I needed to make a 900 mile roundtrip a couple of weeks ago. At the last minute, I checked rental car prices and for $80 I could get a compact rental - with the difference in gas mileage that made it basically free to use someone else's car rather than one of my older vehicles.
Things went a little sideways when I got to the counter to pick up the car - the only things they had available were a minivan and a Tesla. The minivan didn't do me any good on gas mileage, and the Tesla introduced a whole new world of dealing with charging on a road trip that I was unprepared for. But those were the only two choices, so I took the Tesla. Prior to that I'd never ridden in an electric car, much less driven one around town or on a road trip.
The whole experience was fascinating. No one came out to explain the car to me, and it's like Tesla prides itself on doing things differently. Not necessarily better - just different. Just getting into the car was interesting. There's no key - just a card that you tap next to the B pillar and the car suddenly beeps and unlocks itself. Then the door handles themselves are -bizarre-. Honestly I hated them.
Driving it was a lot of fun. Under any circumstance - around town, on the highway, from a standstill - it would absolutely MOVE. This was just a basic model 3, but the instant power delivery of the system was attention grabbing. It was like watching the speedometer on an episode of Night Rider - the numbers will spin upwards magically as you nudge the accelerator.
Braking took a few minutes to adapt to, but I liked that side of things too. It's set up for one pedal driving - as you back off the accelerator, it intuitively transitions into regenerative braking. Once you get a feel for it, you can do nearly everything without touching the brake pedal. On the 450 miles back from Kentucky, I probably used the actual brake pedal once or twice.
Charging was a whole new adaptation. Once you put the destination into the system, it automatically determines charging stations along the route that line up with the cars current charge level, estimated range, etc. With the base model, I think the official range is around 250 miles. But that's based on charging all the way to 100% and going down to 0%. More realistically, I was charging to 80-85% and trying to refill at 15-20%. Two reasons for that - charging slows as the batteries get close to full, and I didn't want to take any risks of running low. Following the recommended stopping points worked very well. The nav system would route me directly to a bank of chargers, and I never got to a spot that didn't have multiple available to use. Using them is incredibly simple too. Just unclip the cable from the charging unit, press a button on the handle as you get to the car for the charging door to open, then plug it in. A few seconds later, a green light comes on and charging has begun. You can watch the status from the screen in the car or on your phone. Typical stops were around 15-30 minutes depending on how much I wanted to add to get to the next location.
One thing I hadn't considered was where the chargers would be located. They weren't typically at or near traditional gas stations. Instead, they'd be next to a fast food restaurant, coffee shop, grocery store, etc. So the MO became to plug the charging cable in and then go inside for a quick bathroom stop and a snack. Longer than my usual fuel stop, but not dramatically.
The only thing I absolutely HATED on the car was the automatic emergency braking. A couple of times the car simply decided that something happening well ahead of me (that I could clearly see would clear before I got there, like a car making a turn across my path of travel) was a desperate life critical emergency that required a VERY HARD deceleration. From what I can gather, this can be disabled somewhere in the controls, but only fur the current driving session. There isn't a way to disable it permanently.
All in all, I wasn't sold on owning one, but enjoyed the experience. It drove great (minus the automated braking), and charging wasn't a big deal along the route I took.
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