why buy a sedan when you can buy a status symbol for a bit more?
I know, I've looked. The Model3, even LR, is a pretty good deal compared to other EVs.
I'll add my own point that Tesla's image is very undeserved, it is only kept by the cult of Elon musk and incessant lies about self driving technology.
The only viable electric vehicles at the same price point are the Chevy Bolt and the Nissan Leaf, and if you ever see one of those parked next to a Model 3 you'll notice that the Model 3 is far more attractive.
If you've tried a Model 3 for a day and you still hold the same opinion you presented here, I concede my point - but I really think you have to experience it to know why there is a lot of hype around the car. The hype is justified, surprisingly so.
The .2 seconds faster to 60 that it goes than my existing car is not worth the tradeoff off of the horrendous steering and lack of road feedback.
You might not beat a Porsche Cayenne, but you'll give it a hard time.
Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on.
The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model.
There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it.
I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3.
Performance has consistently increased. My 2016 will beat a 2017 Altima up a steep hill. I test drove both up a hill that's between the Toyota and Nissan dealerships. Hybrid torque is noticable.
No HUD, and sadly no self-parking. The infotainment system feels a little simple and aged, but everything works. No Android Auto or iDrive(?) but Bluetooth works well. Only adaptive cruise, no normal cruise (or I forgot where is that button), and the follow distance is on a button on the steering wheel - so you can cycle between 160 ft, 130 ft, & 100 ft whenever you want.
It's like a 2007 Lexus, with fresh batteries and engine. The dash has 2 actual dials, and a programmable phone-sized screen. Climate controls are just 2 dials and a few buttons. The steering wheel is almost a video game controller - it has 2 D-pads and other buttons to control most things - audio controls, phone controls, menus, adaptive cruise, etc. And most of these have another control that the passenger can use too.
Grabbing the door handle, with the key in your pocket, unlocks the door - every Tesla is more complicated to enter.
On the other hand, in my 2011 car (and it wasn't exactly anything new at the time either), adjusting AC does not require looking down at the screen, let alone hunting for a flat and featureless part of a touchscreen, that can move with the next software update.
Tesla is a great idea. But IMHO the execution is nowhere near what the price would suggest, and it is advanced in a very SV way, the way Juicero was advanced -- by adding extra tech and complexity to things that have been solved for longer than anyone at Tesla has been alive, and only add to the price with no improvement in UX (or, as with these, with an actual degradation in UX).
If I am recalling it correctly, ergonomics started as something to pay attention to when airplanes suddenly started crashing -- apparently a shape of some control has been changed, and pilots, using muscle memory, would do a wrong thing.
Putting more reprogrammable buttons is better than nothing, I guess, but in the end it is trying to fix, with more technology, self-inflicted problems caused by using more advanced technology than was warranted in the first place.
And judging from the number of comments I see on HN about Teslas lacking physical volume control, discoverability of the interface leaves much to be desired.