On our recent trip to California, we decided to drive as (many) Californians do and rent an electric vehicle (EV). My wife did most of the planning for this trip. With gas prices hovering above $6/gallon in CA, we decided to rent a Tesla Model 3. She rented it on a platform called Turo for about $100/day (I think?).
We met the owner in a parking lot at LAX, and he told us he has 6 Teslas. It’s his business. He said, “It’s not what you think.”
The outside of the car has a sleek but simple look. At about 56 inches tall, it sits quite low to the ground.
There are cameras everywhere. The top of the car is all glass.
The interior was comfortable enough. We had our 2 kids with us (7yo and almost 4yo). They had enough room. I sat in the back to try it out and found the headroom a little lacking. The trunk space is ample. The frunk (front trunk) is really small, but it’s still nice to have some extra space there.
The car is very simple. There’s nothing really in the front except a big screen. For the roof, it’s just two thick panes of glass.
The steering wheel is simple with a audio volume wheel on the left and a cruise control speed adjuster on the right. There’s a Mercedes-style gear shift on the right side. Down all the way once for cruise control and twice for autopilot. There are two wireless phone chargers under the screen.
There aren’t any door handles inside. You press a button to open the door. The windows are frameless and open slightly automatically each time you open the door. It’ll close by itself when you shut the door. The exterior handles are flush to the door and pop out when you press the thick part.
It’s nice that there’s a button to close the trunk automatically. There’s extra space in the trunk if you lift up a flat base.
Charging the Tesla is fairly simple. You just touch the car next to the left rear light to open the charging port and you plug it in. A green light tells you it’s charging.
There are multiple menus. Here are the autopilot and pedals/steering screens.
Those were the visuals. Here’s my experience actually driving the car.
The car was powerful and had plenty of torque. When you press down on the accelerator hard, it feels like you’re on a rollercoaster experiencing a few Gs. We had it on the setting where the car slows down by itself. I found that we didn’t have to use the brakes very often.
Autopilot was really cool. The car drives by itself. It was hard to trust the software to navigate the turns and start and stop on its own, but I started to get used to it. The car constantly tells you to keep your hands on the wheel and apply a slight turning force to make sure you’re paying attention.
We had to carry a card around to start and stop the car and to lock/unlock the car. I believe you can download an app, you don’t need to carry the card everywhere.
Another weird thing was that you don’t need to turn off the car after you park. You just get out and lock the door, and you’re good.
Luckily, our friends and family that we were visiting in SoCal have EV chargers, so we didn’t have any issues charging. It seems like there are plenty of chargers around SoCal if we had to charge, but it would take longer than just filling up a tank of gas.
Would I get one? Maybe. My friend messaged me and said to get one and that I won’t regret it. I’ll have to think about it a little more, but I am in the market for a car. I’m still driving a 2012 Toyota Prius around.
If you have a Tesla, let me know what your experience has been. If I got anything wrong, let me know!