the buzz around Tesla is more like the deafening roar of a 747 so if you're
curious about a car like the Model X well we hope to demystify a little bit
why this SUV is so unique and worthy of that buzz the car we're testing is the
Model X 100 deep so it's the mid-range SUV it's below the ludicrous mode P 100
d and above the 75 d and what that means is you have 295 miles of electric range
EPA rated range and this car starts at around 97 thousand dollars and that's
not including any federal or state tax credits backs we're testing is the three
road model and the one with the bench seat in the middle you can get the X as
a five-seater with just the two rows a six-seater captain's chairs in the
second row that don't fold flat or the bench that we have which has room for
three passengers in the second row and two passengers in the third row and all
of those folds flat at the start of driving the Model X I was tracking every
trip how much energy it used if the predicted range was accurate and after a
few days they didn't feel the need to do that anymore because the range was so
accurate and I didn't have to worry about whether it was going to misguide
me with how many miles I had on my trip and even more than just around town on
road trips the navigation system will figure that
out for you so you can plug in the destination and it will tell you if you
have enough battery life to get there and if you don't it will guide you to a
super charging station which is the fastest way to charge and it will tell
you how long it's gonna take to charge to get that range to get you to your
destination what was most surprising about my week in the Model X was how I
wasn't concerned about range at all with 295 miles of range I was able to commute
I was on day care duty run errands and ranges wasn't an issue now part of that
though is because we're in Chicago and there is a massive network of charge
and supercharger stations we're charging at the supercharger was not much of an
issue now the super charging station is the fastest way that you can charge we
were typically getting about 140 to 150 miles of range per hour the one by my
house is next to a grocery store and the one in the city is next to another
grocery store and some shopping so an hour to run errands while the car is
charging is not bad at all now if there was a home depot near supercharging
stations well I'd be in trouble but the car would definitely get a full charge
there are a bunch of little features that make daily livability so much
easier so much easier that you think why isn't everyone else doing this to the
steering wheel for example very simple not many buttons but this multifunction
scrolling knob here you can adjust the climate control temperature the fan
speed the screen display recent calls and contacts it's just it's information
features that you use a lot and it's really easy access here at your
fingertips another is with the X is an air suspension so you can be in the
weeds in the very low setting or it can be jacked way up with a ton of ground
clearance in the very high setting on the high setting and very high setting
you can even tag GPS locations so when you hit very high it will have an auto
raising location marker so when you ever you hit that GPS spot again the
suspension is gonna raise off the ground and that's if you have a steep driveway
or you're going over consistent rough terrain
they're also driver profiles which while not unique there are absolutely memory
seat capabilities and other luxury cars but in the Tesla you can save up to 10
and whenever you make a little adjustment let's say I move the mirror
or I move the seat a little pop up on the screen shows do I want to save that
as my new default setting or don't want to restore to the old setting it's just
a little feature that makes a big difference
Tesla's preconditioning of the interior works exceptionally well it's been about
eighty to ninety degrees here and when the car is sitting outside it easily
gets to a hundred and five hundred and six degrees inside the car setting the
climate control through the app from inside the house it will get 273 degrees
in 11 minutes which is a phenomenal it does make a lot of noise from the
outside when you walk up to the car it's just whooshing and you hear that blower
motor spinning at 300 miles an hour but it works it works really fast faster
than other electrics we've used and other cars that give you the ability to
you know precondition your interior you don't see back at cameras like this
anywhere else and it's also because you don't see screens like this in many
other cars but Tesla is making full use of this screen with a high-resolution
backup camera and unlike other systems that are gonna turn off after you hit a
certain mile an hour you can keep this camera on when you're driving at
different speeds above just cruising around a parking lot and it's useful in
this car because the rear visibility is not great this model has a fixed rear
spoiler and the back window is very small so rear visibility isn't great to
start with this camera makes a big difference in giving you an extra set of
eyes on the back the proximity sensor is on top of telling you how close
something is they conform to the shape of what you're around so if you're
pulling into a parking space the the blob of caution do not hit this it forms
to the shape of what you're approaching and then when you get really close it
starts telling you you're 30 inches away you're 25 inches away you're 20 inches
away which is that extra bit of context the head tells you you're really close
to something and other systems you just don't have that context of really how
close you are to something until it tells you to stop but this is just a
little extra information that goes a long way into telling you just how
really close you are vex isn't without its quirks and the doors are definitely
quirky they're all electronic so they motor open and close and
the rear doors are the Falcon doors so those will swing upward and they put on
a great show that's for sure they are a WOW factor of this even if you don't
want it when I pulled up to a grocery store they had a nice little barbecue
out front and a bunch of picnic tables and as soon as I pulled up and open
those doors everyone turned and looked at me and
that's not the kind of attention that I want when I'm going to pick up some milk
and they're also just a little weird to live with if you're parking in a parking
garage and the structure is low they're not going to open all the way which is
really smart it's gonna sense that there's an object above and it's only
gonna open you know so it doesn't hit what's above you but then you're left
with a height that you can't really get easy in-and-out access and they do take
pretty long to open and close but they are a spectacle the doors also feel a
little flimsy when they close it's not a solid reassuring clunk
it almost feels like you're closing the door on an amusement park ride just
before you take off so we have the the model of the bench row in the second row
and it's not the easiest to get into the third row the third row is kind of tight
it's more for kids or smaller adults I'm 6 foot tall and it takes a little bit of
work to get back there the bench seat doesn't slide enough far forward to give
you a ton of access so you kind of have to climb over the wheel well heel here
and make sure you don't fall into the seat the bench seat is a little heavy
too to get back which isn't great it's not unusable I'm back here it's not
totally uncomfortable my head is up in the the rear glass area but it's it it's
not the place that you want to be you definitely want to call dibs to be in
the second row but if you are not there now it's locked in but if you do end up
back here you have some AC vents which is nice but the second row is the place
to be it as a flat floor a lot of legroom a lot
of headroom and a nice little skylights too in those Falcon doors the doors
closed like you're sitting in a rollercoaster and the acceleration
matches then we plot here the sixty and four point seven seconds with our Reis
logic VBox GPS equipment and you did the quarter-mile in 13 seconds flat at 108
miles an hour and that's quick especially for the mid-range model an
SUV spaced the Tesla Model X acceleration is most similar to a
Porsche Cayenne a hybrid it's also does research even for 27 seconds that a
hybrid though only has 14 miles of electric range where the Tesla you're
looking at a full electric vehicle with of course the 295 miles of range if you
haven't driven electric car before driving the Model X is going to be a
very different experience there is instant acceleration when you hit the
accelerator pedal there's no down shifting you don't have to wait for the
engine's power to come on at higher rpms you're just off and where that's most
noticeable is when you're on the highway and you see a hole in traffic and you
need to get there to make your exit this has no delay and you're gone in a split
second where the X isn't quite as impressive is in ride quality it doesn't
have the solid reassuring composure that $100,000 Land Rover or Mercedes does it
kind of crashes over bumps and the firmness isn't adjustable so unlike
those other SUVs you can't choose a comfort mode these type of roads or a
sport mode and other types of roads the doors in the third row I can chalk up to
being quirky but what's just flat-out disappointing about this car is its
phone integration especially with my iPhone I just got out of a Honda clarity
plug-in electric that has apple carplay and with apple carplay I can seamlessly
use voice to text functions podcasts various music apps and don't have that
here giving into this car was kind of like
going back five years in phone integration technology there's basic
Bluetooth functions but there's not great phone usage here like you get with
apple carplay for Android auto and it's disappointing because this touchscreen
is wonderful it's fast its high resolution and apple carplay is designed
to mimic your touchscreen phone on a touchscreen and that's where it works
best and just seems like it would be a perfect match but you just don't get
that the test was touchscreen Tesla's autopilot is probably the best execution
of a semi autonomous smart cruise control where it has an auto steer
function that keeps the car centered in its lane and will actually steer with
quite a bit of steering angle around corners when it's set there are some
quirks though on this car even with my hand on the steering wheel it kept
reminding me to make sure your hands are on the steering wheel and it is a
hands-on feature this isn't like Cadillac super cruise where they say you
can go hands-free though super cruise only works on certain highways to
activate autopilot the cruise control stock here you pull forward twice it is
a system that works very well in is a must use feature if you live in
congested areas like we do in Chicago it's not appropriate to call this car a
2018 model year rather the Model X we tested was version twenty eighteen point
three two point four and since we reviewed this car Tesla's software
update 9.0 has been released giving a slew of new features it addresses the
rear view camera only having one view now through software updates having a
360 degree visualization using all eight external cameras that previously weren't
being used there's a new dash cam function and the screen has been updated
with more centralized controls all the cold-weather controls are now in one
spot plus there will soon the autopilot features that can suggest lane changes
to follow the most efficient path of traffic and that's perhaps the
X's biggest advantage there isn't another SUV that can improve as
dramatically without having to buy an all-new car in the next model year
you