Also worth noting: The yoke cover was largely worn out on our 19,000-mile Model S tester. And sure, it may have led to a lifetime of hand sanitizer/clorox use, but it was a sad sight to see after only a year of use. We've rented other cars over the past year - others with similar mileage - that didn't look anywhere near as bad.
As a fighter jet pilot, astronaut or race car driver, it's unlikely you've experienced acceleration on a surface like the Tesla Model S Plaid. This is surprising. Mind-altering. Verging on anxiety. The speed with which nature whizzes past you through the windshield and side window is like driving through the high triple digits in an old "Need for Speed" video game, watching the world bend and expand around you in a playful way. . It's hard to understand without actually being in the car and feeling it. We knew it was going to be funny, but it still managed to catch us – journalists who drive fast cars all the time – completely off guard. There is no denying it. The Model S Plaid is a special car, and its speed is guaranteed to shock you.
This acceleration is only part of the stat sheet of this large sedan. The Model S Plaid has been on sale for a little over a year now, though we haven't been able to get our hands on it yet. Since Tesla doesn't provide test cars for review, we got this one through Toro (more on that experience soon). It's the only Plaid available for rent in Michigan, so we snagged it for a day, allowing us a maximum of 100 miles of driving. Despite the low mileage limit, we spent the entire day messing around with it, getting to know it and learning everything we could about what it's like to drive and drive the Model S Plaid. Just like getting a new phone, though, diving into Tesla's interior requires an adjustment period.
Strange new router yoke blows. We took an express? This is not gambling. There's one thing better than a steering wheel, however, and it's a high, wide, and flat place to rest your hands on long highway trips. Beyond that, the steering is inferior to a conventional steering wheel in every practical way.
If the turn is 90 degrees or sharper, it is said to make the corner awkwardly. Want to implement a quick turnaround strategy? Instead of an easy edge to hold and keep turning, you'll get an open air. And don't even begin to think you'll "adapt" or "get used to it." Given more time to run the yoke, it will still be annoying and arguably worse than a wheel when you need to go lock-to-lock. Even when you're arcing the Model S through wide sweepers at high speed and testing the handling, it's annoying. It's never possible to adjust your grip upwards or move your hands around the steering wheel from corner to corner, as one would on a road with slow and fast corners of varying radii. If you shift position, that one hand completely loses contact. We found ourselves gripping the yoke tightly and with a greater sense of self-restraint—a nagging fear that it would slip out of our grasp—than we ever had with the steering wheel.
As for the digitized Ferrari-like turn signals on the steering wheel, they work better than expected. The Model S is smart enough to understand when you've turned on the indicator in a merging situation versus signaling for a turn at a traffic signal. Without fail, the vehicle would automatically turn off the signal after completing the lane change, so a duplicate press was never needed. Running the windshield wipers as they are — no stalks — wasn't a problem either, mostly because you can just set the wipers to auto, and they'll do their job smartly. The touchscreen shifter worked pretty well, but the "auto shifting" feature where the car magically knows which direction you want to go. We resorted to manually switching between drive and reverse most of the time. And don't worry, we also tried out the silly sound effect "boom box" horn. Senior Editor James Reswick is right. This is a public nuisance.
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