I have two Teslas - Model S (from 2016) and Model 3 (2018). I believe the following are all true:
- Tesla's build quality is quite bad
- I hate Elon now because of his nonsensical tweets and trying hard to stay cool and relevant
- Tesla's false promises on Autopilot and Full Self Driving is a disgrace. They are at-least 20 years away from anything resembling close to L4, but still somehow siphon $8k from buyers with a false promise
- Model 3 is the BEST car I have ever driven. It is awesome, and I would recommend anyone in a heartbeat
Former Model S owner here. Tesla quality, for the prices they charge, is insulting. I had a Model S for 3 years, put about 20K miles on it (which means I wasn’t a “heavy” driver by any means) and it was rattling, had massive panel gaps in the body, and all kinds of little bits just starting to fall apart. The charger door wouldn’t stay closed and eventually broke due to coming open on the highway so many times. After just 20K miles, the car honestly felt like a car feels after you put 150K miles on it.
Then there’s the service. I got an indicator on the massive screen telling me that the radiator needed service. I called the Service center and was told by two different people, “that’s not possible because our cars don’t have radiators.” I said, “look, I’m not the technician here, you are; but, I am reading you the message that the car has on the screen.” Finally got someone who acknowledged that, yes, Tesla’s do have radiators and I brought it in. When I picked it up, the Air Conditioning didn’t work. In the middle of Summer. I called them and told them and they told me there were no openings for service for 6 weeks. After arguing with the service manager for 20 minutes on the phone, he agreed to have me come in the next day and, sure enough, they’d forgotten to reconnect it when they were working on it.
Was it the worst car I’ve ever owned? Honestly, it might have been. When I factor in that it cost over $90K, it’s definitely the worst car purchase I’ve ever made.
> After just 20K miles, the car honestly felt like a car feels after you put 150K miles on it.
I put over 200k on my 2013 Corolla, and that car still felt new except for a plastic pin that broke the first week on the rear driver quarter panel. I was on a road trip with my wife from Houston to Vegas and heard a flapping while on the highway, I pulled off and saw the panel was loose, I pulled off at the next town, got some super glue from a pharmacy and a stick from the side of the road, and that held solid until I traded it in for $2500 off a Chevy Trax this year (we moved to Upstate NY a few years ago, and we now need the AWD).
I’ve been a Toyota fan for a long time. I’m not a super rich guy so it fits my style for having some reliable and affordable.
I’ve been tempted for Tesla many times. Sure being green is cool but the complexity of engineering puts me off.
Electric cars have less moving parts. They should be more reliable and well built than a gas guzzler but I couldn’t say that for Tesla. Too many bells and whistles for my need.
Comma.ai satisfies my hands off highway autonomous needs for <$1000 on my 3 year old RAV4 hybrid.
<3 cheap Toyotas. One time, I bought a ridiculously small 20-year-old Toyota "Truck" (that was the model name) for $5k and drove it coast-to-coast across the US, in the winter, twice, through parks and forests, with what turned out to be a far-too-heavy motorcycle on the back.
The only things that went wrong were a speeding ticket and an exploded tire after 5000 miles. In hindsight it was a stupid trip to take - the people at the tire shop in Arizona were split between laughing and looking very concernced - but that little truck kept my self-sabotage from turning into a disaster and made the whole thing a fun experience.
I had completely unrealistic expectations about what a car should be able to do, and it lived up to them. Even after the 200,000 miles that usually marks the end of a car's life.
In general, if you want to find reliable cars, look at the old models that you still see on the road. Those are the ones that'll last awhile on the cheap. I still see plenty of Toyotas, Hondas, and Chevies from the '80s puttering around, and it warms the cockles of my heart whenever I do. I get the feeling I would have had the same experience with an old S-10 or Ranger. I wish modern pickups came in smaller sizes...
For what it's worth, I have an almost identical experience. Build quality is not good, and every service-center visit leaves you feeling like they are stuffing the service centers with way more issues than the people there can handle. Even with all this, the drive feel of my MS is insane and the screen/app are lightyears ahead. I honestly enjoy driving again, even pre-pandemic with crazy traffic. Their offering is so good it outweighs the crappy support.
If some other car company would step up to the plate and try to complete with similar tech but offering higher reliability, I would go for a test drive immediately.
Side-note: service at Tesla used to be golden. When they first started, they all knew they were pricy cars and everyone expected some growing pains leading to QC issues. It was great - they would loan you a top-model performance tesla while your car was in the shop (great up-sell!!!), they were doing far more of their "mobile service" (super handy, they drive to you and fix the car where you are), and you would get one agent that called you almost daily with an update.
As they have expanded more towards mass market they have gone the way of google - trying to automate humans out of the loop. It's basically a miracle to talk to a human at a service center now, everything is "schedule it in-app where you get 200 characters to explain your issue, we send over an estimate, you can't call to discuss it either approve or don't, drop your car, use our SMS platform for 100% of communications because email might "violate your privacy" (read: leave a data trail), handle the fact that different agents get your SMS at different times and some have no idea what the history is, handle that agents now "have to reply to all messages before they leave" and you're getting hurried "here's my panicked update" messages at 11:30 at night.
I personally feel they missed an opportunity to offer "luxury service lanes" for folks buying the luxury line when they went mass market.
I rented a BMW (not a luxury model, the cheapest automatic available from Sixt in Denmark), and the experience was much better than any car I've driven before. The touch screen worked fine, and having a big map on the center console and a small map on the panel behind the steering wheel was really impressive to me. Adaptive cruise control, lane assist, and proximity warnings made driving much less stressful than it used to be.
But I also have owned a car in 12 years, have only rented 4 cars in that time, and borrowed a parent's car occasionally when visiting them, so I don't really know if BMW's work is really ahead of many others or if they're more standard features you see in all cars.
Personal anecdote: I'm still driving the 2011 BMW 335i that I bought in 2014. It now has 265,000+ miles.
The key with owning a BMW is to do all of the maintenance yourself. That brings the cost of ownership back down to planet Earth.
I've replaced the water pump twice, high pressure fuel pump once, and the radiator. Plus a few odds and ends.
If I had paid the dealer for this work, I'd be totally in the hole.
One thing I will give BMW is that they know how to design a chassis. The car has all of the original suspension components and the steering is still as tight as the day I got it. No clunking, no rattles, no bouncing, etc.
Did BMW learn a lot from the nine production years where their chassis cracked so badly that the wheel supports reliably tore away from the rear subframe? Or the control arms bearings that would disintegrate every 50k? The rear differential bushings and the GUIBO flex disc that both require regular replacement to prevent the car destroying itself?
Not to mention the little stuff, like the window regulators and sunroof self-destructing, the ignition tumbler corroding and disabling the car's internal bus so the lights freaked out, or the headlight mountings disintegrating.
As the owner of an E46 that I purchased used at 100k and now sits defunct at 155k I'm baffled by your comment. I'd fix everything on that car and four unrelated things would break the next month. "Preventive maintenance" wasn't oil changes and brake pads... it consisted of half-replacing major systems at regular intervals.
Maybe they just got their shit together on the newer models, but yeesh.
The E46 is pretty easy to work on, and the subframe thing they fixed for free (after some lengthy lawsuits). I took mine to 200k and never really had any big problems, just the usual stuff (DISA, water pump, oil filter housing leaks, a/c relay, one window regulator). I think the 325 might have had it worse though.
from what i understand they are somewhat notorious for being fickle / needing lots of maintenance. which is certainly the experience my father has had with his, haha. still loves it, though.
Dang, this sounds like taking literally everything I hate about "the future", and doubling down on it. I just had a bad experience with a dealership where I thought my thorough explanation (including error codes) was sufficient to narrow down the issue, but they completely ignored anything I said and did their own thing, which ended up solving exactly nothing. I ended up getting the diagnostic fee waived and have now taken the vehicle to an independent shop, where I can speak 1:1 to the owner and actually have my input listened to and respected.
Speaking of hating the future, the all-digital, gigantic touchscreen interfaces terrify me.
I have a 2011 F150 lariat trim truck, and it is not only swanky on the inside, but isn't phased at all by hauling timber, logs or back woods dirt trails that smaller vehicles get stuck in.
One of my favorite features, though, is that there is NO touchscreen. Every control is a physical button or knob, and I can use any of them from touch and muscle memory alone.
I fully expect the truck to survive another 200k miles or so, but dread the day I have to get something newer.
I regularly haul pipes, skis, boards, furniture, or other long and awkward objects that would destroy a touchscreen, or at least render it unusable for the journey.
It's very hard to destroy screen with protection, and it's super easy to destroy some tiny manual control e.g. anything related to air conditioning, tesla interior is minimalistic, no even air plastic fins, so if you have that stuff inside, model Y or 3 is the best choice for you :)
"Cracked button" really doesn't seem like a realistic issue. And they really don't fall off easily. You're free to have your preferences but the reality is still that most physical buttons are incomparably more durable than a touchscreen, especially a large one, especially if it still happens to be a consumer grade laptop screen. Simplicity has its benefits.
And if/when the buttons crack/fall-off there's a very good chance that you can fix it there and then with a drop of super-glue.
Try that with fancy touchscreen...
I am sympathetic to your point; glasses can be very durable nowadays.
In this scenario, though, I would be most concerned with scratching the screen. That, And replacing a broken knob is surely cheaper than a gigantic touch screen should it be actually damaged.
That was scary to look at. The worrying part is they all look like new cars, many of them with low mileage. This doesn't look safe for anyone on the road.
Same boat. Trading in my fancy Chrysler Pacifica minivan for a Toyota Sequoia with physical AC knobs. Right now I have to wait for a computer to boot up, and then click to accept the terms and conditions. Every. Time.
I got a 2020 Pacifica - I don’t need to use the touchscreen to perform any essential tasks. The AC has physical buttons and a knob. I typically just ignore the screen when I drive and there’s “screen off” physical button.
On a hot day I actually start the car remotely and it automatically starts the AC a few minutes before I get into the car. Mine is a hybrid so I can do this even when it’s in my garage.
This is why I love Subaru. Their new cars have a touch screen, but it's mainly for display and advanced settings. Every important control (audio, lights, climate control, etc.) is analog
Not the 2020 outback. So disappointed as was looking to upgrade to a 2020 but the touchscreen everything made me leave it behind. Got an ascent instead because they had a deal.
Mazda is the only company doing it right these days.
Seconded. Just bought a Mazda 6 and one of the reasons was a sensible, buttons-first infotainment system. There's a knob in the center console that I can use to control everything. Besides that, the seat warmer/cooler, the AC, all the basic stuff is controlled by buttons.
But the kicker is that the infotainment system has a touchscreen, but the touch functionality is _disabled_ if the car is moving, because they think it's a hazard to have a person operate it while driving.
It also takes around 4-5 button taps to do things like turn off the heated seats. In most cars you can do that without having to take your eyes of the road
Yes, agreed 100%. I firmly that believe touch screens in cars are a safety hazard.
I think we're going to collectively realize that putting touch screens on everything is a mistake. It prevents you from being able to use an interface unless it has your attention / you are looking at it.
I agree that anything you are expected to need to adjust while driving should have a physical knob, button, or switch. That doesn't preclude you from having a touch screen to do other things though.
All the screens in cars I've tried have made me want to hammer a screwdriver through them because their software was so terrible.
Except for one: The Tesla screen. I'd still prefer no screen at all, but Tesla seems to hire software engineers who understand that human factors are a thing, and who seem to have an actual degree in computer science.
Seems that these sorts of "policies" & practices strongly contradict Musk's semi-famous directives about crossing company boundaries to get things done, not respecting the chain of command [0,1]
This forces everyone into the same malfunctioning funnel, and it doesn't appear to work for the employees either.
Tons of respect for Musk's accomplishments, but I hope it doesn't go the way of Google which is famous for nonexistent customer support...
[0] "Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. "
> If some other car company would step up to the plate and try to complete with similar tech but offering higher reliability, I would go for a test drive immediately.
VW's commitment to the electric market with ID3 and ID4 is a big deal, given that the success of their Golf/Touareg platforms. VW/Audi fit and finish are second to none, along with their size and ability to compete at the entry-level price point.
I think I've seen people advertising, literally, "Ship your brand new Tesla to me, and I'll get the body work/alignment perfect and ship it on to you" services. Not sure how real, or valid, but something of an indictment.
> - Tesla's false promises on Autopilot and Full Self Driving is a disgrace. They are at-least 20 years away from anything resembling close to L4, but still somehow siphon $8k from buyers with a false promise
Yeah, at this point it's almost Kickstarter-esque (for better, and worse).
> I think I've seen people advertising, literally, "Ship your brand new Tesla to me, and I'll get the body work/alignment perfect and ship it on to you" services. Not sure how real, or valid, but something of an indictment.
Hah! This kind of service exists for top-tier saxophones. Spend $6,000 or whatever for a Selmer Paris horn, then take it to a technician to "set up" the springs, pads, etc.
Nevertheless it is pretty sad when GM is knocking out junk with better body/panel QC.
The challenge with GM is to get them to care about a quality issue when there is otherwise $2 to be pocketed. Like, it's not that GM doesn't know how. The funny thing is to compare a vehicle where nobody would even expect GM to think about caring--maybe a Traverse or a Terrain (not a Corvette!)--and even that is better than Tesla's panel fit.
My hypothesis (not being an industrial engineer) is that most inputs to panel fit are more capital & process (one-time) than operational (per-car) expenses.
If GM developed a tight-tolerance process & machinery for the Corvette, it's probably a wash (capital cost vs standardization of process) to just apply it to their other lines, albeit relaxing the specs to increase yield.
I'm not saying GM has been innovating continuously, but my experience with long-lived processes is that instantaneous improvement is far harder than continual improvement (iterating fixes), due to the specific variables and lagging feedback in play.
Last I saw, the FSD suite did contain enough autonomy and safety features that it was the leading electronic safety packages on the market. Have other automakers caught up yet?
Pretty much everyone's current car is the "best car they have ever driven" because cars get nicer with time and people generally get richer and able to afford nicer ones as they get older.
There are plenty of reasons one would switch from a car that they love driving to a car that is less enjoyable to drive, but still acceptable.
For example, switching from an expensive Audi car with fantastic handling to a mid-range Mazda diesel because it's much cheaper to run. Or because you live in a city and decide that you want a smaller car for easier parking.
Or because you want to switch to an EV, and can't afford a Tesla. I'm sure a Nissan Leaf is a lot less enjoyable to drive than many similarly priced ICE cars.
But it is laughably far from the “best car [I] have ever driven" - which was the quote I was responding to, and which is the basis for the parents’ argument.
Most people I know make compromises as they get older due to having kids and needing space, or for the sake of safety, or because they overspent and were shy about making that mistake twice.
Out of the people I know, most say the best car they ever drove was usually something incredibly engaging and fun, but unreliable and terribly unsafe by modern standards.
My dad's 70, and my entire lifetime he's never shut up about how great the little british sports cars he drove in his 20s were. Most exciting car he's owned by a long-shot in my lifetime was a Saab 9-2 Aero.
I reckon there's two peaks, one when you're young and dumb enough to just go for what you want, and again when you're old and rich enough to buy what you want again. Between that everyone's hauling around kids or just trying to save money.
There might be a different envelope for people with company cars. My dad taught at a university, and drove a Fiesta, then went to work at IBM and had an Audi A4, then retired, and now drives a nondescript Honda with a cracked bumper.
Yeah I mean I used to drive a Mustang and got unsolicited compliments all the time. It was a fun car to drive. I have an Accord now. Its fine. its reliable. Its lacking a 1000 watt stereo and wont push me back into the seats, and while I do wax it as well, I dont get the pride of polishing something beautiful.
I wouldn't really call it better, just... different.
That only holds for people who never rent a car (or only rent cars as good as or worse than the car they own) and never drive a friend's car (or have friends with worse cars).
I don't think that encompasses "pretty much everyone".
Generally, i'd agree with you except my current experience...
I borrowed a 2019 Tesla 3 last summer from a friend while he was out of the country. Really fun, and I overall really enjoyed the electronics on it.
Afterward I had my finger over the buy button to order a Tesla, but after finding out that in my state, the insurance for someone with an entirely clean driving record in their 30's was still around $400/month, making the total cost including loan nearly $1000/month. I just didn't need that type of expense in my life right now, given I work from home (I made this decision Oct 2019, and in retrospect, wow how right I was).
This spring, I bought a 2005 Porsche Boxster instead for $15k. What a car! It's not as fast as the Tesla, but is way more fun to drive, turns more heads, and has held up significantly better than I can imagine a Tesla holding up. It doesn't have auto driving, but even on a 13 hours road trip you want to drive it the entire time. More comfortable in every regard, with a much better suspension too!
Yep, buy interesting used cars - they're a much better deal, especially if you can take the time to wait for a good deal rather than needing to buy a car right now...
i don't pretend that the plural of anecdote is data, but i briefly owned an aston martin db9 convertible (my dream car), and a tesla model s p90dl. after a few weeks of every day waking up, looking at two sets of keys, and picking the tesla, i decided to sell the aston.
oops not that anyone cares but i realize my comment might be misleading. i owned the aston for years, and loved that car more than anything, but once i bought the tesla i owned both for a few weeks, then decided to sell the aston because the tesla was so superior (for me).
While I’ve enjoyed my own time with an Aston (likewise my Alfa 4C), they fail on many of the same quality and reliability axes that Tesla do. So I’m not sure your experience is that different from OP.
Unless you’re the type of person who test-drives cars you can’t afford, just for the experience of it; and then ends up buying something cheaper that is, by comparison, full of compromises.
My brother worked at a car dealership a few years ago. He'd sometimes have people driving some 20+ year old economy car asking to test drive a Nissan GT-R. When he told them they would have to run a credit check before even doing the test drive, the customers changed their mind.
Did he perhaps lose a couple possibly genuine sales? Maybe, but likely not.
Heck, I wanted to create an appointment to test drive a Subaru BRZ and I had to put down a $500 deposit to "reserve the car so they don't sell it before then", which would have been 100% refundable if I chose not to buy the car. I did end up buying the car, but they never charged a deposit at all. My brother said that they probably never even actually recorded my credit card number anywhere, and the supposed requirement for a deposit exists purely to eliminate joy riders.
Not even close. "Best" has lots of dimensions, though: It depends on what you mean, and that changes which car is "best" quite a bit:
Fastest: The one I own now, a Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 (the one with the 350HP supercharged AMG motor.) Yeah, a Chrysler sports car is weird. Other than raw power/speed (and styling, which I love, but is admittedly polarizing), it's not the best car I've owned, but it's very good in most ways, fun to drive, and suits me. I like it enough that this is my second one, after the first got totalled a few years ago. Impossible to nap in at a rest area on a road trip, though.
Coolest: I owned a Ferrari Dino 308gt4 for 25 years, and it was my daily driver for nearly 10 years. Italian cars are an illness, but a fun one. Unless you're rich (I'm not) you need to be able to wrench most maintenance and repairs yourself, and need a good non-dealer mechanic to pick up what you can't. Not really that fast, but everyone thinks it is. Traded a year-old RX-7 and $1500 for it in 1988. If you're willing to put up with poor build quality, go buy an old Italian car - it'll be way cooler than a Tesla.
Most fun: Fiat X1/9. Tiny little targa that really is a baby Ferrari - owning this car first saved me tons by recognizing many Ferrari parts were identical to Fiat parts with the decimal point moved over. (e.g.: identical thermostat: $8 Fiat part, $80 Ferrari part!) Proof a car doesn't have to be fast to be fun, but I eventually added a stroker crank and big-valve heads with dual Webers anyway. Bought for $1500 when I was in college and taught me enough about Italian cars to make buying the Ferrari possible.
Best at speed: '91 Alfa Romeo 164S - the big 4-door sedan. The S is not just a badge - probably a third of the car is different. That's fine until you needed parts shipped from Italy b/c they didn't stock them in the US. Wonderful car, though. Definitely the best-looking motor I've owned, with all those polished aluminum intake runners like a nest of metal snakes on top. The first time I drove it on the Houston Tollway, it felt like I was going about 80, but my eyes disagreed - I looked down at the speedo and saw 120!). Really nice family road trip car.
Most reliable: Chrysler again - 1992 Le Baron 4-door with the beautiful jewel-like Mitsubishi 3.0 V-6. Picked it up as a reliable solid car for my wife when our second was born (killer deal, $2500 under book), and it was without question the most reliable car we've ever owned. It wasn't exciting, but was such a good car that we wound up keeping it for many years longer than we'd planned. We put about 130K on the car with pretty much nothing but brakes and oil changes.
Best quirky car: '87 Merkur Xr4Ti. Bought new for my wife. Fun, roomy (absolutely amazing what will fit in the hatch with the seats folded down), quick, comfortable. Would have kept this one much longer if a boneheaded mechanic hadn't zapped the electrical system. Ain't nobody got time for electrical demons!
Most disappointing: Oldsmobile Aurora. Beautiful car, wonderful motor. Really heavy though, and despite handling pretty well, it couldn't hide that weight. Seats looked nice, but were impossible to get comfortable in. Mileage was barely better than the Ferrari. Had minor electrical demons from near-new. Wanted to like it a lot more, but didn't keep it too long.
Best all-around: Strange to be typing this, but 2007 Chrysler Pacifica (crossover, not the newer minivan). Bought new for my wife at only $2000 more than a good used one, but with a much-improved engine, nicer options, and an unlimited powertrain warranty, which was a good thing, as it ate transmissions every 2-3 years. Without question the best thought-out car we've ever owned. It does everything, and does it well. Surprisingly quick with the big 4.0 V6, roomy (originally planned to get a trailer hitch to help kids move back and forth to college, but never needed it, since everything fits inside), comfortable (the best roadtrip car ever!), stable at speed (will cruise all day at 100-120 mph (not really that fast on many Texas highways), amazing brakes, and freakishly good gas mileage (36 @ 80mph with the first transmission, 30-32 with later ones). You don't expect it, but it's really nice to drive. Other than the transmission problems (actually caused by motor mount failures), the car was dead reliable. Sadly totalled by a Jeep-driving "wench with a winch" rear-ending us at a stoplight.
So yeah, we've had some weird cars, but quirky can be fun. Counting the kids' cars, we've also had a Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Isuzu, Ford, Hyundai, Saturn (probably worst overall), and Plymouth/Mitsubishi, but although almost all of them were good, most aren't really standouts for the "best" list. (Though the Maxima, RX-7 Turbo , and Conquest come close.)
Maybe we'll pick up an off-lease Stelvio Quadrifoglio or Trackhawk in a few years, who knows? More likely one of those than a Tesla...
Honestly, it depends on what other cars you have already driven. Many people who buy model 3 don’t come from higher priced luxury cars. Model 3 is better than bmw 3 series in driving, but not as good as their m3
Autopilot. Just Stay in your lane, and forget about break/accelerator dance. It may extend your commute by 5 or 10 minutes, but man, it is a massive help. Other cars have some limited capabilities like this, but they don't seem to drive the car with the same confidence, IMO. Tesla's version drives through curves with ease, and for the most part, i only leave a finger on the steering, just in case.
Interestingly Tesla’s autopilot is quite bad at stop and go traffic here because it does not know how to drive in a mandatory emergency corridor here. So you’re left with cruise control.
How would, say, the base model 3 compare against a 2 year old base model C or E class? Or the same 2 yeah old Lexus Es350 or Volvo S90? All sitting comfortably in the base model 3's $30k price range.
I've heard the driving experience is definitely better but I have serious doubts that the quality or fit and finish would match.
It doesn’t measure up if you want Luxury or ride comfort. OTOH it excels in commuter traffic and leaving everyone else in the rear view mirror at the lights ;)
I mean, it's not gatekeeping, I'm not saying you can't enjoy it. But the M3 is meant for people that want performance, handling, and mechanical experience.
If you enjoy the Model Y more than the M3, then you prefer it to a car that has much higher cornering performance, much higher acceleration from the 0-60 all the way to 155mph, and of course the M3 is a much rawer experience.
If you don't, that's fine, it's just that the M3 wasn't made for you.
The Model Y performance is 0.2 seconds faster to 60, and slower in every single other performance metric, as well as has pretty low range. I wouldn't call it faster than the M3, unless all you care about it is pulls in a straight line, which is indicative of not really being the target market for an M3.
If you think owning one is a nightmare, try working on them. I work on large truck engines for a living, but know a small shop about 35 miles down the road that claims to be an "authorized" Tesla service center...one of the few in the midwest.
while other automotive manufacturers have robust supply chains and networks, tesla doesnt. most of your parts (bearings, panels, drivetrain) all come from California and only from the factory. It means they can save a ton of money by foregoing a traditional network but in return, repair shops are often on the hook for weeks or months of outstanding invoices waiting for parts, and have to gingerly explain to customers why their new model X will take 4 weeks to get the window fixed.
This isnt to say Tesla uses a ton of custom parts! chargers and electronics are all rebranded (or stock) webasto. parts for the brakes are Ensco or industry-standard (mexican) forged parts. you can work on these yourself but god in heaven help you if Tesla finds out you didnt go through them. In some cases parts for the car are significantly better in the aftermarket. You can improve steering and handling significantly if you eschew Elons pet rebranded control arms.
From what Ive heard, be very careful with the giant television in the center console. repair parts (if youre not from the golden coast) can take months, installation or replacement is a bear, and the controller for the unit has to be shipped back to Tesla before they will even send a new one.
Remember how much trouble Tesla had getting the Model 3 production line going. They were operating out of a tent next to the plant at one point. Of course they have build quality problems.
Musk's solution to Tesla being unable to make "Full Self Driving" work is to redefine "Full Self Driving" as a slightly better driver assistance system and blame regulators.[1]
The model 3 is among the best driving cars. It accelerates very fast, is incredibly heavy and so sticks to the ground, and they provide smooth power across all speed ranges, due to torque being provided directly at the wheels and the lack of a gear box.
Tesla cars also have far more trunk space and highest in class safety ratings. They also have an 'appealing' design which includes the titular panoramic roof.
Now the car is unpolished across the board. Be that manufacturing, interior materials or general care for UX. But those things matter far more to enthusiasts. Your average family owner cares more about all of Tesla's positives.
If Tesla can provide good customer service and aftermarket support, (which it has historically been terrible at) then I can see the other shortcomings not being deal breakers at all.
Now my dream car will stay the Mazda 3 2021. But, I am a certain type of weird.
> Now the car is unpolished across the board. Be that manufacturing, interior materials or general care for UX. But those things matter far more to enthusiasts. Your average family owner cares more about all of Tesla's positives.
This actually seems kind of backwards to me? Car enthusiasts -- at least the way I think of "car enthusiast" -- are the ones who prioritize acceleration, speed and handling to a point where they're forgiving, at least to a point, of other flaws. Tesla also has a lot of tech enthusiast appeal, of course, and their best target market is right at the center of that Venn diagram.
However, I'd think "average family owners" are the kinds of folks who are way more likely to think that if they spent $60,000+ on a new car, that car should be as close to problem-free, and even maintenance-free, as realistically possible. They're not prioritizing for under 4-second 0–60 speeds. I mean, they'll also love the high safety ratings and trunk space, but if the car gets a reputation for reliability problems, they're going to remember there's a Volvo dealer next door.
Tesla's problems generally aren't much about reliability, they're stuff like panel gaps and bad paint, which are in the enthusiast realm. The OP here is really an extreme example.
> is incredibly heavy and so sticks to the ground,
I think you meant "it has a low center of gravity and so sticks to the ground". It's that, not pure weight - otherwise trucks would dominate F1 circuits.
In the early days of auto racing there were maximum weight limits--it was thought that more weight -> bigger engine -> faster car. Of course now things are just the opposite, to the point that race winners hope to collect enough loose bits of rubber ("marbles") to their super-sticky tires from the track during the victory lap to avoid penalty...
Collecting rubber isn’t about adding weight. The teams want to mask the exact tyre wear amount/patterns, which they do by covering the surface with scraps.
<edit>
Actually this seems less clear cut than I thought. I'd heard from David Coulthard's commentary that the reason for picking up was to cover the wear from other teams' eyes. A quick search suggests many people believe it's to do with weight. The weight explanation seems odd, since if the officials think the tyres are masking the true weight of the car, they can demand a different set are used for the weigh-in, but I can't find an authorative source either way.
So it may be to do with weight, or it may be to do with hiding tyre wear.
</edit>
I got a 4 year degree in mechanical engineering and worked a full-time job building cars for a bit, and I still wrote down a line that sounds as stupid as it does.
But damn, I did not expect that line to draw as much attention as it did down the thread. Such is life.
> It accelerates very fast, is incredibly heavy and so sticks to the ground, and they provide smooth power across all speed ranges, due to torque being provided directly at the wheels and the lack of a gear box.
What about handling in corners, etc., ride comfort? Genuinely curious. I have driven a (2016?) Model S a few times, and wasn't hugely impressed with the handling (beyond as you same, the very valid straight line acceleration and linear-ish power curve), compared to my Audi, or Jaguar.
The model 3 handles way better than the Model S, except for (probably) the not yet released model S Plaid (due next year).
The new 2020 model S handles a lot better than the older models, but is still quite big and boaty compared to the model 3, at least assuming that you want a "drivers car".
That said, I love driving my model S, it's quite comfortable, and rock solid for "normal" driving.
i have a model 3 performance and the suspension tune that came from the factory is worse than any performance car i have driven—rear seat passengers actually complain if you do more than highway cruising or drive somewhere with perfect asphalt. i am used to suspensions being stiff, but this one just bounces. tesla considers it within spec.
that said, the feeling behind the wheel is completely addicting. i cannot go back to noninstantaneous peak torque. this is pretty lizard brain of me, performance is more than acceleration, but pinning your head against the seat is a ton of fun and when i purchased the c8 hadn’t come out so there wasn’t another 3 second to 60 option in this price bracket.
agree with everything upthread about build quality issues, UX is not great, hope you don’t live somewhere that it rains hard because the fastest setting on the wipers is way too slow, etc etc. still fun as hell.
>What about handling in corners, etc., ride comfort
Drives a lot like a higher end mercedes, E-class/CLS feel. Smooth, powerful, good handling but not a tight suspension. My previous BMWs had better handling with better suspensions. Still, when comparing the Model 3 to similar ICE vehicles, the Tesla was hands down a better buy in my opinion.
Its a joy in the corners. The batteries have all the weight, and that weight is at the center of the car, and you get a car that spins like a top(when you want to). My last accord (2015) had better ride quality. I was honestly very impressed with autopilot(works for commuter traffic very well) and handling..
"Low CoG" and "Heavy" are not at all the same thing, and frankly I've known plenty of people in meatspace who genuinely thought "moar heavy === better grip", so I may be over-sensitive to this particular falsehood.
The model 3 performance is great at straight line but stock suspension isn’t fun to around tight corners. The way it rebounds on road imperfection at highspeed is not confident inspiring. The mass also resists willingness to turn in. Unless I manhandle it I always run wide around corner.
I had a 2008 Mazda 3, and that car was amazing. Cheap and absolutely a blast to drive, particularly if you shifted gears yourself.
I'm sure that many reading this comment will scoff. However, that car was living proof of one of my favorite truisms when it comes to driving cars in everyday traffic:
"It's more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow."
That Mazda was not powerful by any means, but it rode low and handled like a sports car. Fun to toss around.
This. The extra mass is done about as well as it can be because it's all at the bottom of a car but jerk the wheel left and right it becomes instantly obvious that it's not a light car.
I think you are wrong here, in this exact point. More mass in the car frame makes ride quality better: you can have more weight in wheels (unsuspended mass) or more responsive suspension.
More mass means more inertia, which means you get more body roll and heave. To counter this, you need to compromise on your suspension design (essentially make it stiffer) to stop the thing flopping about.
There is some nuance here though: more mass does potentially give you options in lowering the centre of gravity which can certainly help. Putting the batteries in the lowest point is a smart design move from this point of view.
In general, I'm not saying you can't make a heavy car have a good ride quality, I'm saying you can make it ride well in spite of the extra mass it has to deal with. Adding more mass doesn't magically let you have a better ride quality.
This is the first time I've ever heard people saying "heavy" as a pro. Any car is heavy in a sense of staying firmly on the ground. The rest is steering, suspension, and rubber; a tiny cheap Fiesta ST on good tires and dry tarmac handles like it's on rails. It'll go around a corner much more eagerly though, being about 60% lighter than a model 3.
"In addition to its near 50/50 weight distribution, Model 3 was also designed with an extremely low polar moment of inertia, which means that its heaviest components are located closer to the car’s center of gravity.
Even though Model 3 has no engine, its performance is similar to what’s described as a “mid-engine car” due to its centered battery pack (the heaviest component of the car) and the fact that Model 3’s rear motor is placed slightly in front of the rear axle rather than behind it.
Not only does this architecture add to the overall agility and handling of the car, it also improves the capability of stability control by minimizing rotational kinetic energy."
Well, considering the Model 3 Performance starts at $50k and the M3 at $70k, winning at all is impressive. I agree with the OP, there are a lot of problems with the Model 3, but most serious automotive journalists have concluded it drives incredibly well.
You're arguments, are erroneous and are so out of topic.
Let's do a bit of fact checking on this false narrative. Having worked in government. Most if not all financial transactions records are public record and can easily be traced.
The only known grant(call it subsidy if you want) that Tesla got from the government is a loan from the Department of Energy.
The loan was to buy the old Toyata/GM NUMMI plant. That single plant now hires thousands of workers and produce thousands of electric vehicles a month. That DOE loan was PAID off 10 years early PLUS interest. Therefore, the American taxpayers made money and cemented the U.S. as a leader in EV market share.
Can you provide the rest of the $1.5B you're claiming? I can already predict you will link the Business Insider and L.A. Times articles. Both of which are inaccurate. They also did not provide sources where they got those numbers from.
Before you mention the tax breaks for the Giga Factory in Nevada. This has been a common thing for states to do. So that they can entice companies to build infrastructure. Because that can end up bringing in tax revenue in the long run. BMW have gotten hundreds of millions as well in just South Carolina alone. So that point is moot:
Perhaps from this: 200k cars sold * $7500 tax credit (+ the cars sold during the phase out, perhaps another 100k maybe at an average of $2500)
Such credits are intended to go completely to consumers, but as many government programs have unintended consequences, or perhaps unadvertised effects, the producer just charges more for the item because they know the consumer is willing to spend more knowing they'll get the tax credit, only if they buy that item. Tesla even factored the credit into the price they showed on their website, which many complained was false advertising as it was very possible not to have $7500 in tax liability, but the vast majority did.
It became obvious that Tesla captured a substantial portion of the credit when they lowered the prices every time the tax credit dropped, meeting the people who "lost out" on the credit half way. They had quite a bit of room in their margins to attract new buyers with lower prices. Maybe not $1.5B of margin from the credits, but definitely not $0.
Bad spin. He claims the price is lower because of the “subsidies”. Which is opposite of what you’re implying.
Not only that your logic is flawed, the math also doesn’t check out. Why? Not everyone who were the first 200k early adopters got the credit. Because you would have to owed the tax liability. Hence it’s called a tax credit and not refund.
Moreover, if we use the logic you’re claiming. Then BMW has benefited from it too! Since they sell the i3 EV. Same with other manufacturers that offer BEVs. Like Chevy, Nissan, Audi and Jaguar etc.
The quote about "exceptional ride due to lower center of gravity and essentially middle engine design" was taken from Tesla PR in the comment I've replied to.
The 0-100km/h times for M3 and Model 3 is 3.9 and 3.2 seconds respectively and, essentially, 20%. The difference in peak torque (helps in acceleration out of corners) is smaller, 550 N/m and 639 N/m, about 11%. Power (helps at high speed) difference also less - 317kW and 340kW, yet Tesla win here too. Model 3 is even slightly wider (2cm, about 1% wider), which should help in track too. And after all that, a whopping 0.1s of win.
Tesla borked their very first Roadster, despite the fact that they had to provide only drivetrain to it and everything else was done by Lotus. The analysis above suggests that they are still do not get driving as opposed to drag racing.
> "exceptional ride due to lower center of gravity and essentially middle engine design"
That is a factual statement! Let me ask you this. Have you driven a decent mid-engine sports car like a Porsche 718 Boxster and a Tesla Model 3 performance? I have. They both handle quite well.
>The 0-100km/h times for M3 and Model 3 is 3.9 and 3.2 seconds respectively and, essentially, 20%. The difference in peak torque (helps in acceleration out of corners) is smaller, 550 N/m and 639 N/m, about 11%. Power (helps at high speed) difference also less - 317kW and 340kW, yet Tesla win here too. Model 3 is even slightly wider (2cm, about 1% wider), which should help in track too. And after all that, a whopping 0.1s of win.
Facts are facts, you can't spin it to suit your narrative. The Model 3 won while being heavier and costing significantly less is impressive. That was also prior to track mode being released and the new high performance package.
> Tesla borked their very first Roadster, despite the fact that they had to provide only drivetrain to it and everything else was done by Lotus.
Do you have a background in automotive engineering? Elon Musk and the Tesla engineers said on many occasions, that the original Roadster only had about 20% original parts after they were done with the conversion. They also said that it would have been easier to start from scratch had they known the amount of hard work that had to be done.
> The analysis above suggests that they are still do not get driving as opposed to drag racing.
Terrible analysis. Randy Pobst (look him up) who is well respected in racing would tell you otherwise: https://youtu.be/aywleQX5lyA?t=202
Unplugged Performance Street Tuned Model 3 Beats McLaren F1 - Time Attack at Tsukuba Circuit
Heavy is the wrong way to describe it. What the Model 3 has is a very low center of gravity and low moment of inertia due to the low and centered battery pack.
> due to torque being provided directly at the wheels and the lack of a gear box.
All Tesla's have gearboxes[1], sometimes to the surprise of the owner when they learn they need their transmission oil changed after thinking they've been driving a car that doesn't need any oil.
The driving experience is very nice, but I think my next car is going to be either a Porsche Taycan or another BMW SUV but I do like electric cars. I love not going to a gas station to fill up every week.
I don’t think I will get another Tesla. I think most electric cars will drive similar to the Tesla in 2 years, and what I’m looking for is a more solid, luxurious feel to the interior. The Model 3 interior feels very cheap and plastic vs BMW that feels nice. I hate the all-screen experience of the Model 3. The X6 was probably the best driving experience I’ve had and I miss it. I also miss knowing I can get in the X6 and drive anywhere in North America without thinking too deeply about it. I would have driven my family to Canada for a few months during the pandemic but we didn’t have a car that would reliably take us that distance from SF.
Oh man, I had two BMWs before the Tesla. I still have PTSD from them. I remember that my X3 map was obsolete the day I bought the car and they offered CD based upgrades for $$. I found iDrive to be a terrible experience, where mundane things like entering an address was a nightmare. Also, the steering feel had been neutered down significantly.
+1 on the steering feel. I owned 2008 328i RWD and steering feel... well, it felt 100% mechanical and heavy. Not for everyone, but I loved it and I'm glad I had a chance to drive the last good 'pure' 3 series.
I have driven a ton of cars. I used to be a consultant so I would rent a car every week. And because of my status at Hertz would often get upgraded. I once managed to rent a Jaguar F10. I also owned two BMWs, VW, Honda etc
I have test drove the S,3,X and while the power was pretty neat, the build quality is a deal breaker for me after having both MB & Porsche. I am waiting for them to get that sorted out before I buy one. We have 2 Porsches now which are fantastic. I am committed to not buying another gas powered car at this point so I am looking forward to the other manufactures catching up with Tesla on their BEV offerings.
As a history - old 1960s Mustang, 1990s Dodge, 1990s Pontiac, 2000s MB ML AMG, 2000s Ford(s), 1990s Jaguar, 2000s Suzuki, 2000s Honda(s) (I loved the Element. Great car with small kids - if they made a new one I would buy it!), 2010s MB C-Class, 2010s Porsche(s). Hum. I am missing something...oh well.
You can blame today's rushed run-fast-break-things work culture that push engineers and line workers to their limits. Especially true of what I know from people that work/have worked at Tesla.
I still love and very much support what Elon is doing with SpaceX, but Tesla seems to be this weird company with one foot in amazing and another foot in disaster. It's like the worst best car company at the same time.
I have heard many, many Tesla owners complain about build quality, but others say it's fine. It appears to be hit or miss, which is typical for a poorly optimized manufacturing process. Some cars come off the line in good shape and others have ridiculous problems or bad panel alignment, etc. Tesla's support is also apparently a fucking disaster, which is a common pattern with Silicon Valley companies... even large and cash-flush ones like Apple and Google. SV does not do support or customer service after the purchase.
Elon's behavior on Twitter is nuts and makes me concerned about him. His COVID nonsense is the worst so far. Hopefully he holds it together long enough for Starship to be fully operational before he completely loses his mind.
Model Y owner, totally agree, quality is I would say ok in my case. I'm New Yorker, and the way people drive here, it's like they're not even close , don't spent those $8k. For me that package partially was cool for smart summon, but I need real efforts even to pull my car out of home driveway which is narrow yeah, but totally doable by human, nothing hard...
it'm not OP but i can tell you what i love about my model s. (coming from an aston martin db7 convertible).
it's the quickest car i've ever driven, by far. instant acceleration.
it's better than the day i bought it. my car has learned to do a lot of things through software updates. my aston had a nav system that was obsolete the day i bought it (new), and criminally dinosaur-land by the time i sold it.
hands-down best nav system of any car i've ever been in, and that's something you use with every drive.
hands-down best infotainment system. i have tunein, podcasts, radio, bluetooth, all on a giant screen that makes it super easy to pick entertainment while driving.
autopilot rocks, especially on highways. driving from florida to boston and back within a week was really no big deal. no way i could have done that in any of my previous cars without being exhausted.
it's surprisingly large for a car that's so stupidly quick. it fits five adults, plus a giant trunk in the back and a small trunk in the front. 0-60 faster than you want or need.
convenience is off the charts. you get to the destination and you just leave the car. it takes car of turning itself off, turning off the lights, and locking the doors. every time i rent a car now i am reminded just how many "things" you have to do each time you enter/exit. easier to not have to think about it.
it's got remote control. i can set the climate, make the car move, or trigger my garage door to open all from my phone. i can also track it when i park it via valet.
speaking of valet, it has valet mode, so when i drop it off the car's acceleration and top speed is limited, and the glovebox and frunk can't be opened.
i never have to stop at a gas station because it charges at home. so i always have a full "tank". it's surprising how awesome this is.
the list goes on... it's just a really phenomenal car.
True but they do not integrate with the car like the build in navigation.
The only place you see the instructions are on the phone itself or the display of the car. The build in shows the next instructions within the cockpit & HUD.
It has no access to the wheels, and in tunnels the GPS will simply not work where as the build in sort of does.
The build in depends way less on healthy Internet access (yes there are parts of Europe that I drive though with cripple G2 at best).
Mind you, I SWEAR by Google maps for driving (in Europe) since it is so current and predicts / reroutes better then anything else I've ever used.
Paying major money for updates of the build in also is a real pain.
I think last two points are contradictory because Tesla optimised interior design for self driving - they skipped out on driver instruments in your direct FOV or a windshield HUD - electric car market is still kind of new but the newcomers seem promising - TBH if an electric car fit my lifestyle I'd be looking at Jaguar iPace over Tesla model Y.
I feel like model S and X are outdated at this point and AFAIK Elon said they don't plan to refresh them so I wouldn't even consider those if buying new.
They added a lot of things in 2020 , including newer batteries etc , model s 2021 plaid will be the fastest production car on this planet :) until roadster will be released
I wonder what capabilities they have versus what they turn on for the general public due to regulation and safety. I would imagine that to release FSD in the wild will require an insanely high factor of safety.
Let’s do it. I am going on 5 yrs of autopilot ownership. It still phantom brakes on freeways today as it did 5 years back. Forget about the major edge cases
I'd put $100 that a tesla will be able to take you from start to destination without help in no more than six years, and I think I'm being conservative.
I was going to say the same thing. GP and I could design the bet with assumptions like "most of the US" and "good weather" but that's riddled with issues from a contractual standpoint.
So how about it has to take GP from his home to a destination 100+ miles away, the car has to park itself in a legal spot, and it must reverse at least once during the trip? And I'd like to see it done at least 3x, including once when it's not perfect weather (could be foggy, moderate rain, light snow - whatever).
With conditions as you've described I would still happily bet $100 that no later than 9:00am EST Oct 9 2026, a Tesla available to ordinary consumers will be able to perform the task with no driver intervention.
Given the simplicity of electric cars I feel like the Tesla would be in a pretty good spot.
But Tesla's continuous improvement means parts aren't tied to model years and are often already hard to track down. They're not going to be made by third parties given the lack of scale.
I'm foreseeing small faults totalling otherwise perfectly good cars later on in the current generation.
If Tesla ramps up like they're claiming though, this problem will sort itself out.
But does your bmw have a leaky door, sunroof, trunk, or lights?
What about a charger? Or random electrical errors?
I don’t buy the “less maintenance” part. Maybe stuff breaks less often but if it breaks, you’re screwed.
Anyway we’ll see. I’d gladly be proven wrong.
Also, there are other brands. I think everyone agrees EVs will eventually be more reliable, Tesla is just a worst case scenario with their “high volume” “beta release” (model S)
EVs have far fewer parts than ICE vehicles - transmission radically simpler, no radiator, exhaust, etc etc - I would take a 10 year old Tesla over a BMW any day.
nope, i used to own an m5. here's a letter i sent to BMW years ago.
To whom it may concern,
I purchased an E39 M5 in 2000, which at the time was the absolute pinnacle of automotive achievement. No other car came close to the blend of utility, luxury, performance and driving ex- perience. I was thrilled.
After a few years of ownership, I began to be troubled by the frequency with which I had to visit the repair shop. It seemed that every few months something else had gone wrong, and needed to be repaired, or more often, replaced. All of the repairs have been done at an authorized BMW repair center, with only one exception when my passenger seat broke; BMW wanted over six hundred dollars for a repair that someone else did for me for $50.
Dino Belotti, my Service Representative, has been nothing short of fantastic. He made every visit as painless as possible. The problem is, there were far too many visits. I’m sure he’s got a special file in his drawer with my name on it that is significantly thicker than any other in his drawer. Or then again, maybe they are all that thick. One wonders.
As you can see, the list is quite extensive. Too extensive. In fact, despite only driving my M5 about once per month in the last year, the pace of repairs has not slowed down. The last straw was this past weekend, when I drove my M5 for the first time since getting it back from the repair shop the week prior, and it started to rain. Wouldn’t you know, but the wipers fail to function. So for that round trip to the shop I had exactly zero trouble-free drives in my car.
This is what I have had to replace on this car since I bought it new in 2000:
* passenger-side mirror (twice)
* interior rear-view mirror
* clutch (erroneously blamed for noise when I had an engine problem)
* flywheel (erroneously blamed for noise when I had an engine problem)
* brake rotors
* right rear taillight assembly (connectors had corroded/fused)
* right rear taillight assembly again (connectors had corroded/fused)
* navigation system including head unit
* stereo amplifier
* center console (twice -- once damaged during another service)
* hazard lights switch
* front cup holders (filmsy plastic that's a joke... I never use them and they still broke!)
* passenger front seat (as noted, this lone repair was done at a non-authorized BMW service center) - the motor (yes, the entire motor. a $17,000 part)
* the battery
* front passenger-side blinker assembly
* driver's side interior door trim
* front spoiler
* on-board computer
* O2 sensor
* parking brake
* air-conditioning unit
* air-conditioning unit again
* central locking feature (keys needed to be replaced and reprogrammed)
* two replacement windshields (one developed a crack randomly, the other due to impact) - transmission universal joint
* gas tank cover actuator
* passenger side rear-view mirror (third time)
* front spoiler undercarriage panels
* coin tray cover
* shifter knob (just fell apart)
* rubber moulding around the windshield
* ABS brake pump (a $3,000 part)
* brake bushings
* final stage resistor (not sure what this is)
* paint on the wheels peeled off, looking absolutely embarrassing. Had them repainted. That de-
veloped spider cracks. Had them repainted again. I don’t know whose decision it was to paint
wheels. Bad choice.
* windshield wipers no longer work
* BMW logo just peeled off the front of the car. The irony of this last defect is not lost on me.
With only a mid-level understanding of how cars work, I have to think long and hard about what parts of the car I bought that I haven’t had to pay to replace. The above list reflects only what I could remember at the time of writing this letter. I’m sure there are many more repairs not listed here, but on file at Vista BMW.
I am a huge fan of BMW, and when I bought the M5 for me and the X5 for my wife, I sincerely hoped that we would stay within the BMW family for a long time. I wanted my M5 to be a car that my son could drive some day. I love it that much. But given this track record, it is unfortunately a car I can no longer afford to keep, nor can I in good conscious recommend that anyone I care for buy a BMW.
My repair history has changed me from a fan of BMWs, to someone who cautions others about buying them. I do not know what, if anything, can bring me back into the BMW family, but I thought someone at the highest level of BMW should know of my experience.
A BMW straight six with a manual transmission can be expected to last 300K miles, and if you choose the right one (some models are notoriously bad), the maintenance isn't even that bad.
Electronics are damn expensive to fix in any car, though, which is one of the best reasons to prefer older cars with less of that error-prone stuff. German cars have crappier electronics than others, for some reason. (It's no longer even possible to build really reliable electronics in the age of ROHS lead-free solder.)
Are Telsas known to age well? I can't imagine long term build quality is lowly correlated with short term build quality. But the electric drive train is a major complicating factor.
It is a mixed bag. Early model S cars are only 8-9 years old right now. Still pretty young to determine true long term reliability. Tesla also kept the reputation decent early on by offering warranty repairs on pretty much everything. I've heard it is not uncommon when looking at an 2012 model S to have reports of 10+ door handle replacements. The real test will come at the EOL time for batteries. If it is similar to hybrids, that comes at ~15 years. I imagine in ~2027 virtually all original model S cars will be in junk yards/salvage auctions when they are totaled by a dead battery.
There’s no parts supply or third party sources of most components, so I’d guess that you’ll have cars off the road for stupid part failures before the drivetrain is caput.
2019 Model 3 owner and 100% agree on points 1, 3, and 4. About Elon, he's had some bad takes on Covid, but other than that he really is driving humanity forward.
I mean, I used to have a Mercedes AMG before my current one, and it was simultaniously the worst and the best car I have ever owned. The worst because it was uncomfortable and built like a horse cart, everything in this brand new, very expensive mercedes creaked, rattled and squeaked. I've been back to the garage so many times for "minor" fixes just to make the car usable I nearly ended up hating it after the first year, then kind of ended up learning to live it and started enjoying it more. Which brings me to the other side - I loved the way it drove, it was like the extension of my mind and my body, it was like glued to the road and like a rocket if you wanted it to be.
So yeah, I totally 100% get how you can simultaneously love and hate a car, especially if it's an expensive one.
GLA45. Which yes, is nothing more than a fancy A class, so some excuses I've heard were "well, it's a 'cheap' AMG, what were you expecting". I don't know what was I expecting, maybe only that a £55k car won't have crappy plastics everywhere that creak every time you go over any bump.
Having said that - I've spent enough time on AMG forums to know that the same problem exists even if you buy a C63 or E63, the build quality of the interior just isn't great(while the mechanical engineering arguably is, those cars are very reliable when it comes to the actual mechanical bits)
But yeah, that's a weird segment that car is in. It's expensive, because the engine is expensive, but at the same time you're getting the exact same interior and fit-and-finish as the non-AMG versions of that class, which means an AMG S-class is very nice, while an AMG A-class is just not very nice at all. So yeah, your experience sounds exactly like what I would expect out of that specific model, and by just looking at the price tag, it's not very intuitive that that's what you're gonna get.
Build quality is not the be-all, end-all of measurements in deciding the “best” car. This is a really common viewpoint among Tesla owners. We have our gripes, but those gripes are overshadowed by other things like the infotainment, acceleration, software, etc.
Also matters what build quality people are referring to. I know there have been plenty of people complaining online. Now a roof flies off of a Model Y and that’s terrible. But I’m not sure why all the other recalls don’t get as much coverage and this Model Y. I mean Volvo just had a recall for the Polestar for a problem that would cause total power loss. I understand Tesla is the hotness to hate and love.
I guess people talk about build quality but my two year old Model 3 hasn’t had any issues. I will only buy electric cars from this point on after having the Model 3. How quick it is and I also happen to love the touchscreen and UI. Also no oil changes is fantastic. I’ve only rotated tires. My Audi maintenance costs just kept rising and rising.
It’s odd people compare the Model 3 to a wide range of cars when it seems more apt to compare it to ICE cars like Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series. I think it’s superior to those cars, I don’t miss the amount of buttons they all have (buttons I personally never use). And I feel like all car interiors have started to get very cheap.
Regarding Autopilot, friends who are Tesla owners treat the Full Service Driving option as a way to get early access to new technology and fund its development. I do wish the false promises were not made at all, but I also think at this point people know what they're signing up for. Looking at how it performs (example: https://youtu.be/ZcW7nzmm79E), I would say they have the best implementation out there.
Tesla is an immature car maker. They might have great designs but they haven't matured their processes. They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through. One off type stuff like this and designs that are generally less manufacturing optimized designs coming from them are not surprising.
I don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out. To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
According to the initial Reddit thread (anecdotal evidence I realise), while this is the most severe and highest profile incident, there have been quite a few reports of windows being improperly sealed. So as you say, not a one-off, but rather a flawed manufacturing procedure.
I went along with a family member to a Model 3 test drive recently and it was surprising just how many little defects were there, considering the price of the car. While paint finish or panel fit isn't going to ruin a car overall, the fact the big easy-to-spot things are so clearly flawed does make one pause to consider how rigorous the QA is for the parts under the surface.
I find "anecdotes do not equal data" to be unscientific.
Your doctor doesn't take your oral history for fun, it's data. Now, just like a medical doctor we should weigh anecdotal data accordingly, but it's still data.
Here for example we can tell BMW/Audi reportedly sometimes make production errors. Tesla reportedly don't always make significant (to the commenter) production errors.
Sure, that's not terribly useful. It's still data.
The doctor takes your oral history to assess your health. Knowing that $x percent of family tree has high blood pressure means they can more accurately assess your risk of high blood pressure. For the population of “literally you”, your oral history is data. Now, if the next patient came in, and your doctor said “well, the last person in here has high blood pressure, you might have it to”, that’s an anecdote.
Similarly, telling somebody ~”My instance of $product worked great” isn’t really useful info for them. That’s a sample size of 1 out of a massive number.
Where only one or two anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases
He's responding to another anecdote, demonstrating that any anecdote likely has a counter-anecdote. You should read the context of a thread before replying snarkily.
Why is this getting downvoted so heavily? It is totally true. If there are issues with the production, this will show only in big numbers. One anecdote saying "but I hade one and nothing happened" does literally say nothing about the problem.
Which means that when the showroom models don't even get it right, it's all the more underwhelming. The showroom demonstrator we saw had very patchy paint, misaligned exterior panels and trim, and gaps in the interior door finish too.
While Tesla has been making cars for 17 years, they have also been constantly scaling up. Prior to 2018, Tesla had delivered fewer than 500k cars total. By contrast, they are pushing to get 500k cars out the door this calendar year.
Toyota, GM, etc are sitting on mature product lines which are growing a few percentage a year. They can roll out a new assembly line and spend months fine tuning it before turning it up and shutting down the old one. Tesla has no previous assembly line to lean on.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
The flip side of this is I've heard a fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
> Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
It's so slow though that I don't think it can even be considered "good" anymore. Ok fine they eventually fix issues, but at the cost of you having a defective product for weeks/months?
I really want to buy a Model Y, but I just almost had to push back the closing date on buying a new house because it took longer to have somebody in their solar panel department send a single e-mail than it took for the bank to get me a mortgage. It took a lot of stress, over a dozen e-mails and about 3 hours on the phone before I was able to eventually speak to a human to resolve my issue. The whole experience has soured the brand for me, and from googling around my case is far from an outlier.
Boeing has 50 layers of outsourcing. Tesla is vertically integrated and they try to control the whole process. Their QA might be bad but they have the highest safety rating in the market and are technologically the most advanced in terms of EV.
>fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
This luxury sports car business model. Expensive sports cars are very unreliable and delicate. But they are so expensive that providing very good custom service and repair after the sale is worth it.
They are trying to transform into a market where routine million car recalls kills the business and eats all profits. New cars are expected to work.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
Sure, I thought they had been pretty clear they felt reaching volume was critical to making BEV technology competitive (a larger revenue base over which to amortize development)
I'll have to agree. Having bought into the Tesla Kool aid last year, I decided to get myself one (S). Sure, I liked it and all, and it certainly reeks of German engineering design thanks to Holzhausen, but it's overall service model leaves much to be desired. I only realized that when my SO's Dad showed me the Porsche Taycan, that I realized how much Tesla had sacrificed, in terms of customer convenience and customer service. Tesla is no BMW or Porsche, and I don't think it can be one either - not with Musk's demanding sort of leadership. Designing a sexy car might be possible, but designing the processes behind manufacturing that with no qualms or quality issues, with a constantly changing team of engineers, is not possible. That requires time and patience and a lot of TLC, all of which Musk doesn't have.
It's a good stock to ride the sucker wave on though.
O, please. I own both BMW and Tesla, and while BMW is more refined car, service and quality miles better with Tesla. BMW gets obscure error codes, and then dealership lazily tries to fix it for weeks (this year BMW spent 7 weeks at the shop, last year 3 weeks). Tesla needs service, technician comes and fixes it on your driveway!
You are comparing very different classes of cars. A Tesla Model 3 is equivalent to BMW 3 series ($35-40K), and in my experience compares very favorably to it in terms of performance, design, servicing/maintenance and more. Owning an entry level BMW isn't the luxury it's claimed to be in ads. A Porsche Taycan goes for $150K+.
“I only realized that when my SO's Dad showed me the Porsche Taycan, that I realized how much Tesla had sacrificed, in terms of customer convenience and customer service”
Tesla's level of service drops like a cliff after the first year, at least in Europe. While it's still better than the traditional dealership model of service, it's nowhere close to the kind of service that a German car gets. Not to mention the fact that Tesla wants to play the Apple game and become exclusively set on retaining its exclusive OS. I can see more customer unfriendly behavior in the future.
its interesting because Musk isn't trying to design a Porsche, he is trying to design low end cars, but to me that makes little sense. To me, it feels like he should go with the iphone model
It's this the bit where you tell me that unnecessarily gluing in batteries, and soldering in memory, and charging a fortune for cables, and silently reducing processing power of older products, is all somehow about bringing tech to the masses and not a cynical move to reduce repairability and squeeze money out of successful lifestyle marketing?
> To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
Tesla fundamentally disagrees with established ways of manufacturing cars and is still approaching it as a SV startup. They chase growth numbers, rush new models in production, will put home depot scrap in the cars just to keep the lines moving, and have no quality culture.
Company needs to go over very fundamental philosophy changes for issues like that go away. Just the time itself is not enough.
Japanese or Korean auto-markers turned around their quality over time, by heavily investing into that. Tesla shows no signs of that.
Tesla is improving its manufacturing all the time. They have only turned into a mass market manufacturer in 2017. Shanghai where they could start fresh has very few of these problems. The Model Y rollout was early and much better the Model 3 already.
The argument that Tesla is not investing in improving quality is simply not true. Things like casting make far more exact parts and very repeatable. It also reduces 100s of parts, less variation, less manufacturing steps and thus mistakes.
They are investing in the most expensive paint shop you can buy in the market right now for their new factories and they just renovated the paint shop in Fremont (since then I have not heard of bad paint quality).
They defiantly need to do more but its unfair to say they are doing nothing.
In fairness to Tesla, the cars are relatively simple and last a long time (as long as the batteries don't fail.) But more to the point, if competing manufacturers can't get serious about competing with Tesla, then Tesla isn't under pressure to change its practices.
That's a great theory, until you realize that Tesla's been around 17 years, and that for a lot of their issues they really could crib notes on how other vehicle manufacturers do things. A huge amount of their QA issues around non-drive train components are solved problems everywhere else, and they've been at it for a while now.
They've been making at least 10K units a quarter since Q1 2015. I'd hope that in half a decade they would have figured out how to make the body panels align and stay attached to the frame.
Complaints about Tesla's fit and finish extend back to before they were mass producing vehicles, when they theoretically should have been able to hand fit them. So I really don't buy any argument about it being a problem with scaling up; they just seem incapable or disinterested in fixing this.
The example from this article is from the Model Y, which just began shipping in March. Tesla is still in a huge rampup growth phase where their manufacturing processes aren't yet stable.
I don't think Tesla deserves a free pass with these issues, but I also think they should be expected.
Let's not be totally unfair to Tesla here, plenty of cars have had similar issues. Various models of Vauxhall / Opel have been known for the bonnet / hood latch coming undone at motorway speeds and slamming into the windshield. Others have been known to catch fire randomly.
Sure, and when that happened, did people say "oh, that's to be expected, sometimes cars do this sort of thing" or did they say "this is completely unacceptable and must be fixed immediately"?
Tesla gets held to a separate standard, and excuses get made for it, because people want it to succeed. I want it to succeed, too, but my definition of success includes making reliable cars. (And preferably sacking Elon Musk, but that's unrelated.)
I think it can be both unacceptable and not unexpected. No amount of engineering can match a few months of real world testing. So long as there is a good faith effort to fix the issue then it's not necessarily a sign of incompetence on Tesla's side.
Nobody at Ford has been working there for 112 years. The thing is, Tesla could just hire people who have experience working in quality control for car manufacturing and then they'd be just as experienced at it as Ford.
Your logic suggests either a) they haven't bothered hiring people experienced in quality control for car manufacturing, or b) they have, and yet their cars are _still_ this badly made. Neither is a good look.
Corporate culture doesn't just shift overnight. The Big Three didn't get serious about quality control until Japanese automakers started eating their lunch. Even then, it took time to really ingrain it into the company culture.
I don't know what the Tesla culture is like, but if it skews toward the tech "move fast and break things", just hiring experienced QA folks won't magically get everyone onboard to strict, controlled processes.
This is so true, look at any GM or Chrysler car from the 90's. Complete abominations of cars with cheap plastic everywhere and myriad mechanical problems. You can see their attempts to catch up to Japanese cars during this time.
Those methodologies don’t proscribe the bests places to hold a piece of glass for optimal adhesion. Just how to structure and operate just-in-time workflows.
> Do people really think that "gluing the glass in" is some bit of advanced engineering?
Conversely, do _you_ really think that - evenly applying an adhesive to an incredibly smooth surface (repeatably) to bond it to a frame and have it undergo twisting, vibration, and extremes of heat and cold, aerodynamic effects / pressure, exposure to moisture, UV and atmospheric contaminants and retaining its adhesion for the expected life of the vehicle -
But you're talking about chemical engineering of making glue, and luckily 3m (etc) have already done all that work.
All Tesla have to do is "buy the right glue", and then "make sure it gets put on correctly". That is a bit of production engineering but seriously it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in, and then check that it's been done.
I understand what you're saying but I disagree that it can be reduced to 'buy the right glue' and 'make sure it gets put on correctly' any more it does any more justice to a model CPU to say it's just 'take a transistor and replicate it 5 billion times on a hunk of silicon'. While that's technically true in both cases, it neglects to consider the level of technology that goes into all of the details to make it possible.
I'm not saying that attaching glass to metal is at the same level of complexity as semiconductor fab, but it's a far cry from using some Elmer's Glue to stick two pieces of construction paper together.
And yes, I'm pretty sure Tesla didn't create their own adhesive for the purpose, but I'm equally sure 3M doesn't have an off-the-shelf "Model Y Roof Adhesive, 500ml" product. Or perhaps they did, but the engineering constraints to develop it were those of normal passenger cars, sunroofs, etc., not taking into account the various forces acting upon a 4'x7' sheet of glass at highway speeds, or perhaps the temperatures or speeds of an industrial applicator robot (or conversely, the slowness of a human applicator).
To go back to your original assertion, no, it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in and check that it's been done. If in fact the failure mode was 'Failure to apply adhesive', well, that's a fairly egregious and easy to spot problem. If it's 'adhesive failed for unknown reasons after a short period of time', that's an altogether different problem.
Sure. Choose a glue that has the appropriate material properties in all expected conditions, longevity, resistance to all the various stresses, compatibility with both mating surfaces... Then put it in exactly the right place e.g. where the full range of expected operating conditions doesn't create too much stress or resonance... But only the right amount and with the right cure time and cure conditions.
Repeat this step with literally every weld, seal, screw, or other component. Then get it right for hundreds of thousands of cars regardless of the condition of the factory line and workers/robots.
de Havilland was making airplanes for 33 years when the famous Comet crash occurred.
Manufacturing is a learning process. There's a lot of engineering in every detail, and there will always be room for improvement.
The Comet thing was a design flaw, not a process/quality control flaw. And the Comet was essentially unique at the time; _no-one_ was making things like that. Lots of people today are making cars; Tesla could just hire experts. For that matter, they could buy/merge with a small car company.
I suspect there’s some sort of NIH thing going on.
Nobody had been making pressurised-cabin passenger aircraft for any appreciable length of time when the Comet crash happened. The situations are in no way comparable unless you restrict things to the powertrain.
Musk has admitted to how hard production is. Those little nuances in manufacturing like where to hold glass come from years of production/quality/root-cause analysis to arrive at best practices to avoid exactly these kinds of issues. Don't discount how hard it is just because it seems simple to the uninitiated.
Ever talked to somebody with little to no software experience who will tell you how easy it should be to just slap some code together to build a the next Google? It's like that.
It's only hard because he's insisting on re-inventing everything rather than just using standard engineering practices.
I used to build test equipment for aerospace and safety critical equipment for coal mining. I'm well aware that even with rigorous control you're going to get some errors. But "the glass fell out because we glued it wrong" isn't a normal manufacturing error. It's a mistake that requires more than one process to fail.
This is such a dumb point. When Ford started, horses were the main means of transportation. Comparing that to Tesla’s beginning, which was at the peak of car manufacturing, is stupid.
By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap. They just didn't apply the techniques and processes to the product lines they didn't care about (i.e. economy cars, they were selling SUVs hand over fist after all). And if you look at MRSPs for foreign and domestic economy cars throughout the 90s the prices more or less reflect the respective OEM's level of investment in those product lines. If you wanted an economy car you bought a Civic. If you wanted a shitbox you bought an Escort for less money.
> By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap.
I completely disagree with that. I bought a Cadillac in 2012. Its build quality was lower than anything I've seen from BMW, Audi or Volvo. I'm talking about really inconsistent panel (internal and exterior) gaps and misc vehicle rattles. It's also worth mentioning the Cadillac was the most expensive vehicle of the group and very much a line that GM cared about. I have no idea how Ford is doing, but GM is still not comparable to German/Swedish/Korean manufacturers.
Also, manufacturing engineering and mass production was just getting started. hell, Ford was famous for adopting scientific management and the assembly line to cranck out a massive amount of cars at that time.
I would even argue ford's model of manufacturing turned the last remnats of workshop based work into the mass producing factory.
Personally, I am waiting until Tesla's competition gets their act together and starts producing more EVs. Mercedes and Volkswagen are both moving in that direction, for instance. I think in the next 5-10 years there will be plenty of EVs on the market in most countries, and Tesla will no longer stand out simply because they were first.
I drive a Subaru now. If I could get an EV version of my present car with comparable range, I'd buy it today and never look back. They say by 2035 they'll have electric versions of all their major models[1], so I guess... sometime in the next 15 years, for me?
> Personally, I am waiting until Tesla's competition gets their act together and starts producing more EVs.
Market share of new BEVs in Germany, January 2020 to September 2020:
Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche: 33%
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi: 18%
Hyundai-Kia: 13%
Tesla: 12%
Mercedes: 9%
BMW: 8%
You don't have to wait, the competition is already outproducing and outselling Tesla in Europe. And all of these car companies have new BEV models in the pipeline that are going to further erode Tesla's marketshare, because Tesla has nothing in the pipeline for the European market over the next couple of years.
I'm very much in the same boat. It's one of the things that has always confused me a little about Subaru, since they seem like they've been really well-placed to take advantage of the transition to electric vehicles. A lot of their customer base cares about things like the environment, usually has some degree of disposable income (they're not the cheapest car on the market) and places a high value on areas like reliability and simple functionality. Electric cars already are supposed to require less maintenance than your average ICE vehicle, and the four-cylinder boxer engine/CVT combo isn't exactly known as a hotrod combo either, so it's not as if the need to satisfy their customer base on 0-60mph time anway (for that type of car, ignore the WRX for a moment).
If they made a Crosstrek/Forester-type vehicle with 300-400 miles of all-electric range, kept the ground clearance, roof rack, and usual interiors, I've always imagined that those vehicles would sell like hotcakes. I know I'd be interested in immediately trading up, in a way that I probably won't be otherwise for a long time.
Subaru is slow to move on industry trends. They were some of the last to get USB ports in their cars, Bluetooth, modern power steering (the wheel in my 2013 Impreza is shockingly heavy for a new car), better fuel economy, etc, etc.
They do one thing - they make solidly reliable 4-wheel-drive cars - and they do it quite well. But I've never seen them be the first on any new thing the industry is doing, no matter how good it is.
You're absolutely right. I always thought of Subaru as a niche car maker appealing mostly to outdoorsy types who don't mind getting their hands dirty to do some maintenance on their car. I don't think they really put much effort into their interior aesthetics. Heck, until recently they weren't really making the best looking cars either. I drive a 2016 WRX and it's literally a box on wheels. There is barely any sound proofing, the audio quality is horrid, the interior is as plain as it gets and they're probably 5 years behind everyone else on innovation, but the car is just insanely solid and incredibly easy to maintain.
Honestly, don't wait. These issues are very rare (otherwise you will see a post on HN every day). And even if you have some issues, they will send someone over to your home to fix it.
and car and production technology has shifted massively in those 100 years.
Producing cars in itself is not a new process from a manufacturing perspective, especially not the non EV parts. (like body work and structural work).
What kind of quality control does tesla have, when it is not able to reliably produce cars with the same finish and fit. Most manufacturers have been able to do this for atleast 30 years. it is not like the industry doesn't have solutions to tackle these issues at scale.
Yes, Tesla may not have the best manufacturing quality, but compared against American cars from the 80's...
They've only been mass manufacturing for about 4 years now; previous models are low volume models with a lot of hand assembly.
Musk says that manufacturing is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than designing and building prototypes. He's learning these lessons the hard way. If you can survive the lesson, it's the best way to learn them. Little consolation to those who buy the lemons during the learning period, though.
This is also a tale about America. Tesla's Chinese factory gets first place on a similar survey to the JD Powers initial quality survey that Tesla America got last place in. America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
The problem is the conscious choice to prioritize quantity over quality. Make no mistake, Tesla's leadership consciously chose to let quality slide in order to meet the delivery volumes because the latter is what pumps stock prices. And they did this knowing it could (and did) very well lead to direct loss of life.
This is what would worry me as a potential customer. That the manufacturer selling me their product considers such disasters acceptable in order to ship a few more units. It's not that often lately than manufacturers are willing to do this (think GM ignition key scandal, rather than VW pollution cheating).
>> America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
Is this serious? America has been offshoring domestic auto manufacturing for a couple decades now. The people who worked in those factories didn’t just die, they’re mostly still available for hire. There is no metric in manufacturing knowledge where America lags that far behind other first world countries, let alone the rest of the world.
The Tesla factory is a former GM/Toyota factory notable for introducing Japanese quality practices to the US, and it ran until 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
The age is a bigger issue than you might think. When I worked in automotive manufacturing, I bet the average age was approaching 50. Combine that with work that is more manual in nature and there might be more concern that there is a skill/worker shortage. The DoD has identified this as a risk [1] and notes that a majority of manufacturing workers are over 45 years old [2]
> They might have great designs but they haven't matured their processes. They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through
They’ve been around a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I think at this point the obvious conclusion is that they just don’t care. Like, it’s not like Toyota locks their process engineers in a basement. If they wanted to hire experts it’s just a question of money.
This seems likely to go badly for them as competition heats up.
It's also a question of listening to them. If the process engineers say "to build a quality product it takes X amount of time" and Musk says "no, we need to hit X cars by next week, we don't have that time, build a tent in the parking lot and build cars in there", all the salary in the world won't help.
> I don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out.
People keep saying this but I always see way more critiques of Tesla and Elon than the opposite.
My opinion on the matter is people love pushing back on whatever appears popular. Whether or not it's just a few idiots on the internet with little to no real influence and transform into the powerful strawman others love taking down.
> They haven't spent years fine tuning their QA processes so these things slip through.
That's not true. Similar things happen with all car makers, but if you pick up your car from a car dealership, the dealer will quietly fix the cosmetic issues because they want to avoid a bad reputation.
As someone who’s designed auto interiors, where other people see simplicity like a single touchscreen for all controls, I see an ergonomic disaster motivated by cost cutting.
I'm genuinely curious, could you explain how the touchscreen is a disaster?
I haven't seen a Tesla interior so when you say "all controls" it's a bit concerning. I'm assuming you're talking only of non-driving related control...
Because of the lack of tactile feedback, touchscreens often lead to distracted driving by forcing drivers to take their eyes off of the road to carry out simple tasks. As an example, take HVAC and radio functionality -- in older cars with buttons and knobs, after a short amount of time, people can operate these functions without looking. The same is not true for touchscreens. That's not to say that there is no place for them in cars, but the consensus it's better to use a combination of touch screen (for things you don't often adjust while driving) and physical controls (for things you do). But it's generally cheaper to slap a big ol' touchscreen in cars that does everything, and change configurations in software, rather than investing in custom interior designs for each model of car. And it's not just Tesla doing this, even companies who hang their hat on safety like Subarus are stuffing more and more functionality into touchscreens[0].
Not entirely related, but I always hated the red dash lighting on my car. I thought it looked ugly and wondered why they didn't just go with a cleaner white colour.
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision. What I thought at first was just an ugly colour choice was actually a very subtle design decision to help while driving at night.
It always reminds me how complicated and multifaceted good design is. There are always trade offs to consider, but minimalism as a design trend often seems a little too willing to ignore those trade offs and will sacrifice traits like safety, efficiency and flexibility for the sake of cost and simplicity.
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision.
Given that there is a stream of not-red lights shining at me in the opposite lane, I've been skeptical of this claim since Nissan did it in the 300Z like 30 years ago. It's there to look cool, not be useful. There's a subtle design lesson in there as well, I'm just not sure what it is.
When I took an astronomy class in college, we'd have "night" class on the roof, with telescopes, and star maps.
We were instructed to bring flashlights, but cover the lens with a red layer, to keep the pupils from closing too much, so we could both look at stars but read our star charts.
The headlights in the other lane don't disqualify the benefits of using red lighting inside the car.
You don't need night vision when headlights are visible in the opposite lane. You'll appreciate it when you are driving on a dark road on a moonless or overcast night.
I don't even have a Tesla, I have a 2013 Prius which has an array of buttons for everything instead. The only knobs are the miniscule (and hard to turn) volume and tune buttons on the radio. They made a token effort but placing indentations on the heater temp and fan speed buttons but after five years I still can't operate anything on the center console without taking my eyes off the road.
I love almost everything about my Prius but the person who designed the interior to look like a Starfleet shuttlecraft should be shot.
As a Model Y owner (who still has his roof!), you very quickly become accustomed to it. Excellent voice controls allow for finding music easily, and adjusting things like the AC is done so infrequently that doing it through the touch screen is a non-issue.
Every human factors study I’ve seen results for indicated that touchscreens were ergonomically inferior. Drivers would take longer to make the same adjustments and were more distracted while doing so. You may be underestimating how much the touchscreen impacts your ability to drive. Voice control is indeed much better, but as others have pointed out, experiences may vary.
or are a non native english speakers.
Sure, not getting voice control to work properly in my language is one thing, but not being able to deal with local accents (which is a majority in the world) makes voice control almost useless.
Even the Ford Mustang Mach E has copied the Tesla center-screen design. At least they also have a short-wide screen behind the steering wheel too, and they've included a big knob embedded into the bottom of the center console screen. Hopefully that helps.
Wow. I feel like I got my Subaru at just the right time when driver assistance tech was somewhat mature but the user interface was still mostly mechanical.
I'm not familiar with Teslas at all, but it sounds like a voice interface might help work around some of these limitations, a la Alexa/Hey Google. Maybe they already have it?
Please no, nothing is more frustrating and distracting to try to get my virtual assistant to fix something they've misunderstood. That's about as fun as arguing with your passenger about directions while driving.
It feels like a specialized voice control interface with a limited set pre-programmed functionality accessible through specific hard-coded keywords (which is what I assume Teslas could be equipped with for this purpose) might have a much easier time getting things right compared to an open ended general purpose virtual assistant that has to deal with completely arbitrary voice commands and unbounded ambiguity.
I used to think that voice recognition sucked until I tried Google Assistant. Holy shit is it amazing when it picks up every single word you utter every single time. Truly impressive and if car manufacturers can license the voice tech from Google I can definitely see the tech being quite useful.
They do. You can control many things with voice in Tesla.
I don't know the comprehensive list of things you can use it for, but so far I used it to:
* Change temperature
* Play a specific song
* Set navigation to a new destination
I didn't put switching music tracks (next&previous)/adjusting volume on that list, because those can be easily performed using the scrollable button on the steering wheel.
If by voice control, you mean asking a passenger to do it, sure. If you mean trying to find the right keywords while driving a vehicle at 65 mph, no thanks. I'm a native english speaker with a california accent and none of the systems I've used have been much help.
It's like playing an old text adventure without the manual, so you don't know the verbs. It uses too much thinking to try to come up with different words while also trying to drive.
Your federal law does not necessarily apply everywhere a tesla may be purchased and operated (I'm not saying it makes economic sense or anything, just that US law is likely not the sole reason it's there)
> I'm genuinely curious, could you explain how the touchscreen is a disaster?
Touchscreens in cars are a disaster, in general. They're a bad technology for the use case. They're more so in a Tesla, because Tesla relies on them far more heavily than any other manufacturer, and gives users no alternative for most functions.
Cars should be designed to minimize touchscreen use, not maximize it.
I completely agree. They're not as reliable as buttons. A single failure breaks everything. They're not particularly robust to temperature extremes. I can't use them by touch alone. They don't work with gloves.
In fact, the reliance on a touch screen is why I've stricken Tesla off the list while shopping for an EV. I currently drive an old BMW and I love the interface. There are physical buttons for everything and there's no unnecessary fluffy stuff.
The most-modern vehicle I've driven whose interface I've liked was a Skoda Fabia.
Sounds like you are stating an opinion rather than some fact based on data. As proven by exponential growth in Teslas, there is clearly a massive fanbase of people who like touchscreen. I personally absolutely love it, and don't really know why other cars have knobs and buttons.
So if that happens, embrace the touchscreens then? I mean, in the 90s, Microsoft was pretty hung ho about having voice as the main interface to computers in the near future. They kept the keyboard, which, given the history of early noughties voice recognition, was probably just as well.
My point is that you shouldn't design things being made right now for an entirely speculative future change.
I don't think anyone believes that Tesla will have actual self-driving cars, which don't require constant driver attention, within the lifetime of the cars currently being produced.
One thing I’ve never seen mentioned online but a Model 3 owner I know complained about is that the speedometer is blocked if you have your right hand between 3 and 6 o clock on the steering wheel. He had to change the way he’s used to gripping the wheel to accommodate the car which seemed like a high burden for a luxury product.
I truly don't understand how your friend has this problem. I have a Model 3, and after I read your comment, I tried to block my view of the speedometer with my right hand and couldn't do it. I tried sitting closer and farther back, higher and lower. I tried every position on the steering wheel. I flared my elbows out. I tried to imagine my hands and wrists were twice the size. I just don't see how this is possible. I'd love to see a POV pic from your friend that illustrates the problem. For my money, having the speedometer on the central screen makes it more visible. My view of a conventional dash is always partially blocked by the steering wheel.
Think I misremembered slightly, I only rode with him once. I though the speedo was at the lower left of the screen but it looks like the upper left. Think maybe he was used to having his hand between 12 and 3 and had to move? He was a larger guy if that makes a difference
Not a friend, just a former coworker I didn’t keep in contact with so I don’t have any way to follow up.
Almost every modern car has an adjustable steering wheel which you can move around to ensure you have a line to the instrument panel. Cars in the Model 3 price range will often project speed and other driving information into the windshield.
A lot of people have offered other details. I’d add: in the Model 3 even instrument panel information like speed is in the center display.
Touchscreens cut costs because you can ship the same hardware to all SKUs and change features in software. Buttons need to be added or replaced with fillers depending on the options that each car has.
On my dad's old land rover, you can literally operate the radio wearing blindfolds because everywhere is simply placed. It responds instantly, draws no power, and shut up when you aren't using it. His current car just gets in your way, even if it has more features.
It's a design that is getting sold to people who are getting starry eyed over other aspects of the car. They don't care that the fit and finish is befitting an Aveo. They care that they're driving a sexy new EV from the leading manufacturer of sexy new EVs. From the perspective of "keep Tesla relevant and financially solvent-ish" it's a great design. They know what the people they're selling to care about and what they don't and the latter isn't getting much attention.
It's like how the Tacoma has been the turd of it's segment on paper for 20+yr but still flies off the shelves. Clearly the metric don't tell the whole story. In both cases there's an emotional value proposition that's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And since I know in advance that this comment is gonna piss off a hell of a lot of people here (if I had to pick a demographic that will have both a Tacoma and a Tesla in their driveway HN would be about the perfect fit) I'll ask in advance if any of those people would like to tell me why I'm so wrong.
Just my own personal experience, I've owned two Teslas (a 2014 Model S and a 2018 Model 3) and they both had a pretty good number of problems here and there. The S was particularly bad, though that is maybe not surprising since it was one of the first 50k cars the company built, but the 3 has had its share of issues as well.
But the thing is, I've never had any issues that rendered the car undriveable or unsafe, and service has always been a joy to work with. Every problem I've encountered has been addressed quickly and effectively with no hassle or charge. So, I'm willing to forgive some of the rough edges, and I suspect this is why they get such good customer satisfaction ratings despite the relatively high number of issues.
I have a recent X, the panels fit together, no rattles or squeeks and the issues I've had were fixed fast. Last was the voice control button on the steering wheel that failed to work, reported it on last Thursday, they were at my door with mobile service at 9 this Monday.
I did test drive a 2013 S and I decided to wait until they matured at that point but now they seem to have gotten their act together in most cases.
They're actually on par with Audi here in Norway when it comes to customer satisfaction so it's not all bad [1]. Only Toyota, volvo and BMW beat them. They had a dip due to an overcrowded service department at the launch of the Model 3, but they hired a ton of people and trained them.
Now this roof falling off is one area they could improve greatly, factory Q&A. There should be a bumpy test track where they take all their vehicles for a control drive before shipping them to eliminate issues like that roof.
Cars should be available, not spend time in the shop for repairs that could have been avoided. It's great that you are so forgiving but for me a trip to the garage for some small issue would eat up half a day easily and that adds up quickly when there are a number of issues.
I mean, I agree with the sentiment, but also you're assuming you'd similarly waste half a day for a Tesla repair, and that's usually not the way things work. Tesla will frequently send a technician to a customer's home or place of work and fix issues on the spot. Even when I've had to go to a service center in person, they've included free rideshare credits for quick repairs so that I don't have to wait around, or free loaner cars for longer repairs.
Back in the old days when I lived far away from a service center, they once drove hundreds of miles with a flatbed to come pick up my car, and dropped off a free loaner at my house while my car was in the shop, then came back and returned my car and picked up the loaner a few days later. (The loaner was also a nicer Tesla than the one I owned.) They really do go above and beyond to resolve issues as pleasantly and conveniently as possible.
Well, for one example: Tesla Model 3 production was constrained based on the amount of paint their factory was consented to spray every day. When Model 3 production started climbing, customers were seeing very thin and uneven paint application, well below what's normal for a car in this price bracket, and often very light on critical areas like the sills. Owners in snow-bound places where Tesla is popular, such as Scandanavia, were reporting pain stripping within a few months of ownership.
I don't know about you, but my expectation for what is nominally a luxury car would be to have paint standards better than British Leyland in the 70s.
But I designed interior parts, so it's my own Engineering take. Tesla's were not competitive at all. The gaps between panels were so bad, you could stick your finger in it. That's not just an appearance issue, kids and adults will mess around with large gaps and put stuff inside.
And features in the interior were non existent. (Especially for a luxury car)
Interesting that you are just glossing over the fact that a) Tesla trounces all competition on performance and b) Tesla trounces basically everyone on safety as well.
a) for that kind of money, and lack of features, it better go fast (cornering, meh, not so much).
b) You are commenting on an article that talks about a Tesla loosing its roof. That's a new one on me, and I'd thought I'd seen it all back when I was an auto mechanic.
"In September, Business Insider reported that a Tesla owner found non-standard parts like plastic straps and faux wood, that looked like they were from "Home Depot," holding the cooling unit of their Mode Y in place. "
I have no skin in the Tesla game. I'm not much of a car guy. But I just recently bought a new vehicle and I ruled out Tesla because of that story from last month. I was looking at cars when that story came out. I don't know if stories like flying roofs, and the wood and the other stuff only make the news because they're Tesla and maybe these things don't happen all that often, but that non-standard parts thing really made me steer clear of Tesla while shopping for cars last month. It seems like so many of these things just don't happen to other cars?
That stuff is sloppy, but not a huge deal for me. What's really a deal-breaker is the always-on internet connection, the monitoring/telemetry, and the idea that although I'm buying a car, it's not really mine, because I'm only licensing the software that lets it function.
If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
Everybody always brings that up. I don't love it, but yes I do, and I trust Apple more than I trust Tesla.
> They work offline
They somewhat work, and it's not clear for how long. If it goes a year without being able to connect, is it fine with that? Or will it stop working until it's able to update?
Honestly, you missed out. Don't form your opinion on a single article, they are designed to drive clicks. I have found /r/teslamotors to be fairly humble site with honest opinions
r/teslamotors it fine, but you need to know that they do delete a lot of posts, which is fine. They also have a lot of people that put money in Tesla and will defend the company. They have a weekly reminder about that, it's a bit weird.
Tesla is an unconventional, scrappy company led by an unconventional, scrappy CEO. I'm not surprised that they do unconventional, scrappy things.
I'd be totally comfortable with the wood load spreaders from last month's stories or the fact that some of the cars are built in tent factories. I don't think those issues are blockers. I do think they have a general need to improve their quality and fit/finish, but those are in some cases things that must come from experience and track record of mass production, but I think those are unrelated to scrappiness.
(Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only, not because they are incapable. For that, I'm short $NKLA.)
As someone who’s worked in an FDA regulated industry the idea of changing material and design like that without any kind of change control vetting is insane. Speaks to an underpowered/ineffectual quality department.
Can someone in the automotive space comment if there’s really no legal/regulatory consequence for haphazardly jury rigging stuff on the fly like this?
> I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only
What are you comparing the valuation to? Other car companies? Revenue? I ask because when there are so many emotional investors in a stock like Tesla, I've found it hard to rationalize the price. For that reason, I'm nervous about going short or long for any length of time. That said, I've had a lot of success day trading the price action.
I feel like there's a certain exuberance for the great things that Tesla (and SpaceX) have achieved. Much of that exuberance is well-justified by the delivery. It seems likely to me that continued excellence of execution is priced into the stock at these levels and that no company is that perfect, regardless of the size of the opportunity in front of them.
I also find it somewhat telling that Tesla sold $5BB of $TSLA into the market in early Sept. That might suggest that they thought the near-term market conditions were as good as they were going to get for a while. This is (IMO) a wonderful company with an excessively premium market cap.
"Valuation isn't a short thesis" as they say. Totally fraudulent companies can trade for decades and price corrections don't happen without a trigger. IMHO only enter a short position when you have identified the cause of a correction and you know it is happening now.
I view the plastic straps and faux wood as a positive. The original strap and guard were custom, but deficient. Any other car company would have kept shipping the deficient design until a new component was designed, validated, tooled and produced. That takes most of a year. Tesla will eventually replace their ad-hoc hold downs. But in the meantime they'd rather look unprofessional than ship deficient designs. Kudos.
Another car company would not have delivered cars to the dealers if they knew that components were faulty at the time of delivery. They would have held the cars on the factory lot and replaced the components prior to shipping, because recalls are very expensive and can trigger other legal consequences to the company.
Thus, recalls are only used by other automakers for problems discovered after a unit has been manufactured and shipped, not for problems discovered during the assembly of a unit. For example: if vehicles 0-99 were shipped before a problem was discovered with a component in unit 100, vehicles 0-99 gets recalled, and vehicle 100 stays on the factory lot until the replacement component is ready and installed. Vehicles 100-125 might get built before the replacement component is ready depending on how the automaker has structured their factory line and whether the component is a critical component, and if so they also remain on the factory lot. Vehicles 126+ are assembled with the replacement component so they get shipped after assembly is complete.
Notably, car manufacturers work like this currently, but before Japanese manufacturing methods took over, US-made cars were notorious for shipping with all kinds of flaws, with the classic anecdotes about people receiving cars with beer cans rattling inside of doors.
> Another car company would not have delivered cars to the dealers if they knew that components were faulty at the time of delivery
Very Very doubtful. There is some accountant math that goes into those types of decisions. If that car made it all the way to the buy off ride and into manufacturing with those components and it was found later that they failed faster than expected or didn't always work quite right. They are not going to hold those cars back unless it causes a catastrophic and probably fatal, to the occupants, failure.
Otherwise they will hope it will fail outside of warranty and charge your for it.
My wife’s cousin is a dealer mechanic, and he described this really perverse incentive WRT GM.
If the dealership sees a particular failure mode and reports it to GM, then they’ll issue a TSB (or maybe even trigger a recall). But in doing so, they’ll only pay a fixed fee to the dealer.
Instead, what happens is that the dealer has an incentive to build a local knowledge base on how to fix the common problems but not share it with GM as they can bill the repairs hourly.
(The specific failure mode he used as an example was inadequate weatherproofing in door electrics. The local fix was to pop-rivet the bottom of a plastic container in the right place so as to improve weather resistance)
Car manufacturers don't do that anymore. They learned from Ford's mistake with the Pinto. Also, it costs significantly more to replace parts by recall than it does to simply hold back vehicles at the factory, on the order of 10-20x as much $$$, since there are additional legal and regulatory requirements associated with recalls, and generally releasing a car with known flawed parts means treble damages come into play in any legal proceeding (meaning, 3x damages awarded to the plaintiff).
What makes you confident the ad-hoc hold downs are superior, instead of "deficient" as well? Do you think they're ever even done the same way twice? What's the chance some mechanics at a particular dealer made it up, and nobody else even knows about it? As you mentioned, it was not "designed" or "validated", how could anyone be confident that it's safe, effective, or even superior to what it replaced?
Hopefully they're properly documenting these non-standard vin numbers incase a problem is discovered with the ad hoc design change and they need to do a recall or service campaign for that change.
Sadly, there's a cadre of devoted Tesla cultists who routinely underplay these build issues and even insinuate that early adopters should endure them for the sake of the brand. I really want a Model Y, but these quality issues are massively concerning.
Damn. I bought a Model 3 in Feb of this year, I definitely would have held off if I had seen this first. Anecdotally, my car has been perfect, 0 issues cosmetic or otherwise, but it's obvious I've just been lucky. I really love the car, it's a dream vehicle that exceeded my expectations despite the hype, but there's no getting around the fact that I am sacrificing an unnecessary amount of safety for a cool car. Certainly I could not justify purchasing another Tesla the next time I need a car.
I don't think there are any safety issues with the suspension of the Model 3. Check our the teardowns by Sandy Munro. He is not shy of critisizing Tesla, but had nothing bad to say about the suspension.
The suspension is the one part in a car, which is easily inspectable by just looking at it. And which has not changed much over time. Any competent mechanic should be able to check it. If there were fundamental issues with Tesla suspensions, the net would be full of reports about it and of course authorities would have acted, but beyond that one crusader against Tesla, no one has claimed they are unsafe. Actually, by most accounts, the Model 3 is one of the safest cars you can buy.
However, the suspension of any car is a vital part that is exposed to the outside and exposed to wear constantly. While most electric cars don't require much maintenance - Tesla does not have a maintenance plan any more - the brakes and suspension I would have checked by a mechanic at least biyearly, as this is a very important mechanical part you want to be serviced before there is a failure.
WTF. That looks like a symptom of CAD/CAM "cost/weight optimisation" taken to extremes --- parts designed to be as light and flimsy as possible for their use-case, thus any small statistical outliers cause catastrophic failure.
(It's not only Tesla who does this, but perhaps they have been cutting it a bit too close, given their relative inexperience compared to other auto manufacturers.)
That's incredible. Meanwhile, my Honda has received free repairs after multiple recalls for far less serious defects identified after far fewer incidents.
This "whompy wheels" thing was brought up by an individual who crusaded against Tesla. He even filed reports to authorities under fake names with images of totalled Teslas, he found on the web.
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car and is one of the parts which is not different on electric cars. Any mechanic can inspect it. How does it come, that beyond that crusader, no one called out Tesla for this? Neither the authorities, nor any mechanic working on Teslas. Check the teardowns by Sandy Munro, who is an automobile expert. He criticised many things about Teslas, but not the construction of the suspension.
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car
Parts can be weakened internally and break suddenly, especially those of the cast-alloy that Tesla uses. The aerospace industry has extensive knowledge of that process, and the methods required to detect such defects are well beyond "easily inspected".
Tesla has may legit problems, but I doubt "whompy wheels" are one of them. Someone who goes by Keef has been cataloging/submitting complaints to NHTSA about cars they find via salvage listings that they think are from something they've termed "whompy wheels".
1. Someone is deliberately breaking the suspensions of otherwise intact Teslas.
2. Someone has observed a large number of otherwise undamaged Teslas with this peculiar failure and is documenting it.
Which one of those is more likely...? If you search for "suspension failure" at teslamotorsclub.com there are a surprisingly large number of results too.
For Keef's "whompy wheels", I think this is more likely.
3. Suspension damage is common in vehicles that have been in accidents.
There are legitimate threads about suspension damage due to failed components and/or improper assembly on TMC, but that's probably not what happened in most of the vehicles in Keef's Flickr account.
I've seen the other comments about his crusade against Tesla, but unless he's breaking them himself or being extremely skilled at editing photos, I think the evidence speaks for itself --- so either Tesla's bodies are extremely tough, or their suspensions are below average in strength. I would expect to see some more damage elsewhere on those cars if they've been in accidents.
(IMHO a low-speed impact of the sort that doesn't cause other damage beyond minor scratches and dents should not be enough to break suspension parts.)
I wrote it already in another posting here, but this individual was in a crusage against Tesla. He even grabbed pictures of crashed Teslas and submitted them under fake names to the authorities.
The same /r/teslamotors where the moderators decided the story seemed fake and they should get to the bottom of it, posting a private video against the wishes of the car owner?
The members of the sub are generally quite reasonable, but it's consistently pruned of content that could be damaging to Tesla. I read it for many years until that started to creep me out.
Cultists need cars too. Just because you're trying to summon a Nameless Horror doesn't mean you don't need to get from point A to point B. And why not drive a Tesla so that the Thing With Too Many Angles has an incrementally better ecosystem in which to settle back down for an eon or two of sleep?
Genuine question. What makes the model Y desirable?
To me it’s just a funny looking , awkwardly proportioned minivan with a weird interior.
It’s not hyper aggressive like a German car or cheap and handsome like a Mazda. It’s just an egg with a load of seats.
If you want an EV that can do everything an ICE car can do, including reasonably convenient road trips, it's still the only option. (The delta is not quite as strong in the European or Chinese markets, but it's still there.)
Things that people like about EVs and Teslas specifically:
1) The driving experience is very special. Startling acceleration, single-pedal driving, near-silent low speed operation.
2) Operating costs are very low. Next to no routine maintenance, inexpensive "fuel".
3) Class-leading safety due to low CoG and lack of engine in the crumple zone.
4) Great software that is updated frequently over the air.
5) Arguably the best proto-self-driving/advanced driver assistance that gets better over time. 6) Hands down the best charging infrastructure and experience.
The build quality issues are real, but tend to be overblown by the media. The looks, inside and out, are definitely polarizing. I personally love the minimalism but would like better materials. But it's inarguably different, and for lots of people that's exciting in and of itself.
Can’t quite do everything an ICE can do. Gas cars have superior range on the whole, especially in cold weather conditions. Also you’re much safer finding a gas station on off-routes than a supercharger station.
I was in Atlanta during snowpocalypse of 2011. Georgia had TONS of Nissan Leafs because of a tax incentive that made it close to $0 to lease it. The highway had lots of stranded leafs because the battery died due to heating the car.
That isn't really germane to a conversation about Tesla cars. The lowest-range cars Tesla ever made had more than double the battery capacity of a 2011 Leaf (and unlike the 2011 Leaf, they all have battery-warming tech).
The parent I replied to was discussing the cons of electric vehicles vs ICE cars....so, very germane.
My comment was also referring to the drain on the battery due to resistive heating used to warm up the cabin...not range efficiency on the battery due to cold temperature.
My Googling shows that Tesla went away from resistive to heat pump in the model Y...so, I think my comment is germane to Tesla except model Y.
EV is better for daily commute , charge at home , always full tank , so you DONT need to search for a charger/gas station at all. I used Public charger 4 times since I bought the car . You don’t need to change oil , warm up the car etc .
Interesting you list a lot of things about Tesla and not the model Y.
I want an LC500 convertible because I think it looks fantastic and it’ll be fun to drive. But I want that car not just a Lexus.
And 4) could go either way:) no one is able to disable bits remotely on most cars, or at least until BMW get their subscription service going for heated seats and radio stations.
Maybe they brake automatically - “regenerative braking”? I remember when I was test-driving Model S, the driving experience was very different from an ICE car, because as soon as you took your foot off the pedal, it started braking quite noticeably. To get an equivalent experience to an ICE car, you had to keep the pedal pressed ever so slightly (or change the settings).
Maybe regenerative braking is also when the brake lights turn on.
Yes you can coast normally if you disable regenerative breaking. If its on, your car slows down a lot faster than it would if you were just coasting, so it triggers the break lights when you remove your foot from the gas
It may be, I ride the accelerator so it doesn’t often trigger the brakes unless you let off by a lot then the regenerative braking really kicks in. So if you let off the accelerator enough it triggers the brake lights because the motor is “braking” and charging the battery.
Maybe... there's some kind of threshold of deceleration that triggers the brake lights when pulling off the throttle but I don't know what it is. It could also be autopilot on.
Tesla have got EV infrastructure figured out. Here in the UK if you want to go for long journeys you need distributed high speed charging. Teslas are also efficient with the electricity and have decent range, while being pretty fast. Those are the plusses anyway...
Model y Performance owner, maybe because most of the “aggressive” ICE German cars are slower compared to model Y which is still SUV with big trunk etc ? Whenever I get into German car I feel like I’m in 80s, so many obsolete details . I like minimalism . I want my car drive fast , with good sound , easy to load stuff. Electric car is so much better for daily commute .
The statement about not being handsome like a Mazda has some irony in it, as the Tesla head designer, Franz von Holzhausen, previously was a lead designer at Mazda, before he joined Tesla.
Speaking for myself, I actually quite like the design of the Teslas. They are very smooth and have a quite different approach than most mainstream makers. I dislike especially the overly edgy brutal look with huge radiator openings, which has crept into the car market since 2010.
Maybe it is me being a physicist, but I can also appreciate how the design maximizes aerodynamic efficiency, even if that means other compromises. Which is partly responsible for Teslas leading in range tests.
As I like simple elegant shapes, I appreciate how from the front edge of the windscreen to the very back of the car, there is a single smooth curvature of the roofline.
"Muh technology." Anyway, on the upside none of my techie friends will be able to give me shit for owning an Italian sports car. Or if I do, I'll laugh at them for owning an ill constructed and expensive golf cart.
> he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car.
Does this mean they expect a roof to fly off even when things are done "correctly"? What happens when they make the inevitable mistake?
Normally I'd say this is a PR disaster but just like other companies which command blind, unwavering loyalty, Tesla can also afford such disasters knowing that opinions will stay the same no matter what. Whether you love them or hate them this will do nothing to change it. Tesla is a very emotional choice no matter which side of that choice you land on.
Check out this video comparing the latest Toyota RAV4 Prime (Plugin Hybrid) and Tesla Model Y. The conclusion is that Toyota is a car manufacturing company learning to become a technology company, while Tesla is a technology company learning to become a car manufacturing company.
The uneven alignment at the gap between the roof frames in Tesla Model Y (shown at 10:20) though is quite unsettling to behold. Both of the presenters agreed that similar misalignment will never had passed Toyota QA.
The first time I got into a Tesla S, the first thing I noticed was how unpolished were the finishes everywhere. You can see uneven gaps in the door panels, in the console, in the floor.
There are many unfinished plastic pieces that seem to be cut rough and added like that to the car.
Everything feels like it's made out of cheap plastic. Not even remotely close to the finishes of a German sedan, and inferior to the finishes of an everyday American Sedan like the Chevy Cruise.
I'm sure that the car is structurally sound but it was mind boggling how cheap it felt. It was almost like the interior of super low-end model for emerging markets, but with a large touch screen in the middle.
I watched the whole thing...wow that gap, how can that even come off the lot? It must be withing the Tesla tolerance level, which is scary.
Also the back seat isn't roomier, the dad had his legs spread and said it's just as roomy...I think using a touch screen to move the vents would annoy me very quickly. My family car is a Honda Odyssey and it annoys me that the fan speed on the AC is via the touch screen.
What could a technology company bring? Intentionally broken software? When I buy a coffee maker it has one job: make coffee. When I buy a car I want it to move me over the road. Sure there's software but it's a lot of embedded/DSP/controll stuff. Tesla can do a lot more of the value-add/infotainment crap but most people don't like that.
While TSLA does seem to have a history of these issues I wonder how bad the problems are relative to other car makers who have had to make a large number of recalls over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla still has a higher defect rate, but I think it would be much closer than these articles will have you believe.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
I think there's a tangible difference between something like this and a recall. A recall is a single thing going wrong at a large scale. Audi having water pumps that can short-circuit in common scenarios [0]. Samsung using underspecified capacitors on their TVs [1]. Generally, this was a single mistake that had large consequences.
However, if different things keep going wrong at a smaller scale... That's a problem with management and process, not a single mistake echoed at scale.
Single mistakes are just not reported. My Ford had wires swapped in production and the first time the passenger's windows was lowered, the door locks got fried. Then the transmission fell apart. Different small things. If it was a Tesla you'd probably read about it.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Oh yeah this part is for sure true. I remember years ago a Model S got in an accident and had a small battery fire, and it was all over the news. Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
...If water and contaminants got into the cables of certain model trucks as a result of snow or ice seepage, and those water/contaminants caused corrosion, and the block heater cable was plugged into an electrical outlet and active. This happened for 3 trucks out of 847,000.
Corrosion-related recalls are fairly common for automakers, because it's hard to anticipate which interior components will face corrosive elements, or how frequently, or in what amounts, due to the wide variety of geographies, climates, and uses that vehicles get subjected to.
Tesla has issued corrosion-related recalls itself, multiple times, including in 2018 and 2019, and these similarly did not make national news.
There is some truth to Tesla issues getting covered more often, but when was the last time Ford or Toyota recalled a vehicle because a major part of the body could blow off? A component being faulty isn’t really on the same order of magnitude as the entire roof of the car detaching. I’m also reminded of a story a few months ago where the steering wheel of a Tesla simply detached in the driver’s hands. This is just an deeply flawed manufacturing and QA process that frankly deserves more critical coverage than other car companies because the problems are more fundamental, like potentially ending up like the police car at the end of The Blues Brothers.
I think the fact that you didn't hear about this recall, to the point of not even believing such a thing could happen, while you did hear about this one case of one Tesla roof blowing off, illustrates the point nicely.
Safety issues are recalled, so you would see them regardless.
Since Tesla has less than 1 million cars built IIRC, it's actually much worse of a problem. Other automakers have hundreds of millions of cars on the road with different designs, each with potential problems.
Yet something safety critical like a roof falling off happens rarely, but get recalled.
I’m not seeing this VW recall. Are you referring to Takata airbags? That’s an old recall but a really bad one, caused by Takata not the car manufacturers. The ECM getting updated for emissions reasons? I just took my car in for that one during my regular service, it’s a service bulletin not a recall.
The car makers knew the liabilities of using ammonium nitrate as an airbag propellant. It was just cheaper. It's not like Takata swapped from a stable propellant to one which could be stable if everything was done just right on their own without telling anyone.
That doesn’t answer my question first off and moves the goal posts elsewhere secondly. The issue here is there isn’t a VW recall I can find that he’s talking about, the airbag issue was an industry wide thing and not tied to a specific manufacturer, whereas this issue is tied directly to Tesla moving fast and breaking things still.
Well, it's sure a good thing Tesla has no PR department to respond to things like this anymore. It wouldn't be in the company's best interest to be able to explain how something like this happened, or anything.
Does a PR dept actually matter for this? If an explanation is warranted, just publish it on social media. I expect the corporate focus is more on "fix the problem" than "hey everyone, let's DiScUsS tHe PrObLeM"; Tesla doesn't want to draw attention to the problem, they want to fix the problem so it never happens again and nobody has reason to discuss it.
Kinda like the "child slave labor" issue raised during the shareholder's meeting: Some people wanted to compel Tesla to address the problem ... minutes later Musk eliminated the problem by removing cobalt use.
Could this be a result of forcing people back to work during a pandemic, and maintaining high output quotas while the global supply infrastructure was shitting itself?
> On Monday, Walter Chien said that he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car. "To me, that was more concerning," Chien told Business Insider.
That's a... no? Situation normal, carry on, everybody... concerning, indeed.
Back in 2007 I had an acquaintance with a new 2007 Z06, who had the carbon fiber roof skin come unglued and fly off on the interstate. Seems like this is only news because it happened to a Tesla.
To be fair, Corvettes are well-known to be "plastic cars". If you buy one, you expecy to get the cheapest, biggest engine possible, and you know that the only reason it has any bodywork at all is because of some pesky law.
It sounds like you encountered a high-performance self-lightening model. They're very avant-garde in the racing divisions.
I'd say it's fair to compare them once they had the traditional assembly line with the Model S. The number of parts in a combustion engine are far greater than an electric vehicle. Electric engines vary from 70-100 moving parts vs over 1000+ for performance combustion engines. They really should be measured on their own scale but further highlights how truly horrible Tesla's record is. I wonder how many of the defects are software issues.
I bought a model 3 about a week ago. This is a fantastic car, best I’ve ever owned. No problems yet. My favorite things about it: great acceleration at all speeds, charges to 80% in usually about 30m, cruise control that keeps a safe distance from cars ahead.
I just got my model3 and I'm ver disappointed with Tesla quality as well. The whole thing feel like duck tap puts together. Minor scratch. Stuffs aren't align very well. My cheap crv looks much slicker in term of quality.
Pre ordered a model Y RWD around 15 months back. Have received two calls from sales reps to move or upgrade my order to Model Y AWD, and take the delivery ASAP.
Held off on both occasions due to these quality reasons.
The Tesla cars seem like an IOS update ( what they used t be) - better to sit back and wait to see what breaks, before doing it.
Are the Tesla build issues that most drivers experience (not the driver in the OP) anything more than a cosmetic annoyance if the safety of the Tesla is superior to other carmakers?
If someone from businessinsider is around here: the site redirects me to .es version (instead of .com) where I get 404. Happens with both Firefox and Chrome.
Question to those in the know -- are these roof glass panels attached to the car in a similar way to windshields? I recall that when I had my windshield replaced, they told me that the glue would need a day to bond and not to slam the doors or the glass would just pop off.
I feel like this could be an expected behavior for any extremely new car if that is the case.
The slowest cheapest windshield glue you can get takes like 6hr to cure in normal temps and a couple days at near freezing temps (don't ask how I know this).
These aren't T34s that are driving off the line and to the front. It would certainly have been cured by the time the car made it to the customer. I'm betting their QA process didn't accurately catch and remediate all the cars moved down the line after the glue machine ran dry.
Speaking of windscreens, my chemistry teacher once told us that when he worked at an acid factory they would spew out enough gas to start attacking peoples cars, but to avoid the regulators they would just say "Go and talk to John [redacted]" and they bought everyone a new one no questions asked because it was cheaper than getting shut down.
You don't buy a Tesla for reliability. You buy one to show your friends.
No other automaker gets this pass(except maybe Jeep vehicles).
Anyway, as bad as Tesla quality is, customers getting new cars from new companies should have little expectation of quality. (Although Tesla made it's first car in 2006, at when do they stop getting such sympathy?)
Tesla shipped 139K[1] cars last quarter and 1 roof blew off, nobody died, and now they are unreliable ? Now compare that to existing automakers that have had years more of manufacturing experience, six sigma bullshit, etc and look at the largest recalls[2]. (Ford recalled 7.9 million cars in 1996)
People buy Tesla because they are much more efficient than combustion engines, have superior technology, and a lot more fun to drive .. and maybe it makes you cool to IDK.
I really do not understand why everyone on HN hates tesla so much ...
Same reason people don't like Apple. A low quality product sold by massive advertising/marketing campaigns.
And yes Tesla is unreliable, there's no debate here. A new car company is going to be unreliable. And why are you using Absolute numbers? 1 roof, 7 million Ford cars. You made a statistical error here.
And what is this about combustion engines? It's 2020, everyone sells an EV. Only Tesla sells a low quality EV.
Re Apple: Apple is the most valuable company in the world, what are you talking about?
Re statistics error - what error did I make ?
Re combustion engines, have you tried to do a road trip in a non-tesla EV using charge point. I suggest you try and then report back about how bad the experience is.
Funny you mentioned Jeep, I remembered reading the Consumer Reports review of the 2021 Wrangler, it was bad. It's by far the lowest rated vehicle there. Pretty much everything is terrible on that thing. Road Test, 36/100, Reliability 1/5, Predicted Owner Satisfaction... 4/5. I had to go back and double check that again, just to be sure. Apparently people love those Wranglers, no matter what.
I have a Tesla and also had a Wrangler until a few weeks ago. Nobody is buying either one for fit and finish. The Wrangler was a total piece of crap and it drives like a pregnant rollerskate. You feel like you could be seconds from death any time you get it up to 75 mph, it chugs gas like nobody's business and it performs like your typical John Deere. It was also awesome, tons of fun and the kind of car that would be every bit as cool in 20 years. I got it back when you could still buy an unlimited miles warranty from Chrysler so I didn't really care that it was junk.
I love the Tesla. I wouldn't say it's built badly, but it's not on par with an import in the same price range. I like it for other reasons. It's unlike any other car. I love the way it drives, I love the features, it feels futuristic. I would challenge anyone to drive a decked out Tesla for a year and then go back to a regular car as their daily driver.
Jeep has gone downhill quite markedly now that they're Fiats. I don't have any history with Fiat but I do know since the merger of Chrysler & Fiat in 2014 Jeep has gone downhill. As others have mentioned it's become a lifestyle brand instead of a utility brand. IMO once more people become aware of the significant reduction in their utility value then their sales will plummet. But I could be wrong. All I know is I have a 2008 Jeep Wrangler with 220,000 miles on it and I found it worthwhile to drop a new engine in it. That was a cheaper and more reliable option than getting a new vehicle - even knowing in 2-3 years I'm going to have to put a new transmission into it.
They are very much a lifestyle vehicle. They offer an idea of "mobility" and "going anywhere", basically vehicular freedom to tackle any type of terrain, even if most people never will. Very American sentiments that resonate with Wrangler owners.
Yep! I own a 2012 Wrangler. It's a toy more than transportation. It gets me where I need to go but carrying more than one passenger is a pain. The windscreen fluid jet is poorly located and doesn't get the whole windscreen when I need to get rid of dirt on the windshield. I have had to JB weld the gear shift knob back together.
It's a completely impractical and inconvenient car. But I still love it because it's fun to drive and it can, in fact, go pretty much anywhere.
I think they also benefit from the fact that off road hobbyists really do use Wranglers. They just use ancient models which have been lovingly restored and modified over decades, but they're Wranglers.
So then the more aspirational type want to emulate them, but they want it newer and shinier and with a warranty, so they wind up with the substandard SUV which is the new Wranglers.
Exactly the same story with Land Rovers in the UK, incidentally.
There really isn't a competitor to the Wrangler if you're into offroading. Sure pickup trucks compete but the size of a Wrangler + the massive aftermarket support make it hard to beat. The new Bronco might eat some of the market but time will tell.
On the other hand, despite minor quality things, my wife loves our Model 3. For the price and what it achieves it is a great vehicle. I always tell people Tesla is a software company that happens to make cars. In that regard they are a decade ahead of traditional manufacturers in my estimation. Look at how low quality the software ecosystems of most traditional manufacturers are.
I didn't really believe this back when I was driving a BMW and Honda daily running CarPlay, but now that I'm on the Model 3 I'm hitting lots of software bugs on the Tesla head unit that would've never passed even the most basic of software QA at my previous job.
The Tesla head unit makes the current automaker's head units look super reliable and as solid as a rock. OTA software updates do have their benefits, but it seems like it leads to compromising quality for pushing features of questionable utility out the door.
I get really disappointed when I see Tesla implementing really unnecessary features like Rainbow Road (the over-done SNL "more cowbell" skit) and fart mode. Focus on the reliability before making these features.
Look at how low quality the software ecosystems of most traditional manufacturers are.
The new in-dash systems in the Subarus and Ford E-Mustangs appear to be on par with Tesla, usability wise, and unlike Tesla can be used with physical controls.
I am very ambivalent. I love electric vehicles for the environment, but I grew up with and love sports cars. The Tesla is just too clean and clinical for me. I do have to say, though, I own a high end Ford truck that carries their flagship infotainment system and it is /nothing/ like the Tesla. It actually crashes more often. The only thing it has going for it is CarPlay, but even that can be buggy and not work right at times. Meanwhile the giant infotainment screen on the Tesla generally just works and behaves nicely. It is one thing to read people nitpicking Tesla and another to drive them day to day and be realistic. People love the cars for a reason, they are fun, have really great resale value, are very easy to maintain, and can have very exciting driving performance.
It's not that bad. You get a crappy release once in a while and it gets fixed within a week or a month at the most. And most of those bugs are in new features they continue to add after I've bought the car. Meanwhile, my Chevy has the worst software and infotainment system I've ever experienced and the dealer wants $169 just to check for updates. I've owned a half dozen cars in the last 5 years and none of them had software remotely on par with the Tesla. Toyota and Honda were probably the only others I liked because they didn't really try to do much. They just worked.
The body of the article says they picked the car up from a Tesla service center (which is accurate--you can order your car from a showroom, but you pick it up at the service center). The only reference to a "dealership" is in the photo caption, which was likely written by someone else who wasn't as familiar with Tesla.
Let's wait for the follow up post. The initial video is 3 seconds long, and the photo looks like it was taken on a blackberry. I'm not saying this is a FUD scam, but it smells like a FUD scam. Business Insider hasn't always been neutral or reasonable when it comes to Tesla coverage too.
Much higher in the comments, you can see the original reddit thread linked with the same pictures. Not everyone records their life in the highest quality all the time
- Tesla's build quality is quite bad
- I hate Elon now because of his nonsensical tweets and trying hard to stay cool and relevant
- Tesla's false promises on Autopilot and Full Self Driving is a disgrace. They are at-least 20 years away from anything resembling close to L4, but still somehow siphon $8k from buyers with a false promise
- Model 3 is the BEST car I have ever driven. It is awesome, and I would recommend anyone in a heartbeat