I’ve been pretty excited about the idea of Tesla for quite some time, but the Model S was simply not practical as I have a bit of a large family. The Model X was super intriguing, but oh so expensive. Then there was the Model 3.
Ok… still not super practical as a family car, but maybe it would be good for a daily commuter. My wife could drive it to the gym, we could use it for errands when we don’t need the kids to come with us, and it would make for a slightly better date night vehicle that either the minivan or the Jeep.
Announcement came, pre-ordered!
Of course, up to that point, I never actually took a serious look at any of the Tesla vehicles before. But hey, it was refundable.
So a good deal of time passed and I was back up in Bellevue. There is a pretty big Tesla store there; I figured this would be the easiest opportunity for me to actually go and check out a Tesla in person, especially the Model X as I’ve only see those while driving around town.
Wow… what a huge disappointment. Now, I know not everyone will agree with me, but I thought the styling of the vehicle was both very average quality, and for the case of the Model X in particular, extremely ugly. As one example, in the showroom Model S that I looked at, the gap for the wood trim piece that meets the plastic dash had a varying width gap like it was installed crooked.
Needless to say, for $70k starting prices, I expected a much greater attention to detail on the details.
As for the storage of the Model X… I was completely underwhelmed. The underhood storage in the front was much smaller than I had expected. Sure, it was a bit more than my minivan, but it surely didn’t seem to be a huge difference, more of a “nice-t0-have”.
I didn’t actually test drive one, so I have no feedback there.
At this point, I’m already starting to heavily re-think my pre-order purchase. I love the idea of a Tesla, but what I really want is the body of a Tesla car with the shell of a BMW.
Anyhow, then this happened:
This was uncomfortable for me. Not because I don’t think he’s absolutely and 100% correct, but because he seems to value the pragmatic solution versus, what I consider to be the ethical choice, even if destined for failure.
For me, this made my choice easy now. Whenever possible, I try to make sure that my dollars are going to places that feel I can support on ethical grounds. This is not always possible, and I’ll freely admit that there sometimes exceptions that I make for various reasons or out of ignorance.
However, the Model 3 was already a luxury purchase. If I can’t vote with my dollars on luxury purchases, I’m know I’m not going to be able to do it with necessary purchases.
Does this mean I think you should cancel your pre-order? Of course not. You need to decide what is important to you.
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