I think of the timeline with my Tesla in terms of BC (Before Car) and AD (After Delivery). This post is about the transition from one to the other.

I did a number of things to prepare for delivery and had various concerns before delivery but last Monday (April 21, 2014) was the day of delivery. I took the day off and it was fitting that it was Earth Day and Patriots day and somewhat inconvenient that it was also Boston Marathon day.

Tesla Watertown is the only delivery center (DC) north of Connecticut on the east coast and is about an hour from my house. The family drove me out to the DC. Its not huge with just 2 desks inside (with PCs on them!). Mine was the only delivery scheduled for that day.

It looked like the garage where they do the actual service could fit about 4 cars. The lot had a number of Roadsters and other color/configuration Teslas in pre and post delivery state (pre-delivery ones are quite dirty!):

I had reserved all-weather mats for the interior of the car and paying for those was the only paperwork to be done. Then the keys were presented.

And it was time for the walkthrough. The walkthrough was much like the full walkthrough on Tesla’s site just with interactivity.

We paired my phone up (iOS 7, iPhone 5). The pairing worked but sound wouldn’t play through the Tesla. The phone part wouldn’t sync at all. The delivery person was ex-apple and knew a procedure for checking out of memory errors on the phone and how to resolve those. We went through iOS 7/iPhone quirks and got it all connected fine. This really had nothing to do with the Tesla but its interesting that I never had that issue on any other bluetooth connection in other cars etc.

The car was super clean and I had prepared a mini-checklist based on the work Nick Howe did in Evernote so I could check things off as I went. Teslarati did a book review for the whole book covering all sorts of tips and tricks on the Model S and i’m on the wait list for the e-book version.

The only things I really found were shipping related with glue etc that didn’t rub off immediately. The paint looked perfect to me and the features I checked worked great. We spent a few minutes with my UMC (the charge cable) and he showed me how to plug it in, etc. They quickly cleaned the minor things up and delivery was complete.

At time of delivery Slacker Radio isn’t enabled and the Tesla app won’t work yet. There is always a bit of a delay post delivery for these to get enabled. On top of that their internet connection at the DC was down! Both were working within 4-5 hours and it wasn’t a big deal.

The next challenge was with the family who dropped me off. Who got to ride in the Tesla and who had to ride in the other family car. Believe it or not, the mother-in-law won. I tried my best to induce whiplash 🙂

That was it for the delivery and the car was mine. It had 17 miles on it when I took delivery.

The configuration, put in succinct forum format is:

S85 | Grey / Tan Interior | Obeche Matte Trim | 19″ standard | Parking Sensors | Sub-zero | Pano | Premium Lighting | Dual Chargers (added) | Ordered + Confirmed: 3/7/2014 | VIN: 36801 | Received 4/21/2014

I’ll be posting some other first day impressions related to the driving, range, and charging.