Tesla Testing at c4di

Good reason to be part of c4di number 493: Sometimes you get to drive a Tesla

Today was rather exciting. Tesla came to see us. I’m rubbish with names, and I didn’t write them down, but both fellows who turned up from the company were excellent, both in the talk that they gave to set the scene for the day, and also at the moment when they just said “Get in and drive it”.

So I did. I’ve already got an electric car so the smoothness and silence weren’t that much of a novelty. But the fact that I was manoeuvring a three ton car so easily was very impressive, as was the dashboard display of the vehicles around us as I nervously headed towards the A63. You could see little rendered versions of the cars and lorries in real time. This is a spin off of the self-drive technology and gives you a lot more confidence in traffic.

Dee settles in for his turn at the wheel…

This being close to rush hour, the road was busy, reducing the opportunities for any attempts to realise the 0 to 60 potential of the car, which is apparently only five seconds or so. Dee had a go after I did, and he was a bit more lead footed than me, making the car really leap forwards. He also remembered to have a go with the automatic driving (which I rather stupidly forgot). This was very impressive. It followed the line of the road and kept the car nicely placed in the queue of stop-start traffic that we encountered on the way back to c4di.

Tesla have only been making cars for a few short years, and they’ve had to invent a lot of the technology that they are using. They have a plan, which is to start off catering for the more expensive end of the market before moving into the mainstream. As a quality car, for me the Tesla does the business. The inside was appropriately posh, comfortable and toy laden. It’s a bit on the large side for me personally, I find that the BMW i3 is just perfect for my needs just now, and I don’t really have the spare cash to spend on a toy that big. But I still rather want one.

And I’m not alone. Apparently they are selling more Teslas in the USA than they do BMW or Mercedes cars. During the talk in the morning we were told that Tesla is really just keen to get people living in a sustainable way. If that means getting other car manufacturers to make their own electric cars to compete with Tesla, they say they are OK with that. Well, all I can say is that the competition has its work cut out.

Big thanks to Tesla and c4di for setting up the day. It was awesome.