The car moves off smoothly and almost silently. There is, of course, no gasoline engine to silence, and the engineers have done a great job keeping road noise out of the car.

The ride is smooth and the car feels responsive on the twisty roads around Tesla's headquarters.

Tesla employs a regenerative braking system, which uses energy created when the car is slowing down to recharge the battery. The car begins to slow down as soon as pressure is removed from the accelerator. This is more pronounced than the coasting that a gasoline car would do and reminded me a little bit of controlling a car in a video game.

Taking the turns in the road, I didn't need to use the brake once. In fact, the only time I needed the brake pedal was when coming to a stop at an intersection.

As fun as the windy roads were, they prohibited high speeds, so I headed for the freeway and was briefly able to put my foot down.