Prequel

Back in March my friend/colleague Charles and I (and our respective families) went down to Warbirds over Wanaka in the beautiful Queenstown-Lakes District to see the Airshow.

We both owned cars that we enjoyed driving, but with a tendency towards a lead foot, not cheap to run 😅. Since we each needed to rent a car, we took the opportunity to hire an EV. We’d heard so much about them but never actually driven one.

We both hired a BYD Atto 3 and were looking forward to the experience.

One week out from our holiday we both got an email from the rental company, they would be unable to supply us with our cars as both had been badly damaged in accidents… However, they offered us both FREE upgrades to a Tesla Model 3! Hell yea!

We were in Wanaka for 1 week and spent a significant amount of time driving around in the Model 3, making many trips backwards and forwards across the Remarkables between Wanaka and Queenstown.

Needless to say, we were both very impressed with the Model 3, despite being a rental (rental cars are heavily mistreated and are typically not in great condition)

Here are a few of the things that stood out to me:

• Low center of gravity - Having the batteries as a long wide block across the center 2/3 of the car keeps the weight very low. This drastically improves handling
• Balanced distribution of weight - Not having a heavy engine in the front meant that the car was evenly balanced front to back (Front: 856kg Rear: 904kg)
• Quiet - I noticed little to no road noise when driving (except where the road surface was really bad). This made it easy to have conversations with people in the car without raising our voices
• Storage - Despite the boot being smaller than the car we currently own (2021 Skoda Superb Sportline Wagon) with the added space in the Frunk (bonnet) for storage, the capacity was similar
• Infotainment - This was a real pleasure to use, the UX (user experience) is fantastic, well thought out, easy to use, AND regularly updated
• Performance - Even though we were driving the base model, the instantaneous torque was impressive to say the least, especially when pulling out of corners on the open highway.

For me, this experience flipped a switch in my head, putting me into “research” mode, Kicking off approximately 9 months of deep research into the Teslas and whether they would be a good fit as a replacement car for my family and I.

Gripes with my current car

• Fuel is getting increasingly expensive with 95 Octane costing $2.75 per L with a 70L tank. I’m spending Nearly $200 per fill and filling twice a month
• The car is huge, and parking it is a pain
• The Infotainment SUCKS!
  • It’s really slow to start
  • Apple CarPlay lags like crazy
  • The Radio still doesn’t show the names of radio stations, because the importer won’t allow it for privacy reasons…
  • It had the steering wheel replaced multiple times because radar-guided cruise control stopped working
  • I was without an engine cover for a year while Skoda redesigned it to prevent fires in the engine bay

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good car. But a lot about it is frustrating. It was time for a change.

Tesla concerns

Everyone watches videos online and hears all the negative things about Tesla. It’s easy to have a strong bias against them without actually having had any experience with one. But holding onto that bias is the place of fools. I wanted to find out the real story and I did my research.

First, I wanted to make sure that Tesla was the right choice from a pure specifications perspective. I spent a lot of time in Google Sheets, pulling in specification data and comparing all the cars in the market. Looking at weight, length, width, boot space, price, power/torque, warranty, range etc. It was an exhaustive list.

This affirmed that Price : Spec, nothing beat out the Tesla.

So the next question is build quality. Now I am a Quality Assurance Engineer by trade, having done Software, Hardware, and Firmware testing. I know that nothing is ever perfect. However, I’d heard some nasty stories about build quality and I wanted to do some digging.

First, I want to cut Tesla some slack, they are a “new” company in the car manufacturing game, and people are unfairly comparing the build quality with companies that are 100+ years old. Those early 5+ years will be shaky for any brand as they refine their processes. That said, I did hear a lot about panels not lining up and that was my greatest concern (I had not seen anything about saftey being a concern).

After a lot of digging, this is what I found out.

• The majority of the issues existed only for customers in the US, taking delivery of cars built in the Fremont/California factory.
• Very few issues with the cars out of Beijing, China (Which is where New Zealand gets its Teslas from)
• 99% of these issues were not present on the 2023+ models and I’d heard of no issues on the Hardware 4 “Highland” Model 3’s
• There are exhaustive checksheets you can get for delivery day to make sure everything is good and you don’t drive away if there are issues
• You have 72 hours post delivery to bring up any issues that would cause a delivery rejection, beyond that you fall back to issues being resolved under warranty
• NZ has a STRONG Consumer Guarantees Act that protects the consumer from issues

Fast forward to 2024-Dec-03

My Wife and I had been away over the weekend for a surprise trip to Waitomo to see the glow worm caves and today we had planned to go into Tesla Auckland South to see the Model 3 Performance (Highland) and take it for a Test drive

We wanted to see how it performed, what it looked like in the flesh, and if we liked the changes.

Let me tell you, The INSANE acceleration profile lives up to the name. I had never felt my internal organs press against my spine until that moment, it was amazing‼️ 😍

Back at the dealership and chatting with the Sales guy I learned some useful information.

• Tesla had just increased its referral discount to 1,600 for the purchaser and 800 in Tesla credit for the referrer
• Tesla also used UDC Finance
• Tesla was offering 2.99% while my existing car was at 7.98%

Tesla using UDC made this choice even easier as my Skoda was financed with UDC. Here is how it works

Ordering Process

1. Everything is done inside the Tesla App on your phone
2. You purchase the car through Tesla and pay the (100% refundable if finance or Trade-in fails) deposit of $ 400
3. Choose UDC for the Finance
4. You tell Tesla that you are trading in a car
5. You let them know that money is owed on the car and that it’s with UDC
6. Tesla will give you a trade-in valuation on your car
7. If you accept, Tesla will subtract the amount owing on your existing loan, pay it off to UDC on your behalf, and give you the balance of the trade-in as a reduction in the total loan amount.

Example (arbitrary numbers for easy math):

• The new car is worth $100,000
• Your trade-in is valued at $50,000
• You still owe $25,000 on the trade-in
• Total new finance = NewCarPrice - (Trade-in value - OldCarBalance)
• Total new finance = $100,000 - ($50,000 - $25,000) = $75,000

The next day, I contacted a colleague at work and asked for their Referral code to order a new Tesla.

The Car

• Tesla Model 3 Performance Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive
• Ultra Red Paint
• 20" Warp Wheels
• Black Premium Interior
• Autopilot
• Enhanced Auto Pilot
• Full Self-Driving Capability

I decided FSD (Full Self-Driving Capability) was not worth the cost.

Delivery should be between Jan-Feb 2025 (March if I am unlucky)

Follow along for more posts as we get closer to the time and I talk more about how I plan to pull data off the car into my Kubernetes cluster for analytics