To cut to the chase, I bought a Tesla. Okay, it’s really my wife’s car and she’ll be the one making the payments on it, but on paper, I’m the purchaser, since I don’t have student loans and my credit was more optimal to get the financing done. But we have a Tesla, and I get to drive it around every now and then.
It hasn’t been long, but it’s definitely a fun new toy to drive around in. There’s definitely an adjustment period getting used to regenerative braking, and how you can literally drive with your foot on a single pedal. The feeling of there being no gears shifting at all as you accelerate, and the sheer lack of sound of motors or smells of exhaust definitely makes you feel like you’re driving a spaceship.
Without question, there’s still a treasure chest worth of experience yet to be tapped as far as diving deeper into ownership of our Tesla, and I’m sure weeks, months and maybe years down the line, there will be functions and features that we’ll still be discovering, and hopefully none that will have been gamechangers early in our ownership.
But the point of this post is about behavioral observations that I’ve had, now that I’ve been driving around in the Tesla myself for a few weeks now. I didn’t really think much about it after experiencing some observations, I guess I can kind of understand what’s going on around me whenever I, or my wife are riding around in the Tesla.
- Surrounding drivers are more aggressive. This is really the big thing that I’ve noticed the most when driving around myself. Turning on a turn signal to initiate a lane change, way more frequently than I’ve noticed in any other car I’ve been in or driven, results in adjacent drivers stepping on the gas to forcibly deny me entry. If at a merge point, surrounding drivers are noticeably more aggressive and out to make sure they get ahead of me, regardless of our spatial positioning. At stop lights, in just the last two weeks, I’ve had more people act like they’re Brian O’Connor on me, and turn a green light into an impromptu drag race, and seemingly make a point of getting in front of me like they just won the le Mans. I’m all like, buddy, I’m still trying to learn the pedal of this car, I’m definitely not trying to get in any races here. Plus, I’m 40 with kids, I’m long past caring about 95% of red light matchups.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve pushed the pedal a few times, and the acceleration is staggering. In most cases, I probably could smoke a lot of the cars that have gone Dom Toretto on me, but just because I could doesn’t mean that I am, especially where I’m still new to this and learning about the car.
But I don’t know if it’s the color of the car, or the notion that all Tesla drivers must be rich assholes, but it’s pretty undeniable that drivers all around me, when I’m in the Tesla, have their aggression ramped up like that one cheat code in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City where you can make everyone super aggressive.
- There are way more Teslas and EVs on the road than there are places in public to charge them. My house has yet to have our private charger installed. The upcoming holiday and the fact that we had no idea when the delivery of the car would actually come made it difficult to plan out, so we don’t have a personal charger installed just yet. We’ve kept the car charged because my office has EV parking, and have had to utilize a supercharger already.But it was the supercharger experience did I realize that it wasn’t going to be as quick and easy as I thought it might be, as when I rolled into the lot with the charging stations, every single one of them was occupied. I never thought of it, and I didn’t expect it, but it’s apparent that there are a lot of Teslas out there, and the need for superchargers seems to far exceed the amount available. I was fortunate that one opened up while I was circling, but I could very much anticipate this being an issue in the future.
- Which ties into this next observation, people very much abuse EV parking, especially if said EV spots are in optimal locations. I noticed this at Disney World, how EV parking was drastically closer to the front of the parks than the rest of the pleeb parking, but it wasn’t until I had my own EV and tried to use the EV parking at my office did I realize just how problematic EV parking abuse actually is.My parking garage has six EV spots, and they’re pretty good. When I knew I needed to use them, I didn’t realize that I’d be competing with the same cars on a daily basis to try and get one of them, and since I have to take #1 to school in the morning, they’ve often times been all filled up when I get there. And the thing is, I’ve noticed that they’re the same cars on a regular basis, and knowing first hand how often a Tesla actually needs to be charged, it’s become apparent that these people are utilizing the EV parking not because they actually need to charge so much as it’s just better parking than if they had to park in general pop. This is really no surprise at all upon thinking about it, but it’s still obnoxious considering their asshole want for good parking just might be denying people who might actually need the charging spots.
- Speaking of the assholes, now that I am a Tesla driver, I can now raise my nose and be that Tesla driver, and look down on the other Teslas that I deem to be of lower quality than the one I legally own. Namely, all the people in the low-end Model 3s that are single motor, rear-wheel drive, as most obvious by their shitty looking wheels that look more like a sandwich meat slicers than some sweet rims.The best part is that there’s this one low-end Model 3 that runs sentry mode, and has lights come on when you walk too close to it; I’m like bitch please, you’re parked next to two Model Ss and a Model Y, ain’t nobody going to touch your car first, get the fuck over yourself. Yes, I know it’s a treasure to you, but to the rest of us Tesla drivers that actually like having two motors and all-wheel drive, you’re basically a Nissan Leaf with a fancy skin.
- And last but not least, speaking of the Nissan Leaf, if you think being that Tesla driver is cruel to other Tesla drivers, imagine what it’s like for non-Tesla EVs, like Nissan Leafs? They’re these hideous little buggies that are unfortunately entitled to the same EV spaces that I need, and it annoys the piss out of me when I get into the parking garage and the same three Teslas are already camping half the spots, but then there is this Audi and two Nissan Leafs that are camped out in the other. Little fucking turds piss me off, but no more than when they’re camping a charger that I’ve been needing the last few days.Maybe this one will dissipate once we get our own charger and don’t have to sweat it as much, but probably not. They are inferior, and being that Tesla driver isn’t going to change that.
