Roadtrip, first 5kish miles impressions, and stuff I wish I knew coming in
So, I've driven my Trailseeker a little under 5k (see pics for proof.)
I've used it for daily commuting as well as a road trip from VA to CO and back in a 10 day period.
The short version is that I love it and have no regrets, other than not being patient enough to wait for the blue or green that I wanted. If you're on the fence, unless you need to drive over 1k a day on a very regular basis, or you don't have access to an outlet to charge on a nightly basis, it's pretty close to a perfect car for me.
The longer version-
The Good:
- Silent, comfortable, easy to drive
- Torque on tap. Very easy to go from a standstill to felony speed, as well as to get out of the way of any hotheads.
- Charging at an L3 is generally pretty fast
- So nice to not deal with gas stations. Charging is easy and smooth
- The 360 camera and radar systems are super helpful for parking, and broad awareness
- The cruise control + lane following aren't literally self drive, but they're pretty close. You can basically use them on the highway absent greater than 30 degree turns.
The Bad:
- I wish the daily fast charging limit was documented somewhere. AFAICT, you have a limit of 4 fast 0-100 fast charges worth of charging per day. If you start at 100, and do about 74 mph on the highway, you'll get about 1k miles before you run into the limit. Once you hit it, the car will start to throttle your charging speed: 1st to 68Kw, then 48, 40, 32, 28, 24, and 22 (not sure if gets worse than that, I was home from my big trip). This is a major limitation and it really should be documented somewhere.
- Without tint, it's an absolute greenhouse. I got it tinted with high end ceramic tint and it made a huge difference. You need to do this if you're going to road trip. Running your AC is a major energy sap. If you can cool the car down and then just run ventilation, or low AC power, you'll save a lot of energy burn.
- The lack of lockable, closeable storage in the interior of the car is very strange. No Glove box, wtf Toyobaru? I know it's for the radiant leg heater, but that's a touring only feature
- No built in route planner. why?
The minor/I wishes:
- I wish when you were parked you could stream video to the display. It would be nice if at stops for charging you could run youtube/netflix/etc on that nice big display while you wait
- Actual Self drive. I'd happily pay for it.
- A home button on the infotainment so you could switch out of car play/android auto without multiple taps to turn on charging prep.