With a history of roasting other people’s cars, it seems James May has now turned the table on himself. Having owned his Tesla Model S 100D for a year now, James summed up all the things he hates about the car.
Tesla is often in the news about its questionable quality control process, autopilot issues, or stock prices. Usually, these stories are from news outlets or journalists who only live with the car for a short period of time, so it’s interesting to see what a long-term owner such as James thinks of the car.
To start off with, James has trouble remembering the name of his own car. This sounds silly, but when you consider the full name is the ‘Tesla Model S 100D Long Range” it suddenly becomes a lot more understandable.
Being frank and open from the outset, James is quick to say he does in fact “love” his Tesla, but he is “not a Tesla evangelist, or indeed an electric car evangelist” which also explains the Ferrari under the cover in the back of the video.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the first real issues with James’ Tesla is a technology problem. Despite being set up so that the pop-out door handles ‘present’ themselves automatically when he is nearby with the key, they still need to be manually activated to open.
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Convenience also seems to be a big issue, as the Model S automatically turns itself off when James steps out of the car. Useful if you should genuinely forget to turn the car off, but if you need to exit the car to open a gate (as demonstrated by James) it is somewhat of a frustration.
There are also a few minor issues that become very annoying, very quickly for James. The automatic trunk closes with an unnecessarily loud beeping noise which “could wake 5 houses,” while the modernistic Tesla logo design is at odds with the ‘Model S’ and ‘P100D’ badges which James describes as being “from a spaghetti western.”
Perhaps the thing that James hates the most about his Tesla is the “clonking” noise that comes from the rear suspension. It’s not just his car either, as he says it’s happened in every Model S he’s ever driven; There’s that famous Tesla quality control again!
Oh, and he doesn’t like that it’s dirty, but that’s not really Tesla’s fault, is it?