Drove a Tesla yesterday.

[RhondaHonda]

The 19" tires on my Mach-E are pretty skinny, and they are Michelin EnergyX, I would probably get better traction with something else. The Tesla website states that the M3 Performance comes with Summer tires, did you switch them out for all seasons?

As for more fast, more costs more too. The M3P costs $16K more than the base model. Regarding our purchase, if the price was no different we almost certainly would have gotten the GT, but the GT costs $11K more than the Premium trim, and $15K more than the base Select trim. Spending $11K more to get to 60 in a little more than a second faster, doesn't seem like a great usage of money, and my wife would virtually certainly not have gone for it. lol. I don't feel it's really necessary either, in the real world where we all drive.

If you have the scratch to buy a Plaid, more power to you. If you ever wanted to take an EV on Hot Rod Drag Week, that would be the one to take. I hear people have put it on a weight reduction and gotten into the 8s with it. Sounds fun.

I have a Model Y Performance. It has all season Michelins straight from Tesla. Current at 21,xxx miles on the stock tires and figure I have at least another 10,000 which is much better than I’d seen reported. I need to measure the tread depth but they are wearing evenly so far and I can’t rotate due to the size difference F to R.

I haven’t ridden in a Plaid S but am intrigued by the acceleration, although I agree it’s totally unnecessary. Sort of like a big house, nice clothes, leisure travel, a large TV, jewelry, meals at restaurants, a smart phone, pets, landscaping, boats, motorcycles, RVs, cigars, booze, watches, pools, you get the idea.

 

[Ws6]

With regards to the comments about how fast the cars go, our Mach-E is a Premium AWD trim and I can't imagine anyone really needing to go faster than this. Magazine reviewers have tested this trim at times between 4.8 and 5.1 seconds 0-60. You can pull out into pretty much any gap in traffic confidently, that's really the only use case for this accelerating this quickly in normal everyday driving. I actually turned down the drive mode to "Whisper" in an attempt to make a little more efficient as we inadvertently had it in "Unbridled" mode since new. The car is actually more enjoyable to drive in Whisper mode because it's not trying to leap away at the slightest provocation of the go pedal or brake pedal. And it's still plenty fast to blow away from traffic with minimal to zero effort.

If you get a 2024 GT, it is 3.7 0-60, and if you pay for the software upgrade to the "GTPE" aka GT Performance Edition, that declines to 3.3 seconds 0-60. But why? You need slicks to take full advantage of it, I'm sure. I'm sure the GT comes with grippier rubber than our Premium AWD, but still, I can't imagine that it would do 3.3 to 60 without the conditions being nearly ideal for traction with the stock rubber. Any bumps, loose gravel, etc and you're breaking the tires loose for sure.

I'm already at the edge of traction with the Michelin all-seasons on our Premium AWD, a hard launch will break the tires loose briefly. I'd probably be fine giving up a second 0-60 as, 5.8 to 6.1 would still be fast. The torque in an EV hits different, it doesn't need to be as all out fast as a gas car to perform passing manuvers and so forth.

The point that @JHZR2 makes is real, what happens when there are a lot of these out there and people are doing risky maneuvers on a regular basis. Our crash rates have already been going up. I don't have any really good answers in this area, other than, people need to take driving more seriously.

Dude...my car pulls a 0-60 in the mid 3s in the rain on all seasons, lol! Nothing special required.

 

[JHZR2]

No one needs a Tesla M3P, Plaid, BMW, Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari, McLaren, you name it.
But the Bi-Turbo MBZ across the street is pretty darn cool... The better part of $200K maybe?

Most of the risky maneuvers I see, and there are a lot of them around here, are not from high performance cars. Not sure I have ever seen a Tesla driving dangerously. Altimas? Sure, they are the bad boys of the month. And Subie WRX...

Nobody needs anything of that sort. That’s not the point.

The cars nobody needs have been around for the last 100 years now. They’re not intrinsically bad, there’s nothing wrong with them being offered and sold.

It’s the enabling and widespread poor driving practices, enabled by the specification of vehicles down the model line from the type that you mention. And that doesn’t mean that the owners of the fancy ones get a pass. It’s just that broader availability of higher performance vehicles seems to beget worse driving practices, more waste, etc.

The public would be better served with smaller motors, more normal acceleration, better range. And the half that are below average (or more) will still drive like idiots. Just a bit less wasteful perhaps. Nobody really needs more than about 72hp to get from point a to b.

If you don’t see the stupidity of distracted idiots routinely racing away from a green light, and accelerating into red lights, and that sort of poor practices, then I don’t know what to say.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Nobody needs anything of that sort. That’s not the point.

The cars nobody needs have been around for the last 100 years now. They’re not intrinsically bad, there’s nothing wrong with them being offered and sold.

It’s the enabling and widespread poor driving practices, enabled by the specification of vehicles down the model line from the type that you mention. And that doesn’t mean that the owners of the fancy ones get a pass. It’s just that broader availability of higher performance vehicles seems to beget worse driving practices, more waste, etc.

The public would be better served with smaller motors, more normal acceleration, better range. And the half that are below average (or more) will still drive like idiots. Just a bit less wasteful perhaps. Nobody really needs more than about 72hp to get from point a to b.

If you don’t see the stupidity of distracted idiots routinely racing away from a green light, and accelerating into red lights, and that sort of poor practices, then I don’t know what to say.

You just made my point. Cars cannot be idiots; that's the driver.

I disagree with your assumption, "It’s just that broader availability of higher performance vehicles seems to beget worse driving practices,". Can you support that?

 

[Ws6]

You just made my point. Cars cannot be idiots; that's the driver.

I disagree with your assumption, "It’s just that broader availability of higher performance vehicles seems to beget worse driving practices,". Can you support that?

Subaru and Tesla and Ram...

Subaru makes absolutely dog slow vehicles. Even their flagship STi performs sjmilar to a Honda Accord jn the quarter. So I don't think it's a hp thing.
https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/