Seriously. The LAST place I expected to have the ‘scales of my bias against electric cars fall from my eyes’ would have been at the annual opening round of the Meremere Dragway’s perennially popular Night Speed Drag Wars ‘introduction to drag racing’ event at Meremere (south of Auckland) last Friday night.
Yet there it was in all its full-time 4WD/twin electric motor glory, a sleek, black, low-slung Tesla Model S (Rego LOLGAS) its driver creeping soundlessly from the packed staging lanes before lining up for his next practise run down the left-hand lane of the New Zealand’s oldest and most storied strip of quarter mile goodness.
Alongside was another expensive, late model attention-getter in the form of a serious-looking Audi A-something station wagon.
What happened next was – for me – the really interesting bit. First, I grabbed a quick pic on my Samsung camera phone then watched as the two cars lined up at the staging lights.
Staging is a relatively simple process. Ease up to ‘the line’ and stop when the bleu light at the top of the lighting tree illuminates.
When the starter is satisfied that both vehicles are in their correct spot, he then thumbs a rocker switch he holds in one hand, and the starting sequence begins.
You get three orange lights going off progressively down the ‘tree’ before you get your green and once you ‘get into the swing of things the measurement of your reaction time (from when the green light goes on and when you ‘go’ is as important a measure of your success (or otherwise) as your best time down the strip.
Particularly if, as the ‘dude in the Tesla’ was, you choose to run in the C6 DYO class.
DYO means ‘Dial Your Own, giving you the opportunity to work out how quick (or otherwise) your car or motorcycle is in your three allotted practise runs then nominate the time you will try and repeat in the elimination rounds.
Last ‘season’ for instance the Final of the C6 DYO car class – literally- went down to the wire, with Shyma Mehta driving a 1998 Honda Integra R going up against ran against the distinctly old-skool Holden Brougham of fellow Aucklander Robert Arnold.
Both drivers ran their ETs close – Arnold doing a 14.40 to his ET of 14.493, Mehta a 14.20 to his ET of 14.310, but Mehta got the nod thanks to a sizzling Reaction Time (RT) of just 0.189 cfm to Arnold’s 0.523.
But I digress.
I can’t remember whether or not I have aired my – generally negative – views on the whole ‘hyped-up-to-all-hell’ petrol-is-dead/electric-cars-are-better-and-we-all-should be-driving them BS’ in this particular forum before.
Suffice to say, while I have no strongly-held views either way, I’m old enough now to know when I am being set up and when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
You might remember, for instance, the concerted campaign to paint the 6-monthly WOF checks ‘all cars on the road in NZ’ had to pass, as needless ‘make work,’ and that 12 months was fine for all cars first registered on or after Jan 01 2000,
A someone who chooses to own cars older than that I am well aware of the need for the type of maintenance required to keep my fleet in safe, roadworthy condition.
I’m obviously in the minority though, because every time – say – I’m at the supermarket and I’m Idly wandering along a row of late model SUVs I’ll see – let’s see – mis-matched tyres, tyres worn thru to the canvas on the outside edge, and tyres with – way less than the legal minimum tread depth. Yet if I go and check the WoF label on the windscreen more often than not the next check is not due for another 4, 5 or even more months.
And that is just the tyres. If the alignment is so far out that a tyre is wearing abnormally imagine what the ball joints are like up front, or the condition of the trailing arm bushes at the back.
So, I was no big fan of the move from 6 to 12 monthly WoF checks. And I thought the PR campaign whichever Govt Dept ran to promote the change was disingenuous (look it up!) at best and downright dishonest at its worst.
In saying that those responsible come across as rank amateurs compared to the slick professional BS artists obviously being paid outrageous sums to encourage us to ‘go electric.’
Having had to push a genuine Zero electric motorcycle the last two (mostly uphill) kms home when I had one out on test -several years ago now – I know all about ‘range anxiety.’
In saying that though I have also talked the issue through with technical types within the electrical supply industry who have told me that quick, reliable, cost-effective home charging units are on their way and that as battery design and technology improves so too will the array of quick chargers in the community get better
Which is all very well, until some smug, woke prick with (way) too much money and time on his or her hands is interviewed by a typically idealistic but hopelesly ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ journo type for an article in a fashion or ‘lifestyle’ magazine or newspaper ‘supplement’ and comes out with the usual planet-saving crap that got them thinking about buying a Hybrid or electric-only car or SUV in the first place.
So it’s the people making the most noise about the whole petrol vs electric debate which piss me off, not the technology or choice of motive ‘power’ itself.
Proof, in fact, came several years ago, now when I interviewed businessman, racing driver and all round ‘good bugger’ Tony Quinn and as a means of wrapping up our chat asked him what his ‘daily driver’ was.
After initially saying that he didn’t really have one – claiming that he basically borrowed whatever was closest if and when he needed to drive anywhere – he then said, ‘no, put down a Tesla Model S. My son Klark has got one in Sydney… It’s got this mode called Ludicrous. Push a button and it does 0-100km’h in 2.5 seconds. Incredible.’
Which is more the kind of endorsement that works with me…not to mention – I would imagine – many of you reading this column.
I know, because after watching the Tesla creep silently up to the staging area, then literally disappear stage left in an eerie kind of almost complete (bar the chirp of wide, ultra-low profile tyre on VHT-prepped tarmac) silence and record a time in the low 13s I pulled my phone out to share the moment on Instagram and Facebook.
I don’t do this every day but figured that a Tesla turning up at a round of Night Speed Drag Wars had a certain (I suppose the word is) ‘shock’ value.
Not that I expected the virtually instant response I got though.
In fact, by the time I had watched a few more quick-fire runs, and did a second round of the pit area to see if anything else new or different had arrived since I had, I checked my Facebook feed and WTF…..the post had attracted 10 Likes, 3 smiley face/2 sad face emojis and two questions in the Comments section, both enquiring as to the times the Model S was doing.
This, remember, was Friday evening around dinner time to boot.
And so, my Tesla education began.
Before ‘the dude in the Tesla’ had another go I moved ‘possies’ (from directly in front of the staging area to further down the strip so I could actually see (not to mention read) the large digital screens at the end of the quarter mile onto which a driver’s time is flashed on completion of each run.
If anything the Tesla seemed even more ‘other-wordly’ as it hoovered past where I was now standing, an underbody-defining red neon lighting kit (which I hadn’t noticed before) only adding to the sense of ‘now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t’ occasion.
Without anything to directly compare it with or to the 13.14s time which flashed up on the sign above the Tesla’s lane seemed pretty impressive to me.
I have since found out however that there are actually two S models, one optimised for covering distance (range), called the Long Range Plus, the other – simply called the Performance – for impressing the hell out of people like you and I.
It was behind the wheel of the latest factory-optioned Performance model, for instance, that an owner in the US set a new world record for the Model S of an incredible 10.45s earlier this year, which you can watch for yourself here https://youtu.be/l1hWYkgk8f0.
I’m not sure how much range you would get if you used the Model S Performance’s 250 km/h top speed on a regular basis. However, running up and down a drags trip at between 10 and 14 seconds at a time can’t put that much strain on the battery.
The bottom line?
Sure, a couple of years ago I had a quick ride in the front passenger seat of a Model S Tesla and yes, the driver showed me both the process by which you select Ludicrous mode, and the result – albeit on a heavily-trafficked Auckland motorway – when you use it.
The wankier ‘holier-than-thou’ spin of the marketing types at the time left me cold though and I put Tesla in the same ‘urrggggghh, no way Jose’ box in my ‘car’ brain as Toyota’s original Pious (oops, I mean Prius).
Lucky then that I decided to make the ‘trip-to-the strip’ last Friday tow watch a little local history in the making because watching the sleek, low-slung black Model S hunker down on its large diameter mag wheels and ultra-low-profile tyres then literally catapult down the strip into the gathering darkness was not only entertaining it was educational and the result was like…a switch being turned on in my head!
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