Tesla P85D

Life Cars & Motorcycles
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Tesla is the new motoring wunderkind. It’s is clearly THE leader in electric supercars. It’s cars are super fast and seemingly very well made.

Walked into the TESLA outlet in San Jose last year. Marvelled at the vehicles. They opened up a place in Walnut Creek. And I went in there a few times.

The other day walked in and asked if I can get on the test drive list. Remembered they used to do test drives at their production facility in Fremont, not far away.

Turns out they now do demos in Walnut Creek.

Didn’t want to put on any airs, told them the current crop are too expensivo for yours truly. But maybe maybe the upcoming 35,000 dollar ones could be in the running !

Took a nice demo with a nice sales rep. They call them Owner Advocates or some such.

Tesla markets their own cars themselves and there is no hard push for people to buy. Salesmen probably are on salary.

My salesman tells me casually that he is one of the top ten best sales reps in the USA for Tesla and he got one to drive himself. Pretty cool.

He knows his stuff, he asks me what model I’d like to drive. Not having ever driven one, i said whichever is convenient.

He says, oh great, let’s take out our most awesome , top of the line P85D with the “ludicrious” mode. This was their top car , selling for about 130,000 or something.

It drives itself on the freeway. Just set your cruise control, the distance you want from yourself to the car in front and you can actually take your hands off the steering wheel. The car will drive itself on the freeway. Pretty cool when you are tired ! It can stop and take off again as well.

It has a self park feature also, but i didn’t get to try that.

The car drives really well, super quiet and docile and then if required takes off like you are on a catapult ! Just amazing.


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No tesla fans

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:fan:

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do they just turn on the auto-pilot mode when you say you want to do test drives?

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The Auto Pilot is new this year. So is all wheel drive (it uses a front drive motor as well as the normal rear drive motor, thus two motors). As a result one can actually get a rather steep discount on previous models without either. Otherwise, Tesla do NOT discount.

SO far it only works on the freeways. The sensors can’t figure out the lanes too well on regular roads, so far.

So once you are on a freeway. You can set how many car lengths you want to be behind the cars in front, set your speed and then pull this little lever (think its the cruise control lever, i forget) twice and the car starts to drive by itself.

It can then make turns and keep your desired speed , while being able to come to even a complete stop should traffic ahead stop. Then go off again.

Now Audi also have this feature, and I think BMW does too. But Audi you still drive the car, just that if you lean towards the edge of the lane the car will steer itself back to the center. Tesla you actually can take your hands off the wheel entirely.

Quite nice on long trips down to LA !

I got a nice long , about 40 min demo. We got onto the freeway and then tried the self drive. It was cool but a bit unnerving, im not sure how much i would “trust” the system. But actually it seemed entirely competent.

Acceleration from 60 to 90 is incredible (not saying i went 90 just sayin) and the zero to 60 is like a catapult (again, not saying i did this you hear, just sayin).

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Elon Musk is a good guy. Their more affordable models could have a serious positive impact.

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Total Tesla fan. I’ll definitely look into getting one when I move back to Europe, if their leasing offers are good.

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They are expensive the current models. But the upcoming 35,000 dollar ones could really sock it to BMW , MERC and Audi.

Don’t they have a few in Taiwan already? I read that Taichung offers free parking to all electric cars (or was it Tesla only).

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I don’t know if there are many here yet as I don’t notice cars. Years back Tesla were planning on making Blue Star and White Star models which were closer to 15 grand. Don’t know what happened to them.

Musk is also branching into home power generation. And then there’s those rockets.

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I’ve heard there are a couple here, though I have yet to see them.

Saw a video of a guy testing it out the autopilot software update in the States. It will even change lanes for you if you hit the blinker!

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Tesla makes the Y in Germany and it is reportedly the best seller currently

Adaptive cruise control and active lane keeping is now standard on all Toyotas sold in the USA and becoming common on most other brands

Tesla is still the go to car if one wanted to go electric because of its really great charge network and that the cars are very fast even if they are very simple inside as far as design

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do these things go in the did not age well thread? :wink:

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Elon is in the running along with trump as possibly the anti christ or perhaps also bezos

But Tesla has been acknowledged to be better made NOW THAT THEY MAKE THEM IN CHINA.

Haha

I might like one but it’s still expensive and
It’s a bit much having all the controls on the center iPad thingy

Tesla are fast however insurance is expensive and repairs if crashed takes a long time I hear

I wouldn’t trust the auto pilot though as many have died
And I still remain worried the doors might not open in case the car catches on fire

I think the Audi way of ‘2 pulls on the inside latch and the door opens even if locked ‘ takes away my anxiety there

That said I’m waiting for the ORA CAT. If it’s here and 25k

So probably no Tesla on the horizon for me

They are everywhere here in the Bay Area

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a model 3 starts at a good chunk less than the average new car in the US now, costs less to run, and is way less than your tt. just sayin’. :wink:

model 3 starts at just over $30k with federal tax incentives. might be under $30k in California if you qualify.

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Haven’t really looked at the 3 since I got the TT so I’m set as far as new cars are concerned for awhile

The Prius is only 7 years old and it’s expected to do the full 20 year ownership I usually aspire to as they have a reputation for longevity

Charging a Tesla 3 costs roughly half what it would to fill up the tank on the TT currently around 50 bucks and I think the 3 is roughly half

But my Prius has that level of efficiency gas wise
And has cost nothing in repairs so far only oil change every 10k miles and it’s on its third set of tires

Have talked to a guy with a Tesla with 100k miles and he said he has spent zero dollars in maintenance

Hasn’t even changed his tires which really needed changing I don’t think they really go much past 80k if that in miles

When I got the TT the model 3 loaded one was about the same price and the fed rebate is hard to get as you have to owe the irs that amount of money to get it

Plus no rebate for Tesla then it’s only recently been re Instated for Tesla I think

But all said and done some IFS here

If I had a space in the garage

If I had not gotten the TT and the wife did NOT dislike the Tesla

Then it could work as 95 pct of my daily drives involve way less than the 250 plus mile range

Ideally if one had one’s own home and installed solar and had a Tesla battery installed at home a Tesla car will make total sense for many

Who knows maybe if I stumble into some money I may consider trading in the Prius for a Tesla

At this point I’m more interested in trading it in for the new 2023 Prius which has nearly 200 hp and can have all wheel drive and gets 57mpg !!!

If the numbers work I would be more interested in that at the moment

It I admit the few times I drove Tesla I liked them
They are 911 fast even the cheapest ones

I don’t need to replace the Prius yet though and it’s paid off so that’s really nice so probably not getting anything car wise for a long while

Ps went on Tesla website and the cheapest rear drive single motor 3 with zero add ons is 42990 plus tax and dmv

So about 47500 out the door or so
I wouldn’t qualify for the federal rebate but the state 4500 should do so still over 40k

It’s a nice vehicle though I have no idea what the insurance will be

Maybe in two years or three years when the Prius is 10 years old I can re look at it

The 2023 Prius has very nice lines and great reviews and is around 35k out the door or so so a very attractive car to get it seems

Will have to go demo one later when there is no mark up

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Uh, I think you have a misunderstanding of the credit. you need to have that much in liability over the year, but you don’t need to owe that much per se (which it seems you seem to be implying); anyone that doesn’t pay that much in taxes is unlikely to be buying a new ev.

why? (I think you’ve said you don’t make above a certain income, and that’s below the cutoff.)

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I was told that was if you owed money you get the rebate if you don’t owe money you don’t

So
If you are owing say 3k you get 3k if you owe 10k you get 7500 deducted and now you owe 2500

I usually get a refund so means I dont qualify for the rebate

I may be wrong though which it sounds like Honestly I don’t know how the fed rebate currently works lol

But since I’m not currently in the market it’s academic

The horse has left the barn on that one :smiley_cat::smiley_cat:

Maybe a few years later I will revisit a model 3
Most likely though I will drive the Prius till it’s very old

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that’s what I thought you were saying… that’s not how it works. it’s not how much you owe at tax time, it’s total tax liability regardless of whether you get a refund or owe at tax time. if your fedl income tax liability is $10k and you get a $2k refund, you still get the $7500. it’s a nonrefundable credit though, which means if you’re total liability is less than the rebate, you only get up to your total liability (so if you owe $5k, had $7k withheld so you get a $2k rebate, you get $5k).

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I’m a bit
Dense so bear with me here

Let’s say tax liability 15k minus tax paid and exemptions etc total 17k so I’m due 2000 refund

I now get the 2000 and the full 7500 back so I get 9500 back?

But if my total liability was 5k and I had paid a total of 7k so I’m due 2k refund but I get to add 5k so I get back a total of 5k plus 2k total back 7k?

Or what

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Yep. A $7500 tax credit is literally a credit towards your taxes ie the $15k you owe becomes $7500 you owe (assuming you meet all the criteria, such as income limits, etc) so if you had $17k withheld, you’d get $9500 back.

Being a nonrefundable credit, it can’t (in simple terms) create a refund where you have no liabilities, so the $5k in tax liabilities brings you down to $0 tax, and you get refunded the $7k you put in. A refundable tax credit would have given you a full $7500 credit even though you had only a $5k liability, meaning you’d have a ($2500) tax due, and get all your $7k back, for $9500 total.

edit: You seem like you make decent money; you gotta get smarter on tax credits (and if you don’t understand credits, probably deductions too).

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