Mark Price 1 - Haters 0
 

I took the Tesla P85D for a test drive the other day and it was nothing short of phenomenal. The insane mode couldn't have more appropriately named, I can't wait for the P90D to come out to try ludicrous mode.

How anyone can hate on these cars is beyond me. I appreciate a solid exhaust note and did find it odd being so silent, but that's what having a gas guzzling second car is for.

Once the Model X comes out there's only one other decision to make... which color to choose!

Test drive a Volt and get back with us.

$12,000 option- ludicrous mode for a 4-door family sedan.


like a shiny display at the end of the grocery aisle

Car itself is badass, the price makes me cringe a little.
The issue I have with them is the lack of charging stations.
Beside the one you can have built at your house, how can you actually plan a road trip 3 hours away? Fully loaded the the P85D can only go 280 miles ish.
And you do find one, you gotta wait an hour for charging it?? (correct me if i am wrong)

http://i.imgur.com/GZozgQD.png

It's more suitable for a country like the UK - At the moment anyway...

No thanks. I've never been in or driven the volt so I can't comment on it, truthfully I see no need to test drive anything else after being in the Tesla.

For those with the money and the patience to have every single person they know want to get in and slam on the pedal, why the fuck not, it'll put a smile on your face every single time. Just have fun replacing those tires every couple months.
A buddy of mine spent $6500 over and above the already overpriced MSRP of his new RS7 to have it matte grey, to each their own.

I'm perfectly fine with the P70D at half the price.

i found the same thing testing a volt out

hey kids, jump in the car, we're gonna get ludicrous driving you to school!



what a ludicrous marketing gimmick.

We drive to Toronto from Montreal 4 to 6 times a year so that was one of my concerns. It would require 1 stop about half way for roughly 30 minutes, which isn't an issue traveling with 2 young kids, takes that long to pee and eat anyways.
They currently have 3 super charger stations along the way with 8 chargers at each station so there is very little chance of having to wait to recharge.

I get some people have range anxiety, as time goes there will be more and more free charging stations all over the place.

lu·di·crous
ˈlo͞odəkrəs/Submit
adjective

so foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be ridiculous.


yes, let's make and market family sedans as ludicrous.

Not everyone wants to sacrifice performance / fun factor / looks and sit in a minivan (or a bland sedan) just because they start a family. :Graucho

i understand that and i get it. but a dedicated ludicrous mode built in to a family sedan is beyond silly. i expect more from elon musk. it's a marketing gimmick and on top of it, they charge the customer for it. and the bigger issue is soccer moms driving around with ludicrous mode. yeah, that's what we all need.

and btw, using ludicrous mode? it's against the law, it's called excessive display of speed/wreckless driving.

Time and place, there are no shortage of ridiculously fast sedans or coups with back seats available for those in the market for it.

Sure it's more gimmick than practical, I say good on Tesla showing the world it can create a car that's just as fast or faster then cars 5x it's price.

there's never a time and place on public roads to let untrained soccer moms launch like roller coasters. besides, everyone that gets in that car is going to want to check out ludicrous mode, that doesn't lend itself to right time, right place at all. that's a right here, right now attraction.

it's beyond nonsense to market that car as extreme and honestly, there was no need to, and it didn't even work really. Musk's announcement of ludicrous mode, and i believe even insane mode, did nothing to the stock price of Tsla, nor did it create an uptick in sales orders.

i understand not all cars are supposed to be practical, but marketing a practical family sedan as ludicrous is dangerous and fruitless.

On a related note, what makes the S a family car?

it's a 4 door sedan. you're not going to stuff the family into a laferrari.

Okay fine honey you're right (trying to approach this like I do a debate with my wife that's going nowhere;-)

So putting aside the insane and ludicrous mode options which very few of the cars actually have can we agree that the Tesla is simply a fucking amazing piece of machinery and technology?

okay, fine honey, if you want to take that approach, no prob, i'll approach this like i do when dealing with a typical gfyer-

gofuckyourself.

you want to start a thread making this a competition b/w mark price and haters, then you want to get snarky about someone's view by portraying it as an argument with your old lady you can't win.

I get what you're saying, but don't subscribe to the notion that all 4-door sedans are family cars.

If that were the case, you could also question whether there's a market for an AMG version of any of 4-door Mercedes sedans. The same for the Audi RS4 or the RS6. The list goes on.

Amount of kids you stuff into the back seats more than zero? Family car.
Less than zero? Simply a luxury sedan.

Tesla has a pretty good line up to satisfy both groups.
Want to play it safe? Go with the 70 or 85.
Extra juice? The P85D's got your name written all over it.

ps. I'd be surprised if scared soccer moms would floor the pedal to the metal just because they can. Every driver is responsible for their own actions, regardless of whether they're sitting in an old beater, a tricked out AMG or a Tesla or a Ferrari.

ps2. if this argument is about Mark Prince and not the actual topic (Tesla model S) I'd like to request a refund for the time it took to type this out. :1orglaugh

I agreed with you that it's a marketing ploy and very impractical, but certainly not a reason to hate on the company or the car.

Besides it's not like they even came up with idea on their own...
http://media.treehugger.com/assets/i...rous-speed.jpg

Can we move on now?

i fully get all of that and don't disagree.

i find the marketing ploy to be beneath elon musk's level of smart, i also find it irresponsible and disingenuous.

the car doesn't need to be cartooned in order to sell more units, and performance packages can be added and such without marketing them like their being sold like a video game to children.

I love them but when they finally reach here they are going to be over AUD100k

no, this is about my belief that the car is too important and too good to be marketed as a cartoon combined with the risk of temptation with a 4 door family sedan marketed as ludicrous.

that's really a big part of my view on it. the car is fantastic in its own right, has been accepted everywhere and is selling out no problem at all. why make a cartoon out of it?

Telsa and VW are both rumored to be building an all electric van.. Perhaps soon I will be able to drive around the country and camp down by the river while giving motivational speeches here on GFY...

The Tesla cars seem to be top notch.

But how many people drive that far on a daily basis? I work from home and rarely drive more than 200 a month. My wife works out of town and drives 40 miles a day, but again, rarely do either of us drive two hundred miles in a single day.

The only places we ever drive long distance would be Southern California, Phoenix, and Vegas - it seems like we would have all of that covered:

http://content.screencast.com/users/...07-27_1014.png

Eventually the

I'm guessing you aren't getting the reference?

of course i am, that's why i identified with Madalton's meme. i've commented elsewhere on the ludicrous speed including cheeky comments about a future upgrade being Plaid speed and they can have a coordinating interior.

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/...e_to_plaid.jpg

I own a Tesla 85. Road trips aren't a problem. There is supercharging stations in all directions every 100 miles. A lot of hotels and other destinations also have charging there. Charging only takes about 15 minutes. You can grab a starbucks or goto the bathroom and it'll be ready to go again. The nav lists all of the nearby charging stations. I've gone from Seattle to Whistler/Idaho/Portland with no problems. Definitely the nicest car I've ever owned.

Anyway still a better deal then watches

Got it.

In terms of marketing and positioning IMO they need the hype. They need to stay cool. They need to stay in the news by pushing the limits to the absolute far end as the ballsy company that is disrupting the business of century old corporate behemoths.

They're locking horns with competitors that have been on the market for 100 years. Tesla? 12 years.

It's only been a bit over a week since the announcement and they've racked up about 800K articles about Ludicrous mode in every single publication available mainstream, tech, etc. Social media has been ablaze.
They need to go all in as their competitors are not going to go down easily...

I'm pretty sure they'll have the answer to the outrage/commentary of the general public once the Ludicrous mode related incidents/accidents start rolling in.

ps. and all marketing/media hype aside, in my view Ludicrous mode matches Musk's personality 100%. If there was 0 marketing upside involved he still would have tried to do it just to prove that it can be done.

Geeks like electric cars, geeks like Spaceballs, Musk is clever - cars were sold

oh yeah, the media coverage has been ludicrous, it's all over my news feeds, but i'm always interested in all the key words associated with this, tesla, musk, electric cars, batteries, blah blah.

and i fully know and appreciate how very smart and successful elon musk is.

and i get that hype is important. i can only imagine the snickering that went on in the meetings re: naming the package, well, software upgrade really, ludicrous mode. musk knows he has the midas touch. everyone of us who follows him knows that. but i do disagree with the name.

and i think my view is also overall, this need for ludicrous horsepower is, well, ludicrous. cars do not need 500+ hp and they certainly don't need 800hp. all while advertising them doing power slides and fishtails for the tele commercials. make a car super lightweight, put some reasonable hp on it and enjoy it at a more reasonable speed.

so yeah i can see this as Musk Trumping the car industry, see what i did there? Musk = Trump media circus.

See now that's funny to those that get it :winkwink:

The Tesla 85 is about what? $ 75-85 K new?

How much in gas would you say you save / Year?

Solid football score 1-0, congrats Mr. Prince :thumbsup

Were your previous cars priced the same or higher? Or were they cheaper?
If that one is the most expensive no surprise it is nicest.

I fill up our pig Touareg once a week, the max pre-auth for credit cards at the pump is $125 so that's what I put in... Once in a while that gets the 100 liter tank to full.

Saving over $6k a year in gas, putting it towards the cost of a car seems very appealing to me.

I hear ya, definitely an option I will be looking at once we got more Charging Stations near me and once the price comes down a little.
Thanks for the replies

I had a mercedes Benz SLK350 and a Nissan Armada. It costs about $7 for a full charge of 265 miles.

I'm waiting for the "Beyond Mindless" mode.

600 mile range
5 minute recharge

now this is a great idea and inline with the perceptions and such of the car.

imagine if this was the ludicrous mode- ludicrous long range and ludicrous short charge times. i think that's fantastic marketing!

Hi Kenny,

Congrats on your test-drive. If you buy one, you know who will become your new best-est friend? ME, that's who. I will move in with you, we can hang out and be buds, and anytime you need an errand, I would be happy to take your 'S to the store for you.

Is your Rep's name Sasha? If so, tell her I say high, and that I sent you her way. She's a sweetie.

If you think you want one, you should buy one in the next week. I just heard that Tesla Canada will be raising prices because of current value of the US Dollar.


I love my Volt, but was completely underwhelmed when I took back the Model S and drove my Volt home from the Tesla gallery. Tesla so-rules, it's sick.


I know it seems like that, but I swear to you it's not. The Model S is a super-car in disguise. It only looks like a Sedan. But it drives and feels and handles like Super Ferrari Mega Porsche 10000.


Charging at home only takes about 4 hours, and charging at super-charges takes only about 30 minutes (and they're free). Plus there are lots of other regular charges that charge in about 3-4 hours time too.

And believe it or not, planning your trip based on charging is kind of fun, and so is being efficient. It's jus like reading the stats for your website and tweaking to improve conversion rates. It's great.


Bingo!! That is my thinking exactly.


I think you're missing the point. It's a sedan and you can squeeze some kids into the back, sure. But when Dad is alone, and he's about the get on the highway, it's a fucking thrill to be able to put it into Insane or Ludicrous mode.

No it's not. You're not speeding in ludicrous, you're accelerating - wildly. Next, in any other car, the real wheels would spin out wearing the ties, creating smoke, and more importantly, the back end of the car would slip. None of this happens in a Tesla. Your tires never lose grip of the road.


Ouch!! Come on Dynamo, KennyB didn't deserve that just because you disagree with him. And besides, he's right. And so am I.

I just realized - its cool as hell that the Nerds have beat the motorheads in speed, acceleration, and coolness. Maybe now we will get to bang the cheerleaders!


Very cool man, congrats on your purchase. We just bought a house this spring and now we're putting in a pool, so hopefully I will be ordering mine this winter to take delivery next spring. Can't wait.


I've been driving my Volt for the past 14 months and have saved about $2700 in gas so far. Then again, this is compared to the Chevy Camaro I used to have, but still.


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Hey Mark, I've been dealing with Pierre-Yves. He informed me of the price bump that's coming but I feel ordering the S when the X is just around the corner is acting prematurely. This will be the family car and replacing a touareg so I'd prefer a true 7 seater. That said the optional 2 rear facing seats are probably good enough with young kids.

I'm in no panic for the car but I know I'll get the S in 6 to 8 weeks, the X could be upwards of a year, arg!

Yes been anticipating the model X too but they are only rolling it out next year I think. It's pretty damn nice too...

Model X | Tesla Motors

And did you hear about this?

Tesla Model X prototype spied in California with strange sensors adorning - SlashGear

How long till they start charging for supercharging? 5 years? 10 years?

umm, i'm in a much better place to know US law than you are

Unlike speeding tickets, an exhibition of speed charge doesn't require that you travel above a certain speed. All a prosecutor has to show is that you accelerated unusually quickly, ?peeled out,? raced, or engaged in prohibited or dangerous activity. Even if you never exceeded the speed limit, you can still be convicted of an exhibition of speed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=exhi... =93&ie=UTF-8

he most certainly did deserve it. he's the one that started a thread making this a contest, markprice 1 haters 0, and he's the one that got cheeky when i participated in the contest when he tried to insult me by referring to talking to me like his wife in an argument.

and he's right about what exactly? the choice of car he wants? when did i attack that? heads-up, i didn't. i also talked glowingly here about the car and elon musk. so what exactly is it you think you're right about?

Let me guess, powered by "non polluting" and "free" electricity?

I like the Tesla and if I drove more I'd consider buying one. I just bought a new car last August and currently it has 4300 miles on it almost a year later. Would be a bit ridiculous to spend that much for something that would sit in the garage most of the time for me.