2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.com

2013 Tesla Model S Long-Term Road Test

They say the 2013 Tesla Model S isn't particularly low compared to other cars out there, but ours scraped when exiting a parking lot near my house.

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gslippy

The resale on this car will be fascinating. It's worth mentioning that the software patch being pushed out by Tesla will soon raise the highway ground clearance by about an inch.

k5ing

As you probably know by now, Tesla has disabled the lowering function at speed for now. They say in January they will bring it back and also let the driver select whatever ride height they want. I'm guessing that will include being able to drive it in one or both of the high modes. That will help on uneven/gravel/snowy roads where even the standard height may be an issue.

My own opinion is that they should either add a button on the steering wheel, or at least put the height adjustment on one of the two dashboard displays accessible by the scroll buttons so they can be instantly accessed for situations like the one you describe in the article.

arcticbluetsx

I agree with k5ing's suggestion of a button that is always accessible on the display. However, I would only make it adjustable at speeds below a certain mark, like 20-25 mph. Nobody is going to pull into a driveway at speeds anywhere near that. Driving in cities with roads that are rarely smooth, the high setting would be useful and practical.

fordson1

There is a lot of ink being spilled over this, and it's a BS issue, like unintended acceleration for Toyotas. Any of the trailer hitches the guy hit would have stuck up much higher than 6 inches and would have hit the front undercarriage, not the battery.

capt601

15 seconds to negotiate the menu?? Wow. Takes us a total of 2 seconds and all while we are driving below 9 mph, so that when we reach the driveway it is already at full height.

hybris

Forget menus and touch screens what we need to is a small easy to turn knob on the dash with good indentions and the various drive heights clearly labeled. All that would take maybe a 2 or 2.5 inch section of the dash and surely Tesla can find that space somewhere on here.

allthingshonda

Sounds like the engineers at Tesla anticipated this with the rub strips and the air suspension ability to raise the car. I wonder of the parking sensors could be programmed to detect objects that would cause a ground clearance problem.

actualsize

Yes, the auto-lowering function has been disabled via a recent firmware update. Essentially, the 0.8-inch drop at highway speeds has been done away with. The 6-inch static ride height is now the freeway ride height. I wrote and submitted this before that news came out, but it would have made no difference in this situation. As for the 15-seconds, I could probably do a little better as a full-time owner, but the height controls still live on a menu screen I don't often access.

jvonbokel

FWIW, Tesla has suggested that a future software update could include the option to automatically raise the suspension in certain areas, as defined by GPS.