At Yahoo Finance we talk about Tesla (TSLA) all the time — mostly in terms of the company’s wild and crazy stock price or Elon Musk’s antics. But what about the cars themselves?

What’s it like to drive a Tesla, and even more important, to have the luxury electric vehicle be your primary mode of transportation?

To find out, I took a Tesla on that most American of excursions: A summer road trip and vacation, in my case from New York City to the great state of Maine.

The folks at Tesla said this would be no problem, but I had a million questions: Do I have to learn how to drive a Tesla? Where do I charge the car on the drive up? Once I’m in Maine, how do I charge the car? And is there enough room in the trunk for me to bring home some lobsters?

Not just any car

To be clear — especially to you Tesla owners — I’m hardly the first person to go on a Tesla road trip. There are more than 600,000 and counting Teslas out there. But if you’re one of the 200 million adults in the U.S. who doesn’t have a Tesla, read on. (Tesla owners might want to peruse this too, if only to keep me honest.)

A Tesla isn’t just any car. Sure, it’s electric and I’ll get into that. But you also discover that you’re part of an ecosystem — as they say — connected to a network by an app that controls the car, plots your routes, and maps your charging needs.

As I climb into the Model 3, the first thing I notice is there’s no dashboard, only a computer monitor. It only takes a few minutes to acclimate yourself to the touchscreen interface, which is highly intuitive (lights, windshield wipers, climate, entertainment). I was never vexed for more than a few seconds.

To start up, you unlock the car with the app, put your foot on the brake, hit gear selector stalk on the right side of the steering column — down for forward, up for reverse — and you’re off!

What does it feel like to drive a Tesla? Different and the same. Of course there is no engine sound at all. Super smooth and super quiet. And the acceleration is insane, like nothing you’ve ever experienced. But there’s nothing to be scared of. In fact, once you get used to the power, the acceleration is game-changing. You see a spot a hundred yards ahead, and you just ... go there! (Ok, be careful.)

One difference is when you take your foot off the gas, (err accelerator), you don’t coast, you really slow down. That’s because the Tesla uses something called regenerative braking — friction if you will — to charge the battery. (Why let the energy of slowing down go to waste?)

I would say it only takes about 10 minutes behind the wheel to become comfortable with the basics. (There are advanced functions like Autopilot, which take a bit longer to get the hang of.)

As for the whole range issue, the Model 3 goes 300 plus miles on a charge and where we’re going in Maine is some 350 miles away, so we will need to recharge on the way. Plus, we don’t want to arrive with an uncharged battery, all of which the software gets. Still, like most, I had range-anxiety. And like most people, my anxiety dissipated over the course of the trip.

How my journey went down

First, we drove north from NYC through Westchester to pick up our niece. The mapping (Tesla uses Google maps for display) then directs us north on route 684 to route 84 east through Hartford and up the Mass Pike on route 91. Most Tesla owners charge up at home, but on a road trip like this, you will need to charge on the road, of course.

The software suggests recharging at a supercharging station in Auburn, Massachusetts, about halfway through the trip. (Interesting because this about where we usually gas up.) Supercharging stations — there are over 700 in the U.S., each with multiple charging docks — are preferable as they are Tesla-owned, which means they are faster and more efficient. You don’t need any expertise to charge, just pull up and plug in. The app can tell you how many charging docks are free. (I never had to wait on this trip.)

Me behind the wheel, going a bit too fast. More