Tesla Ownership Pros and Cons

So after waiting and waiting for Tesla to start producing a car that was actually mildly affordable, and for the Midwest to fill up a little more with charging station, I finally bit the bullet and ordered myself a Tesla model 3 sedan this weekend. Im excited about cutting the fuel line and maintenance costs, but any duders or dudettes here have any experience owning a Tesla or any all electric cars really? Id love to see some pros and cons of ownership for people that have been on this bandwagon for a while!

I've had one for a couple years and live in San Francisco and it's awesome. Charging stations are everywhere in The Bay so it's pretty convenient.

Only con is the auto pilot, people should still be paying attention even while using it and a lot are not. I use it often and have only had one hiccup with it. On the highway, the sensors detected a dip in the concrete (start of some roadworks) as the end of the road and decelerated my car from 70 to probably less than 20 mph immediately. Luckily no one was behind me but if they were I definitely would have caused a huge accident maybe even death. Making things worse to disengage the Autopilot you have to tap the break which means after I had decelerated i had to tap the brakes slowing down even more to then accelerate.

Be very careful when using the auto-pilot.

yeah, im a fan of the act of driving, so I don't honestly see myself using it much other than proof of concept. Opted to not drop the 8K on the full self drive because no Maximum Overdrive for me please

I don't see how electric cars are feasible in the sense that they are they're the only form of fuel for vehicles considering how electrical grids don't produce enough electricity to fuel every car on the road and everything else with it.

@rebel_scum: Electrical grids in most developed nations are capable of handling a total conversion to electric cars if most people charge their cars at night when general power usage is low. A slow 3kW overnight charger uses roughly as much electricity as central air conditioning for a house or less than running an oven and a laundry machine at the same time.

Even in places with worse infrastructure the grid can be updated and upgraded. In some places new power plants will likely have to be built, but it will still be cheaper overall than maintaining the fossil fuel infrastructure from extraction to refineries and distribution.

It was all those Beastcast ads, subconsciously making you think that electric cars are normal now dot com.

I wanna hear what you think of the car after some time with it, I've been thinking about making my next car purchase an electric one. My two main concerns are road trips to visit my fam that lives about 400 mi away, and everyday charging since I live in an apt complex. Are you installing an in-home charging station, how does that whole thing work?

I would really like a 100% electric vehicle but I worry the infrastructure for that is still not setup yet where I live for that to be viable by the time I need to get a new car.

I do not own a Tesla myself, however I know someone in my area (Ohio, USA) that does.

He is generally pleased with his experience. The only downside is that there are swaths of places in the mid-southern US where charging stations are few and far between. This is based on info from about a year ago, however if you wanted to travel from the Ohio to Texas, you would have to take "the long way", due to a dearth of charging stations in states like Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

@keenblaze: I have gotten the at home charging station installed in my garage already, our power setup was good enough at the house that they were able to use the existing second panel. Ive been told to expect maybe $20 a month increase to the power bill but that's a lot cheaper than I use on average in gas for my jeep. You can also simply plug directly into a normal 120 or 240v outlet, but obviously the 120 is going to have a hard time doing much more charge than 3 miles an hour or so. There Is a Tesla supercharging station directly between my work and home though, so in theory I could stop there once a week or so and keep a full charge in about 45 minutes

idk I'd say a con is the bolivian lithium but hey

@zombie2011: That's just absolutely terrifying. Don't end up like this guy.