A space-age exploration of the Surrey Hills in a Tesla Model X
The Surrey Hills are so unexpectedly beautiful and rugged that it hardly seems possible they are only just the other side of the M25 from London. They are scenic enough that the Belmond British Pullman train will take you puffing round them at moderate pace for a whole afternoon. For a few precious hours, you can admire the thickly wooded slopes and grassy Downs as you sip chablis, your head leaning against an embroidered antimacassar, just like a murder suspect in an Agatha Christie novel.
An altogether more up-to-date, not to say space-age, experience of the same landscape is offered by the Tesla Model X. The electric car offered by the company, whose CEO is the eccentric tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, is a sleek machine with “falcon-wing” rear doors that open upwards and then fold out into a sort of mobile sculpture. This is dramatic and extremely elegant, but also leaves the interior open for inspection by passers-by – who are understandably keen to see inside. I was driving with my husband and two children and we had to perform multiple repeat demonstrations of the silent unfolding of doors for spectators to enjoy.
Driving the car in London is slightly hazardous due to the numerous pinch points and traffic-calming systems. The Tesla is a good deal wider than the average city car – designed for the boulevards of Palo Alto, California, no doubt – and risks scraping its 20-inch “Slipstream” wheels on the kerbs. Time to hightail it to the country.
I find the in-car computer systems of many cars almost impossible to use but the Tesla’s large, dashboard-mounted screen is as easy to operate as an iPhone.
With seven seats at our disposal, we added a friend and her baby to our cargo and the excellent sound system had to suffer a playlist that included the greatest hits of Frozen, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast as the Model X whisked us to Holmbury St Mary, where we were staying with friends.
Our host is a car obsessive and immediately kidnapped our wonderful vehicle to test its four-wheel-drive ability in the pony’s paddock behind the garden. It responded gamely to the new terrain and, being virtually silent, didn’t frighten the horses too much. But it was a slightly incongruous sight to see this aerodynamic, 21st-century machine bouncing round a bumpy field, dodging piles of manure. He also managed to put in into “Ludicrous Mode”, which is when the already nippy Model X can do 0-60 in 2.8 seconds at the push of a button.
Yet there’s little call for Ludicrous or even the relatively sensible “Insane Mode” (0-60 in a more moderate 3.1 seconds) on the lanes of Surrey. For these are extremely beautiful but also mostly single-track roads with high banks and trees curving over them to form green tunnels in the summer. Beautiful, yes, but also with restricted visibility and a high number of Lycra-clad cyclists puffing up and swooping down the toughest gradients at all hours of the day. After all, these are the biggest hills (up to 965ft above sea level) looking east until you get to the Ural Mountains in Russia.
The cyclists come for the hills alone, but there’s plenty to see around here. The recently opened Grange Park Opera at West Horsley Place had a triumphant first season in the county this year, making use of the Tudor stately pile that Bamber Gascoigne unexpectedly inherited from a Dowager Duchess aunt (as you do). The house is worth seeing for itself, never mind the glorious music pouring out of the brand-new amphitheatre.
We always enjoy the climb up to Leith Hill for its vista of the Downs to the sea. It’s also where Ralph Vaughan Williams lived and worked, so where better to play The Lark Ascending as you drive? The only drawback of the Tesla here was that we parked under a slightly low-hanging branch and the falcon-wing doors sensed this and wouldn’t unfurl to their fullest extent when we got out to walk up to Leith Hill Tower for a proper view south.
One slightly unexpected benefit of Surrey’s status as the richest of all the Home Counties is the amazing food shops that flourish here, catering for the expensive tastes of all those bankers, footballers and lawyers. The Kingfisher Farm Shop in Abinger Hammer is far more sophisticated than most I’ve seen and will sell you an artisanal meringue nest to go with your knobbly potatoes and locally grown watercress.
The Tillingbourne Trout Farm in the same village is almost comically picturesque, with geese waddling about its stew ponds and a goat called Reggie. They’re big on game, too, and I wandered in having parked the Tesla in these rustic surroundings to find them busy butchering pigeons, the staff covered in feathers.
But the jewel in the crown of all these small producers is F Conisbee & Sons, a butcher in Leatherhead that has been going since 1760 and deserves to survive for at least another 400 years. We turned the Tesla back to our friends’ house loaded with ingredients for a Surrey feast of hogget and bubble and squeak – followed by that aforementioned meringue.
I am not sure what the space-age Musk would have made of this Olde English saunter round the south of the country – or the menu. But the Tesla took it all in its stride. And as for charging, we were so close to home that we hardly used up a quarter of the available mileage (a claimed 350-mile range once it’s fully charged).
Plus we weren’t polluting the lanes for all those cyclists…
TESLA MODEL X - THE FACTS
Tesla Model X 100D
PRICE from £87,200 (£103,280 as tested) - inc £4,500 plug-in grant
ENGINE 100kWh electric motor
POWER 371bhp
TOP SPEED 155mph
ACCELERATION 0-60mph in 4.7sec
RANGE 350 miles
