<b>Car Review</b>: 2015 Tesla Model S P85+ | Driving |
| <b>Car Review</b>: 2015 Tesla Model S P85+ | Driving Posted: 16 Oct 2014 01:03 PM PDT Overview All-electric luxury sport sedan is a bona fide game-changer Full disclosure — be it for the media, politicians or financial institutions — is as much in vogue these days as electric vehicles, so in that spirit, here's mine. Before driving the Tesla Model S P85+, my 6/49-fueled fantasy involved marching into a local Porsche dealership and ordering up a shiny new 911 Carrera S, silver exterior, red interior, manual gear box. Has been that way for years, if not decades.  Canada's first Tesla Supercharging Station, in Squamish, 'refuels' a Model S from near empty to 80 per cent in less than 30 minutes. Sixty minutes behind the wheel of Tesla's all-electric sedan, that fantasy went up in a cloud of water vapour, replaced with going online, ordering a Model S P85+, silver exterior, black interior, and paying for it with my Visa card. Got an inkling where this review is going? Read more: First Tesla Supercharger in Canada is as clever as its cars All that hype you've heard about the Model S — a game changer, revolutionizing the way we drive, revolutionizing the way we buy new cars — is all true. My all-too brief time with my new fantasy included city driving around Metro Vancouver and a run up to the Sea to Sky Highway to check out the Tesla Supercharging Station in Squamish and the handful of Tesla charging stations at Whistler resorts. Readers of Driving.ca will know I've spent a good many months behind the wheels of electrified vehicles as part of my Driving Unplugged series and blog, from the Nissan Leaf to the Chevrolet Volt, from the Mitsubishi i-MiEV to the Honda Accord PHEV. Those same readers know too that I'm a big fan of electric vehicles, primarily due to their exciting 21st century powertrain technology but also because of the possibilities they offer for our future. Among those is a lessened reliance on fossil fuels, an increase in our country's energy security, and, perhaps most importantly, a reduction of harmful pollutants.  The user-friendly 17-inch touchscreen controls most every cabin and driving adjustment, allowing for a very clean and elegant interior. You can even check out the latest on Driving.ca while driving around. Do I think electric vehicles will replace carbon-based fuel vehicles? Not in my lifetime, nor that of my 14-year-old son. But I do think EVs will become much more prevalent on roadways around the world in the coming years, and particularly in those cities, like Vancouver, with moderate climates, hydro electricity and a population willing and able to be part of changing the carbon-driven status quo. If only we could all do that in a Tesla. Recent speculation about the California-based automaker's long-term future revolves around it getting out of vehicle production and into just battery production to fuel the expanding EV global marketplace. Tesla's soon-to-open $5-billion Gigafactory in the Nevada desert is expected to produce lithium-ion battery packs to power a half-million electric cars by 2020, so we very well could see the end of Tesla vehicles in the coming years. That despite the fact the company is bringing to market a smaller sedan and a sport utility in the next year or so. Whatever happens, we can be thankful for the production of the Model S P85+. Where those aforementioned EVs I've driven were electric-powered, they were far from electrifying in terms of performance. Not so this Tesla. Consider that the 2015 version of my fantasy Porsche hits 100 km/h from a standing start in 4.5 seconds; the Model S P85+ does it in 4.4 seconds.  Options on our test model included the massive panoramic roof and the 21-inch silver performance wheels. The Model S's regenerative braking system, a much-used EV system that harvests electricity produced from the friction of braking back into the batteries and actuated when your foot comes off the accelerator, provides a down-shifting sensation. Zipping up and down the Sea to Sky, I rarely even touched the brakes heading into corners as the automatic regenerative system slowed the car in a very stable manner. It took some getting used to as the Model S system "grabs" more than other EVs when you lift off the accelerator, but after a few corners I was driving deeper in as I would a normal car, then lifting and letting the system slow me down. The ride is as good as any luxury sport sedan on the market, thanks to a double wishbone, virtual steer axis coil spring front suspension and independent multi-link coil spring rear suspension. And just as with those high-end sedans, there's electronic stability control and traction control. Weight distribution is a confidence inspiring 48%/52% front to rear. Read more: Tesla unveils AWD Model S sedan, new safety features With 470 horsepower and a 460-kilometre, full-charge range from an 85 kWh battery, the P85+ is the top of the line Model S available in 2014, ahead of the base 60 (60 kWh battery, 380 hp/345 km range). In addition, the "+" in the badging denotes this model has some enhancements over the P85, including larger brake bushings. That "+" will be dropped in 2015, a year in which the Model S will be available in all-wheel-drive across all three battery platforms. These D — for dual motor — versions will be priced at just $4,000 over their rear-wheel drive counterparts, so in markets like Vancouver, expect the AWDs to outsell the RWDs by a substantial margin. The P85+'s cabin is a design in minimalism, apart from the amazing 17-inch touchscreen that controls the vast majority of cabin comforts, in addition to driving aids such as suspension settings and traction control. All in all, this sport sedan has it all. People tell me they are amazed at how many Model S's they see in Vancouver; frankly, I'm amazed there aren't more. One final disclosure: I do not own any Tesla stock, but sure wish I did.
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