You know that feeling of anticipation? The excitement when something you’ve waited a long time in coming finally arrives? This morning dawned that way.
At 6:15, the morning sun warming into a blue-sky day, our neighbor picked us up for the ride into town to catch the shuttle to its drop-off at the Phoenix airport. More friends picked us up there and drove us to the Tesla Service Center in Scottsdale where a number of sleek Tesla Model S sedans gleamed outside the Center.
No fancy showroom here, we walked into a room set up with tables where we were warmly welcomed by one of the staff. “In just a minute,” he said, “we’ll take you back to see your Model X.” In the meantime, he wanted us to know that if there were any issues or questions we had, to call him at any time and that they’d be there for us no matter where we were. Lauren, our delivery manager, came over to meet us. After a brief chat, she opened a door and we entered a room, empty save for a Tesla X against the wall, unobtrusive beneath a custom black cover. The rest of the large room was devoted to our Model X.
Center stage in the white room, its falcon-wing back doors raised high in greeting, glistened our stunning Signature series Tesla Model X. That new-car smell infused with leather notes wafted into the room drawing us in to explore the new futuristic SUV. Tom & I walked around the vehicle for a few minutes before Lauren brought us to a table set with a bottle of Moet champagne and other welcome gifts…and the final piece of paper to sign indicating we’d accepted delivery of Tesla Model X # 493.
A center mounted 17” vertical touchscreen on the dash is the control panel where the majority of the vehicle’s features are accessed via apps: navigation, audio, charging, lighting, doors, etc. Ann, Tesla’s rep, then spent over an hour familiarizing us with the many features of the Model X. Finally, she unplugged it from its charging port and one of the fellows drove it around front for us to take home.
It only takes a moment when sitting in the cockpit to realize this is no ordinary vehicle! It handles and drives like a race car, with the comfort of a spacious SUV. As soon as we were on the freeway with open space ahead, Tom touched the pedal. Instant torque pushed us back into our seats, the feeling similar to that moment when a jet first leaps off the runway! We enjoyed the drive north, even trying out the autopilot feature. It sure is weird to give autonomous driving over to the Tesla – but it does a brilliant job. We’ll go into more details about it when we hit the road in a few days to head to the Pacific Northwest.
Although it had a full charge with plenty of juice for our return to Prescott, we stopped at the Tesla supercharging station in Cordes Junction at the intersection of I-17 and Hwy 69. Popping open the “taillight” reveals the plug. Tom hooked the car in, the indicator light flashed to show we had a good connection, and we walked away.
From inside the travel shop, we used our Tesla App to see how much charge we were getting and 15 minutes later used the app to turn on the air condition before we walked out to the vehicle. Unplugging from the charger, Tom remarked how fun it was to watch the other vehicles pumping gas and paying money to do so. (Tesla founder Elon Musk’s main purpose behind Tesla is to wean us off fossil fuels.)
All we could say as we slid into the comfortable seats for the drive back home was
Oh…My,…Tesla!!
PS: And when we got home, Tom took the photos off the mirror!
