A Visit to TeslaLand
When I was a kid in grade school, there were two things we spent all summer anxiously awaiting in September, and neither one involved the start of school. One was the new network TV show line-up from ABC, CBS and NBC. TV Guide would dutifully construct and publish a two-page weekly schedule. We would pour over that schedule and curse the network scheduling executives that purposefully matched up head-to-head the shows we wanted to watch, but which they wanted to compete with each other over. Not to worry, we could see the other show in about thirteen weeks when the reruns started. Maybe someday someone would invent a machine so you could record one of the shows for later viewing, or maybe make TV’s cheap enough so you could own two to watch both shows simultaneously. Ridiculous, right?
The other thing we used to be eager for in September was the release of the new car models. Would this one have bigger fins, would that one still have push-button gear-shifting, would the rear lights on the new Thunderbird model go all the way across the back fender and was that even legal? It was a big deal in the early sixties for a young boy. I’m not really sure why it was a such a big deal to me in those days. We didn’t even have a car in Costa Rica or if we did I don’t remember it. When we moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1961, my mother probably had only so much money from her development job in Turrialba. She had gotten a whopping $3,000 per year fellowship to support a family of four (there never was any alimony or child support forthcoming or even expected), so while a car in suburban America was less a luxury than a necessity, she got what we could afford. It was a 1956 Oldsmobile 88 in white and teal blue/green. It was not exactly a show car, but it was an Oldsmobile and thus had some style. I mean, it wasn’t a Ford Falcon, a Studebaker or an inexpensive Chevy. It had a ways to go from being a Cadillac or even a Buick or Chrysler. But an Oldsmobile, even one without electric windows or seatbelts, felt more upscale to my seven-year-old sensibilities. But the soon-to-be-released 1962 Chrysler New Yorker was amazing. Why couldn’t we have one of those? Little did I realize that in September, 1961, the state of Wisconsin would become the first state in the union to mandate front seat seatbelts in new cars…at least those sold in and after 1962…like the Chrysler New Yorker (which also had electric windows, by the way).
American boys of the 1960’s (and before) had a car fixation. That Detroit heavy metal dominated our psyches day and night. And guess what? I think my mother, who I have often said must have been 49.9% male, must have felt it too because in 1964, after inheriting a few bucks from her father (who, strangely enough, died in a car crash on his way to a funeral), went out and traded in the Olds 88 for a 1962 Chrysler New Yorker with power windows and seatbelts. No joke. And then, in 1966 when she got a big job after getting her Ph.D, she went and bought a 1967 Ford Thunderbird Landau. It was the closest thing to a Corvette a mother of three could respectfully be seen driving. I asked her why and she could only say that it spoke to her. Like I said, she was 49.9% male.
My first car came only after five motorcycles. I was in Ithaca, New York where the winters lasted a lot longer than they had in Rome and the passion of a Triumph TR6R 650 was displaced by a hankering for a car that I could drive all twelve months of the year. I bought a 1968 Ford Torino. Not the Gran Torino of Clint Eastwood fame, just a plain old Torino with strange synthetic cloth bench seats. Don’t worry, I will not take you through my Buick Trans Am, Jeep CJ7, Volvo Wagon, BMW 7 Series, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda car history. What I want to talk about is that three years ago, during one of my several moments of being very flush with cash, I ordered a brand new Tesla X with the gull-wing back doors. It was more a whim than a hankering, but I bought it in anticipation of moving my act out to California for my last act. That was three years ago.
Here’s the thing about Teslas if you haven’t heard, they are not due in for regular service for 125,000 miles. I have never owned a car for that many miles, 60,000 miles perhaps. Well, after three years and because I am filled with Electric Vehicle Owner Range Anxiety and thus never drive the car for long trips, I only have 6,700 miles on the odometer. I love that car and enjoy it thoroughly every time I drive it. I can honestly say that as a motorcyclist, I have never driven any other car that made me feel as good as I do when I ride a motorcycle, except for this Tesla X.
Recently I have gone weeks at a time without driving the X because I’ve been picking up rocks and shrubs and I would simply rather do that in my leased Mercedes gas-guzzler. I have noticed that the center big screen, a trademark feature of high-tech Teslas, has once or twice gone on the fritz and needed to be reset, which is a fairly simple affair. At first I just thought I needed to drive the car more. This was a stallion that needed to be taken out of the paddock once in a while. But then I got a notice from Tesla telling me that some pre-2018 S and X models had center screen chip problems and that if I was experiencing that I should make a service appointment, so I did. Never having been to Tesla for three years, I had missed their whole big growth stage of its life, so it would be a new experience for us all.
Let’s be clear about something. Tesla is now worth almost $500 billion in market capitalization. That’s more than twice the size of the monstrously global Toyota brand. It’s almost 10X the value of General Motors and you can fit all of Detroit and Stuttgart heavy metal (and throw in Turin and Modena for good measure) into Elon Musk’s back pocket. Only John DeLorean and Preston Tucker could dream that big and not get labeled crazy. The only thing is that Musk has actually done it and only gotten spanked by the SEC once or twice, less for any serious wrong-doing and more for being a flippant maverick dreamer.
When I bought my Tesla I remember how pro-active the sales and service people were towards me. As an early adopter, I even got lifetime free turbo-charging should I ever get over my range anxiety. I was oblivious to the possibility that the company might have gone through some sort of change over the three years. So when I booked my service appointment I was not surprised that Tesla inundated me with preparatory emails and texts reminding me that I could see all the necessary details about my visit on my personal Tesla app, which was, indeed, impressively detailed and accurate. Tesla knew more about me and my X than I did. So, this morning when I arrived at the service center exactly on time, compliments of my Tesla gps and autopilot capabilities, I was surprised to fall into the Tesla COVID social distancing program. Wasn’t Musk the guy who gave Governor Newsome the finger over shutting his Fremont plant? I was politely told that there would be no loaner, but I had already gotten a $100/day Uber ride credit. I politely declined and said I just wanted a ride home (I would even get back for pick-up myself). I felt like I was cutting the line at the Small Small World ride at Disneyland. When my Uber arrived in three minutes (it was a Toyota Prius, strangely enough), I was done with my first visit to TeslaLand.