When my friend Faisal bought himself a Dodge Challenger in 2009, I was impressed. It was a midnight blue color, and while a little more snug in the backseat than was practical for my purposes, it had the right feel to it. Maybe a little more muscular for me, but it had the feeling of achievement. You should understand: owning a car in NYC is superfluous, MOST of the time, given the extensive subway network, expensive LOTS of the time, with scant gas stations available, ruthless metering, punitive tolling and ticketing systems, and a pain in the ass ALL of the time, with no parking available, monthly spots starting (at the time) around $350, and the dreaded alternate-side parking system, a street-cleaning schedule that meant having to move your car from whatever spot you may have otherwise lucked into, typically at least two times per week.
Despite what cycling and tolling advocates may tell you, very few people opt into this masochist hellscape by choice, typically what’s happening is they have some set of obligations that necessitate the car. A family with equipment that needs to be moved between locations, old people or handicapped people that need to be ferried from there to there, work gear, and so on. Indeed, many people with a car would prefer to be without it, but NYC works mostly by stick and not by carrot, so the solution is almost never “make more bridges, tunnels, or subway lines that people can use instead,” but usually “charge those poor fuckers some more, that’ll learn ’em.” (And then they whine that the city has become too expensive for families and there is no age diversity to be had. Well, no shit.)
For more than 10 years I was one of those people. A single dad with a growing toddler I needed to quickly ferry at odd hours from house to house and school to school, elders who often needed the same, and vast, non-train-able distances that I needed to travel. There was also the fact that I lived at the gateway to Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood infamous for its lack of subway coverage. My daily commute was already a mile by the time I arrived at the train, plus whatever it would be when I got off on the other side. I had two bikes stolen, and my landlord frowned at my keeping one accessible in the hall, despite being on the top floor. I walked A LOT. I commuted to a client bi-weekly on a plane, and often parked at the airport.
So while the inconveniences of car ownership were and are most acute in Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn, further out into the Boroughs a case for a car could not only be made, it was often preferable. I found myself right at the line. I had used cars–Volkswagens, mainly, and by 2019 I was near certain I might have been the last person in New York City still driving a manual transmission. Not a gearhead, but I needed, wanted to have a car. Something in me knew that I didn’t plan to stay in New York, and when the moment struck, as it often did, I wanted to be able to get out decisively, to head north to New England, or just the Bronx, maybe get a sandwich or an empanada. When I wanted to go, I wanted to go. Sometimes I just wanted to take a drive, loop Manhattan by midnight, ride the backroads of lower Connecticut in the dark.
Faisal’s purchase was the next step in my journey of self-actualization. I wanted to buy a new car, one that I wanted and liked, not a used hand-me-down, or the cheapest beater I could find. Partly it was symbolic, having been financially behind the 8-ball all of my adult life (and giving the better part of my income to other people) I really wanted something that I liked and could call my own. And his path to it was: “Simple. I wanted that car, I worked for that car, and then I bought that car.”
Indeed. This stayed with me for years, as I very consciously worked for, ‘that car.’ But which?
It wouldn’t be a Challenger. That much I knew. A Dodge? Probably not, because I’m not really a douchebag. I couldn’t afford a BMW or an Audi, and once I saw that BMW was experimenting with charging subscription prices for air conditioning I determined we’d probably never be in business together. A mini? It made a great case as easy to park in the city, but no way to carry everything I’d need. A Tesla? No way to charge it and anyway, too expensive. Another Volkswagen? Do I really want to replace the electrical system for a third time? God forbid.
For eight years, I waited.
The Tesla Era
When I finally moved to New Jersey during COVID, I was able to realize a second ambition: solar panels. This opened up the possibility of getting an EV. After researching the marketplace for a while, the Tesla Model 3 offered excellent lease terms, I was behind the wheel. And not only behind the wheel, I was plugged into my own house, getting a charge FROM THE FUCKING SUN.
And things were great. I took the photo you see up top at a moment of consummate pride in my achievement, yes, but also some wry academic distance. Once upon a time my grandmother won a Pinto in a raffle, you see. You know, Pinto? The cars that famously exploded when struck from the rear, a symbol of the unsafe-at-any-speed 70’s? It was the newest shit at the time. The vicissitudes of time have a way of making fools of us all, and so some part of me knew there was a risk–a fun risk, mind you, of looking back at the photo one day and seeing some weird anachronism, an extremely dated sign of the times, or something worse, so obviously I had to capture it for posterity. Little did I know.
A detail that drives me a little berserk: A lot of people shit on Teslas, I think because of the way the car is represented in the media. They claim it’s a shitty car, that the details aren’t finely crafted, whatever. While this may be true, it just wasn’t my experience at all. In the time I owned it, the car worked, more or less, perfectly. And it was FAST. The torque was such that the 90-degree merge-at-speed highway entrances that New Jersey loved so much ceased to be a white-knuckle experience. I stopped worrying that the car would breakdown or stall in traffic on the GW Bridge, a constant and terrifying reality for me, an agoraphobic. It just performed like a demon. Having worked for GM and commute to Detroit for years, I’ve rented and driven dozens of cars, and it wasn’t in the same category, it wasn’t even in the same sport, ballpark, or galaxy as any of them. It was an altogether new type of experience. I should credit that jump in experience to what an EV is capable of compared to an Internal Combustion Engine, not a Tesla in particular. Indeed, people will say, now, “Why not just get an EV that isn’t a Tesla,” and I think now that’s a fair question, as there are finally a lot of competitors available, and critically, the charging network has (mostly? partially?) arrived. But they will often say things like “Why not just get a Rivian, or a BMW or Audi?” And… I guess a lot of people most critical of Tesla are looking at the luxury car market. A Tesla 3 is not that! I urge you to price-compare a Tesla 3 and a Rivian, and you will see rather quickly that if you are willing to pay 90k for a car, sure, it turns out you can have all kinds of things. I think I paid something like $339 a month? And took my gas out of the sky?
So, when people ask me, did you like it, I say with no hesitation, it wasn’t my favorite car that I’ve ever owned, it was my favorite object that I’ve ever owned. I wanted the car, I saved for the car, and I bought that car. Well, leased, anyway. Low mileage.
And yet, alas.
The Problem With Elon
I’m not sure exactly when I started taking note that Elon might be becoming a problem. I was never an Elon fanboy that I remember, at one point he was going to Mars, and that seemed interesting, and I certainly appreciated what he had done with the car, but I just didn’t give it any thought. In fact, after the Thailand cave boys crisis, when he called a rescuer a Pedo Guy, it became apparent that he may have something really wrong with him.
Still, it seemed strange and counterintuitive that people were beginning to equate Tesla-the-brand with rightwing values that Elon was increasingly signaling. If anything, the kind of person who stretches themselves to buy an EV is typically politically left of center, environmentally conscious, tech-interested, elite-signaling. The literal opposite of the kind of person that buys an American made pickup truck, for example. It also was starting to look like Elon was midstream in one of the worst, Dixie-Chick style brand mismatches of all time, signaling his loyalty to the exact opposite values someone like a Tesla owner might be expected to have.
As I explained many times: “I also own a used Subaru. I’m fairly certain that the executives at Subaru and I agree, politically, on very little. But do you know their opinion on anything? Neither do I, and I love that about them.”
It only got worse from there. Online, sentiment turned toxic. People openly talked about vandalizing the “Swasticars,” posted photos. There was increasingly the sense that I was, as I called it at the time, “Driving a narrative.” At first, when I owned it, people would tell me they loved it. Someone in Williamsburg literally put his hands on my wife’s rolled-down window, greeted us and said with a smile, “Beautiful car. You know this is my car, right?” Three years later it would be “You own a Tesla?” In a tone that suggested there might be some tepid, probing questions to follow.
I started to look forward to the ending of the lease with some concern and budding excitement. I’d have to get another New Car! I had taken on the short, three-year lease with the lowest mileage possible. Most of my trips were pick-ups into and out of the city. But I had also done this knowing, or expecting, that the battery technology would improve, and by the time I got another lease, I could go further for the same price. (This actually turned out to be true.) But it really was starting to look like I had also sensed something else might happen, and it was playing out in front of me, much worse than I ever would have expected.
As the lease expiration came up, I found myself in a conversation with the salesman. I explained my concerns, told him that “It’s come to the point where I’m afraid to park it and walk away from it. I don’t know what I’m gonna find when I come back to the car.” He deflected, offered better terms. In the marketplace, the price had improved, the stock was in freefall. I asked him, “I have to know, are you hearing this a lot?”
There was a meaningful pause on the other end. He saw himself ensnared, but was also trapped in a Call Recorded For Quality Assurance and Training Purposes. The Boss was notoriously petty, vindictive, and retaliatory.
“We’ve heard this kind of thing before,” he finally offered, “But I need you to understand that there are ten thousand other people here working very hard.”
It was a valiant response, and I thought of these ten thousand with regret. I really had loved the car, they had delivered the experience I wanted, but they had been sabotaged–humiliated, really–publicly and theatrically, by management. I could imagine their frustration. But we had to be done.
In the end, I opted for the Kia EV6. I pay the same amount–almost to the dollar, but this time with AWD. The charging network is worse, significantly worse, the experience of charging on the road is substantially shittier. The onboard computer is pathetic, by comparison. Driving the Tesla felt like driving a car made by computer experts, who basically attached wheels and a motor to an iPhone. Slick, sometimes over-designed or too-clever, but mostly ‘just works.’
By contrast the EV6 feels like driving a car made by car experts trying to mimic some computer experiences. More Windows than iPhone. Suddenly you need to know a lot about how to get the best performance out of it, you need to know what a ‘driver’ is, and so on. Good, but second tier. Waiting at a public charging station for others to finish feels like a a waste of time, it literally never happened with the Tesla. Tesla’s charging experience felt bespoke, seamless, optimized. And the onboard computer took care of everything. I never even took out my credit card.
But do I miss it?
When I’m waiting for a charge? Yeah. When I’m trying to get the onboard computer to show me places I can charge at? Definitely. When I can’t warm up the car via an app on my phone? Indeed. When I have to point my car facing out of my driveway because the port is on the wrong side? Especially.
Am I going back?
No.