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Comment by travisoneill1 | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered that they vigorously deny things because they are not true? If even a fraction of the negative things about Tesla in the press were true then their cars would be falling apart on the streets and the company would be failing from low demand. In reality buyers love the cars and they just broke their delivery record again last quarter.

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Teslas do have poor reliability: https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20...

And Tesla has cut corners with engineering decisions: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Musk wants Tesla to out-Toyota Toyota, but it hasn't yet and probably won't:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2018/02/16/tesla-th...

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26955/inside-toyotas-takaoka-2...

There's no point in ignoring Tesla's problems. It's better to be objective about it. If you want to buy a Tesla you should go in clear-eyed about the reliability issues.

And that’s not even talking about how many cars they have bricked with over the air updates (probably thousands) leaving their owners stranded in the morning.

Source? I've had this happen to me once, but it was due to a battery fault (in the 12V battery amusingly, not the main battery that powers the car) stemming from some arse in a Jeep that hit me the week prior. Tesla sent a "ranger" out who fixed it in my garage in a few hours.

Try that with your toyota!

Use Google there are too many first hand accounts on Reddit and Twitter to source here.

Talk to people who own Teslas and they will bitch about their experience. Tesla annoys their customers constantly with things like: inaccurate battery charge indicators, no support for CarPlay or Android Auto, updates breaking functionality in their cars, promises for self driving which never materialize, and much more. I am sure I will hear more at lunch.

If Tesla is making such shitty cars, how do you explain why more and more people are buying them?

I'm waiting for him to pivot to Tesla soon going bankrupt. This is a sad script I've seen play out over and over again. Just about every single time, it is just FUD.

Tesla has plenty of problems, but bricking thousands of cars on OTA update isn't one of them. I've had my Model 3 since Dec 2018 and have done plenty of updates. One of them did brick my car, but it turned out to be a fault in the 12V battery. They had it fixed in no time directly in my garage. I was blown away by their service although it did take them several weeks to get the seatbelt tensioners when someone hit me head on. They've supposedly fixed that since, but I dunno.

These are not unlike growing pains in a service that is in hyper growth mode. You'll find problems like this, address them, and continue on.

So I should talk to myself, who owns a Model 3 AWD LR? I love it and anecdotally entirely shot down your FUD.

> Use Google there are too many first hand accounts on Reddit and Twitter to source here.

You're the one claiming that OTA updates have bricked thousands of cars. The onus is on YOU to supply a source to backup your claim.

That totally explains why Tesla has great customer loyalty numbers. Perhaps collecting anecdotes on Reddit and Twitter isn't a very accurate gauge of consumer sentiment?

> Try that with your toyota!

In some countries new Toyotas come with two years maintenance and 24-hour roadside assistance:

https://www.toyota.com/toyota-care

And even after that period you can have any mobile mechanic come to your home to service your car. It's not a novelty or something exclusive to Tesla.

You are not getting the level of service in the United States that Tesla owners get, which is far more than roadside assistance. Not even remotely comparable.

I sure hope it's not even remotely comparable. Tesla owners say Tesla's customer service is bad:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/non-existent-custome...

From that link: Model 3 sedan has “Average” predicted reliability based on owner feedback.

That’s not great, but also not poor reliability. Their high end models do seem to be having issues, but the reliability standards for cars are extremely high these days.

Car fleet operators find Teslas are not commercially viable because they have too many defects and the repair time is too slow:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27725/tesla-fleet-company-stru...

The bumpers were literally falling off of Tesla Model 3s: https://jalopnik.com/bumper-falls-off-brand-new-tesla-model-...

But Teslas also have the highest customer satisfaction: https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20...

Even if reliability is statistically poor there must be something about the particulars that keeps them afloat. Perhaps the non-essentials are unreliable or perhaps Tesla is able to succeed by cutting corners on things that have been traditionally important but aren't actually important to consumers.

The screen is essential in Teslas. The screens have a high failure rate because they're not built to be automotive grade. Tesla went with industrial grade screens and they're not robust enough.

Or perhaps they’re still so supply-constrained that they haven’t run out of fanboys. Or perhaps the car is so expensive and eco-friendly than it is more valuable as a combination Veblen good and virtue signal than as a reliable source of transportation.

> Or perhaps they’re still so supply-constrained that they haven’t run out of fanboys

Tesla is approaching half a million cars sold in a year now. If your contention is that they have a problem because hundreds of thousands of drivers are deluded fanboys willing to overlook all their faults... I don't think it says what you think it does about the company.

It might wear off if the cars are shoddily built and will not be reliable in the long term.

Now you've stacked up two hypotheticals to counter the point, though. That's might be true. It also might be true that the cars are of, on balance, very tolerable quality and that maintenance issues just aren't a driving factor in driver satisfaction. They're cars. Everyone loves their cars.

You can’t always judge quality right away. Tesla is barely approaching 1/10 of what Toyota sells in the US, except Toyota has been doing it for long enough that people can—and do—drive 20 year old Toyotas. And that reputation for quality is what keeps new Toyotas selling today. Tesla is approximately 20 years away from even being able to tell whether they can match that.

And there are absolutely brands that people shy away from due to the maintenance issues. Most people care more about reliability than about virtue signaling, flaunting their wealth, or being early adopters. Tesla can dominate those three markets and maybe give, like, BMW a run for their money. They’re almost selling as much as BMW now, actually. Good for them.

Being objective about it would be the press paying the same amount of attention to it as equivalent mistakes of other car companies, which is none. Minor Tesla quality issues seem to get press on par with the VW diesel scandal.

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