I invested some money into Tesla stock about 8 months ago, and have been rewarded handsomely. Therefore, with small portion of my gains, I found a 2012 Model S P85(performance model that can go 0-60 in 4 sec.) with 124K miles for about $22K which I believe is way below what others are selling for. Even though I invested into Tesla, I've never actually driven or ridden in one before. I believed from everything that I've researched with long battery life, performance, supercharger network, and Tesla as an energy company, I believed their future was bright.
Anyways, this post is more focused on the car itself.
The first two weeks, I was over the moon of how great the vehicle is. I loved how the car handled, loved the instant torque and could zip through anywhere. I loved the storage space with being a hatchback as well as front trunk space. I thought it's a great car that I was totally blinded from any flaws.
But after having it for a month, there are some definite flaws where if I had the option to buy a Tesla, I would probably pass. I'd be interested in renting it for awhile to check it out as it's a unique car, but I would not buy it again.
Here are my reasons:
1. Wind noise and excessive noise into the cabin. This is the biggest deal break. I've heard newer models are better, but I still see people complaining about this. I think it is the biggest flaw of Teslas. It always create this wind throbbing noise where it sounds like when you have the front windows shut, but have a back window open. The noise is very annoying and I took it to the service center, and they said that they fixed some molding, but it didn't fix anything. It sometimes give me little bit of car sick feeling b/c of this as it's probably messing with my ear pressure or something which itself is very annoying.
2. Estimated mileage is way off. I took a trip to a place where it's about 70 miles away. I started with battery power of 215 miles, and by the time I was about 60 miles into the trip, I decided to stop at a Supercharging station b/c I was already down to about 100 mile range left. So, going 60 miles, it used 115 miles of range. I was going about 75-80 mph. Yea, I could've gone slower to save on battery, but that's inconvenient.
3. Supercharging time sucks. It will take over an hour with my car to charge to full if I'm close to empty. When I start charging, my screen will initially state like 50 minutes remaining until fully charged, but in reality, it is much much longer. So, this is not a car to take on long trips as even though I started with 215 mile range, in reality, I would want to recharge after only going about 120 miles so i don't get dangerously low. 215 mile range is when i have it set as 90% full. So, at 100%, my range is about 240 miles.
4. Little annoying issues here and there. a. I've had to reboot my screen multiple times as sometimes, the screen would go blank and I would need to reboot which is annoying. b. When I get close to my car to with my key in my pocket, doors won't unlock and I would need to take my key out of my pocket before it unlocks. When this happens, there's no point of having this feature as i'd rather not have this feature and just take my key out of my pocket every time instead of having it work sometimes and sometimes not. c. my rear door doesn't open from outside currently. I've scheduled a service, but they have to order the parts, and won't be fixed for another 2.5 weeks.
5. When utilizing Supercharging stations, there's not much of fuel savings compared to gas. When using superchargers, last time, I got about 70 miles of range for $7. If gas is priced at $3.20/gallon, it's equivalent of getting like 32miles/gallon which is not that impressive.
6. I hate the Tesla fanboys. They will defend any criticism you'd make with Teslas as it's always the complainer's fault that it's the most annoying group of fanboys that i've ever communicated with.
So, therefore, I would not recommend buying a Tesla until these are available:
at least 500 mile range. Since if it's advertised 500 miles, it'll hopefully go for actually 400 miles.
make the charging time to be much faster. So until V3 Superchargers are widely available.
And with these options and being much more affordable.
Take care of the wind noise issue.
Hopefully in few years, this will be a reality, but at this time, I would not buy a Tesla. I know that mine is old, but even the newest ones have the same issues. They still have high wind noise. The range is not that great. Charging time still takes a long time. There are issues with build quality. There will be many annoying issues that you have to go to service which sucks.
I know many of the Tesla fanboys will come and defend their cars, and criticize me for making invalid points, but these are real concerns.
I also think I'm overextended with TSLA stocks, so I have shed some of my positions to not have my portfolio be crushed if something happens to TSLA. I do still believe though that Tesla is the future, so I'm still holding a good chunk of TSLA stocks. Just not as much as before.