The Tesla Model 3 reminds me of the times the electronics failed in my first car

I assumed the article was written by an owner, or at least a reviewer - low and behold it's someone filling article quota? He purports that he thinks the electronics in it might break down on him, if he bought on. This article is thin as it is, and makes no point.

I do t think a pure electric vs pure gas necessarily has more electronic components to fail. A modern gas engine has many electronic parts that allow it to work and an electric drivetrain isn't exactly complicated. All the other aspects of a modern car are going to be the same; electric Windows, navigation, safety stuff. So I don't think there is anything inherently more likely to break, electronics wise.

Now the big difference is that it seems we have decided electric cars = autonomous cars. And I would agree that autonomous function opens the car to a whole host of electrical problems (sensors, computers, etc). But this would be the same in an autonomous gas powered car.

My question is whether these systems will still be receiving support in 10-15 years time.

Yes, autonomous vehicles are on the horizon, so all vehicle lifespans should be considered limited, but cars generally don't suit the gadget life cycle of being discarded after a few years when the new model comes out.

What was the last piece of technology you purchased that has survived 10 years intact or without replacement by the newer and better?

I'd argue that it's much easier to maintain a supply of mechanical parts than of 10-year-old electronics; unless there's been some serious consideration of future-proofing in the design process?

Yes, when the main electronic of a Model 3 fails, the car is broken, until the failure is fixed. On the first glance, it is somewhat a concern. But then, it is not so that more conventional cars are much more useful if some important electronic component fails either. With the Model 3 the switch to electronic control comes with a huge simplification of the whole car. Most of the components that can fail beyond electronics in a "normal" car, the Tesla just doesn't have.

I think the only thing here that would concern me is the (apparent) lack of a mechanical door opener. If there is a critical failure in the electronics and you have an urgent requirement to exit the vehicle, that seems like a dangerous thing to me. That's assuming there actually isn't a mechanical door latch release.

Things break down, all the time. Trying to unbind a mechanical window winder mechanism that's jammed in the down position can be a nightmare... So can trying to release a tailgate when the tension wire snaps half way between the release handle and the rear door.

I don't know if it's really justified saying that electronic parts can fail more often or not - My first-generation mx5 has electrically operated popup lights, which are still going strong nearly 25 years later. I once had a 1985 Nissan Bluebird that had an LCD Digital dashboard, still working fine in the early 2000's.

Treat your equipment right, maintain it well, store it correctly, and you'll get a good long life out of it. Leave it out in the weather, never check the condition of things like batteries and terminals, and just run the car forever on hopes and dreams and sure... things will break.

One of the reasons I love my 1985 Supra is for its mechanical and electrical simplicity. There's no CANBus. Wires and switches operate all the electrical (not electronic) components directly. The tailgate has a mechanical lock. The door locks are mechanical with electric actuators. The only electronics are in the engine controller and the beautiful digital dashboard (with VFD meters for speed, fuel and temperature, and LEDs for the tachometer). Probably a very good reason why the car's electronics are still working 30 years later is because they are very isolated. The engine ECU doesn't need to talk to anything, just receive signals from the engine sensors and send fuel/spark data to the components. The dashboard sends a simple speed signal to the cruise control ECU and nothing else. In isolation, any of these components can fail and it will only disable the related systems. I have had a complete failure of the engine controller, but that turned out to be a very simple electrical relay cutting all power intermittently. I can trace any failure with nothing more than a multimeter.

Modern vehicles are not just computers on wheels, they're entire networks of computers on wheels. And all these systems are intrinsically interlinked. A failure in any one system can be enough to either stop the car working, or forcing it into limp-home mode. And you as the owner have no hope of fixing it. Even if you can plug a diagnostic computer into the OBD interface, the best you can usually do is poke around the engine controller. You need specialist hardware to interface with the other systems such as brakes and airbags. My Supra is long past the point Toyota will support it (although to their credit, I can still get a surprising number of parts). Looking at smart devices these days, manufacturers stop caring the moment the product is even released. Support gets pushed to one side and the successor takes priority. Cars have a lot more established history with this, but I'm sure that, with almost every major manufacturer having their cars purely electronic (even the ICE-powered ones), by the time the car gets to be the age of my Supra, there is going to be no hope for maintaining them. Some people view any consumer product more than a few years old as 'antiquated'. I don't get this mentality; the sign of a quality product should be longevity. Sure, there needs to be improvement, but as manufacturers basically tell us 'no, only we can support this car for you, and it's going to be expensive', and then five, ten, fifteen years down the line, 'nope, we don't care any more, buy a new one', people who like to get the most out of their vehicles are going to hate living in this era.

Weird article, as the Model S is already free of mechanical controls and has been around sine 2012.

The point of all of this is to disrupt Uber, and not to be cool.