Gadgetory

to our video team who absolutely killed it with this piece and hopefully you all agree and hopefully you brought questions for me here today we all you need to do is tweet at us we have a hashtag it's Tesla QA and we'll pick that up uh Sam I have I have the lovely and wonderful Sam chakra with us here who is going to be feeding me questions Sam do we have anything yet yeah right off the bat we have pastor s88 from twitter asks how is the interior space is it roomie yes it is very very roomy and tehsil actually talked about this specifically with me the fact that by eliminating all the controls inside the car they were kind of able to open it up a bit and it is really cavernous like it's probably one of the more roomy sedans I've ever been in sitting in the driver's seat I didn't actually sit in the in the in the rear seats mmm which was a bit of an oversight and in retrospect but but from the front it's it's a really really roomy ride cool all right let's see what else we have a couple more here off the bat this question was asked by two different people does the large LCD screen become distracting at night is it usable in the day when the Sun shines on it oh that's it oh yeah that's a great question in the daytime I didn't have any problem with daylight viewability and and this is something that is an issue for more and more cars now because we're seeing a lot of vehicles move to LCD instrument clusters and larger and larger LCDs in the center stack and and last year I I took a look at the cadillac XTS which has what cadillac calls q and it's a little bit like what Tesla is trying to do where they they replace all the instruments with with a single CD and they have a big LCD in the center and I didn't really have any problems with daylight viewability there and I certainly didn't in the tehsil and I don't know if that's just that they're using good LCDs or if it's that the hoods that they have on the instrument clusters kind of block that light of its combination of both but there was never an issue in the a light and also i think that the back lights are very strong which also helps at night however at first it was way too bright for me what it does is it has an auto adjustment we're at a certain time at night I think it might be like tied to sunset i'm not sure but at some point it goes from a date they mode to a night mode where all the colors change so like the base map in google maps is is it turns into like night mode essentially yeah yeah it's like dark gray instead of white so that helps but the the the default backlight strength was too high at night so there's like this this huge like light hitting my face while I was trying to drive and but I was able to turn that down it wasn't an issue after that there's there's like a a dial on on the screen that you can easily just turn down the brightness yeah it's just a slider you go into settings or slider you turn it down you're all set okay so there was another parts of this question with such a large screen on the dash be fine distracting at night or too much glare during the day did you find yourself searching for things on there or is the system pretty well thought out um it depends on the screen and the function basic things like the like the radio and the climate controls which are permanently docked at the bottom of the screen okay excuse me are easy to find and after a few hours i was able to pretty much hit them without even looking but uh when you get into like the settings of the car like like it it there's a thing called creep mode which is kind of a weird name the other thing about it it creep mode where when it's enabled when you take your foot off the brake it creeps like a regular automatic car and when you turn off it it just sits there like a manual what if you want to go in and change functions like that kind of you have to dig and look around but hopefully you're not accessing those while you're driving anyway right so it really isn't that big of a deal and the web browser is just a web browser the the keyboard the soft keyboard that comes up at the bottom of the screen has a very simple layout it's that the keys are huge they're easy to practice I don't have any problem with missed visit estate prices working a keyboard it is a standard QWERTY keyboard and there's a separate toggle for getting into symbols okay but but yeah what the the bottom line is it after two days of driving the car there was never really a point while I was uh well i was actually like in motion that I was like concern that I wasn't gonna be able to find something I needed in the screen but one thing that kept vexing me and and my video crew can attest to this one of the things that that was a continual problem was the fact that uh yet like i would get in and the doors would lock or like i would lock the doors or something would happen and then they would want to get in the passenger seat and the car was locked and you know that the door handles completely retracted right right right right and then the only way to let them into the car is to like go like a couple menus deep and then you find the like this um there's like an overhead view of the car with like all the different lock toggles available to you and then you can unlock the doors so it would take like a good like 10 seconds to get them into the car there's much on the door like no uh no I don't think so it's just it's just window controls I think I'm trying to picture the interior the car I don't think there's a physical switch for the locks so so yeah I kept doing that and it it I think it got them a little frustrated and you couldn't what about just opening the door from the inside like leaning over and yeah you could do that or you could pull the the fob out of your pocket and and double click one of the buttons to unlock the doors that's another option but I just ended up using the screen not the fastest function in the world but then again it's not something you need to do while you're driving right all right let's move on ah paul from twitter says when with when will the supercharger network be available in europe hopefully this isn't paul miller otherwise he's jr. um in Europe I don't know to be very honest with you I know that they're concentrating on the u.s. right now and they have a lot of work to do there because they want to get 200 stations by 2015 and they only have what I want to say eight or ten right now and they're they're just on the coast they have a few on the west coast and I think two or three on the east those are charging stations or a supercharger say those are super chargers so the idea the way Tesla described it to me is I want to get you an H formation so that they'll have you know they'll have superchargers all down the west coast superchargers all down the East Coast and then a bar across the country that allows you to get across without having to like plan a stop at a level 2 charger and then and then get a hotel and let it charge overnight but they're they're a long way from that they have no superchargers in the middle of the country right now so the only way to do a cross-country trip is to like I said plan a route along level two chargers which take a lot longer but but as for europe i don't know there might be some information on tesla site about that but i'm afraid i don't know offhand okay um so this is sort of a question relating gas stations are everywhere so if traditional cars run out of gas run out of fuel gas station is nearby have you felt any anxiety about running out of electricity and not being your place to charge it yeah yeah there's actually if you watch our video there's a prominent section in it uh where I'm sorry is the is the Hangout okay I just got a note that it might not be active right now or is it active think it should be ok sorry yeah there's a prominent section in our video where we very nearly run out of juice trying to get two morrow Bay California which was our night one stop we had a two day trip and our night one trip was through a place called morro bay which is about halfway up the the pacific coast of California and and we yeah we got there with one mile left of range and I want the sweating bullets I was I was not comfortable for a few minutes there I we we had um we had driven past san luis obispo about 15 or 20 miles before we got tomorrow bay and i'm sure that we could have found a level 2 charger there and we were kind of deciding you know we were right on the bubble with the range and we're like well should we stop should we keep going and we decided just you know forge ahead why and and yeah it was it was very very close um this is a sort of a question coming for me does it have a you know the reserve tank now some cars technically have that whatever it is is there something like that the Tesla where it's gotten you know it reserves something in case you know you come into that sort of emergency well what Tesla told us is that when you get to when you get to zero range uh you're not necessarily just going to like die on the side of the road it can run there have been you know tales of Model S owners and drivers who've pushed it beyond zero we didn't get to that point we didn't want to get to that point right but but uh but one thing that does happen is when you get close to zero I think it starts happening around 20 miles of range you get this this dashed orange line in the in the in the in the instrument cluster that that indicates it's not our p.m. but like it indicates an amount of power that you can't push the motor beyond and that's because the battery just incapable of it anymore at least not safely right and that orange line keeps going down and down and down into get closer to zero range and then you get to the point right around zero miles to go we're like you can just barely accelerate and and that's that's the point that we got to by the time we hit the level 2 charger in morro bay so so it sort of like caps the car and really condenses what what fuel you or energy you have left right yeah you're not going to you're not going to be racing porsche panamera 'he's when you get close to zero range unfortunately but to answer your original question I mean yes you can probably push app as zero but I certainly would not want to be the guy that has to do that right okay this is from YouTube Jay Fodor asks uh what is the platform that the touchscreens running on is it based on Android or what's what is it the it as far as I know via the cars you I is is some custom solution on top of real-time OS or Linux it's it excuse me it's not it's not Andrew right but I can tell you that the the center cluster is running on a Tegra 3 and I believe that instrument cluster is running on to take her to UM and I was let's put it this way i think that the car would benefit from a Tegra 4 because especially especially in the web browser which was little laggy and you know i don't again like i said in the in the in the piece i we I I don't believe that a driver should ever have access to a web browser while rolling right and i'm doing a tesla you do right yeah especially a bad one but this one was but but i do think that in terms of performance maybe it's just the size of the displaying the resolution i don't really know but whatever reason it performed very poorly especially on like a really design intensive site like the verge so so yeah they would probably benefit from a hardware it is that attributed to the network connection or you think it's strictly the hardware it's it's the hardware yeah because you could let the you could let the site load completely and then it'll so yeah like a swipe around and it's it's really laggy okay and also it doesn't support it doesn't appear to support any kind of video if you ml 5 or flash so Wow so if you want to watch the Tesla audio in the Tesla I'm your Tesla to do something really meta you just eat you can't unless you bring a laptop or tablet along with you Wow alright um this questions from sams e bein from youtube how fast did you guys push the car that's enough a style how fast um this is going to be kind of a cop-out answer but I don't the short answer is I don't know because you know there were there were definitely a few straightaways along the PCH that were completely emptied devoid of cars where we you know we we opened it up but I wasn't you know I was so focused on paying attention to the road ahead of me and my surroundings that I wasn't actually looking at this pedometer so the short answer is I don't know but the car it feels like when you put the accelerator to the floor it feels like the car will do like propel itself forever and eventually you'll hit the speed of light and then you know some weird relative it relativity stuff will happen and time will bend and it's it's insane like the car feels unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life it's a in terms of performance right and thrusts into work and yeah not because it's it's I mean I've been in some very fast cars but but the the way the car accelerates is very foreign because it's so smooth and smoke and so linear throughout the entire uh you know range of acceleration and speed like you okay there is no there's no like traditional tort curve like in a like in an internal combustion engine so it's it feels very weird even if you're accustomed to a car that can do zero to 60 in under five seconds you know huh um all right we've got plenty more questions to go through here this is from Sam Hector on YouTube what's next for Tesla iterative updates to the sedan or diversifying it to SUVs and other types of vehicles the first thing you're going to see well you know it's it's it's anybody's guess really because they were like I said in the piece they were actually really secretive about what was going on in the design studio in LA but it's pretty widely understood that that their next thing is the model x they've been showing it off for a while now they have the concept version of it in the design studio what is the model x the model x is their SUV okay and the really notable thing about this this SUV is that it has these so-called falcon wings where instead of having four doors that open to the side like a normal SUV the the the doors open straight up um kind of like AG all wing uh like yo mclaren doors they're not they're not know they're not a like a McLaren is a swing wing right or did a going on well me neither what about like is it is like a DeLorean where they open this way or their Lamborghini you know sort of it's like it kind of unlike anything the closest approximation I can think of would be like a Mercedes SLR but the difference is that instead of the door being a single piece that opens straight out like this hmm the the door is the door like goes across the the top of the roof and is hinged along the edge where it turns down along the side of the vehicle so that when the doors raised they kind of like that they they crease and come together so that they're not opening up so the long and short of it is that you can you can drive the car into a really tight parking space and you don't have to worry about having to open the doors because they go straight up and there's also just one on each side so when you open the door it like opens up the entire side of SUV so there's an insane amount of like uh you know it's like super easy to like get big boxes in and out super easy to walk in and out of it so technically the size of four door and the the two doors on the side are just this just one piece um yeah well yes yeah the each door is like the size of like to traditional doors so it covers the front and back of the vehicle and if that's TV i would actually um the model x is a very sleek looking SUV the closest approximation i would give you would be like a BMW x6 um uh well I'm trying to think i'm going to google some some pictures here oh i see so it's yeah BMW x6 would be the closest i think so but but it's a little more utilitarian than that i think there's a little more cargo space the x6 has been widely pad for for having no cargo space that is not the case with this vehicle so uh so yeah that that's their next project and then after that I'm sure that you're gonna see some updates the Model S and they also kind of hinted that they're looking for ways to get into a more affordable yeah that were some things next question two is there a timetable to bring the prices down to crius level yeah for the Model S III don't think that's necessarily their goal it's definitely a premium vehicle and it feels really premium inside now but you look at things like the Nissan Leaf and even like that you know the Chevy Volt and and the the mitsubishi miev i think it's called mom there there's obviously a demand and an interest in lower costs may be smaller v's and and that's something that that when i talked to franz von Holtz house and he definitely indicated that that's something that they're interested in pursuing longer term and they're kind of exploring ways to do that but the next project is the Model X in terms of updates to the Model S one thing that that that he know for that Franz noted to me is that the car because of the touchscreen it's very it's very future proof and and you know I mentioned before that I think it could up it could benefit from up from an upgraded take before and it's 3g instead of LTE runs an ATT 3g network button but that aside all your firmware updates to like the motor software and the the touchscreen software and the instrument cluster software all that comes over the air just like a smartphone which is it totally unique in the car world like you know that nowhere else does this ever happen right like you'll just you'll wake up in the morning you'll go out to your car will be like hey we downloaded a new firmware overnight do you want to apply it and you just you know you apply it and and there are release notes and everything it's really cool so that the card in in that regard the cars very future proof and they're still adding features to the car perfect examples that creep mode I talked about earlier yeah that was not there when the car launch you ha drivers requested it so they just added it in a firmware update wow wow uni um so relating to that question sort of directly Ashwin rajani sorry if I butchered your name from Twitter's asking how does the technology and the Model S compared to other techy cars audi with google earth BMW i drive Ford SYNC Mercedes etc very good question the in terms of the overall capability of the car there excuse me of like that the the ice that the center console the electronics of the car I would put it about a half step beyond the most advanced systems from mainstream manufacturers on the market right now those paying you know audi and I Drive primarily but they're all kind of like in that same mix that you know that they have the cars have their own data connection cellular data connections Audi and BMW just upgraded to LTE or in the process of doing so Tesla is not yet but obviously it's hard to ignore the fact that there's no other car in the market that has this giant touchscreen so right that certainly sets Tesla apart and I I don't think I mean the I I had a long round table with Audi executives at at CES earlier this year and I mean it definitely wasn't grained in my mind how badly these traditional car manufacturers have been have feel like wronged and burned over the years by government regulators both in the US and abroad like it's such a heavily regulated industry the car business and in for obvious reason safety that uh that it's it's very difficult for them to do really anything and I think they're little gun-shy about doing like really radically different things with other regulations right right with human computer interaction and you know just in general that the way the driver interacts with the car Tesla what I think felt unburdened by that gun shyness because they're new to this business and like i said in the piece i don't think that regulators have really caught up with how far ahead Tesla skated from the puck so they're doing these insane things with this giant touch screen like the browser that I just don't think the Department of Transportation ever like considered then they never thought that this would be something I had to contend with so so I think that over the course of the next ten years to get back to your original question I think you're going to see the the old guard car companies the BMW's the Fords the Mercedes of the world you're going to see them incrementally catch up to what Tesla is doing in terms of interface and you're gonna see Tesla kind of like I don't want to say stagnate but you're gonna see them kind of like level out as the regulations catch up with them and so I don't think they're going to have that radical interface advantage forever but right now they're certainly half step they're ahead right okay I'm the same person from Twitter not a schwinn says is there any way to integrate smartphone apps into the center stack google nav Spotify Rdio mom Pandora hmm yeah another good question so they they in the most recent firmware update they just added a screen of like apps it's like an app drawer basically like you would find on Android or anything else are they installed in the console themselves are from your phone there well this so Tesla's not talked about how that's going to work exactly but it's pretty apparent that they are going to end up having a way to install extra apps in the in the car because you know right now they have slacker but it's you know it's obvious that they want you know they want our do they want Spotify they want all these things and and the the car has smartphone integration but not to the same extent that like Ford SYNC does or GM's was it called my link i think is what GM uses so it's it's not to that level of smartphone integration the tehsil you can you know you can connect the phone bluetooth and all that all that jazz but it's it's not like you have all these look like apps on the phone that like are tightly integrated with the center console right now so i think but the impression i get is that they're going to end up having apps that are installed in the dash and then you know maybe they'll talk to the phone in some way i don't know but i think that the the the center console for tesla is going to be like the primary point of interaction ok cool uh let's move on um someone asks let me find this question here be honest Chris would you own a Model S or an m5 um I both is that available yeah thats you know the m5 is is a really a really stellar vehicle in many ways i mean the the short answer to your question is i would own an m6 gran coupe after after seeing it at a couple auto shows recently but um but the the m5 is a really amazing car with a really amazing engine and a lot of great things going for it i think that the Model S is uh is also an amazing car but but it's you know the infrastructure isn't quite there yet to make it practical for every way that you would traditionally use a car you know it's it's obviously great for urban and suburban trips but but it you know still at the point right now we're planning a cross-country trip would be a really or even like a state to state trip would be like a really stressful thing and you don't always want to have to worry about that and I'm really really hopeful that through combination of government subsidy and private investment they're going to get to the point in the next three five or ten years where that infrastructure will be there and things like Tesla superchargers are going to be a major part of that but but today if I if someone put a gun to my head I it would have to be at m5 I think but believe me the model s is right in the mix and and if I could have both I certainly would cool um okay uh does the electric this this is coming from George on Twitter does the electric motor make the whirling sound and does it feel a bit disoriented to hear that sound instead of an engine it's a really quiet car in terms of in terms of like mechanical noise I think that at very low speed with the windows down you get some of that that Jetsons sound yeah but when you're at speed on the highway with especially with the windows up even with the windows down like it just like a regular car unless you're driving like a diesel 18-wheeler like the the the prevailing sound that you're hearing is not the engine with the road noise and the women noise and and the Model S is the same way um there was another question relating to that um how cool this is from inner slice on Twitter how quiet is the car what's the cabin noise like at highway speeds um yes it's it's a it's a quiet car I don't know how much insulation a sound insulation they put in it and I don't know you know if there's any interplay to be honest I don't know if they do active noise cancellation which is kind of a hot feature in cars these days you're seeing a lot of cars do this thing we're like you know they that there's a microphone that's detecting like the engine you know that the ambient noise and then it's emitting sound from the speakers to cancel that that noise out I don't know if the Model S does that to be honest but um it's it's not it's certainly not a loud car I used to own a Lotus Elise which is the car that theam that the the tesla roadster was based on right and that was a very I mean first of all was a gas and I can't it's not apples apples because it had a gas engine in it but like that the engine in that car was like six inches behind your head and so if you were driving for more than a few miles actually were earplugs when I would drive it from state to state because you just go deaf otherwise but but that is not a problem the Model S needless to say okay out of the this is coming from mobile dawn on twitter out of the 265 quoted mileage what do you reckon most people will actually get i think that most people will get so so first of all i should i should point out that Tesla has a total of three different battery capacities for the Model S we tested the largest battery which is an 85 kilowatt hour but they also have a 40 and i believe it's 65 and that that affects the the price of the car obviously tremendously because that I think that the base 40 kilowatt hours like 57 k and the car we tested was I I added it up and it's somewhere around 100k so big difference in price but um if you get the 85 kilowatt hour then you'll get the 265 yep but and in the world I think you will probably get realistically 240 to 250 would be my guess but one of the reasons and I pointed this out in our piece one of the reasons that we that we really took a big range hit I think is because we were you know first of all we were really being liberal with the accelerator to we were we were driving up and down the mountains non-stop and and Grenn you get some region on the way down which is putting power back into the battery but you're not it's it's not a perpetual motion machine so you're not getting the same amount of energy on the way down that you're that you're taking out the battery on the way up okay so that was a hit and and we had a ton of of cargo in the car you know we had like you know a billion cameras yeah and other humans right so it a you know we got I think somewhere around probably 220 when all is said and done but but i think that the average person is going to get it more than that okay this is coming from curtis cook on google+ pretty good question how does the state inspection process go can you just take it to a local mechanic and have them tested that is a very good question and that varies from state to state uh I don't yeah I honestly don't know at all how that works I know that California is a lot more strict for that sort of thing than most states but but I I'm sorry I don't know and to be honest not it's possible that not all states have figured that out and maybe some states don't even care because it's a zero-emission vehicle so you know some like in in in Michigan where I was raised the the inspections always centered around you know the amount of crap that the exhaust was putting out and right that's not an issue with the model s so if I yeah yeah I mean check with your state mm-hmm okay um so Anthony Keller from Google+ chris sigler what if anything did you miss about the Tesla after returning it and going back to internal combustion oh the linear acceleration just that the the the ability to be on the highway like there's a certain amount of I think that as a driver there's a certain amount of confidence that comes with knowing that you can like kind of accelerate your way out of any situation and and that's something that I always kind of like lingers in the back of my mind when i'm driving a car that doesn't really accelerate like the car that i personally own right now which I don't like and that that isn't a problem with the Model S at all so so not having access to that that seemingly limitless and linear acceleration i think is the thing that i missed the most about the car the thing that i missed the least is is not having like I you know I mean that the charging situation that in a nutshell like you it's going to be a long time until I mean if there were superchargers every 25 miles around the contrary it would be a complete non-issue right because everywhere you you went you feel safe I get in and you'll be fine but but until that happens there's always going to be at least a little bit of doubt as to whether you know you're always going to have to think about it which is a price you know that's as the owner of a of a gas car that's not something that you ever think about it might be something that you occasionally think about if you're driving a diesel cuz I don't gas stations I have diesel but but as I as a gas car owners just a complete non-issue because there are gas stations everywhere and right that's so until that's solved that that is going to be the thing that is going to be the thing that that i missed the least about dry TV for sure on that just made me think of a question we have to pay for gas do you have to pay to you know charged vehicle at superchargers no but the the level 2 charging situation varies from city to city and from state to state in Morro Bay the the there was one level 2 charger there and and by the way if if we had pulled up and the charger was in use we would have been completely hosed which I am just not thinking about Jordan one of our video guys actually just brought it up with me but but that was a free charger not all level two chargers are free like it here in Chicago um Walgreens and I think they do this elsewhere to walgreens the the the drugstore company has installed level two pre level two chargers at a lot of their stores so if you drive an EV you can just park up and plug in while you go in but if you go into like a lot of parking garages in the city there are level two chargers that are like little kiosks with with credit card readers and you need to pay to charge but the super chargers are free which is one of the the really awesome things about of course if you're driving any EV other than a than a Tesla doesn't do any good whereas level two chargers are pretty universal so um but yeah it just varies from location location ok this is coming from inter slice again on twitter 0 to 60 and 4.4 seconds how about 0 to 100 just how severely is range going to be depleted screeching way from stop lights in the city a lot uh yeah I was warned on several occasions that being liberal with the accelerator would have a significant impact on our range and I think it did just because we fell so far short of 265 going from LA tomorrow bae 0 to 100 time I I don't I don't know I Tesla probably has an official remember on their site but but I can tell let's put it this way even if we did do a 0 to 100 run on a public road I wouldn't tell you it's just not legal um ok this is coming from a shag on Twitter since the engine is totally different there's a good question is maintenance different you have to change the coolant oil filters etc that is a great question yet we brought this up with with the the PR people at Tesla and it's it's close to a zero maintenance car one thing that I didn't bring up in the piece is that if you open up the hood it's just another trunk there's like there's nothing user serviceable in there it's just an empty space where you can put in luggage and we did use it for luggage the only thing you can access there's the windshield washer fluid just like any other car and and we were told there's some fluid or lubricant or something that that needs to be changed once every 12 years I think but but apart from that I think they recommend a yearly checkup where you just take the car in and they like you know look it over and do whatever to it but it in terms of user service it's basically zero as windshield washer fluid and power that's about it um that's that's pretty interesting okay what else let me check here as much as this is coming from no amar on YouTube as much as I like the Tesla s I feel that this car will get an initial press bump and then slowly fade away do you think the Tesla s is the car that will make electric cars viable for normal America I and not yet but I think what's very important about Tesla even if the Model S is not ultimately the car that pushes the world over the hump on v's what's important about the company is the fact that they're being really aggressive about pushing the EV agenda and making sure that it's in the public eye and talking about it constantly and talking to people like us who are bringing you stories about it and so that you know people are aware of the EV initiatives and they're aware of infrastructure issues because it you know a test will be the first to admit there's a ton of money and time and energy that needs to go into building out this infrastructure make it five truly viable and so I think just having Elon Musk and Tesla being so aggressive about pushing the EV agenda is what matters more than the Model S itself and you know you're seeing I was talking earlier about the old guard car companies being a lot more conservative in general and that's certainly true with TVs to you know companies like Ford and GM do have EVs in their lineups but they they don't try to market them as mainstream cars yeah and it Elise in GM's case they're um they're they're pushing extended-range v's um also known as hybrids like the volt and and now the cadillac ELR which are you know they're a great concept but uh they still rely on gas and the range is a small fraction of what you get on a model s so um so in terms of you know pushing a true EV infrastructure and agenda Tesla's really leading the way and I think that that message is much more important in the car itself okay all right we'll take a couple more this is again from raw she's got some great questions is there a built-in voice it's a built-in voice command if so how well does it work Alice can see rior google voice be used like can you integrate Syria with it or doesn't have its own proprietary system yeah there's there's a built-in voice recognition system that they just if i'm not mistaken they just recently added it in a firmware update it i don't think that it shipped with the car it's new and uh they admitted to me on the spot they were like look we know that that voice recognition isn't perfect we're playing with it you know we just added this uh we didn't test it much but it did fail to recognize you like you know the problem with most of these voice recognition systems and cars is that like you don't know off the bat what it can recognize and then you need to go to like a process like have it lists out possible commands to you and it's just and and then it becomes more trouble than it's worth I wasn't able to get it to like do anything interesting you know I got a lot of like unrecognized command okay like I press the buttons an unrecognized command at the bottom of the instrument cluster but it's new and and you know unlike a lot of other systems where like you know that they probably aren't going to update the way the voice recognition works and even if they did you have to take it in the dealer to get the firmware updated with this cards just an over-the-air update so they could theoretically make it better than it is right now okay so that's one of Tesla's big things like they could just push updates over the air unlike any other manufacturer can write okay let's see um what else do we have here did you feel as intimate and connected this is coming from Linda Don Twitter did you feel as intimate and connected with the Model S as you would with your favorite manual shifting vehicle no no I no no I mean if you if you compare this to will like that the lotus elise that I was talking about before lucky it's very like you definitely feel like you're part of the machine whereas with the model ests and frankly with any car where you're not shifting yourself you feel a little more like you're being taken for a ride and I think that you know we were testing the performance model which has you know it has a bunch of things that make it a sporty-er experience and it definitely felt like a sporty car but did it feel like a sports car I would say no it just it felt like a very sporty sedan and yeah i mean III don't think it's it's possible for an EV to ever achieve that level of connection with the driver and you know I am I my guess is that there will be in California at some point in the future unless they're banned there will always be at least a niche market for gasoline vehicles even after v's an extended-range v's take over for that very reason the fact that you know that there's an enthusiast slash hobbyist aspect to it that you can't get from EV but I think that being said I think that Tesla did about the best job it possibly could connecting the driver to the car sort of having a manual even though even though it's you know probably one of the most technologically advanced cars you've ever been in and driven it doesn't you don't feel intimate with it as you do it you know a regular stick shift car no yeah I don't think the technology really has anything to do with it you know you can drive you know and again going back to the the lotus elise it's a very raw car there's no technology in it dates you know it's got like a crappy aftermarket radio and and you know a button to turn the lights on and off and a manual transmission and that's about it and and you know you that's in fact I think that many ways technology is is opposed to feeling connected with car um because it you know that systems kick in for you like you know stability control is a great example that traction control and there are things happening that you don't that you're not actively controlling yourself right that's not an issue with like a really old school manual car okay makes sense this questions coming from Michael Voss on Twitter what kind of tires does it come with it comes with tires uh they're low profile I I think that they're uh they're not like right flats or anything no I don't believe so I'm getting it mixed up in my mind because I just had a discussion with the chief engineer of the Cadillac ELR and he was talking about tires and I don't want to get it mixed up okay but the I can tell you that they're extremely low profile i think that the that the the high-end wheel on the model s if you if you option it is a 20-inch so as you can imagine it's gonna be a very low profile tire but i don't know the manufacturer i I don't I don't know the stats on it I'm sorry mm-hmm but that that should be on Tesla's site that should be in the back section yeah um would you want this is coming from interest less on Twitter would you want a manual in the Tesla Model S or is the automatic beneficial to the overall system yeah I don't think I mean they could I'm sure they could find a way to like you know MacGyver Emanuel what it's it's counter to what they're trying to do and you're sacker I'm sure that you'd be sacrificing a great deal of efficiency right for that like the bottom line is that if you want like if a manual is that important to you this is probably not the car for you right and and you know BMW went through this the same heartburn where uh you know that they they got their electronic manuals they're so good that and still efficient that they were faster shifting than a manual and more efficient and better in every way even for their performance vehicles but you still have these old-school people who just say just give me a manual right they actually had to go back and lie you know engineer a manual for the new m5 and m6 and you can actually like you can spec them in by default you get the electronic manual but if you want to spec in the manual you can but but of course is our internal combustion cars so I think it's it makes a lot less sense in something like the Model S and I don't think you're ever going to see that okay to preserve long-term battery life does it need to be fully charged depleted or can it be topped up randomly I don't mean the battery on this thing right yeah there are there are a couple different charging modes on the car that you can choose between one's called standard ones called max range and i think that the standard mode is better for the long the longevity of the battery than the max range but you can like if you absolutely need like top top out the battery you can put into max range mode and get a little extra juice out of it but apart from that you know I didn't look through the instruction manual for the car but mark the engineer that we talked to in in gilroy California where the superchargers are located he had just picked up his Model S from the factory and he had said that there were no battery conditioning recommendations huh for the car that he had been told so and you know to be fair lithium ion batteries are pretty low maintenance compared to like my cats and nickel metal hydride so right that that that doesn't necessarily surprise me it's possible that you know my guess my instinct is that if you treat the the battery the same way you treat a laptop battery to get maximum life out of that you're probably going to get some some extra life out of the out of the car's battery pack as well but but we weren't told any guidelines for that okay um alright let's wrap this up I got one more question here has anyone asked about the public perception about Tesla did anyone recognize the car when you were driving it oh yeah we got we got recognized non-stop which really surprised me because you know I I don't think of most human beings as being car fanatics and like you know they can't tell you know a Ferrari from a Lamborghini but also you did drive it through california rights you'd expect yeah yeah and I'm sure that they're much more familiar with Lake low mission vehicles in general and Tesla specifically since is a California company uh but it it still shocked me just how many people everywhere knew what we are dry either knew what it was or wanted to know what it was interesting at what I pulled into a gas station ironically of course yeah and and this guy another pump came over and he was like holy crap what is this this is a beautiful car and you know people I mentioned in the piece a guy in a pickup truck like pulled up next to me on the expressway not start honking his horn and giving the thumbs up and it was and it we were we were going to pull out in in Big Sur getting some you know doing a photo shoot and and a family came up with their kids and they're like hey you know can I put my my son in the car can you go around with it so everyone was just really really excited about it which surprised me because it isn't a very like it is a very attractive car but it isn't like it isn't like a bright green tesla roadster you know it doesn't have that level of like you know grab eNOS it doesn't grab your eyeballs like that does so um so yeah i was a little surprised but but you know it unless you're um let's put it this way it's a first world problem if you're a Tesla driver and you're getting a lot of people asking you what your car is that that is the first real problem true alright cool um Chris thanks for hanging out literally and you know right here with us yeah and thanks everyone for your questions we got some good ones for sure I just want to make it a point if you liked what you saw here we are the verge we have a youtube channel as youtube.com slash the verge and if you like what you saw definitely subscribe to our channel