Life with a Tesla Model S: Two years on, has the charge worn off?

Two years after its launch, the Tesla Model S remains a hot topic among electric car fans, automakers and the public at large. Tesla has issued a steady stream of rolling changes to the S — from the four-wheel-drive setup shared with the upcoming Model X SUV to new body shields — while other automakers have targeted luxury electric buyers, (the BMW i3 being a prime example.)

So it seemed like a good time to circle back to early Model S owner Franklin Parlamis, a Bay Area financial analyst who gave us the good, the bad and the ugly roughly six months into his ownership of a $100,000 Tesla Signature Series Model S with the Performance package (0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds).

In that first blush of ownership, he was smitten with the car’s speed and styling, both of which generated conversations at every stoplight. But he was disappointed that true battery range was closer to 250 miles than the advertised 300. He loved the kid-gloves customer service that dealt with a cracked windshield instantly, but bemoaned the lack of cupholders in the rear. He loved the computer-like upgradeability of the car’s operating system, but felt less than comfortable driving what he considered to be a rich person’s vehicle.

Now after two years and with 19,000 miles on the S’s odometer, Parlamis fills us in on:

The mind-blowing upgrade

For months, each time Parlamis pulled up to the deep rain-gutter dip between the street and his driveway, he had to punch a few commands into the car’s massive 17-inch center display in order to get the front end to raise so he wouldn’t scrape.

“I just got used to it, but one day I went to do that and it told me the car was already raised,” says Parlamis. “Using the car’s GPS, the car simply knew where it was and was now able to raise itself when it sensed I was at home parking. And that blew my mind. The car was literally thinking for me, and in that sense was improving my life.”

Parlamis says the functionality of the S’s GPS also has only gotten smarter over time, specifically by intuitively starting nav directions to an address that is listed on an imminent calendar-based destination that has synced over Bluetooth.

He notes that sometimes the system requires what amounts to a control-alt-delete reboot that was standard fare on old PCs. “The screen will just freeze up, but just resetting things tends to take care of it,” he says.

The massive nit

Parlamis has one major gripe, though he allows that “maybe it’s because it’s considered a performance car, and I was driving a Subaru before.” In two years, he’s already replaced nearly all the 19-inch rims and low-profile tires to the tune of $6,000.

“It started when I got a nail in one tire at around 8,000 miles, and when I brought it in I was told that I should replace both rears,” he says. “Then a month later I hit a pothole and the tire just blew. When I had them check it out at Tesla, they said most of my rims weren’t true any more, which they said was the result of having tires with a short sidewall.”