Tesla Model X P100D Test Drive Review

Tesla Model X P100D Test Drive

Topic: Tesla Model X P100D Test Drice Review

We have travelled to the future to test the car that combines all the trends of the automotive sector: SUV, electric and autonomous. It is the trendiest car of the moment, without a doubt, and it does not have a direct rival to face it.

We are talking about the Tesla Model X, and this time we have tested the top-of-the-range version, the P100D, capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 km / h in 3.1 seconds while having a range of 542 kilometres thanks to its 100 kWh battery. Would you like to take a trip back in time?

If a reissue of ‘Back to the future had to be done, the ideal car would be the Tesla Model X and not only because of its huge hawk-wing rear doors that may remind those of the Delorean but because all the technology it treasures transports you to the not too distant future.

When I got to pick up the car, it came from a Destination Charging where their batteries had been fully charged the night before; an operation carried out at a rate of about 100 kilometres per hour. The other option is the Supercharger located on main roads, which by the end of the year will have 24 stations.

Is the design of the Tesla Model X liked or not like in Europe?

When you have the Model X in front of you, it is inevitable to have conflicting feelings. The front of the vehicle, as with the Model S, is spectacular and striking. Although everyone may like it more or less, it cannot be denied that it has a hook, and this, even though being an electric model, lacks a traditional style front grill.

It is also noticeable that the design of its lines has arisen in the United States, not only because of its length over five meters but because there it is allowed for cars to circulate without a front license plate, with the fronts being cleaner earning many points from favour towards Europe. When will we have something like this here? Never.

The rest of the Model X line is somewhat more controversial, and I understand that it may or may not like it depending on the angle from which you see it. There are perspectives in which the bodywork, especially in the rear quarter, resembles a whale. The line of the gate, almost as vertical as the façade of a building, can delight the Pelotari as it looks like a wall of a pediment in Euskadi.

Tesla Model X Doors Open

Without a doubt, regardless of whether you like the design of the Model X, more or less when you open its hawk-wing rear doors, it is inevitable to be left with your mouth open. They are so long, and their movement is so harmonious that it is hard to believe what you see.

The rear door opening system is intelligent. Thanks to the six sensors that each door has, the car itself detects the distance to possible side obstacles and automatically opens the doors in one way or another to ensure that there are no hits nothing.

30 centimetres of lateral clearance is enough to open tesla model x doors.

They assure that 30 lateral centimetres are the minimum necessary for the door to open. I tried to get them to hit the garage’s roof or cars parked to the side and failed. I fear that technology has overtaken my mischief in this regard.

The screen is 17 inches, the largest in the world in a car. It may not make sense to do things like open the doors from a touch screen, but the future is there.

From the screen, you can do absolutely everything, from programming the route of the trip in the navigator, in which case it will adapt it to the available battery charge and the possible Superchargers en route if necessary to reach the destination, or listening to your favourite songs On Spotify (comes with a free Premium account for life), open and close the doors or move the seven seats individually at will.

This unit of the Tesla Model X came configured with seven seats, all of the individual and the ability to move each one independently from the screen itself or the switches integrated into each of the seats.

It can also be ordered in a five- or six-seater configuration. The central second-row seat is eliminated in the latter, leaving a comfortable aisle in the middle space or placing a large glovebox there. Also, the flat surface of the floor makes moving around the interior very comfortable.

Obviously, after an hour and a quarter of chatting about the infinite functions this car offers, what I wanted was to get behind the wheel and see how it moved, so I took the key (a remote control shaped like a car), I engaged D with the selector lever behind the steering wheel (inherited from Mercedes) and set off.

During the first bars of the route, I admit that the sensations were extraordinary but pleasant, almost to the same extent. It is sporadic to carry a car more than five meters long and nearly three tons in weight and do it without hearing more noise than the inevitable when the tires, 22 inches, in this case, touch the asphalt.

After I had covered a few kilometres, I began to get used to driving a quiet truck, and I felt comfortable and confident to start playing with the different driving modes available.

In normal mode, the Tesla Model X pleases for the toughness of the steering, which has a noble and precise feel despite being electric. That good feeling with the wheel, that perception that you feel how you are treading on the asphalt, was constant throughout the test, so in this sense, the Tesla convinces.

The brand proudly says that the panoramic front windshield is the largest globally, but the reality is that it also has certain discomforts. When the heat is high, as in California, the glass transmits too much heat to the occupants, even though the top is tinted to protect from the effects of the sun.

The panoramic windscreen is the largest in the world. Still, in extreme temperatures, the heat it transmits to the interior and the low power of the air conditioning system can turn the cabin into a sauna.

The said windshield has narrow sun visors that usually are crimped vertically on the A-pillar. Once you deploy them in their protective position, they are hooked by a magnetic system to a frame that runs through the central area of ​​the windshield. They do not protect much from the sun, but they represent a rather curious and practical solution.

To all this, we must add that, as in many other electric cars, lacking a mechanical motor, the air conditioning force is not enough to maintain the temperature we would like, and that even though they have improved it by providing it with 6 more intensity levels (it has gone from 6 to 12 speeds) thanks to comments collected in a Tesla user forum. That is one of the advantages that the heart of the car is software, but you need the hardware that gives more strength to the air conditioning system.

The system is activated by pressing twice in a row the lever that comes out to the left from the steering column (also a Mercedes heritage and the window controls), and the best comes when it starts working. It breaks precisely where I would and starts with hardly any delay as the car ahead does.

The automatic start and stop system in traffic jams work perfectly. In this sense, Tesla is already one step ahead of the rest of the car manufacturers.

At first, you have to trust that the system will work. Still, once you get your mind to internalize that the car will do it alone, the capacity it has to speed up those centimetres that other manufacturers keep as a safety distance is impressive.

This unit had air suspension, which allows the height of the free body to the ground to be varied by up to five levels. That would be nothing new if it weren’t because every time you ask it to raise the body, it asks you if you want it to do the same operation whenever it passes through that point.

If you say yes, the car will automatically record the exact point by GPS and carry out this operation automatically as long as you drive at less than 55 km / h, something handy to forget about the bumps that give access to your house or that step that you have to overcome to enter the gym garage. Has no other manufacturer come up with this idea?

It can memorize the points where you want the body to rise to; for example, avoid a speed bump and once memorized, it will do so automatically—a genius.

There are no aerodynamic noises, and even in the steepest corners, the body does not creak anywhere. It seems as if Tesla has been making cars all its life, but the reality is that we are talking about a brand with less than 15 years of life.

Without a doubt, it is the power and instantaneity with which the enormous torque is delivered that highlights the dynamics of this car. Due to its electric nature, having two motors located in each of the axes, the response to the movements of the accelerator is instantaneous, brutal and addictively fun.

It makes no difference whether you are travelling at 20 km / h or 100 km / h; if you step on the accelerator pedal eagerly, you will stay glued to the seat. There is about 950 Nm that take care of it. We could not make measurements of acceleration and recoveries. Still, I do not doubt that in either of the two parameters, the Model X P100D can snacking on supercars without messing up.

The traction capacity it has and the general feeling that the Model X offers compared to other high-performance SUVs are surprising. Dynamically it is competent.

The car masks the more than 2,500 kilos of weight very well, perhaps because that excess weight is located on the vehicle floor so that the drifts of the body are minimal no matter how much you go strong in support.

The steering delights us with a magnificent touch, and the chassis seems to be ready to follow the line that we mark at the beginning of each curve. To all this, we must add the traction capacity, which is simply enormous.

It is a strange sensation to feel how the car seems to circulate on rails in which the 22-inch tires are serrated to pull without losing the slightest bit of force. It is as if it were attached to the asphalt by magnetic force.

The quality of the finishes, both internal and in the body, is not its strong point, nor does it pretend to be.

We know that Tesla is approaching things differently in many aspects, and it seems that in terms of finishes, they also want to break with the established. Thus, both inside and outside, some finishes do not fit in a car that costs more than 170,000 euros, but I suspect that this is not a reason for a customer who wants a Model X to go, for example, to a Porsche Cayenne or BMW X5. When you want an iPhone 7, a Samsung Galaxy Note won’t do for you. I do not know if I explain myself.

Getting into the back of Model X is something you can do standing up.

Tesla Model X Technology

As I said before, the key is a kind of miniature of the car in which we find several functions. If you click on the hood area twice, you open it, and you find a very low and flat boot, which occupies the entire surface of the car across the width and offers 185 litres of capacity.

Suppose instead; you click twice on the area of ​​the rear doors. In that case, you will start the opening ritual, which in case of having a car or other object too close will begin with the opening upwards, taking the edge to an extreme angle for, a Once the side of the door is released, move it upwards.

It is a very spectacular system but not too practical in everyday use since the opening of doors is not as fast as we would like and sometimes, especially when you open and close indistinctly and vary continuously with the remote control or With the door button itself, the system can stop or not react with the same freshness that it does if you only activate it in specific situations.

The point favouring this rear door opening system may not be very obvious at first glance, but it is certainly differentiating from other cars in this segment.

Thanks to the immense free space that the door leaves once it is fully open, access to the second and third row of seats can be done completely standing up to be much more comfortable than in any other car to access the interior. They say that there is no evil that for good does not come, right?

Cautious not to completely discharge the batteries, we drove down the other side of the mountain pass we were on, and the driving sensations were still surprisingly good.

With the Sports steering mode engaged and the suspensions in the lowest position, the Model X dramatically changes character. The steering feels harsher and encourages you to stick closer to cornering and be more playful. Sporty touch? We could say yes.

There is nothing ridiculous about the Ludicrous Mode.

For brand policy reasons, we were only going to have the Model X for about 36 hours on our hands, so we would not waste time and leave without testing one of the most famous American SUV elements, Ludicrous mode (ridiculous mode).

Who has not heard of this system that allows the car to get the most out of it and make many supercars look ridiculous with accelerations from 0 to 100 km / h in 3.1 seconds?

To activate it, you have to follow a protocol that, at least, is curious. On the screen, you must go to the vehicle configuration program, enter the mode system and press the Ludicrous for five seconds. Then the screen begins to project the stars of ‘Star Wars in a clear reference to the speed of one of the Star Wars ships in which this mode is inspired.

For it to work, the batteries must be at a temperature of 50 degrees. Some battery heaters will be activated under normal conditions, and the clock box will show you the exact minutes remaining until you can use them.

In our case, it was 15 minutes that we took advantage of to find a place to perform this acceleration, worthy of a supercar with total safety. We then found an infinite straight, more than 1.5 kilometres long, in which visibility was perfect.

Autopilot is not a friend of grade changes.

On the national road, the Autopilot works excellently, you hardly notice any steering corrections, and it stays in the lane very easily. The smoothness with which it performs the right movements is impressive so that from the inside, you do not appreciate that it is working.

So much so that on the screen behind the wheel, curves are drawn to the left or the right as the route progresses, just so that the driver is aware that the system is reading the road. Also, the system differentiates when you are approaching a car or a truck and draws the silhouette of one or the other to know that it is attentive to everything that happens ahead.

Therefore, for now, the Autopilot is better to use it only on highways or motorway type roads where there are no major changes in the plane because if it loses the road lines, you can get a good scare. Either that or keep your hands on the wheel as required by the highway code.

Tesla Model X P100D Data

Tested version				P100 D
Displacement	NA cm³		Type of traction	Integral
Engine block	Two electric		Combustible	Electricity
Power (CV @ rpm)	More than 600 CV		Tank capacity	It has no liters
Par motor (Nm @ rpm)	More than 950 Nm		Urban consumption	– l/100 km
Empty mass	More than 2.5 tons kg		Extra-urban consumption	– l/100 km
Maximum speed	250 km/h		Combined consumption	– l/100 km
Acceleration 0-100 km / h	3.1 seconds		Trunk capacity	950 + 185 liters (with two rows of seats)
Transmission	Automatic		Price	172.000 euros

Charging in a Destination Charging

The range of 542 kilometres offered by the P100D is no less than what you could do with a fuel tank in a high-performance SUV with a combustion engine.

It so happens that Tesla is the one who installs the three charging points for free. The North American brand wants the electric car charging infrastructure to be developed; hence it does these things without charging the establishments. That is indeed a policy of fait accompli.

The accelerations at the exit of the traffic lights are dazzling thanks to its two engines, one located on the front axle and the other on the rear, that you can be sure that you will always be the fastest, the first on the exit grids Urban.

For the rest, the Model X arouses a lot of expectation and that the test unit had a fairly discreet colour configuration, with the body in dark gray and the unpainted metal wheels.

Tesla has entered the automotive world to change the rules of the game. Without a doubt, the Tesla Model X P100D is the true reflection of what they can do. An electric SUV with a capacity for up to 7 passengers, cutting-edge technology such as the Autopilot with a development somewhat more refined than traditional manufacturers and a real heart attack performance.

The Tesla Model X P100D is a car in every way. Okay, the finishes and the quality of some materials are not up to what you can expect in a car that is close to 200,000 euros in price, but I do not think that is something that matters to those who consider buying a car as well as alternative to, for example, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo S (196,934 euros), a BMW X5 M (140,500 euros) or a Mercedes GLS 63 4MATIC for 157,350 euros.

And it is precise with these that I compare it at the level of autonomy since the 542 kilometres that the Model X P100D reaches in real use are not less than the duration of a fuel tank in any of those three high-performance SUVs. If you can live knowing that your trips will depend on where the Superchargers are, if the hotel where you go has Destination Charging or the plug you have at home, the Tesla Model X can be more than an interesting alternative SUV traditional. And I say that I consider myself a Petrolhead.