Automotive

Wait until you drive a Tesla.

 

The BMW i5 you drove seems a tiny bit slow by Tesla electric car standards.  The Tesla car itself - not looking at its controversial top executive - is a wonderful machine from a driving perspective.  It is significantly lighter than the competition.  And the car has the most amazing torque curve that makes the car jump with excitement the instant you breath on the accelerator pedal.  The car is tuned to be extremely responsive, even a small increase in pressure on the pedal result in a fairly large response from the car.  I'm sure all of the response isn't great for tire life and probably isn't very efficient.  But!  It does make me feel very safe!  Sure, the Tesla does have some weaknesses, the very mediocre brakes are one BIG AREA of oversight.  But they did the right thing in most applications.  They didn't cheat by giving you skimpy tires to get more range.  Look at the BMW iX, a large $90,000 SUV (with a few options, tax, and license), the standard variant comes with 235mm wide tires!  That's awfully narrow for a car of that size and weight!  The Tesla Model 3 (the smallest car they make) has 235mm wide tires on the base variant in USA!  The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are also some of the cheapest cars with a double wishbone suspension (the superior architecture used by Rolls Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, etc.)!  Not a MacPherson strut suspension!  Fun fact; Porsche's very expensive 2 door sports cars (almost all 911, Boxster, and Cayman models, but not their SUVs nor sedans) are probably the only very expensive cars that aren't double wishbone - this is mostly because they don't want the double wishbone to intrude on trunk space.  Overall, from a chassis engineering standpoint, Tesla did a good job!  Now if only Tesla could fit a spare tire into the trunk, then I'd be happier - need to send my memo to the Engineering team about that again.