Some Tesla tips

people who approached me when they found out I had a Tesla Model S.

In New Zealand, that amount of money can get you a luxury European sports car or nearly a BMW’s i8 plug- in hybrid.

Although some of the luxury sports cars have launch mode, you have the upgraded Ludicrous Speed, and, seriously Elon, you have to credit your marketing team for coming up with that moniker, because deploying that function is Ludicrous- ly fabulous.

I liked the nod, Elon, when you hold down the Ludicrous mode on the huge touchscreen and you get the animation of “warp drive” and then up come the two options asking if you want to continue. There’s “Yes, bring it on” or the hilarious “No, I want my Mommy” ( though in New Zealand it’s mummy, so maybe in the next software update you could fix that, please? ).

Hit “yes” and be prepared to have your head thrown back into the seat as the Model S shoots ahead at a warp speed. Seriously, Elon, that never got old, though I always made sure I deployed it on quiet streets without any pedestrians as I didn’t want to startle people when the red beast silently launched off.

Of course, when you deploy Ludicrous mode a few times, you not only power though the battery charge but also your power usage graph on the touchscreen goes from a flat line to looking like the Remarkables ( a big mountain range in New Zealand).

When I picked up my test model it was 90 per cent full of charge, giving me about 400km of driving