Out of Spec Motoring ran an experiment that doubles as a history lesson: road-trip one of the first Tesla Model S cars ever built, a 2012 Signature in Signature red, alongside a current Model Y and see how the decade shows. The old car has north of 100,000 miles and a remanufactured battery pack, and the hosts are candid that it is not a natural road-tripper. The video reports it was rated at 265 miles when new, with the host estimating something closer to 180 to 200 miles today. The whole point of the run is the gap: how far efficiency, charging, and software have moved since Tesla began delivering the Model S in 2012, watched from inside a car that predates almost all of it.
The useful comparison is not old versus new for its own sake, it is what an early Model S is actually good for now. As a used EV, a first-year Signature is a cheap and characterful way into a Tesla, and the video makes a strong case that Tesla supported the car unusually well over time, with a later infotainment upgrade the hosts say added route planning, a dog mode, YouTube, and access to the modern Supercharger network on a car built in 2012. But the buyer consideration the hosts keep bumping into is charging. The pack simply does not take a fast charge the way modern cars do, which quietly reshapes what kind of car this is: a fine local and regional runabout, not a long-haul machine. There is also a cost wrinkle the video flags, that this particular car lost its free supercharging after being traded in years ago, so a fill cost real money on the trip. That distinction is the one to carry into any used-EV search, where a low price can hide a slow charging curve that only reveals itself on a real trip.
The video reports the Model S charging peaked briefly around 128 to 130 kW before tapering hard, often sitting in the 40 to 90 kW range, with one stop taking roughly an hour to reach about 80 percent. On efficiency the host cites about 330 to 350 watt-hours per mile on the highway for the Model S, against roughly 250 to 270 for the rear-drive Model Y, which the hosts put at around 30 to 40 percent more efficient overall. Their workaround for the old car is charger-hopping in roughly 50-mile stretches near the highway, which they say suits its charging behavior better than long deep charges. The Model Y, meanwhile, handled the drive on the company's driver-assistance system, doing the navigation while the driver watched, and the host describes that as noticeably less tiring than steering and route-finding manually for hours. The trip totaled about 713 miles, and the host says the old car had fewer squeaks and rattles than his much newer Model S, which he takes as a sign of how well the early car was built and maintained. He also notes the Signature is one of the first Model S cars built, now running on a remanufactured pack, and treats the drive as much as a look back at where Tesla started as a test of the car.
Bottom line: A first-year Model S is a genuinely cool piece of EV history, and the fact that it still runs modern software and squeaks less than the host's 2022 car says something about how Tesla supported it. But the charging curve is the tell: this is a car to buy for what it is, a well-kept around-town used EV, not a road-tripper you lean on for 700-mile weekends. If you want the badge and the story on a budget, it is a charming buy. If you want to actually road-trip, spend the extra on something a decade newer.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.