I’m not exaggerating when I say delighted. I’ve experienced plenty of stressful experiences with EV charging at Electrify America. Range anxiety is real, and planning out charging stops with non-Tesla EVs can be especially time-consuming and stressful.

Tesla’s vertical integration seamlessly presents all the information you need to make your EV experience smoother and calm anxieties. I’m a big fan of Tesla’s navigation system and route planning. I think that, coupled with their charging network, is the company’s strongest selling point.

A curiosity
How will this be handled now that non-Teslas are able to charge at Tesla chargers? Unless there’s some sort of integration within the other OEM’s software, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, etc, it’s unclear how Tesla would be able to accurately project how many cars are en route and how many chargers will be available.

15 seconds after I started driving, I stopped because I didn’t like the one-pedal driving and wanted to change the drive mode. I’ve tried one-pedal driving before and I don’t like it. It took me another 20 seconds to find the Dynamics section in the car’s settings, where I changed the setting to ‘Creep’.

I started driving again and then 10 seconds later I stopped again while looking over to the settings again, accidentally hitting the brakes hard and jolting the car to a stop, spooking out my friend.

Him: “You don’t have to hit the breaks like that 😒”
Me: “This thing is aggressive! 😥”

I didn’t like ‘Creep’ either so I changed the setting to ‘Roll when pedals are released.’

Confident that this was the right setting for me, I started driving and pulled up the navigation app again. My friend then went on to explain that he hates when he’s driven by other people in a Tesla because they can’t get over the one-pedal driving dynamics… I bet he was regretting lending me his car in that moment.

Then, realizing that ‘Roll’ didn’t feel right, I stopped the car again near the parking structure’s exit. I let out a sigh as I looked for the Dynamics settings once again and changed the mode back to ‘Creep’ and the acceleration mode to ‘Chill.’

Finally, as I turned left and out of the structure, the car rang different chimes as me because I was nearing the curb.

It caught me off guard. My senses were overwhelmed.

In isolation, all these events wouldn’t mean a whole lot. One-Pedal driving is a common EV driving dynamic that just takes some getting used to. Changing drive modes isn’t a new concept, and accidentally braking too hard can happen from time to time. Also, many cars (including my own) have advanced visual and audible safety features to let you know when you’re close to hitting something.

But all this happened to me in my first 3.5 minutes of driving the car. A regular Model 3 driver likely wouldn’t face this sequence of events, but since the car was so different from others I’d driven, it happened to me.

I drove out of the parking structure exclaiming, “I don’t like this car man.” My friend laughed.

Having no information behind the steering wheel changes the driving experience

Any time I drive with the GPS on, I tend to glance over to the screen fairly often. As we waited at a red light to turn left on Culver, I realized I was struggling to see the map clearly.

The map is positioned on the right side of the screen, in favor of the blindspot camera, speedometer, and 3D rendered view of the surrounding environment, called Real-Time Visualization, on the left. As a result, I had to look down and far to the right, away from the road, to see the map. If it was on the left side, it would be more in my line of sight and easier to see, while still being able to keep the road in my peripheral vision.