Robot Car of the Future

I was scheduled to take delivery of my new car on the last day of the month, Saturday, September 30th. But I got a call on Tuesday of that week asking if I would prefer to pick it up on Thursday. Why, yes! Yes, I would! So I drove out to Glen Allen to get it. My mother dropped me off at the dealership, but not before sticking around to get the first look at the car. My eldest son came along, too, so he could also claim to be among the first to see it. I actually let him be the first to sit in the car. Then he left with his grandma while I filled out the paperwork and got my lesson in how to use the controls. I was disappointed that a feature I read about in the owners' manual was no longer a feature. The sales guy said ther was no work-around, it was just gone. Other than that, it was informative. Eventually, it was time to drive away in my new car! I rolled slowly and silently out of the showroom/garage, and was on my way. I didn't use any fancy features during the few mile...

With my sights firmly set on a Model S Tesla, I began looking for used cars.  There are few enough used Teslas for sale that most car search engines will let you look at the entire inventory across the country, and not limit you to what's available in your state.  There are so many variables to consider when looking at the used Teslas, it is a bit daunting. The company doesn't have model years since it is continuously changing options, what is available on a car built in February might be gone by June. It didn't take me long to find a 2016 in our price range with autopilot capability, but by the time I got in contact with the seller, it had been sold.  Before I moved on to my number two choice on the used car list, I had a delightfully fateful conversation with my husband. He is self-employed, and his income is variable. Highly variable. We went eight years without earned income after he sold his last company, then moved up to minimum wage with his new company only af...

It all started years ago, when Tesla first announced that they were making a sedan. My husband and I briefly considered the Roaster even before that, but it was too expensive for us. But the year the Model S was deemed "the safest car ever tested" by the press, was the year I decided I wanted one, it was 2013. But I was not exactly in the market for a new car at the time, my Lexus ES 330 was only nine years old at the time, and under 100,000 miles. I had two car seats in the back with a four and two year old boys in them, generally making a great mess all over my back seat. I did not even want to get a new car until both were potty-trained. My affection for the Lexus gradually waned over the intervening years. When I hit 100k miles, I still liked the car. I had never put so many miles on one car before in my life, it was a milestone for me. But the fit and finish weren't what they used to be. After I'd had the car ten or eleven years I began longing for a quieter ...