Yes, THE FUTURE. Where everything goes “FWOOM” and “BEEP.” Or, in this case, where it’s oddly silent. Because over the next two days, we’re going to be driving over 700 miles, from New York to Detroit, in a Tesla Model S. And we want you to come with us.
Figuratively speaking, of course, as this is the Internet and you can’t all possibly fit in the car. The three of us on the trip—Raphael, Michael Roselli, and I—barely fit in here as it is with all of our camera gear. But we’ve set out to answer a simple question:
Is the road trip from the future going to be any different from one in the past?
So-called “experts” tell us that in the future, all cars will be gasoline-free and they’ll all drive themselves. That doesn’t sound ideal to us, but who knows? Maybe it’ll be great. To that end, we’ve gotten ourselves into one of the most futuristic cars we could find, a Tesla Model S, equipped with a full battery charge and Autopilot. (Bear in mind, Alex Roy, Carl Reese and Deena Mastracci just did a much longer Tesla road trip where the car drove itself most of the time.)
And if that’s enough, there’s always a ridiculous amount of horsepower and enough acceleration to rip your face from, well, your face.
But road trips aren’t about the joys of slogging through thousands of miles of Interstate, or seeing how much face detachment can be had (though there will be plenty of both of those). It’s about journey, and destination, and experiences.
I hate all of my coworkers, naturally, so there should be plenty of those.
We’re going to be getting it all on video for the upcoming season of Neat Stuff in Cool Cars, but for the time being, we want you to join us. We’ll be here in the comments, courtesy of a Mi-Fi, as much as we can, and you can find us on Twitter under the hashtag #FutureTrip.
It’s going to be great.
Or awful.
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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