KEEP my beloved LandCruiser or switch to a Tesla? That is my question.
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So I recently hired a Tesla Model S (2016) to test-drive a loop from Canberra to Sydney to Bathurst to Canberra (with child seat included for Tuesday school-run, of course).
First impression: based on performance, safety and comfort alone, I'm happy if Tesla takes over the motoring world because a near silent cabin that flies from zero to 100 kilometres an hour in three seconds never gets dull.
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But what about the freaky reality of taking your hands off the wheel on Autopilot, and range anxiety on batteries?
Activating Autopilot for the first time, I just couldn't lift my hands from the wheel at 110km/h until the owner pushed repeatedly: "Take your hands off now - it's fine. It's fine! The car knows what it's doing."
As hands lifted, my only thought was: "It bloody better know!" But by the time I'd reached Marulan, asking the car to steer itself was becoming second nature.
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I can report Autopilot truly is a thing and it works brilliantly on good roads with line markings on both sides of the car, like the Hume from Canberra to Sydney, the M2-M4-M7 and Lithgow to Bathurst, although the four to five places where two lanes merge into one kills Autopilot, so you just steer to the correct lane and re-activate Autopilot. Keep calm and carry on.
But Autopilot is only a driver-assist function that extends what most of us know as cruise control with heaps more sensors. It is not Full Self Driving (FSD), where you can jump in the back and snooze. FSD is coming, some say 2022-25, but that's another story.
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I found Tesla Autopilot like driving an iPad on jet-fast wheels where you become Manager of Driving Functions rather than actively driving, and it definitely eased my total 917km journey.
Range is a big issue in a big country and my four-year-old Tesla S only had a full tank of 330km but note a 2019 version now has 713km in the tank, while a new long-range Tesla Model 3 (half the price) has 620km and my favourite, the Cybertruck, will have more than 800km.
That said, with my 330km range limit, the Tesla told me to stop at Goulburn to Supercharge over a coffee (21 minutes with loo break) and again in Sydney if I wanted to press on to Bathurst that day.
Unbelievably, there are only two Superchargers in all of Sydney and the Broadway one was closed! This meant a detour to St Leonards and a forced (but welcome) dinner break of one hour for charging. The timing worked out pretty well this trip, but it could have gotten messy under different circumstances.
I found Tesla Autopilot like driving an iPad on jet-fast wheels.
All the electricity I used was free from Tesla Superchargers (thanks Elon) but if I'd charged at home overnight, my 917km trip would cost $48.87 worth of domestic electricity.
That's around $5.33 per 100km, which is about four times cheaper than the LandCruiser on gas, five times cheaper than on petrol, and half the usual cost of about $15 per 100km.
And with only 20 moving parts, a Tesla is estimated to be 10 times cheaper to maintain than any internal combustion engine vehicle with 2000 moving parts.
Final Tesla impressions: easier to drive, better comfort and safety, will tow my boat, cheaper to run, less to maintain. The jury is in: goodbye LandCruiser, hello Cybertruck.
