Comment by brianstorms | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianstorms | Hacker News Reader

My 2013 Model S has had its share of issues. My car is on its third drivetrain. Am I unhappy about it? Nope. Was it a hassle? A little. Was it a show-stopper? Nope. Did Tesla always take care of the issues to my satisfaction? Absolutely. Would I buy another Tesla? Not only YES but I cannot imagine ever buying anything else ever again.

Tesla's huge weakness continues to be communication between company and customer. That is and always has been my number one area of concern. Not reliability. Except in terms of communications reliability. They are terrible at managing expectations. At providing quick and timely updates. At explaining functionality (ESPECIALLY in the age of autopilot) for not only safe driving but also simply maximizing enjoyment of all the car's capabilities. Tesla as a company is a shambles when it comes to communicating. It unfortunately continues to be a low priority to fix it. I wish CR would ding Tesla for lousy communications. Because customer complaints about their weakness as communicators go unheeded.

But I would still buy a Tesla again and plan to.

As someone who typically drives cars outside of their warranty period, I don't understand the lack of concern about reliability after your 3rd drivetrain. I suppose if you are leasing the car that is one thing, but with that kind of warranty work I would be extremely hesitant to buy a used Tesla.

The Model S powertrain warranty is 8 years/infinite miles.

My current car is 14 years old. My previous two reached 16 and 17 years.

I try to run then as long as possible because cars are money sinks.

The future won't be like the past. I don't expect to own a car 8 years from now in any scenario (electric self driving cars on demand).

Owning a vehicle just seems like such a waste, so much capital tied up in something that sits around all day. Could you imagine airlines that let aircraft sit idle 95% of the time?

There won't be any self-driving on-demand cars in 8 years. Maybe 28.

8 seems like an extremely reasonable guess.

The Tesla motors will get much more reliable with time. Nobody has mass-produced such a high torque motor before, it will take time to get the manufacturing ironed out. They will certainly get them to last much longer, but even if they don't the motor unit is only a couple thousand dollars and only takes a couple hours to swap. A Electric powertrain is significantly simpler than a combustion vehicle.

Well then this is obviously not an issue for you. You don't sound like the type to be an "early adopter" for cars, so I think it would be out of character for a consumer like yourself to buy a Tesla is the first place.

I don't think they're alienating a significant portion of their demographic by not catering to people who only buy a car every one or two decades, especially considering they're selling a luxury sedan and they're the only successful American automotive company for at least a few decades.

I would love to buy an electric car for my next vehicle. But if the operating cost, including repairs, is higher than a conventional car, then that's not a good deal for me. I'm certainly not going to pay a premium just for that.

I also don't like being stuck on the side of the road. Frequent powertrain repairs like I hear being reported on this page greatly concern me.

I'd say your expectations around car ownership are significantly out of line with a typical car buyer or someone who may be reading Consumer Reports. I don't think most people buying cars have any real expectation about communication or any relationship with the manufacturer of their car, and having the drivetrain replaced twice would seemingly be a dealbreaker in terms of brand loyalty for a great many car owners.

Obviously early adopters make for a different market, but I think your experience only serves to confirm Consumer Reports' latest report.

Out of curiosity, why would a drivetrain replacement be a dealbreaker? The replacement is usually a one or two day job in the service center, and they give you a loaner Tesla while they have it. Why do you care if they pre-emptively replace your drivetrain?

It's hard to gauge how widespread these failures are if only people who had problems report in. My anecdata point is that my 2014 Ford had no issues whatsoever and I would find it extremely annoying if I had to waste time driving to/from service centers for things that most modern cars haven't been failing at for years. Even more so if I paid as much as the Teslas cost.

Any sort of repeated major problem with an essentially brand new car would be a dealbreaker to many people because it's so rare with most modern cars. It's an inconvenience in day-to day-life caused by something you paid a premium on to buy new, and it's an indication that once the warranty runs out, you're stuck with potentially expensive repairs. Even if you don't intend to keep the car, reliability problems hurt the resale value.

I don't see the problem. Early adopters are shaking out the bugs in the Model S and the Model X. If Tesla adopts the Uber model, you're never going to care if the car has problems, it'll be Tesla's problems.

All of this hand wringing assumes car ownership is going to continue as it has in the past. I'd say the tea leaves are showing something different with self driving cars advancing as quickly as they are.

Tesla Model:

* Sell expensive cars to people who are rabid enthusiasts.

* Hustle hard to get Superchargers and Gigafactory done (funded by expensive cars from step 1)

* Perfect autopilot/autonomous systems

* Sell Model 3 to those who want to buy it, rent by the mile to those who don't want to buy

* Profit hard.

If the car drives itself and you rent a trip rather than buy and own a specific vehicle, why would most people care to pay a premium for a Tesla trip rather than just getting a Nissan Leaf With Google or Hyundai e10 With Uber or a self-car2go or...?

My model assumes Tesla is the innovator, and has self-driving cars first (possibly in a partnership with Google). Uber is playing catchup, and incumbent auto manufacturers won't want to lose 90%+ of their demand to by-the-mile rentals.

How much does being first matter here, though?

A self-driving taxi service is not easy to scale because in addition to good maps of anywhere you want to service, you need to own and maintain physical cars (starting with nightly cleaning on weekends). This isn't an app, and being popular in California won't help you operate vehicles in Barcelona.

On the other hand, once someone makes a good-enough software platform, they can just license it to any local Addison Lee-type taxi/minicab company that already owns the cars and has experience maintaining them. If that someone is Google, they might just give it away like the rest of their products.

Uber got relatively large adoption by largely avoiding trying to scale too much horizontally, by using local drivers with their own cars - routing is the only thing they've done (and it's not as good as local knowledge). They claim to not be a transportation company at all, they just connect contractors. That sort of thing won't be possible with self-driving Tesla taxis.

Plus, we don't yet know if Tesla is any good at making non-premium cars.

Regarding incumbents trying to avoid cannibalisation - are you familiar with carshare systems operated by BMW and Daimler?

A 7 Series on its third drivetrain within three years would have people tearing up message boards about how terrible internal combustion engines are

Reply on news.ycombinator.com