> The car, the service, the people, all of it is on a whole higher plane of satisfaction. It feels like the transition from a flip phone to an iPhone in 2008.
Same here. This is how I describe it to other people.
Same here. This is how I describe it to other people.
In other words, I don’t get the whole Tesla club thing for basically a glorified metal bucket.
Although for some odd reason I do want Tesla to be my next car.
* No oil changes
* Charge at home, wake up every morning to a "full tank" for a lot less than it'd cost to fill up with gas
* No gas station fill-ups
* Autopilot is huge for quality of life on highways and in bumper-to-bumper traffic
* I keep the valet key card in my wallet, but there's no physical key that you need to keep with you. My car key was the last one I really needed, so I no longer carry physical keys
* The car has an API, so you can use it to automate various actions (like to start the HVAC system if the car is at work and it's 4:30pm on a weekday). With my normal schedule, the car is already pre-warmed/cooled any time I get in it
* Built-in dashcam includes side cameras, and sentry mode
* Summon, and (soon) enhanced summon
None of that helps if you're driving a loaner while you're waiting for parts, but it's tough to quantitatively measure the impact of just having things like this. And I've got more faith in Tesla to improve logistics in parts sourcing than traditional automakers becoming more like Tesla.
I still never want to see service people, or deal with service, and definitely never want to interact with a sales person ever again. Tesla is the best at making that happen. And that A to B is more enjoyable too. It really sounds like you'd be very happy if you bought a Tesla, assuming it's in the budget.
This is the way Tesla wants it.
In a car dealership world, you're sold a future revenue generator for the dealer, as you're expected to come for routine maintenance.
With Tesla's corporate ownership and generous warranty, the less they see of you (post-purchase), the better it will be for the bottom line.
I suppose any auto manufacturer selling their vehicles direct and owning their service centers outright would have a strong incentive to maintain high reliability, and yet for some reason Tesla remains the only one pursuing that model.
I wonder if Tesla should not have entered the mass market with the 3 and stuck with the S and X. Higher margins and lower CapEx there.
In 2013 Tesla won (by a wide margin) the Consumer Reports rating for the best infotainment system. It turned out that a lot of owners loved large, fast, responsive touch screens for viewing maps, navigation, controlling multimedia and vehicle settings.
You'd think that everybody in the car business would be elbowing one another to introduce a better, brighter, faster, more colorful and capable infotainment system, given a clear product market fit.
Yet the winner for that Consumer Reports award did not change in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018.