Re: Not bad but still no cigar, methinks!
In the spirit of balance and honesty, as a Model S owner, I should just say that any claims of 300 mile range are total nonsense, and I have no idea why TM would tell him that a "press car" would get less range - one of the great strengths of the car is that the battery degradation is extremely slow so the press car would be going every bit as far as a new one.
In the real world in the UK a Model S will go 225 miles on a full charge. 250 is pretty easy if you are careful, and monastic drivers can get even morem, but 300 is not realistic. Personally I drive it without any consideration to energy efficiency and get 200 ;-)
There is an obvious tradeoff then compared to a German Diesel Exec car which can go 500 or more, and which more importantly can re-fill in 10 minutes.
But the reality after 6 months and 10k miles in a Model S is that it is genuinely *more convenient to fill with fuel than a conventional car*.
In a normal car you have to go and buy petrol say once a week, which is a 15 minute detour from your journey, and which inevitably sometimes has to happen at an inconvenient moment when you are in a hurry.
But in a Model S every morning you get in and it has charged up overnight. You never have to go unexpectedly to get fuel, and because the range is so high, if you cover say 50 miles a day typically then you literally could not care less about "range anxiety" or even driving efficiency or anything else. And then on those occasional days when you want to drive 300 miles you of course need to have a plan, and a charging strategy, and a Plan B in case the charger is out of service. That is less convenient than buying petrol, of course, but it's not much of a hardship, especially when you remember that charging at a Tesla Supercharger only takes 30 minutes or so and is FREE.
Saving 15 minutes a week by not buying petrol and instead having to stop for 30 minutes once every 8 weeks to charge on the road is a pretty easy tradeoff for me. And why are you trying to go 300 miles without stopping for a rest break anyway?
But don't kid yourself you could ever drive 300 miles non-stop in one :-)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
