Dear all,

I have been a Tesla driver for exactly two years now. The most common question I hear is, “Are you satisfied?” In the post I want to give you a detailed answer to that question.
The short version of the answer is: Yes, I am very satisfied.

Here are a few numbers:
• Number of kilometers driven: approx. 35,000
• Average consumption: 21.1 kWH/100km (that’s a good 2 liters of diesel per 100km)
• Minimal consumption on a longer distance: 15.6 kWh/100km (Swiss highway, constantly driving 120km/h)
• Maximum consumption on a longer distance: 29.9 kWh/100km (German autobahn, uphill and driving 190km/h)
• Number of major problems: zero
• Number of minor problems: one (the front left tire pressure was low)
• Number of loading processes: I don’t know, I didn’t count
• Cost per kilometer: I’ll tell you about it in a separate post
• Number of vacation trips: all but one

All in all, I am very satisfied. The car is dynamic, innovative and beautiful – just like me 😉

All joking aside: I am really amazed how well I get along with an electric car, correction, a Tesla in everyday life. The Tesla is indeed the Tesla among the electric cars. The 450km range is easily achieved. At 200km/h it isn’t, unless it’s at a moderate speed in that case it is.

“How do you manage the charging situation?” Not a problem either. I have four options:

1. In my residential area the electricity supplier installed a charging station. In the beginning it was free, now I pay a monthly fee of 10 Euros and per charging session 3 Euros. That means 3 Euro for 450 km range. That’s a fraction of the cost for driving a diesel car.

2. I am charging at home. It works just fine, although I only have a normal socket. The charging from “completely empty to full” takes forever, but that almost never happens.

3. Supercharger. I use it relatively rarely, expect when I drive really long distances.

4. Destination Charging. Very important. I deliberately choose hotels that offer a charging option on business trips. The next morning the battery is always full. And usually the hotels do not charge anything (mostly hotels with a slightly higher room rate).

Three things are important:
1. The option to charge at home. Without that option I think it is quite difficult to have an electric car.

2. Destination Charging: I rarely drive 1,000 km per day. For all normal business trips of about 500 or 600km one stop at the supercharger is enough.

3. The Tesla-Software: My Tesla tells me exactly what my battery charging level is and how long I have to charge. That offers me a lot of security. So far, I haven’t seen another car that does this as well as Tesla.

“But you can’t even use the Tesla to go on vacation!” is another thing that I hear quite often. That’s nonsense! How often do you get up in the morning and say, “Darling, I think we don’t have any plans today or tomorrow. Let’s just drive to Paris for coffee!”. However I have to admit that sometimes I decided to not use the Tesla for certain distances. Sometimes it’s simply too complicated in certain regions.

I just noticed that this Post has already become quite long. But I’m glad you’re still reading 🙂

Have a nice day.
Best regards,

David Wenger