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Six Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Bought the Tesla Model 3: EVie & Me, Part I

Donald Unger
5 min readAug 22, 2019
Photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash

A week ago, my wife and I bought the Standard Range Plus Tesla Model 3 — which is rated at 240 miles per full charge.

It is a gorgeous piece of tech and a dream to drive, whether I’m driving or letting Autopilot do most of the work. And — after our house and perhaps our daughter’s college tuition — it is the most expensive thing my wife and I have ever purchased.

As of this writing?

I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

But . . .

Buy any new, complicated, and expensive thing?

If not “Buyer’s Remorse,” there’s always some period of post-purchase . . . let’s call most of it Flailing & Befuddlement, coupled with periodic eruptions (which vary in intensity) of: “Damn! Wish I’d known that before we bought — definitely before we equipped — the car!”

Some things ya-might-maybe-wanna-know (beginning and ending — of course! — with the all-consuming matter of “range”):

1. Range, Take I: I live in Central Massachusetts but my most important, friends and family, connections are in NYC, about 175 miles away. One of the things I was “waiting for” while lusting after an EV was an affordable car that could make that trip on a single charge, with a bit of…

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Donald Unger
Donald Unger

Written by Donald Unger

I write what I know and what I’ve lived: humor & chronic pain; politics & parenting; business writing & cultural analysis; and . . . ranting (a lot of ranting).

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