More Car Stuff

Some stuff about the car:

There’s a lot that I like about the Tesla. There are a lot of luxury-car amenities like heated leather seats, built-in nav system, and infinitely adjustable seats. There are some great things that may be unique to Tesla and may not (I don’t know much about cars, except how to drive them). For instance, the emergency avoidance system (which, actually, kicked in a few times when it shouldn’t have), which has a great feature: If you’re in cruise control and you’re coming up on a slower vehicle ahead of you, it gently matches speed, a safe distance behind, and will stay matched until you do something about it. On a long Interstate trip, this is invaluable. The phone lock concept – the key for getting into the car and starting it up is your phone – worked much better than I had hoped. If you leave your phone in the car, it’s OK, because as long as your phone is about 30-50 feet from the car, it’s unlocked. As soon as you walk further away, it locks itself, turns on the sentry guard (reports attempts to enter it), and folds in the side-view mirrors! That still doesn’t avoid the ‘left my phone on the bedside table’ problem, but I never did, maybe partly because all my books and music are on my phone. All I had to do was be more vigilant about keeping my phone charged, and I did that.

There is a list of things I don’t like about the Tesla:

• The outside and inside door handles: Outside the door handles are perfectly flush with the body (aerodynamics are important), but to get them open involves movements that do not feel natural to my old, arthritic hand. Inside, the door opens at the touch of a button – a button that is not conveniently placed.
• The side-view mirrors tilt down automatically when you reverse (so you can see the parking lines when backing into a supercharger?), so I can’t see anything I need to see.
• No window wiper or washer on the back window
• Everything is done on the touch-screen (which is more like a 15″ monitor, not a 22), which means everything requires that I take my eyes off the road. There are an enormous number of actions that take two or three touches. I prefer controls I can operate without looking at them.
• The cradle designed to hold and charge your phone was not well-thought out. Because I had a standard case on my phone, it didn’t fit, and Randall had to partially disassemble it. Really? All Tesla owners have to have stylish thin phones that they never drop? More about this at the end.

(Obviously I’ve finally learned how to use bullet points).