I didn’t get to driving lightning overnight; I was originally an electric car skeptic.

I liked the idea of electric cars, but I thought they were impractical because of a old bugaboo, range anxiety. Range anxiety is that feeling in the pit of your stomach you are planning to drive 200 miles to New York City, and your car range is, say, 210 miles. Theoretically, you should be able to get there, but you know that:

• Your actual mileage may fall short of what your theoretical range is
• Charging mid-way will require finding and stopping at a charging station for the better part of an hour
• Even once you get there, you’ll have to charge up before you get home.

Internal combustion engine (ICE) drivers don’t worry about these things because of we have gas stations to refuel at. Electric car charging stations, on the other hand, are far fewer and farther between in the U.S. Assuming that most consumers wouldn’t want to deal with range anxiety, I had always thought that hybrid cars, which use electrical motors but have a gasoline-powered ICE to supplement them, were a better solution.

And then, on October 18, 2013, as part of some connected car research with colleague Ryan Martin, I went to our local Tesla store at the Natick Mall and saw the Tesla Model S85 chassis pictured at the top of this post. I was thunderstruck by what I saw.

Some may look at that photo and ask, “What’s the big deal? It’s a car chassis.” However, this photo is not just the chassis; it’s the entire battery pack, chassis, and drive train. There is no engine to put in front; the electric motor for this rear-wheel drive car is already mounted in the car. Here’s a closeup of the drivetrain:

The entire Tesla drive train has fewer than 20 moving parts. A normal ICE car has more than 10,000.

Now, despite having a fantastic test drive in the S85 (it was very responsive and very fast), I wasn’t sold on buying a Tesla yet. For one thing, our house has a steep driveway that really requires all-wheel drive to climb in winter. For another, the price of a Tesla is much much more than any amount I had ever paid for a car, and I was skeptical I could convince my wife that we should buy one.

At the end of our test drive though, I knew that our Tesla experience had fundamentally changed my mind. As I climbed into my car and was driving away from the Natick Mall in my Mercedes E320, I felt something I had not experienced in the decade since I had bought that iconic luxury car.

I felt a little disappointed to be driving it instead of a Tesla.