I spent a week in Washington DC, with a Tesla Model Y rental from Hertz. I wanted to share what that experience was like. For background, I had never driven any electric car before pulling out of the lot with our rental. I had my wife and 3 middle-school aged children (5-seat config) with me for a trip that was a combination of driving from our accommodations in Georgetown downtown 3 days, parking in a garage, and walking the sites, and spending two days in the Williamsburg, VA area, about 160 miles south of DC.
Why would I do this? My family is doing what we can to decarbonize, and an electric car is high on our list. I thought this would be the most difficult thing to use an electric car, so it seemed like a great test of real life usage. That said, personal use from home would be much easier, since we would have a charging point in our garage, whereas here, we could only use public charging stations.
Two last data points if you don’t know me: I consider myself a “car guy”, and I design software interfaces for a living, so I have opinions on interfaces. Oh, and the kids all already wanted Mom and Dad to buy a Tesla even before living with one.
TL;DR
- I liked driving the Tesla a lot. It’s very clear that electric cars are better than ICE cars.
- If you have the means to buy an electric car, unless you have very specific reasons not to buy one, you should buy on. If you can find one.
- Tesla’s biggest advantage is the Supercharger network. I’d like to see a lot more car charging infrastructure—it is challenging to plan our where and how long charging will happen on a long trip.
- The model we drove sells in the neighborhood of $70k. While I like the car a lot, the build quality and ride does not feel like a $70k car, and I will not personally be buying one.
- Still leaning towards Ford Mustang Mach-E, with VW ID.4 as a second possibility.
First, renting from Hertz is a nightmare. A Tesla Model Y is priced a little above their full-size SUV rate, so not cheap. I paid upfront to get a significant discount—which is only offered to people who are not signed in with a Hertz account! When I arrived at the counter to pick up, they had me call customer support to change my credit card number, apparently they can’t handle Apple Cards having different numbers when you book and arrive, but then, they charged me hundreds of extra dollars that I will be calling customer support about. All rental companies are a disaster, but I am unlikely to spend my own money at Hertz again. The Union Station Hertz location is literally a shack in the middle of a disgusting parking garage. There was a very friendly attendant who clearly deserves a raise. He was overwhelmed by all the people waiting, which meant I had to wait 30 minutes to get my family and all our luggage into the Tesla. We easily loaded all 5 suitcases in the trunk, without needing the frunk.
Since Teslas don’t use keys at all—you interact with them from your phone—they have a key card for things like valet parking, as lending your car to a friend. Hertz made this much worse, because they wrapped the card in a hard plastic shell and has a piece of wire for a key ring. You couldn’t keep the key in a wallet, for which it is designed. To enter the car, you have to tap the card on the B-pillar at the driver’s door, in just the right spot. If you approach the car from the other side it doesn’t work. If you just need to get in the trunk, no luck.
Car controls come to life as soon as the car is unlocked, AC starts to cool, audio system reconnects. When you sit down, you tap the card between the drinks holder and arm rest of the center console, after which you’re allowed to drive, and you can toss the card in the drinks holder or somewhere safe. You’ll need it to lock when you get out.
One of the elements I was expecting to dislike the most was the single screen to control everything. I’m generally a fan of the minimalism aesthetic and think the design of Teslas inside and out are tasteful and attractive. But I am also aware of the usability advantages of physical (haptic) feedback of physical controls. After a week of living with the car, I disliked the ‘one screen to rule them all’ far less than I expected. While the UI design is excellent, it is still a pain to use menus and receive no tactile feedback while focusing on driving.
The navigation system is excellent, although a few times it read directions too late for me to react with turns in close proximity. The major reason (I suspect) Tesla doesn’t allow Apple CarPlay or Android Auto is because the Supercharger network roadtrip planning is well integrated into the navigation system. However, the map UI is at times hard to read, and the text is surprisingly small for things like exit numbers while traveling on the highway. Apple Maps’ UI in CarPlay is far easier to read while driving. On the Tesla display, you can run in light or dark modes (or have it switch automatically at night). I preferred the light map during the day, but the rest of the UI is easier to use in dark mode. I wish that was an option. And why is there no traffic displayed on the map? This is baffling… I looked for a setting to enable it several times. A web search now led me to a forum post where someone states, “To activate you need to tap on the trafic lights icon on your GPS map.” Seriously?
While we are talking “infotainment”, let’s talk media playback. The best thing about CarPlay and media is the Apple Music integration. But in a Tesla, Apple Music users are stuck using your phone as a Bluetooth device. It’s super frustrating not to be able to select a playlist without picking up your phone, let alone the inability to use any other CarPlay enabled apps such as a podcast player. Spotify and Tidal users can log into their accounts for a native experience. There appear to be other streaming options, as well. This aside, the audio system of the Tesla is rich and enveloping. It is an audio system befitting a $70k car.
Let’s talk about driving. The Tesla handles great, with sports car-like tight steering and low center of gravity, and the acceleration with its instant torque and AWD is fantastic, even squishing the pedal a 3rd of the way is like launching a rocket ship. This said, the Model Y is supposed to be “an SUV” (the best comparison is “crossover”), and no one passed the memo to the suspension. Feels like a Model 3 sports sedan. You feel every impact on your gut. Many of the streets we took in DC were under construction and we were beaten up on surfaces that would have been smoothed out with little fuss by our Subaru Ascent. Part of this was the 19” wheels with very narrow sidewall tires. Mostly, it was the suspension tuning. I cannot imagine driving this on rough country roads, let alone rutted gravel roads a CUV should be at home on.
Around town, the instant torque helped merge and get around obstacles with less stress. The first thing I had to get used to without practice was “one pedal driving”. For the unaccustomed, an electric motor without current acts as a brake. Even better, it regenerates electricity and sends it back to the battery, a process fittingly called “Regenerative braking”. This is fantastic, but there is a learning curve. When you stop accelerating, you’re already moderately braking. There is no coasting. In stop and go traffic this takes practice… but once you acclimate, you don’t want to go back. I would estimate I touched the brake pedal about 90% less than I do in an ICE vehicle. After a day of use I was a near-expert and a convert. There are settings that simulate coasting, but that costs battery. My advice is to learn, adapt, and save power.
When you say “Tesla” one of the very first things people think about is “Full Self Driving”. The Hertz rental does not come with Tesla’s “Autopilot” driving assistant enabled. You do however get their “Autosteer” and their “Traffic-aware cruise-control”. These are mostly very good. Neither, however, are as good as I expected, and my takeaway is that we are not anywhere as near to full-self driving as Elon would like. In fact, I prefer my Subaru’s Eyesight cruise and lane keeping systems to Tesla’s. Here are the two reasons… if you enable Autosteer in traffic, you must continue to hold the wheel. You as the driver don’t get to have an opinion on where in the highway lane you are driving. In wide-open driving, this doesn’t make too much difference. But on a busier road, you frequently approach vehicles that are very close to your lane. At any speed, an aware driver would move farther in their lane away from an 18-wheeler that’s close to them.
If you try to shy aware from a big rig with Autosteer on, it will fight you, not allowing you to pull away… and then disabling itself with no tension ramp-down, meaning the pressure you’re exerting against the wheel is then freed, and you swerve and have to correct. Furthermore, when you engage it again, if you’re not perfectly centered in the lane (and you never are) the car will jerk you in line the moment the feature is turned on. Autosteer has no nuance or subtlety. Subaru EyeSight only cares about crossing the line. Otherwise it’s fine with you being a bit to the left or a bit to the right of center. That said, EyeSight does not actively steer. It only encourages you to do the right thing.
But I have yet to mention the worst part. If you have Autosteer enabled in a lane that has on-ramps besides it, when the dotted line disappear between the on-ramp and your lane, Autosteer will swerve your car towards the ramp, as you are now on the far side of a much wider lane, if only temporarily. Since Autosteer has no subtlety and cannot apparently look ahead 20 yards to see that you will again be centered ahead, it must autocorrect your course immediately. This is just unfathomable at this point in Tesla’s existence. How is this that bad?
The cruise control is also subtly flawed. For the most part it is smooth. It can know and automatically adjust your speed based on the speed limit without your intervention. Want to just always drive the speed limit on the highway? Easy with one tap on the screen. Always want to drive 5MPH above the speed limit? You can set an “offset” and also do this automatically. Very smart. But turning on cruise and autosteer is too awkward. I am used to either only using buttons in Hondas and Subarus, or using very intuitive stalk movements with VWs and Saabs. In the Tesla, you can only turn on and off with the stalk, and then you adjust with a scroll wheel on the steering wheel. It feels like too much movement for too little control.
The first few times, moving the stalk that is also used for selecting forward and reverse is very disconcerting. Imaging using your gear selector in an automatic transmission car to disable cruise control by shifting into reverse! Well, that’s how you do it in a Tesla. In fact, if you hold the stalk upwards to disable cruise and you hold there one second, the car will be placed in Neutral. Disconcerting.
But my biggest complaint about cruise control is also part of its biggest strength. The best cruise control systems make stop-and-go traffic suck less. Tesla takes this to another level. If you have cruise enabled, and you’re stopped for less than 5 minutes, the car will start forward movement again without your input. On my Subaru, I have to tap the accelerator to reenable cruise after the vehicle has come to a complete stop. I prefer the Tesla option. So what’s the downside? Tesla knows only one way to move itself from standstill: rocketship. This is problematic if the car in front of you only gently moves forward a few yards, then stops, because you launch and then immediately decelerate. It’s so bad that I was constantly questioning whether I should tough it out, or manually take over. But it gets worse. Tesla has settings for acceleration! You can choose “Chill” to greatly reduce the sensitivity of the accelerator. But the car does not apply this chill choice when it controls starts itself. Rocketship or nothing.
The roof is tinted glass. This is cool. The back window is also glass, but it is all-but unusably small. If given the choice, I’d prefer more usable glass in my rear window than my roof. The car has a myriad of external cameras, and they’re mostly great. But rearward vision is compromised, and best I could tell, there’s no blind spot warning. If a car is in your blind spot, it’s drawn on the center screen, but the part of the screen it’s shown on is partially blocked by your hand on the steering wheel. When you put on your blinker, you are shown a camera shot of your blind spot in the same spot of your center display, but of course, if you’re looking to change lanes, you’re not looking down there, you’re looking at where you’re driving. Not a huge deal, but it feels like they have all the tools while not using them to their fullest potential. Positively, there’s a buttons on the screen that, at any time will display all the exterior cameras on the display.
In close confines, the car will measure the distance between your car and other objects. This is especially useful during parking. I wish they’d use that same data when using autosteer, to adjust your position in the lanes during traffic. They do use their radar for driving data, somehow… 3 or 4 times the car screamed at me to correct what I was doing but for no apparent reason? The alarms are intense.
Lastly, for a car that has such a wait time, you’d think the build quality would be better. There was one piece in the interior of the driver’s door near the rear view mirror that looked randomly wrapped in cloth and placed. The frunk does not shut well. I understand the car makes use of lightweight materials and the frunk door is likely aluminum, but it’s not too much to ask of a $70k car for the doors to shut easily.
If this was a $40k car, I wouldn’t complain, because I know the batteries and the tech are not cheap. But my Subaru was $40k and its build quality is excellent and feels substantial.
I liked the car enough to go onto the Tesla website and build one up myself. That’s when I found out it was a $70k vehicle, that I could get in January at best. And since Tesla’s are popular, they’ve exceeded federal rebate levels, so you’re paying full price when you can get thousands off of almost every other make of electric car. Unless you’re obsessed with having a Tesla, I can’t justify it.