Teller, of the famous American magician duo “Penn & Teller,” is apparently a Tesla Model S owner — going by the interesting review of his that was recently published on the Tesla website.
CEO Elon Musk linked to the review himself via Twitter, so I’ll just leave that tweet right here:
Review of Model S by @MrTeller http://t.co/eF7ICE9ef4
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2015
Here are a couple of highlights from the review:
“I’ve always looked askance at people who said they loved to drive or loved their cars. A car – I thought – was a nice, useful machine, but about as lovable as a dishwasher. I defined a good car as one that took care of the chore of transportation without breaking down.”
…
“So one afternoon – with 45 minutes to spare before a rehearsal – I swung by a Tesla showroom and looked over a Model S. It was, as I had anticipated, brainy and practical. So doing due diligence, I took a test drive. It was like piloting a big, stealthy cat. The combination of muscle and silence enchanted me (as you may know, I’m partial to silence). The movement was not just efficient, but thrilling, a velvety-smooth, noiseless roller-coaster. Still my parents’ son, I dutifully went and read the reliability reports. Two weeks later, I placed my order. A year later my first impressions have only deepened. The intelligence, power, and severe beauty of this machine are no hype.”
…
“It’s because I’m paying attention to every moment I’m on the road. Why? Because I now love to drive.”
That’s a pretty similar story to the ones that I have heard from a great many Tesla Model S owners — that it’s a fundamentally, qualitatively different experience than driving your average gas-clunker. (Much less a diesel car, I’d suppose.)
As far as the choice to solicit Teller for a review, I’d assume it’s because someone at Tesla (Musk perhaps?) is a fan. There does seem to be something of a congruity in worldview between the Penn & Teller crowd and the Tesla one. Though, maybe I’m opening myself up to attack by Tesla fans here by showing my ignorance on the matter? 🙂
I like my car. When Tesla asked me to review the experience, I did. No ad. Unpaid, just because I wanted to. .http://t.co/xOyeiJ2o7B
— Teller (@MrTeller) October 15, 2015
This is a super cool review. So cool it almost sounds paid for… but probably not since I imagine Teller has more money than god. I’ll find out for myself on Back to the Future day when I pick up my Tesla. Of course, mine won’t have any options like traffic/navigation on the big screen (it would be $6k to retrofit… ouch)… But still, so excited!
No one’s paying me, yet I spend time giving high praise to lowly SparkEV. I’d never do this for gas car as I think of them as pointA to pointB with cargo. There’s something about EV that stirs the soul.
Except Nissan Leaf and their stupid “no charge to take up fast charge spot and have everyone else waste their time” program, EV experience has been very good. I wonder how Teller feels about Tesla supercharger waiting due to it being free.
http://sparkev.blogspot.com/2015/10/free-charging-sucks.html
I have super respect for anyone who drives any sort of EV. I was planning on a Leaf but I’m extremely lucky to have found a used base-model Tesla at a price I can barely afford.
At least as far as the supercharger network near Southern California goes, every location has 8 to 12 parking spots with chargers so there is rarely waiting and it doesn’t matter if one or two of the spots goes down temporarily. I was reading reviews of one station at an outlet mall that started with 8 ports and after a few complaints of waiting, it got upgraded to 12 ports. I was also reading reviews of a particular station with complaints of waiting or being down… then realized the complaints were about a pair of CHAdeMO chargers that happened to be located in the same place.
CHAdeMO stations rarely have more than 2 spots and are down too often to rely on any particular location for daily use or a long trip where that charger is the only option. At least half the Nissan dealers in my area have given up on keeping the CHAdeMO ports operational at all. Luckily there are third-party charging stations around that are more reliable but it still seems to be a rough road where there aren’t enough EVs that need to charge away from home to make installing too many chargers or maintaining them really well profitable.
Since Elon Musk sent out notices to Tesla owners about crowded superchargers, I suspect there are problems. Whether that’s as bad as Leaf is not known. What is known is that free charging means waiting for some dumb F plugging in fast charger at 88% and taking spot for entire 30 minutes when it’s only going at 3kW (or less!)
In SoCal, there’s typically only one CCS shared with Chademo. They are placed about 10 miles apart (mostly less), so in case one is broken, there’s a second option nearby. So far, I only had few times where I had to drive to another CCS unexpectedly.
Public fast charging could be reliable and profitable if electricity is not government owned (let’s face it, all utlities are government run). But as of now, we’re at their mercy with no end in sight.
Public fast charging is crucial in transition from gas cars to EV; without it, I’d still be driving my gas car over half the time (maybe even more). No, I don’t use DCFC all the time, but it gives me confidence that I can drive my EV and not get stuck even when the trip is less than 100% certain that it’s just commute.
As for Tesla, if it’s 10 or 12 years old and battery needs replacing, would you spend $8000 ($100/kWh + install cost) on such old car? I can see spending that much (or bit more) for P90D, but I don’t know about S70. Future is unknown, but given that average car’s age is 12 years, junking a 12 year old car due to repair cost (aka, battery replacement cost) seems wasteful.
But that’s just my opinion; we’ll see in 10 years what’s going to happen with Teslas needing new battery in a market awash with Bolt and Model3.