Model S browsing at Santana Row San Jose

Finally went down to one of our two Tesla stores, Santana Row in the Bay Area, the other is in Menlo Park a couple miles from Stanford University.

The store is a little smaller than I had imagined it would be, but there was plenty of room to ogle the Signature Model S from all angles. They also had a 'skateboard' on display with the basic chassis, wheels, battery and inverter/motor/gearbox on display.

On to the car.

The liftback and front trunk were open the whole time. The cargo area has a nearly flat floor, the only raised part is the rear seatbacks which are 60/40 split folding. Lots of room back there and a storage space underneath a cargo floor lid.

This one had a sunroof that opened over the front passengers (see pic) and a glass roof over the rear seats. Backseat headroom was somewhat limited due to the roof edge around sunroof cutting into headroom space. The rear seats are set a little low, so my long legs were didn't have as much thigh support found in typical midsize sedans. Understandable due to sloping rear roofline. Floorboard is flat all the way across. Legroom front to back is very generous. The leather felt great.

As I've heard, there are no cupholders in the rear seat. The seatbelt latches are set into the seat and I had a bit of a time buckling into one of them. I'm slim, so I wonder how it would be for a big, wide dude, hmmm. It's easier when the latch sticks up out of the seat like most cars. It was easy to buckle the front seat belts though.

The front seat was pretty amazing to sit in. It's of course power adjustable with power lumbar and goes very low to the floor and very far back if you want to. The steering wheel is centered squarely in front of the driver, feels superb and of very high quality. It's electrically adjustable and seemed to have a very generous adjustment range.

Nice large left dead pedal and the brake and gas(?), ok, accelerator pedals are large and felt great. Visibility seemed quite good. Sun visor a bit small and the sunvisor mirror was blurry, hopefully the production ones aren't.

The pillar between front and rear doors is a little prominent and makes entry and exit a little more tougher than your bread and butter sedans. There are two cupholders in the front. Looks like they'll need to fill out the center console space with some bins. Should come in later revisions.

The front trunk is pretty spacious as it goes pretty far in towards the 'firewall' (what firewall, there's no engine up there!)

What else? Front passenger seat is fully electric adjustable too. I didn't play with the 17" touchscreen so much, but it is huge. The horn worked (no I wasn't the one to test it out
Really beautiful car and I look forward to seeing many more on the road.

One cheesy pic coming right up...


This must be one of their test drive cars just behind the store.

 

I think it's time to stop the silly browsing of conventional / hybrid sedans and point towards, plan for some kind of Tesla in x to 1x years.

Keep going Tesla!