2015 Tesla Model S P85D: Witnessing change in 36,000 miles, plus one really long road trip
On April 21, 2015, a Tesla Model S P85D rolled off a transporter in front of Car and Driver headquarters, its cherry-red paint spattered with mud as if it had come from its Fremont, California, assembly plant by way of the Oregon Trail. The car’s unceremonious arrival belied the magnitude of the moment; the very first electric car to undergo a Car and Driver long-term test made the impending seismic shifts facing our industry feel very real and very close. You’ll note something similar the day you take delivery of your first plug-in vehicle.
We knew that Tesla was driving massive changes in a century-plus-old industry, but we’d soon be surprised to discover that the Model S was itself capable of change. When we took delivery of the car, Tesla was touting 691 horsepower from a car that would practically drive itself — just as soon as the engineers finished writing the software. Plugging the Model S in behind the office, we could feed the car with our 40-amp circuit, adding 22 miles of predicted range per hour of charging.
Nineteen months later, when our Model S embarked on a 4000-mile sendoff from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles via New York City, the car that completed that journey could steer itself down the highway, its two electric motors were now understood to make a combined 463 horsepower, and the 17inch touchscreen, twice upgraded by software updates, had learned to plot the neces-
sary high-speed-charging breaks on long-distance routes. Those stops would be dictated by Tesla’s network of proprietary Superchargers, which had grown from 188 U.S. locations to 325 during our time with the car, including a station just three miles from our Ann Arbor office. When we needed a quick jolt of electricity, that Supercharger could refill the battery at a rate roughly 10 times faster than that very first charge at 1585 Eisenhower Place. Our Model S was still red when it completed its 40,000-mile tour of duty, but in many ways, it was as if we were living with a different car.
Our P85D (read: performance, 85-kWh battery, dualmotor all-wheel drive) started with a steep $105,670 base price. We inflated that figure with 21-inch wheels ($4500), a panoramic glass roof ($2500), air springs ($2250), high-capacity onboard chargers ($1500), red paint ($1500), and a carbon-fiber spoiler ($1000). Inside, we splurged on Tesla’s aggressively bolstered “nextgeneration” seats ($3500), a high-fidelity sound system ($2500), a rear-facing third row of seats ($2500), carbon-fiber interior trim ($800), a coldweather package ($750), and a tech package that included the hardware needed to enable Autopilot’s self-driving features ($4250). The final price of $136,720 is spendy — even by BMW 7-series standards.
Our car’s big battery pack made electric living easy. The EPA rates the P85D at 253 miles per charge while our own real-world range test extracted 206 miles during a 75-mph highway cruise. The exact number wasn’t as important as the fact that the Model S effortlessly covered our staff’s dayto-day demands with plenty of juice to spare. It wasn’t offlimits to staffers with long commutes, nor did we ever feel uneasy taking the car for a weekend, when charging was less convenient or assured. There’s good reason newer EVs are targeting the 200-mile threshold that Tesla cracked.
Our long-distance road trip highlighted that Tesla’s range estimate is consistently optimistic. This discrepancy demanded that the driver perform constant mental math, evaluating how quickly the predicted range was falling compared with the climbing odometer. Over 40,000 miles, the predicted range dropped 1.4 miles for every mile driven.
We averaged 69 MPGe, well below the EPA’s 93 combined MPGe. With electricity at a national average of 13 cents per kWh, running our Tesla cost the same as driving a 38-mpg car with gas at $2.40 per gallon.
Efficiency, though, seems like one of the less compelling arguments for buying a Tesla. The Model S’s appeal lies in the thrill of instant torque, the comfort of seamless acceleration, the tranquility of nearsilent idling, and the convenience of at-home refueling. Tesla alone made EVs cool, with its focus on the primal desire for style and performance. We just hope that the company can embrace the kind of continuous improvement we witnessed in the Model S. If Musk can advance its build quality and send a SpaceX rocket to retrieve its pricing from the upper stratosphere, as he intends to with the $35,000 Model 3, Tesla’s transformation from startup to automotive institution will be complete.
HOW TO TRAVEL FAST AND EAT WELL IN A TESLA
The Model S’s embedded trip planner keeps a conservative store of electricity in reserve and favors frequent but short charging. As we crossed middle America, the nav system recommended stopping at almost every Supercharger along our route. But because the charging rate slows as the battery fills, we found it quicker to ignore Tesla’s recommendations, drive the car to near empty, and plug it in for only slightly longer charges. Our routine: Drive between 120 and 200 miles at roughly 5 mph over the speed limit, charge for 20 to 45 minutes to a predicted range 50 miles greater than what was needed for the next stint, then get back on the road. We typically arrived at the subsequent stop with 20 to 30 miles of remaining range, although uphill stints caused us to slash our speed or tuck in behind semis on a couple occasions. Starting with 247 miles of range and climbing a little more than 1000 feet over 190 miles into Weatherford, Oklahoma, we rolled to the plug with just two miles of indicated range.
Traveling in this manner requires some advanced planning to know which chargers to visit and which to bypass. We used Google Maps and plugged in our chosen charging stops knowing that we wouldn’t risk a run longer than 200 miles.
In hindsight, we would have added one preplanning task: Noting the nearby amenities that are listed on Tesla’s Supercharger web page. You can’t escape mediocre megachain dining along the Supercharger network, but you can prevent the disappointment of pulling up to a charger at dinner time only to discover that it’s located at a secluded hotel. And even the bestplanned trip requires a good pair of walking shoes. It often takes a decent hike — sometimes across lawns, through landscaping berms, or along busy roads — to refuel the passengers.
RANTS & RAVES
“The heavy regenerative braking works well in this car. I wish all EVs and hybrids had it.” —Mike Sutton
“Autopilot is the first system that convinces me that maybe the autonomous future isn’t that far away after all.” —Dave VanderWerp
“Charging turns a five-anda-half-hour drive into seven hours.” —Jennifer Harrington
“The cabin heats up faster in this car than in many internal-combustion [powered] cars.” —Kirk Seaman
“The touchscreen responds to pokes and swipes like a five-year-old iPhone that’s received three too many operating-system updates.” —Eric Tingwall
“When I began writing this, the odo read 16,061. Now it reads 16,063. Wait, who was driving?” —Alexander Stoklosa
It’s too early to know whether Tesla will amount to an entire chapter or a mere footnote in the annals of automotive history, but the company’s Model S will leave a record here at Car and Driver: We’ve embarked on our first fulllength long-term test of a battery-electric car. (We previously conducted a four-month test of a 2011 Nissan Leaf.) Over the coming months, a 2015 Tesla Model S P85D will cover 40,000 miles, logged no more than 250 miles at a time between battery charges. Concerns among the staff that the Tesla’s stay would stretch well beyond that of a gas-swilling vehicle have rapidly evaporated, though. Our Model S racked up 5262 miles during its first two months.
If it seems like we’re late to the Tesla party, know that it wasn’t for a lack of effort on our part. Despite invitations in earlier years, Tesla only provided a Model S for our annual 10Best evaluation this past September—at which time the electric car promptly earned a spot on our list of the greatest cars on sale today. Forty-thousand miles in a Model S will complete the picture of the Tesla experience, offering new insight into ownership and the car’s long-term reliability.
For reasons both practical and hedonistic, our long-term car is the top-performing Model S P85D. Its standard allwheel drive will help us plow through the winter months, and the large, 85-kWh battery pack eases the range anxiety that comes with trying to accumulate 40,000 miles on the odometer in a timely manner. Of course, we were also wooed by Tesla’s claim that the P85D can hit 60 mph in 3.1 seconds.
The P85D’s steep, $105,670 base price set the tone as we ran down the options list. Accordingly, our Model S is fitted with every available feature, save for the executive rearseating package. It is outfitted with a leather dashboard, a microsuede headliner, carbonfiber trim, a small lip spoiler, 21-inch wheels ($4500), and $1500 in red paint. The $4250 Autopilot package adds adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assist, self-parking, and automatic high beams. “Nextgeneration” front seats, at a cost of $3500, have earned high praise from our drivers for being better sculpted than the standard seats. Our car is also equipped with a 12-speaker stereo, an air suspension, a panoramic glass roof, a heated steering wheel, heated secondrow seats, and rear-facing third-row seats. The optional dual onboard chargers allow us to add range at up to 58 miles per hour when we hook up to a 240-volt, 80-amp circuit. All in, our Tesla Model S P85D carries a sticker price of $136,720 before the $7500 federal tax credit—our most expensive long-termer ever, not to mention the most powerful, with the P85D’s combined 691-hp rating.
We ultimately intend to take full advantage of the dual chargers by installing a dedicated 100-amp circuit in the Car and Driver garage. For now, we primarily charge using our existing 240-volt, 30-amp connector, which provides a full charge in about 12 hours. This setup also meters the amount of electricity that’s delivered to the car so we can measure true energy consumption, including the parasitic losses of the charging process.
To date, our Model S has consumed an average of 47 kWh of electricity per 100 miles, equal to 72 MPGe. The EPA rates the P85D at a combined 93 MPGe, although the agency doesn’t consider the inefficiencies in the charging process.
While we aren’t surprised to miss the EPA’s mark, we were frustrated when we couldn’t replicate Tesla’s performance claims — so much so that we tested the Model S on two separate occasions. The best we managed was a 3.3-second run to 60 mph, two-tenths behind the factory figure, and an 11.8-second quarter-mile sprint. Our driver also noted that acceleration fades with back-to-back-to-back full-on runs, especially at triple-digit speeds. Cornering and braking numbers fall right in line with those of the sports-sedan standard bearers.
Even though our staff has driven Teslas on multiple occasions, the Model S experience still feels novel. It’s not just the smooth, silent acceleration or the act of plugging in every time you park that makes the Tesla so different. The Model S is full of idiosyncrasies, chief among them just how many switches and buttons have been condensed into the sprawling 17-inch touch screen. You tap or drag a finger to pop the door locks, slide the sunroof, and warm the heated seats, both front and rear. There is no driver involvement in powering the car on. You simply get in with the key in your pocket, press the brake pedal, shift into drive, and whir away to your destination—usually quite rapidly, as we’ve yet to tire of the Tesla’s full-zoot Insane Mode setting.
It’s less simple, though, when your destination is farther than the EPA-rated 253mile range. Online editor Alex Stoklosa claims the longest trip to date, traveling 1600 miles round-trip between Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Alton, Virginia. Tesla’s trip-planning software led him circuitously through Washington, D.C. (rather than the more direct, southeasterly route from Detroit) in order to utilize Tesla’s free Superchargers, where he stopped to recharge at roughly 100-mile intervals.
At one point, the car lost confidence that it would make it to the next charge point and ordered him to backtrack 20 miles to a Supercharger he had already passed. Stoklosa summed up the experience thusly: “The Tesla is a great road-trip car that requires too much forethought and waiting to be good at road-tripping.” That won’t slow us down much, though. There are bound to be several more long journeys on the way to 40,000 miles in our 2015 Tesla Model S P85D.
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2015 Tesla Model S P85D Price as tested: $136,720 (base price: $105,670) Zero to 60 mph: 3.3 sec
Top speed (governor limited): 160 mph
Fuel economy: EPA combined/city/hwy: 93/89/98 MPGe C/D observed: 69 MPGe