California realtor Lisa Karos talks fast and pretty much non-stop. It serves her well in her chosen profession. One can imagine Karos' clients succumbing to a fusillade of words, throwing up their hands and crying, “Uncle!” as they hand over a six-figure down payment.
Today, though, Karos isn’t talking about tony homes along the shores of Huntington Beach, California. Instead, the subject is cars. Actually one specific car: her new, red Tesla Model S.
“The car is amazing. It’s a jet. Very fast, very high-tech and comprehensive,” says Karos, 55.
If there were a yearbook for Tesla buyers, the word “Luxury Car Buyer” would appear under Karos’ smiling face. She’s be alongside a few other distinct Tesla-buying archetypes: “The Car Nerd,” “The Thrill Seeker” and “The Environmentalist.”
In this series, we'll examine some of the real life characters in the Tesla Yearbook. Their stories reveal the joys and frustrations of owning a cutting-edge product that is, quite frankly, different things to different people. For one enthusiast, it's literally a drag race car. For another, it's the embodiment of green tech.
Lisa Karos is a real estate agent in Huntington Beach, California. She bought her new fully loaded Tesla Model S in December.
For Karos, she describes her Tesla as if she's reading a script for a luxury car commercial voiceover: "I chose it, because when I got in it, there was nothing else like it for the size. Just cutting edge. Main reason was I wanted a sports car and I wanted something sleek."
Then a rare pause before she recounts a particularly distressing experience she had with her new car.
It was shortly after Karos purchased the top-of the line, electric sedan. She says, “Soon as I got it, I took it on a long trip, which is not recommended."
Founded by billionaire inventor Elon Musk in 2003, Tesla Motors sells uncompromising all-electric cars that look like many of the top-of-the line luxury cars on the road — only they're built and run almost nothing like them.
There are four wheels, a steering wheel, odometer, air bags and seatbelts. It doesn’t fly or ride in a special Tesla-only lane. Yet owning a Tesla is not like owning a regular car. Teslas have a pair of electric motors, an undercarriage filled with batteries, a giant touchscreen in the middle of the front dash and cost at least three times as much as any base-model luxury sedan. And there is as much as a four-month waiting list to get one.
That scarcity — Tesla reports selling roughly 50,000 Model S cars worldwide — is why so little is known about the world of Tesla ownership, at least to everyday people.
For that reason, we began talking to Tesla owners around the country, some of whom are doing unusual things with the car. Others, like Karos, are learning some tough lessons.
“As soon as you get it, you put an app on your phone to find charging stations,” Karos explains. Unlike the halfway electrics, also known as hybrids, Telsa never uses gas. There is no combustion engine under the hood. In fact, there’s really no engine at all under there. When I visited a Tesla dealership, we opened up both the hood and trunk to reveal ample storage space. The comparatively small motors sit hidden underneath, next to the wheels.
Without gas as a backup, Tesla cars and their owners are at the mercy of hundreds of charging stations dotted all over the U.S. The ones that matter most to Tesla owners are what’s known as Supercharger stations. These have the dual benefit of being free to use and fast. A Tesla salesman told me a car could get a full charge in 5-10 minutes. Karos puts the time at closer to a half-hour (or longer). Of course, this is better than regular charging stations, many of which take hours to fully charge a Tesla.
The reality is, most Telsa owners, like Karos, charge the car overnight at home. “I had an electrician install a 220 line in the garage. It was a piece of cake,” she says. Her local electric company told her it costs less than $2 extra per day to charge the car. The Tesla dealer told me a full charge, which should last between 200 and 270 miles, costs about $15. Imagine paying just $15 for a full tank of gas.
Karos recalls a road trip with her 27-year-old daughter up to San Jose to see friends for New Years. She had invested in Tesla's bigger battery option — better for the occasional road trip — and seemingly bought every other option available in the Model S, taking it from a base price of roughly $87,000 up to $105,000.
There are a couple of travel options up the California coast. You can take Interstate-5, which runs deep through the heart of California's Central Valley, past Bakersfield, and hooks a hard left at Los Banos. At 373 miles, it’s the shorter option. Still, 373 is 100 miles beyond the range of even the most fully-equipped Tesla, which is rated for roughly 270 miles on the larger battery option. Karos decided to go with the 101, a scenic highway which primarily runs along the coast. The route would add almost 100 miles to the tip. The benefit, though is two Tesla Supercharger stations along the route: one 173 miles from home in Buellton, another in Gilroy, closer to Karos’ final destination.
Karos made it to Buellton without issue and the miles to drive readout gave her confidence that she’d easily make it to Gilroy.
Teslas offer constant feedback on how many miles a car has remaining on a charge. It’s on the digital dashboard right in front of your face. But certain variables may not appear among those expertly rendered graphics.
“Actually, the mileage it says…is not accurate. I almost ran out of charge,” says Karos. “It depends on weather. If it’s cold, it sucks up the kilowatts, and if you drive slightly erratically, say under 50mph, it‘s going to eat up your electricity.”
As Karos drove, she noticed the warning message: “Charge Now. Charge Now." Her concern grew. She realized she’d need to find a charging station well before her planned destination.
I was trying to cross the light…and barely made it.
A quick search of the PlugShare App revealed a Ford Dealership with a slower charger. It would not get her back on the road as quickly, but would have to do.
She found the nearest freeway exit and started getting off the highway, but the message continued blinking. She couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t going to make it. (Karos claims the Tesla will simply “dead stop” if it runs out of juice.) " I was trying to cross the light…and barely made it. If my car would have died there, it would have been horrific.”
Beside her sat Karos’ adult daughter, who was near tears with concern and frustration. In desperation, Karos contacted her Tesla dealer and asked in near panic, “Am I going to run out?”
She didn’t and made it safely to the Ford dealership, which let her charge up partially for free.
Still, as far as Karos is concerned, the Tesla is not designed for long-distance driving. “It was an experience that was not a good one. It was very stressful,” she recalls.
Overall, she gives Tesla’s service and support high marks, but thinks they lacked a bit on the sales side. By her measure, they didn’t prepare her for the variables of electric driving and, perhaps, didn’t stress strongly enough the limitations.
Despite this, she still loves the car. The electric Tesla is perfect for her real estate business: lots of short trips between nearby neighborhoods. She considered a number of other sports and luxury cars before her decision, including a Porsche, Mercedes and the new Chevrolet Corvette.
Karos may have shopped for traditional combustion luxury cars alongside the Tesla, but the shopping experience was surely worlds apart.
When you go to, say, BMW or Mercedes-Benz, you get the white glove experience. They do everything but roll out the red carpet for prospective buyers. You'll find better cars, free food and an exclusive feel. Still, they have enough in common with lower-end car dealerships (lots of cars, big lots crawling with salespeople, heaps of pressure).
Tesla dealerships are not like this. Typically they have a single car and one stripped-down chassis to show you how the Tesla is built and how it works. The show floors are comparatively small and the sales people are helpful, the opposite of pushy.
When I arrived at a showroom in New York City, the salesman was on the phone, negotiating a deal for another customer. He glanced in my direction, but didn't cut the call short. I walked around the glistening, black showroom model for 10 minutes, unaccosted. Even when Tesla sales people do turn their attention to you, they don’t exactly hit you with a ton of information — my salesman didn’t even have a brochure to hand me –- but will happily answer every question you have.
It's like a polite game of hard-to-get.
It felt mushy, and lagged compared to the Tesla.
It seems, though, Tesla doesn't typically expect tech-savvy customers in their showrooms. Karos, for instance, appreciates the innovation and design, but ultimately expected nothing short of no-compromise luxury car performance.
“I love the [Tesla] and it’s hard to actually go back," she says. Prior to buying her Tesla, Karos owned a Mercedes e350. Recently she tried driving her old car again. “It felt mushy, and lagged compared to the Tesla.”
But Karos, who didn’t buy the Tesla to save the environment, conserve energy or play with advanced 21st century technology, noted it lacks a DVD player for “books on tape.”
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