting for 2 years and it still not being available as Beta in Europe i asked if i could remove it. Since this was possible i downgraded to EAP. EAP allows a hybrid semi-form of self-driving where you can enable it and the car will follow the road automatically, keep distance from cars, and if you indicate it changes lanes for you. Pretty cool.
Was it worth 33.000kr? Ehm, well if you regularly drive long distances then yeah maybe, you sitt quite relaxed with just a hand on the wheel and the car keeps you on the road. You do kind of zone out so not sure how secure it is since you’re still responsible.
It does seem kind of buggy with speeds though. If your traveling at 100km/h and go through a 70km/h zone, it doesn’t slow down, even though the car will indicate it’s a 70km/h zone.
Alignment/Quality issues
Historically, Tesla has had quite some quality issues. Not with drivetrain but with fit and finish.
I was kind of worried that i would be getting one of these cars but upon delivery the car was in absolute perfect condition. One of the rubber trims in the rear doors had a small bump on it, but other than that perfect.
After having the car for a few days, and having it standing in the head i noted that the black plastic door handle expanded slightly, and thus rubbed on the door paint when opening.
I scheduled a mobile service appointment in the App, and got a date to have it fix.
Mobile service
So Tesla claim that over 85% of the service appointments scheduled with Tesla are mobile service appointments. This is new to me, i’ve always had to take the car in REALLY EARLY to the car shop, leave it for the day, leaving me to either go back by buss, or stick around.
Mobile service comes to your location, and you don’t even need to be home. Tesla will unlock your car, perform the service, lock your car, and leave. They can even change your tyres.
I happened to be home, and was greeted by a really nice British guy that arrived in a modded Model X, basically a mobile garage.
He fixed both issues within an hour, and was on his way. I mean… would have been better if the alignment of the handle was perfect from factory, but damn this was smooth.
Final words
Am i happy with the car, was it worth the wait? Absolutely! It’s a pleasure to drive, it looks stunning, it’s got tons of nice tech! It wasn’t cheap to buy, but so far it’s been cheap running it. The insurance (even full insurance) is less than the Passat Hybrid. It doesn’t require service (Passat is 5500kr for oil and inspection). And to fill it with electricity to drive around 500km is usually between 5-15kr since i have Tibber and charge at night.
Every day is a learning day 