I got a call from a friend who said his son was doing some market research and wanted to know if I wanted to test drive some electric cars. Sure, I've been watching the electric car market for years. I show up and I quickly realize that I'm getting more than I was expecting. The first thing they do is hook up a wireless mike on me. Then they film me inspecting the exterior of the car and then familiarizing myself with the instruments. They then stick a couple of
GoPros on the outside of the car and put the cameraman in the front seat and off we go chasing an Audi S7. After a while I swap into the S7 for comparison comments (they're roughly the same size and performance specs except the Audi is gas).
Exterior. The first interesting thing is that the door handles are absolutely flush. You tap them and they pop out and you can pul on them to open the car doors. Double clicking the front of the key fob opens the "hood" which is a large storage compartment. Double clicking the back opens up the rear compartment which is more storage. Opening a small compartment yields the charging cable.
Back in the car. The seats are comfortable as you expect in a luxury sport. The dash is an hires computer display. On one side of the central display is a speedometer. On the other is the energy use which is sort of like a VSI. Goes positive when you're consuming energy from the battery, negative when the regenerative breaking is putting it back. On the left side is the "gas" gauge that tells you how far to go before you run out of gas. The right side is some convenience info for the multifunction buttons under your thumbs on the steering wheel (which can be used to tune the radio, adjust the climate contral, etc...).
The entire center console is a large touch screen. By default it's showing a GOOGLE MAPS image which is your navigation system. There's a 3G (sorry no LTE) interface that is loading up the traffic red/green lines. The middle is the controls for the stereo (XM radio), and the bottom are the controls for the climate control and heated seats. You can minimize/maximize any of these sections. Alternate buttons allows you to bring up specs on energy usage, and a web browser (I send my wife an email while I'm waiting) and the interface to the cell phone.
Pushing the CONTROLS button allows you to adjust the ride hight, something with the steering, the aggressiveness of the regenerative breaking, and lock/unlock the doors, release the hood and the trunk, and open and close the sunroof. One amusing feature is that you can use the suspension to lift one wheel off the ground to change the tire.
I engage the "Creep" mode which was off. This I know is the feature that allows the car to start rolling at a slow speed when you take your foot off the break while in FORWARD otherwise the thing responds like a golf cart, nothing moves until you step on the gas.
Put the thing in forward and start off. The S7 is playing pace car for me so I don't have to navigate. Gosh the thing is quite. Not only is there no engine noise, but compared to my A4 there's very little road noise or vibration either. After a few blocks we hit the divided highway. The S7 pulls away and I stomp on the gas. The thing smoothly and quietly accelerates up to 75 (which is as fast as we need to be going on the public roads). The thing that surprises me (not that it should have), is that it is smooth and quiet. There's no automatic (or manual) transmission shifting. Just a smooth and continuous acceleration.
After this we head out to a road with some curves. At the suggestion of the video producer I let the S7 get away from us so we can play. This is fortunately one road over from where I live so I'm familiar with it and snap the thing around some curves and top some hills. Handles nice, shoots around the corners on rails like my A4.
All during this I'm being peppered for opinions. This thing claims a 300 mile range which is pretty good for an electric. It handles like a sports car but has a non trivial backseat and some decent storage. Yeah other than hauling sheets of plywood around, I could give up my pickup for this.
I switch over to the S7 for the last leg home. I've got an A4 so this is familiar territory. The NAV system isn't a touch screen, but it's got the knob+4buttons I'm used to. The performance and handling is similar to my A4 and the Tesla but the shifting of it's tiptronic is very noticeable after driving the electric.
All in all it was fun. The Tesla was fun. I've only ever seen one prior and that was a roadster that passed me one day.
GoPros on the outside of the car and put the cameraman in the front seat and off we go chasing an Audi S7. After a while I swap into the S7 for comparison comments (they're roughly the same size and performance specs except the Audi is gas).
Exterior. The first interesting thing is that the door handles are absolutely flush. You tap them and they pop out and you can pul on them to open the car doors. Double clicking the front of the key fob opens the "hood" which is a large storage compartment. Double clicking the back opens up the rear compartment which is more storage. Opening a small compartment yields the charging cable.
Back in the car. The seats are comfortable as you expect in a luxury sport. The dash is an hires computer display. On one side of the central display is a speedometer. On the other is the energy use which is sort of like a VSI. Goes positive when you're consuming energy from the battery, negative when the regenerative breaking is putting it back. On the left side is the "gas" gauge that tells you how far to go before you run out of gas. The right side is some convenience info for the multifunction buttons under your thumbs on the steering wheel (which can be used to tune the radio, adjust the climate contral, etc...).
The entire center console is a large touch screen. By default it's showing a GOOGLE MAPS image which is your navigation system. There's a 3G (sorry no LTE) interface that is loading up the traffic red/green lines. The middle is the controls for the stereo (XM radio), and the bottom are the controls for the climate control and heated seats. You can minimize/maximize any of these sections. Alternate buttons allows you to bring up specs on energy usage, and a web browser (I send my wife an email while I'm waiting) and the interface to the cell phone.
Pushing the CONTROLS button allows you to adjust the ride hight, something with the steering, the aggressiveness of the regenerative breaking, and lock/unlock the doors, release the hood and the trunk, and open and close the sunroof. One amusing feature is that you can use the suspension to lift one wheel off the ground to change the tire.
I engage the "Creep" mode which was off. This I know is the feature that allows the car to start rolling at a slow speed when you take your foot off the break while in FORWARD otherwise the thing responds like a golf cart, nothing moves until you step on the gas.
Put the thing in forward and start off. The S7 is playing pace car for me so I don't have to navigate. Gosh the thing is quite. Not only is there no engine noise, but compared to my A4 there's very little road noise or vibration either. After a few blocks we hit the divided highway. The S7 pulls away and I stomp on the gas. The thing smoothly and quietly accelerates up to 75 (which is as fast as we need to be going on the public roads). The thing that surprises me (not that it should have), is that it is smooth and quiet. There's no automatic (or manual) transmission shifting. Just a smooth and continuous acceleration.
After this we head out to a road with some curves. At the suggestion of the video producer I let the S7 get away from us so we can play. This is fortunately one road over from where I live so I'm familiar with it and snap the thing around some curves and top some hills. Handles nice, shoots around the corners on rails like my A4.
All during this I'm being peppered for opinions. This thing claims a 300 mile range which is pretty good for an electric. It handles like a sports car but has a non trivial backseat and some decent storage. Yeah other than hauling sheets of plywood around, I could give up my pickup for this.
I switch over to the S7 for the last leg home. I've got an A4 so this is familiar territory. The NAV system isn't a touch screen, but it's got the knob+4buttons I'm used to. The performance and handling is similar to my A4 and the Tesla but the shifting of it's tiptronic is very noticeable after driving the electric.
All in all it was fun. The Tesla was fun. I've only ever seen one prior and that was a roadster that passed me one day.
