cheltonianmotoring
“Instant power, amazing torque and the type of acceleration you would usually expect from a supercar.”
slowly aswe left the residential roads and reached the dual carriageway. Then I putmy foot down.Hard. In less than 5 seconds,wewere at the speed limit, andmyDad’s facewas a picture.We got talking about the power, and of course aswell as the obvious lack of an internal combustion engine, there is one other difference between this and say anAstonMartinV8Vantage, that boasts a similar0-60time. It's the way the power is delivered. I drive a lot of fast cars, and
considermyself capable at handling them, but at the same time Iwouldn’t expect to be able to get close to their reported acceleration times, even on a track. That relies on crisp perfect
gear changes, at the precisely optimummoment every time. In the Tesla, youmash your foot down as hard and fast as you can andwait. There’s no gearbox, there’s no lag, there’s no drama. It just accelerates fast, until either you reach the speed limit, or run out of bravery. Peoplewill ask about the charging,
and in fairness Iwaswondering about that. I struggled to get the charger to work properly on a standard 3-pin overnight charge, but thatwas user- error, and if I bought one, I’d install a Teslawall charger.On theway back to drop it off,mywife and I stopped at a services that had a Tesla Super Charger. These units are reported to give you 80%of charge (at least 200 miles of range) in 40minutes. I thoughtwe could test it by getting a coffee, but even then… a 40minute
coffee break every 200miles…would that get annoying? I startedmy stopwatch as I
plugged it in, andwewandered in for a
coffee.By the timewe’dwalked in, ordered, had our coffee delivered and drunk it,whenwe got back to the car the stopwatch read a shade under 30minutes, andwe had added 185miles to our range, so it actually doeswork. It could be inconvenient,
depending on your usage, but I suspect a 30-minute break every 185 mileswould suit themajority of people perfectly. So,where’s that order formfor a TeslaModel 3…
CatchmoreofToby at
www.cartestdummy.co.ukor followhimonTwitter@tobyaiken
THECHELTONIAN JULY /AUGUST 2019 49
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