Swapped Evora for a Tesla Model S

[spunagain]

Hi All

Well it is my last post as the now Ex-owner of my Laser Blue NA.

 

It went to Silverstone a couple of weeks back for SOR and it sold 5 days later.

I have had my NA Evora for 5 years now and 33000 of my miles plus the 5k miles it had when I bought it as an ex Lotus management car. Mine was a Dec 2010 car – a Model Year (MY) 2011 with Tech and Sport packs, reversing camera and Pioneer satnav stereo which has been great.

My 2 daughters (11 and 14) are could not really fit with us all in the car so it was time for something with a little more room.

The car has been fantastic to drive - comfy and quiet on a cruise, but an animal that will easily break traction in the wet in low gears if you are not careful! The traction control seems quite relaxed about wheel spin in sport mode!

The looks are fantastic and are way better than any photo shows. I used to still catch sight of it in the car park at work and could not believe it was mine!

I had a full 2bular exhaust and manifold, a BOE air filter and Essex Autosport ECU tune which helped with the torque and the aural drama when you clogg it! The sound was fab, but the power gains are not going to set you hair on fire to be honest. Their Dyno showed 298hp.

The soundproofing was a revelation after 14 years in an Elise. In fact while I say above that the exhaust is quiet, if you open the windows it is another story entirely. If you think you need a sports exhaust (or louder sports exhaust), make sure you run through the gears with the windows down first, you may well be surprised!

I had the long box which is great for economy (30+mpg in the real world) but poor for 3-6th gear acceleration. I am glad I had it for motorway cruising, but curse it overtaking - I would rather have been able to a lower geared 3rd and ride the torque than drop to second. You should definitely test drive the close ratio and long boxes before you buy if you are considering one. I had a CR Sports racer as a courtesy car from Lotus Silverstone and to be honest the CR box transforms the car, it is much more fun to take it through the gears at legal speeds. In fact the CR box is so good that I have looked into upgrading the gearbox and it can be done at a scary £3-4K. May be wait until the clutch needs replacing.

The other advantage of the long box (if it worries you) is that the MY2011 car like mine got 199g/km which means cheaper tax. It looks like you lose about 4-5mpg with the CR box.

Some servicing cost examples below from my ownership, but bear in mind there are all main dealer costs with a few mods thrown in for good measure, you can get better prices at indys but I have been very happy with Lotus Silverstone. Here are the bills I have had:

5^th Year Service +Wheel refurb and Headlight clear coat respray £1541+£343 for a new pair of rear tyres.
4th year service – (the big one) + new mud flap brackets and A pillar trims: £867.

£200 or so on fitting heated seating elements
A full set of OEM Pirelli tyres (18” and 19” were £644 fitted from Headley tyres) Note the 19 and 20s are much pricier!
Essex Autosport ECU crack and rolling road tune: £1068.
3rd year service + fitting of 2bular manifolds and Y pipe and BOE CAI filter kit: £1498.
2nd Year service (with brake fluid and fitting Dynamat to doors): £550.

While I have spent a fair bit (mostly on mods), on the up side the depreciation has been very reasonable – I have dropped less than £7.5k depreciation in 3 years.

 I have also had a few niggles which were all sorted under warranty by Lotus Silverstone who have been fabulous. But you should look out for them when buying cars off warranty and get them fixed by the dealer or negotiate with the seller.

One last mention – repeated from the reactions thread. A while back we all went out to a country show and parked up in the field in the Evora. The 2 girls got out my side from the back and walked round the car, another parent in the car to our left spotted the girls and blurted out before he could stop himself “Where the F**k did they come from?!”

 

I am loving the new car – a Tesla 85D which is great for the kind of driving I do right now, but I suspect I will be back in a lotus within a few years.

 

Thanks for all the support advice help and camaraderie on TLF – I will keep dropping in for an occasional Evora fix.

I will explain how I got to the Telsa below

 

 

 So How did I end up in a Tesla?

The Journey

 

I am afraid I have been interested in the idea of electric cars since the mid 2000s when I saw on line the work done by AC Propulsion – the company Tesla took on to develop their drive train.  In fact I was saving to buy one of their drivetrains to build my own car when Tesla took over and took them off the market.  I also applied to be an early adopter for the Mini E (which also used an ACP drive train) but I don’t think I was doing enough mileage at the time so was turned down. I would have loved a Roadster but the cost was too high and second hand they are still very expensive with less than 100 on UK roads today.

 

In 2012 with cash earned from filing a few patents at work, I bought a used Lotus Evora which I loved but my daughters are now in their teens and objecting to squeezing in the back for family trips. So once again I started looking at electric cars.  Last spring a colleague at work was also interested and got offered a sizeable discount on a Leaf if he arranged a visit from Nissan with a couple of Leafs at work so we could have some test drives.  I tried one and was very impressed but it did not tug the heart strings.  Over the summer of 2015 some of my patents had granted and I now had a bigger pot to play with, but then I got made redundant.  Car buying went on the shelf for a bit.  In October I got a new job in Swindon again 22 miles from home with a lovely drive on B roads or a clear M4 going against the traffic, but circumstances there changed and it looks like I will be in Maidenhead for the next year or so – 35 miles from home and nasty commute on the M4 along with the traffic to London. Constant traffic jams and nose to tail traffic. Time to look for a car to suit the commute.

 

In February I borrowed a new 94h BMW I3 but the day I picked it up was -2 degrees C and fully charged it only showed 73 miles of range, this would give me 3 miles of contingency and that was before battery degradation over time. So that got scratched off the list. I suspect the range would have been better if BMW had thought to turn on Preconditioning which warms the car (and I think the battery) ready to drive, but it still seemed pretty marginal.

 

 

The Car

 

I did not think I could afford a Tesla model S as I really wanted a dual motor model and even 2^nd hand they were very expensive, but it did not stop me idly checking the PH classifieds every so often. My car to be was on a posh car dealer advert in Essex, taken as part ex for Range Rover and reduced by £3000 after languishing for a month with no interest.  It was the right spec – 85D, right colour – Deep Blue – check my profile there is a bit of a theme there, but it did not have the sub zero pack – heated rear seats, washer jets and steering wheel, so I hesitated. The price then dropped another £3000 which put this 14 month old car at similar pricing to a 2014 model S (not P), so the following Monday I booked the viewing and started to do a little more research. One of the bits of advice I got was to aim for as late a model as possible and not worry about mileage.  Telsa make continuous improvements and a partial list can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/teslamotorsclubwiki/home/model-s/options-by-year

This car was ticking the right boxes!

Next I emailed Tesla to see what I could find out about the service history, the response was not much due to Data Protection but they suggested I call the car’s local service centre. A quick call established the owner had been into the centre 5 times but were not allowed to disclose service history but confirmed there was nothing in the records to worry about. I since found out a couple of visits were for buying extras like a European charging adapter and a type charging 2 cable. I specifically asked if there were any issues I should worry about that would not be covered by the warranty, and the answer was not apart from the interesting information that a well known manufacturer had been known to be buying the odd Tesla, tearing it down, having a good poke about and then re-assembling and putting it back into the wild.  Turns out this invalidates the warranty.  I contacted a mate who works at said company and got the reassuring response “Not one of ours!”.  I also ran an HPI check just to be sure, which flagged up finance on the car which turned out to be the dealer’s It turns out many car dealers purchase their stock using finance, sounds obvious but had never occurred to me before that the dealer finance would be linked to the car.

On the Friday Mrs Spunagain and I took the day off and drove off to Essex to have a look, fell in love and put down a deposit!  The car looks better in the flesh than in photos kind of Maserati like.  No leather seats, but that does not bother me (but may be an issue at resale time). But is does have the panoramic roof, premium pack which adds a few odds and ends and Autopilot. The test drive was great with the car as solid as a rock with no rattles squeaks or untowards noises or behaviours, apart from the insane acceleration.

 

The Purchase.

 

The car dealer offered me 24-to 25k for the Evora, so I went to Lotus Silverstone and arranged a Sale or Return deal, I took the car down the Sunday after seeing the Tesla and the following Saturday it sold, and after costs I trousered £30510, much more than half the cost of the Tesla, so the cost to change was around the price of a Mini Cooper S. It is worth saying Lotus Silverstone have been fantastic – I bought the Evora from them in 2012 and they took very good care of it for the 5 years I had it. As I said in the last post £7500 depreciation in 5 years and 32k additional miles is not bad!

When I viewed the Tesla I noticed a few chips on the alloys and well worn tyres and negotiated a set of Pirelli P Zeroes and wheel refurbs all round.  As you can take the boy out of Essex I went for a Shadow Chrome recolour, which looks good but is possibly a bit darker then I had in mind. The car came with Cable and adapters for a Commando (16 A) Type 2 (22kW) European and 3 pin plug.

 

Pick up.

 

3 hours on the train to pick the car up and I drove home via the M25 and the M4 A33 Supercharger to try it out – a free top up in 30 minutes, and Ikea to pick up a double mattress. I have since found Ikea has 3 Ecotricity Chargers which are £6 for 30 minutes, but this is refundable in Ikea if you buy anything which is not food. To get the best from that I think I need to get a Chademo adaptor which will allow up to 50kW DC charging but I still need to check this.  This is because my car only has a single AC charger so I think I would be limited to 22kW using the AC charger they have there, rather than the 43kW available if it had two chargers. 

The car is fantastic, doing most of the M25 in Autopilot which is very strange and going to get some getting used to.  I am charging either at Reading Supercharger or of my 3 pin plug at home for now, but have got a 7kW charger installation booked for April with www.chargedev.co.uk who were recommended to me by a Leaf driving friend. 75% of the cost up to £500 will be paid for by a Government grant which has extended beyond March this year. I have done over 1000 miles in it so far, commuting and a trip to Silverstone to pick up the stock exhaust bits for the Evora that the new Owner didn’t want – I will pop them up for sale soon. I reckon I have spent £10 on electricity so far.

 

 

1st Impressions

 

The car in incredibly serene at low speeds but like the Leaf and i3, wind and tyre noise become more obvious over 60mph.  One thing is that IMHO, the stereo needs speed sensitive volume as I find myself adjusting it a lot, I had this in my MG ZT and it worked very well. The ride is quite firm, more BMW like than Lotus like but not uncomfortable.  The handling is good, there is bit of roll in the corners but that is to be expected of a 2 ton car!  The suspension is the same as the P or performance variants so I will have to go after-market if I want to improve it, but there is only so much that you can do with that much weight. (Mine has springs rather than the optional air suspension).   But it is also very big - it is as wide as an S class, and to my shame I have already curbed one of the alloys

Once I had spent some time playing with the seats I have found a very comfy setting and spend 2 hours in the car last week with the family visiting National trust house in High Wycombe and my brother in Slough. No complaints from anyone!  The acceleration is crazy, my youngest daughter wanted to name the car "Jesus" as that is what one of my mates yelped when getting the drag strip demo! The car has now been named "Flash" after the sloth in Zootropolis and because it is a bit... (You have to name the car in the UI). I just got a FW update installed last night and now have more ventilation fan settings than yesterday!

I seem to get another 70 miles of range overnight on the 3 pin plug so, I supercharge every other day or so to keep it topped up.  I am charging to 80% day to day to maintain battery life and only set it to 100% before a road trip. I have also found a bunch of free 7kW chargers in

Newbury Parkway

car park which seems to give me cheaper electricity then charging at home even with the parking fee so I use the Tesla now for trips to the Town.

 

Next

 

I have a service booked for the 5th giving me time to find any niggles and get the car up to date on its service history (Although servicing is not mandatory at all to keep the 4 year “Body” and 8 year battery and drivetrain warranties going!) I think I is worth having come resale time.

 

I am also planning a family road trip to Sunderland to visit the In-laws which will be my 1st big road trip of nearly 300 miles.  It looks like there are 2 Superchargers on the way so it should be pretty painless. But will buy a Chademo adapter for emergencies.  I have already installed and registered the Ecotriciy app just in case.  I might look at Economy 7 as an option for home charging but need to do the sums to see if it makes sense with my other power usage.

 

Finally once I get my V5 I can register with Tesla and install the Tesla App on my phone allowing me to control changing and heating remotely and use the "Summon" command.

Edited April 1, 2017 by spunagain
it merged my 2 posts so edited to make more sense

[Barrykearley]

Looking forward to the tesla thread

[spunagain]

I plan to add this as to the readers cars thread on PH so will crosspost back with any updates here too!

[Bibs]

Excellent post, thanks for sharing. Can't see how a car is covered by the DPA though, no personal information is being shared!!

[Barrykearley]

Wow - nice write up. 

I looked at the gull wing one the other day - stunning. I really really really want a tesla. The lotus however will  be going nowhere . Our leaf has over 70k on the clock and needs to be replaced in the next year so I hope they get a wriggle on with the tesla model3