Tesla Model S: The Future Is Here
The all-electric Tesla Model S sedan is brilliant, beautiful, as user-friendly as a smartphone, fast as hell, quieter than C-Span, American made and years ahead of its luxury-sedan competition. But it isn’t perfect. I see things I would change. Those jazzy polished-zinc door handles, for example, part of the cabin’s circumnavigating bands of alloy and leather, weren’t shaped for human hands. The 17-inch capacitive touch screen panel that dominates the forward cabin still seems clumsily placed—design by procurement. I expect Tesla’s next-generation touch screen and graphical user interfaces to be fused across the forward cabin bulkhead like a bandit’s mask.
Nor would I be a class traitor if I could get something more intimate from Tesla’s color and trim department. I suppose it would be un-Buddhist to wish for diamond-pleat suede? These 12-way power adjustable seats are upholstered like high-tech dentist’s chairs.
Sometimes I miss the intimacy of a conventional, wraparound cockpit with a cabin-dividing center console. I long for it like a missing limb. The Model S doesn’t require driveline tunnels, prop shafts or torque tubes. Not even the new all-wheel-drive models, because there are two traction motors, one fore and one aft. The floor pan is as flat as a sheet of plywood and about the same size.
Here’s another problem: You can forget which of the enormous storage compartments you’ve put your groceries in: the front, where there is no occupying combustion motor; or the rear, where there is no evidence of a battery pack. I propose programming the daytime running lights to indicate with a single flash, forward or rear, to remind owners which end was opened last. Make it part of the proximity-approach routine. About 200 milliseconds ought to do.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-model-s-the-future-is-here-1428086202
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