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I was sitting in the parking lot of a ski area, watching a romantic comedy from the early 2000s on the 15-inch screen of a Tesla and dining on a combination of trails, when I knew that if there were only a few feet of snow on the ground, I would live my wildest ski dreams.
I drive Whatshername, a 2011 Ford Fusion named after a Green Day song. I inherited my grandfather’s low-space, front-wheel-drive sedan when I graduated from college. It’s not an adventure bike, but its mileage is smart and its all-weather tires don’t make it completely harmful in the maximum road conditions. If I fold the rear seats, I can lightly install my five-foot, five-inch frame on the back to catch z. Kelly Blue Book says separating would make me about $5,000. But this weekend, Whatshername was getting dusty and I was driving a car with a valuation more than ten times higher: a Tesla Model Y. When I showed up in my apartment in a giant trailer, 3 of my neighbors shouted a variant of “Beautiful Car!” In fact, this never happened with my Fusion.
Cooking at the Tesla (Photo: Maren Larsen)
Model Y is Tesla’s fifth and final iteration, which went on the road in March 2020 with a base value of $51,990. The edition I checked, with the entire independent handling package, sells for $59,990. (The representative who put me in touch with a control vehicle pointed out that the existing styles in combination spell S3XY, which is supposedly the way Elon Musk needs us to think about his creations.) The Y is an average-length all-wheel drive. SUV with an exceptionally spacious interior. (Tesla plans to launch a back-wheel-drive edition in the near future). In length and overall configuration, it is comparable to a Subaru Outback but completely electric, and the interior looks like a spaceship. Compared to the slightly less expensive style 3 on which the Y is based, the Y is a little more versatile, thanks to this extra space. And its 350-mile diversity makes it, in theory, very suitable for long journeys, a border that has traditionally been difficult for electric cars to cross, despite the increase in cargo networks.
One of Tesla’s main promo problems is its network of superqualifiers: nearly 1,000 250 kilowatt fast charging stations in North America located along high-traffic roads that can fully re-qualify a Model Y in about an hour for about $20. (New Mexico, where I live, has ten of those stations). The Superrater network is complemented by slower-loading target evaluators, located in places such as hotels, restaurants, and workplace parks, where they are expected to gather on site for more than an hour at a time. Its voltage varies and its use is loose as consumers of the company. Finally, there are third-party electric vehicle evaluators, which require payment through an app or car credits. However, Tesla’s maximum number of homeowners slowly rates housing when the car is not in use.
I put the Y to the check for a week in northern New Mexico at the end of July. During the two-hour trip from Santa Fe to Taos, I fully used the car’s luxury features. Usually, my phone is stuck in a cup holder and connected to Whatsername through a dense network of tangled auxiliary cables, chargers and dongles, however, in the Y model, I simply placed it in a charger under the screen and connected it seamlessly with Bluetooth. When “Go Your Own Way” came out of the crystal clear low-tone speakers, I put on my sunglasses and felt full of that feeling of infinite possibility. I felt like I was in the middle of a sunny road trip montage in a Hollywood blockbuster.
On the road, I tried Tesla’s autonomous driving mode: an optional $8,000 drive force assist formula that “sees” the road through 8 external cameras, forward-facing radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors to allow traffic-sensitive cruise control, lane direction, parking. assistance, automatic lane replacement and other features. (All Teslas come with fundamental adaptive cruise control). It is not a completely autonomous formula: the driving force must remain active, hands on the guide wheel and eyes on the road. At first it was disturbing to have the car under my hands, but also unexpected how quickly it started to feel normal. I tested the car’s gentle electric acceleration, which looked like a high-speed exercise from a station or a roller coaster taking off, without my sedan rushing as I tried to reach the speed of the road.
I put on my sunglasses and filled myself with that feeling of infinite possibilities. I felt like Amid a sunny road trip montage in a Hollywood blockbuster.
I arrived 70 miles later in Taos with just over the remaining battery part, not enough for a circular to the camp scattered in the forest service box I was looking for, and discovered that the two slow destination loaders in the small town were turned off or inaccessible. So I headed 30 minutes north to the ski domain to look for juice on a third slow charge hoping to recover the day after myArray.
Not only have I driven an electric vehicle before, where the time it takes to recharge it is as vital as the distance to an endpoint, however, my Fusion can travel 500 miles in a tank, so I rarely worry. fuel or distance. I went to Taos countless times last winter, and although I would possibly have worried that my tires were skating on the ice, I never got involved with the fuel gauge on my board pointing to E.
Taos station, I connected. “Three hours and 40 minutes,” the screen said, telling me how long it took until the battery recharged. It’s definitely a replacement for a ten-minute pit prevention at a fuel station. I took the time to explore the grassy ski slopes, but when the sun went down and it started raining, I had to do some calculations in electric vehicles. I can leave with the car partially loaded, check to locate a point along the road in the dark and restrict my autonomy for the next day’s activities, or I can just call it one night, sleep in the parking lot with your resident camping with mountain bikers and spend time with JLo and Matthew McConaughey. It’s not a complicated choice.
A bad-taste film party and a full pace later, I curled up in my sleeping bag at the back of the car, looking to distinguish the small star bites on the tinted glass ceiling. The back seats were flatter than my car and I didn’t have to put my feet in a closed chest that led to claustrophobia. And there’s also a view. Still, anyone much taller than me could not sleep in the car; At just 68 inches long, I maximized the trunk area with 3 inches to spare.
As I walked away, I thought distractedly how frightening it would be to expect a hailstorm at $52,000 with a full glass roof.
Several episodes of mysterious and cursed buzzing and some unexplained alarm clocks led me to do systematic testing of the Bluetooth key and door lock. I decided that if I wanted the car to remain closed and off while I was sleeping inside, I would have to disconnect my phone after fastening it at night to prevent its proximity to the car from turning on the air conditioner or automatic unlocking of the doors. if someone pulled a handle. As I walked away, I thought distractedly how frightening it would be to expect a hailstorm in a $52,000 car with a full glass roof.
The next morning I woke up early with the sunlight penetrating through the glass bubble at nearly 360 degrees around me. The sky had cleared up and the view of the complex, even from the car parking lot, was beautiful. Feeling well rested, I stoeded, zipped my sleeping bag and pressed the door opening button. The car alarm broke through the morning calm and I tried to reconnect to Bluetooth before provoking the anger of my camping buddies. I’m not even sure my own car has a working alarm.
When my central rhythm returned to normal, I turned the stove on the flat, low tailgate to make coffee and oatmeal. I took out part and part of my cooler, kept in the perfect 24 x 15 inch garage, well under the trunk floor, where my Ford has a spare tire, which is probably even more convenient, let’s be honest, much less cool. Instead of adding spare parts to your vehicles, Tesla offers a loose roadside helpline, which works as long as you don’t run out of cell service. The hatch, which opens to a 76-inch free space, allowed me to move freely under it, and the huge amount of garage area meant I didn’t have to look for anything while fulfilling my morning routine.
With the Tesla and my batteries recharged, I resumed my plan, returning to the city and then east to locate a camp and some walks through the day. My address pulled me off the road and put me on an old-looking road in New Mexico: rocky, stoned and in bad shape. With 6.6 inches of free floor space and four-wheel drive, the Tesla has a slight improvement over the Fusion, which has only 5.3 inches of free space and front-wheel drive. I sailed nervously on a very cobbled secondary road to a secluded spot with a parking spot at a point and trees spaced just for a hammock.
The one at his campsite (Photo: Maren Larsen)
Before I could sit down, it started raining. I postponed my hiking projects and hammocks and crouched in the car as the rain turned into hail. Being in a car during a hailstorm is an unpleasant and noisy experience, but I’m never too worried about Whatsername getting hit. I guess they show character. At the Tesla, however, it was a nightmare. What if the dirt road is absolutely destroyed and I can’t take the highway? What if the glass breaks? (A search on Tesla’s owner forums after the fact indicated that Tesla was incredibly unlikely, and Tesla says its internal tests have shown that glass is more shock-resistant than aluminum.)
The typhoon lasted all afternoon and until the last night, but fortunately the hail was not large enough to pose a genuine threat. Finally, far enough away from civilization to have lost a cellular signal, I put my phone into airplane mode. The car was silent, indifferent to its Bluetooth lifeline. With some other night of film out of the consultation and the technical features of Inert Tesla, the forest around me has cleared up. For the first time in days, I didn’t care where I would load or how I’d get there. I got into my sleeping bag and looked at the rain through the roof, soaking me off the unpluged happiness of being there and alone.