Well, my quest continues to replace my old Range Rover 5.0 Supercharged with something sizeable and electric. My daughter came with me to the Netherlands this week and drove over herself in her Range Rover Evoque.
I had a test drive booked with Tesla for the Model X on Tuesday. Super easy to do online with the app, uploading of driving license and verification etc. Location was a bit horrible on a busy industrial estate. Car was ready upon arrival. Was greeted, walked around the car and said have fun.
Well, first issue was that the rear seat (was 7 seat model) could not lock in place and was broken. Second issue is that that new horizontal screen is partially blocked by the steering wheel. Annoyingly as the gear shifter is on the left of the screen implemented as an app you have to lean to the right to see it. But hey ho, it gets a bit better when you tilt the screen which is a cool feature. I guess they made it for the joke steering wheel and this car had a normal round wheel.
Off to drive, initial impression is that the throttle response is pretty strong but something you get used to. The one pedal driving is no where near as strong as what we have in our Polestar, but again something you get used to when driving more. I actually really liked the no indicator stalks, I immediately took to it, no problem at all. Superb implementation and works well together with what you do and how the car anticipates it.
But we were back in about five minutes, perhaps 10 minutes. The drive was horrible. Felt so unrefined. The wind noise I could deal with, although that really shouldn't be there on a €130K car. It was the ride quality, now I think something was wrong with it as surely such low-level vibrations shouldn't be there. I changed the suspension settings from manual low and medium, to auto and comfort, it was just always there. It wasn't like what you can get with safety assistance, it was like bad road surface but all the time. And then there was the unrefined air suspension. My gosh, it's bad and bumpy and not tuned well; terrible at taking traffic-calming road features, even worse when on those typical European cobbled streets, but also every single ridge in a tarmac or concrete road was noticeable. I really wasn't expecting that.
Oh, and then there was the sound system, it had clarity, I give it that. But just can't produce bass correctly, so muddled with no depth to it. But to be fair, it was radio, Bluetooth is supposed to be better, but to make it shine one got to use the USB ports.
I know I only had it for a short while, but I also didn't like the UI. I find it requires too many clicks, and the print is too small for use in a car when driving at speed.
However, what really got to me was the reaction of the Service Center, they were surprised about the car and acted in disbelief? Interestingly, two day later they got back to me and said that I was right and that vehicle has something wrong with it and was decommissioned as a demonstrator, and they are awaiting another one.
A real shame as range and size wise this was on paper the best option for my unique use case; wanting to drive without recharging from our house in the United Kingdom to our house in the Netherlands, whilst big enough to haul lots of stuff.
I've done some more research and won't discount them fully. It's a bit harder to find, but actually quite a few similar experiences that are similar. It appears that it really depends on what one was used to before this car. But the reports can be that the Raven version Long Range can be more compliant and refined, and even the even older 100D but requires mounts to be sorted, and good alignment performed. From what I see, the raven has half decent charging speeds and charging curve, but the 100D is a bit slow in that aspect compared to what we are used to with the Polestar.
I'll give them another chance, but the first encounter wasn't good at all.
