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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

Many would also say that Tesla's are only luxury in price. The interiors are not nearly as nice as those from BMW or Mercedes.

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Exactly! Besides maybe the “entertainment package”.

I’ll end up buying a Tesla because it’s fully electric. I was on the wait list for a Model 3, but my previous volt lemon’d and I couldnt wait until an unknown delivery date, so I bought another Volt.*

The volt for now gets me the round trip. I need to charge anything beyond going to work and back.

I’m at 5000 miles with NO GAS! It’s rad!

* I know “you bought another volt when your first one lemon’d?!” Yeah totally. It was an awesome car and between GM and California’s lemon law I pretty much sold my old one back to GM for just shy of the original purchase price.

Luxury is the wrong word for the segment Tesla is competing in. “Premium” is closer, but still wrong.

“High end” feels a lot closer. A kitchen aid mixer isn’t a luxury item, but it has a good profit margin and people who love mixers will buy it.

Tesla is more like that... there’s no hand stitched Italian leather or whatever, but the software is top of the line, the drivetrain is top of the line, it has unique features that make it a better car, without competing on who can make the prettiest mahogony inlay.

Like, not having to stand at a smelly gas station in your heels and pump your gas is a luxury. But Tesla doesn’t sell you a wall charger with gold accents.

But then it's not even that they are competing in that segment, they are that segment. Outside of people with sufficient disposable income who hate fossil fuels so much they are willing to wait for a full charge (and I've seen some of their supercharger centers; might be better than your average gas station ion a middle of nowhere, but not really a place where I'd want to spend well over an hour for a full charge, when I can be in and out of a gas pump in 5 minutes). It's a legitimate niche, but not necessarily a very large one.

Also, I am not sure if they really make a better car. Unique, for sure. Myself, if it doesn't have AWD, I don't buy it...

I think all of Tesla's lines have AWD?

They do, eventually, but as many things with Tesla it is sometimes hard to tell what is actually available (as in you can go and buy it) and what is to be available "real soon now" for several years. It is not cheap, either.

2 of 3 shipping cars -- while dual-motor Model 3's have been spotted in the wild, you can't order one yet.

Didn't AWD on Model S become widely available only relatively recently? I seem to remember it being an option last time I looked at it.

October 2014 is when it became available, not sure what you mean by 'widely available' and 'an option'. From launch it was available at both smaller and larger battery sizes, now they've started offering it as the only choice for some battery sizes.

Well, an option, as an option on Model 3, yeah. Can't quite buy it.

In any case, yes, it seems that it is more available now than I thought. Now if it only felt as a 70K+ car...

Their build quality is atrocious, too. When stuck behind one on 101, I can see that gaps are uneven right from my driver seat. For a Yugo it might be OK. For a car with a luxury price tag that's just wrong.

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