I drove a model 85 yesterday, very interesting experience. My shop neighbors are renting the space for toy storage, the dad and his son have a very eclectic collection of vehicles 1992 Bronco with 30k, Viper, old fire truck, Buick GS, etc. Today one of the son's friends stopped by with a Tesla demo model 85, and since we were talking cars they offered me a drive. It's really eerie how there's so little noise. The instant torque is awesome, though the car felt a bit soggy otherwise. The instrument cluster and center console were really cool tech, but would take a bit of practice to safely operate without taking your eyes off of the road to hunt and peck. Overall I was pretty impressed, it's a very different sort of car.

Side note, after hot rodding around town for a little while, they had to plug it in to get home.:)

I think I would dislike a car that requires hour long stops at charging stations during trips. But I suppose one could rent a different car for road trips.

Musk says they're going to have a firmware fix for 'range anxiety,' which some interpret as a 10-15% increase in range per charge.

Personally, I'm quite happy with the plug-in hybrid tech in my Volt. I've done 18,000 miles to date averaging 123 MPG.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1426863038.jpg

Do you charge nightly? Any idea of the 'real' operating cost of this car ('fuel' only) versus, say a 4-cylinder car?

I pretty much have it plugged in all the time its home. My electric bill didn't change, so the charging cost is negligible (if I run the ceiling fan all day, it seems to cost more). so I figure it's somewhere aroung $0.04/mile.

We're lucky in LA to have very low electricity costs.