Ok, by “we” got a Tesla I mean that Aubrey bought a Tesla. I’m still driving the same car I’ve had for the last 10 years and plan to continue until basically the wheels fall off. But, I am super excited to get to walk through the process of Aubrey buying his new, awesome car! There are big time pro’s, and a couple of snafus that we ran into throughout the process that I think will be good info to have for anyone looking at getting a Tesla in the future. Here’s how it worked for us!

Ordering the Car

Now that we’re completely through the process, selecting and ordering the car itself was hands down the easiest part. Tesla has their ordering process built to be minimalistic and extremely user friendly. I would say that you could build, order, and have paid for your Tesla in under 3 minutes. That is both awesome and terrifying! There aren’t many bells and whistles to choose from like most other car companies have. It’s basically pick a car, pick the mileage range you want, interior and exterior colors, then you’re done!

Putting the deposit down is just as easy as paying for an Amazon order. They take multiple forms of payment, apparently now including Bit Coin! They also gave Aubrey a great deal on trading in his current car, and that process was, again, pretty easy. He just keyed in the car’s specifics and they spit out a number that was more than fair.

Waiting for the Car

Waiting for the car is not nearly as fun as building it. But, there are some cool parts to the waiting process too. Tesla has an app, obviously, where you can watch the status of your car and what level of completion it’s at. The app is also where you can get ETA updates on when the car will be ready to be shipped! Aubrey watched the app pretty closely, and any time we got to see an update it was really exciting.

A fun fact for Tesla is that the turn time from ordering to being fully produced is lightning fast for today’s market. Aubrey ordered the car in mid-December, and it was built and being shipped at the beginning of February. If you were to order a Mercedes, Land Rover, or anything like that from scratch you’re looking at a 4-6 month window minimum.

What keeps Tesla producing faster is that they’ve started to produce their own chips for the vehicles. Telsa has the brain power and liquidity to be able to do this, which not many other car companies do. Just another genius move in my opinion!

Receiving the Car

Here’s where things start to get a little dicey. Because we live in Little Rock, the closest dealership to pick up the Tesla is in St. Louis. That’s not awful, but it is a 6 hour drive. If we lived closer to a dealership, then Tesla would be able to drop the car off at the house. We also don’t have the choice to fly to St. Louis since Aubrey traded in his Nissan, so road trip it is!

Communication with the Dealership

The communication of the car’s availability for pickup was mediocre. Aubrey got an original delivery date, and we made plans to be off work to drive up that Friday, stay overnight, and come back the next day with the car! Then, he was notified of a policy that we were completely unaware of. Apparently, the car has to be picked up within 48 hours of delivery, so we couldn’t wait until the weekend if the car was going to be delivered any time during the week. The penalty if you don’t make that window is that the car goes to the next person, and you go to the back of the line.

We worked through some logistics with the dealership, and were finally able to schedule a weekend pickup.

Weather Delays

Turns out, the weather had different plans. A big winter storm that swept through the area left a few inches of ice on the roads in Little Rock, and feet of snow in St. Louis. We were nervous about driving with less than ideal conditions, but still willing to do so.

What we weren’t prepared for was the truck the car was on to get stuck somewhere in Illinois due to poor road conditions. When I say stuck, I mean literally frozen to the highway and not able to move. So, through continued less than ideal communication we rescheduled the pick up date AGAIN.

The Pick Up Process

Once all the bad weather moved on and we finally got to St. Louis, we were really excited! And, turns out, the actual pick up process for the Tesla is almost as easy as ordering it. We showed up to the dealership at our scheduled appointment time, and within 30 minutes had his previous car traded it in and drove off in Aubrey’s new Tesla Model 3!

Here are some pictures of the inside of the dealership/studio!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I would give the process of purchasing a Tesla a 7 on a scale of 1-10. The ordering and physical pick up of the car is pretty dang easy. For us, it was everything in between that got tedious and frustrating. Depending on dealership, don’t expect the communication to be crystal clear. There were a lot of times it seems like the right hand wasn’t talking to the left in Aubrey’s situation.

All that to say, this car is a DREAM to drive and so much fun! I plan to bug Aubrey to let me drive a lot more now that he has it. If you’ve ever considered a Tesla, consider this a sign to look into it further!

Here are a couple of pictures of Aubrey’s car!