Hacker News Reader

Comment by zarro | Hacker News Reader

They are wonderful cars and I have never heard anyone not loving the driving experience.

The only concern that I think is preventing growth (Other than production of course) - is the concern about long term reliability.

If you buy a camry or prius you know almost for a fact, that your going to drive 200k miles without a problem, and if there is one, its recognized as an engineering failure and the dealership fixes it for free - and fast.

But with Tesla, there are lots of rumors that the queue for getting stuff fixed it really long, and that after warranty expires, really expensive.

What I am really scared of is another "BMW" style reliability experience, which I would consider to be a catastrophic failure on the part of Tesla.

Edit - also accidents "caused" by "autopilot" software, and liability is still a big question.

View on HN

> But with Tesla, there are lots of rumors that the queue for getting stuff fixed it really long, and that after warranty expires, really expensive.

Rich rebuilds did a great video on the out of warranty costs of older Teslas [1]. The summary is: they're surprisingly expensive to run; major systems break much more frequently than I would expect of say... a Japanese car.

The newer cars may or may not be better.

___

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq5c4jGR2gM

How good are Japanese cars?

They are extremely good. My first car was a 2005 Honda Civic that I drove for 10 years until I traded in for a First Gen leaf. Absolutely no down time. Changed all four tires once or twice. I went back and traded in my first gen leafs after 3 year lease expired and promptly bought a 2019 Honda Civic which drives like a charm. Even the whiz bang features like adaptive cruise and lane keep work perfectly! Very happy with the purchase, waiting for the 250 mi Honda Civic EV but am not holding my breath.

>They are extremely good.

Keep telling yourself that but it totally depends on what you get and who you are (i.e how you use it).

'09 "CVT" Altima owned by literally anybody. -> crap

'03 Accord owned by Grandma -> Perfectly fine car

'11 Tacoma owned by Joe the scrapper -> Made a one way trip over the scrap scale 5yr ago.

'11 Tacoma owned by upper middle class neighbor Steve who uses it to haul pine mulch for his garden and is generally easy on equipment -> Perfectly fine car.

It takes little more than a pulse to get your hands on (for example) a Nissan Altima or a Dodge Journey. They are solidly meh vehicles and (for the most part) bought in droves by people who's credit leaves them little other option. Time is not kind to vehicles under that kind of ownership. They get serviced when they have problems that impede their usefulness, maybe. Meanwhile, in an upscale gated community across town 4Runners plastered in honors student stickers will see easy use (food spills in the rear seats and smelly sports equipment are not particularly hard on vehicles) will see the kind of preventive maintenance the authors of German car service schedules lust over. When it comes to longevity the way a vehicle is treated matters more than anything else and over 20+yr the seemingly small difference between how different groups treat their cars will compound to be the dominant term in the equation.

It'd be interesting to see why people are down-voting. I purposefully picked examples that pretty much everyone in the low end used car world can agree on.

I drove a Honda Fit for 120,000 miles, rolled it, repaired it, drove it another 10k, somebody hit it when my wife was driving and it was totalled.

We had no major repairs in this time other than the rollover. I had to replace the break pads but neither the suspension or emission controls system was replaced. Sometimes the hatchback stuck and we had frustrations with TPMS. The safety systems worked perfectly both times, I didn't even feel any pain in my accident, the back window broke so I had no trouble getting out.

My take is that Honda and Toyota are in a different class than Mazda, Suzuki, Subaru and such. Subaru has fanatic followers but I think has awful TCO.

Contrast that to a Hyundai I owned that needed a $200 repair every month at 90k.

I think the luxury sedan market is a tepid category, driven by people who get $90,000 of value from a $90,000 car. I still remember Audi for their self-driving incidents in the 1980s and find it hard not to see them as a bastion of euromediocrity. BMW and such are always in the shop, so is Cadlliac. I see so many Cadillacs in the ghetto and driven by my ethnic white relatives (polish, italian, etc.). Cadillac has been kept alive by WW2 survivors who will never buy a German car.

Unlike the others, Tesla stands out. My wife rode in a Tesla and she said 'that was a special car's and she hasn't said that about other cars.

> Unlike the others, Tesla stands out. My wife rode in a Tesla and she said 'that was a special car's and she hasn't said that about other cars.

That's exactly what Tesla tries to sell, "a special car". On all the thinks they are focused on long term reliability and repair ability are likely not their priorities, for now.

In a certain way I wouldn't be surprised if they would have adapted some of the "ship fast + PR, then working and then (maybe) good" development mentality which is common in the software world.

I.e. I wouldn't be surprised if they prioritize innovation (e.g. self driving) and performance/range over safety/durability/etc. as long as safety/durability/etc. are "good enough" to get away with it.

Speaking of RichRebuilds. His friend recently rebuilt a Tesla Model S P85D and it took them only 2 days because of how easy the are to work with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHq3eNO6QaA

Awesome channel! Am glued to his channel.

Cost and service (call it reliability) were my biggest issues.

I have a long commute and needed to buy an economical car a little over 2 years ago. I live in a rural community and anticipated that it would be difficult to get a Tesla worked on. I pass multiple Chevy dealers on my way to work, so I bought a Cruze diesel. For the difference in up front cost, I can buy a lot of diesel -- at least enough for the first 200k miles and probably more. And if it breaks, I know I can get it serviced locally.

Teslas are really cool cars, but the math and potential ownership hassles still don't work for me.

From a 33,000 mile view of Model 3 RWD, LR:

- Oiled a squeaky driver side door

- Replaced tires

Meanwhile, some things got better:

- Tesla increased range by 5%.

- New audio CODECs improved sound.

- Driving safety features improved, even sans AP/EAP.

- Bunch of new toy features in the software.

Stuff I wouldn't expect on a $50,000 car:

- When rolled down, windows seem to not be secured within the door. Close the car door, and you can hear them bounce inside.

- Trunk lid doesn't have that 'solid' sound when closing like my 328i did.

Something of an interesting technical side effect:

- I neglected to rotate my tires (bad, I know), and, I did not replace the front tires when the rear were done (RWD). That meant that the front turned at a slightly higher RPM than the rear, cuz the rear had full tread, the front about 25%. When I took hard turns, it also meant the inside wheels turned slower than the outside wheels. Hence, at that point, it's possible all 4 wheels are turning at slightly different rates. That seems to invoke traction control, something I never (literally) saw in 33,000 miles up to that point.

What dealership is going to fix for free the problem you run into at 8years/150k miles?

I just got an extended warranty notice from BMW for a potential defect in my Mini Cooper's fuel pump (not a recall notice) that covered cars up to 160,000 miles.

Maybe it has worked out for you, but I don't know all that much about cars and my experience is that dealers usually talk their way out of covering something or add one extra crap they say is not covered that costs a lot anyway.

I have had the opposite experience, FWIW. Dealers get reimbursed by the MFG for warranty claims, so I've had them cover things out of warranty or give me a rental car so they can pocket the money from the mfg. To the degree the last Jeep service I did they were SUPER pushy about giving me one of their "Rentals"

Although it not "Guaranteed" you can rest assured when you buy a Prius for instance, the probability of you having a catastrophic failure or expensive repair before 200k miles is very low - and if it happens, is usually covered by Toyota themselves.

The kind of problem caused by a manufacturing defect that leads to a recall. Parent's overall point is that you can effectively drive these cars 200k+ miles until the wheels fall off, and if you can't, it's due to a defect like that. Tesla is a younger company and it's not yet apparent how the vehicle's end-of-life will play out like it is for these sorts of vehicles.

Aren't there plenty of Teslas out there with 200k+ miles?

Lots. https://sites.google.com/view/teslamiles

The Model 3 motors are designed for a million miles of service life.

The big issue is the battery pack. It's a major part of the total car cost, and it's not going to last a million miles.

For everything else in the car maintenance and longevity is going to be better than ICE cars due to the much simpler drivetrain, so the cost of replacing batteries and the battery lifespan is going to be the main factor in value of used fully electric cars.

Tesla is working towards a million mile battery [1] (and the batteries they have on the road today will easily last to 500k miles, which under normal duty [average American yearly miles driven], you won't see until you've been driving the car for 37 years @ 13,476 miles/year). It would also appear, from the cost decline curve of lithium batteries [2], that to replace your vehicle's battery (if necessary; highly unlikely) in 8 years at the end of its warranty will be substantially cheaper than replacing it today.

At a million mile service duty for battery and motors, the powertain is reaching human life expectancy (74 years) at average miles driven per year quoted above.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-may-soon-have-a-battery-th...

[2] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06...

At least in my experience, it's not the drivetrain you need to worry about. It's all the electronics and sensors - from antitheft to odometers to AC.

That's why I'm not terribly optimistic on Tesla reliability. Powertrains rarely fail in the first place.

Anecdotally, but looking at older Model S on the local Craigslist equivalent, I see two listings right now that are ~6 years old with ~120k miles and say "recently replaced entire battery pack under warranty". If whatever fault that was happens to another Model S after the warranty expires, it's going to be a total writeoff. These cars are being sold now for below $30k (equivalent) with almost two years left of warranty.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-record-mileage-900000-ki... 900k km is waaay more than 200k miles

It doesn't say whether he had to make an out of warranty battery replacement.

https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty

For 8 years you're fine.

This is sort of true. If there is something wrong with the battery then there is a good chance they will fix it for free even if it's not under warranty, rather than billing you several thousand dollars.

But if, say, the dash lights come on saying you need to take it in immediately because there is a problem with the battery, but when you take it in they can't find anything wrong with it, then they will still bill you a few hundred bucks for looking at it.

The system should totally keep a record of the dash lights shown, and they totally shouldn't charge you if you told the truth, yet they couldn't find anything wrong.

My 2003 Honda Pilot had the airbags, a transmission part and a key cylinder replaced under recall in the last 4 years.

Also normal car companies that follow the law have third parties called mechanics that can order parts and get cars fixed.

My Honda hybrid’s battery was replaced for free at 11yo thanks to California’s emisiones warranty requirements (15y 150k mi for PZEV cars)

My 2002 Civic with 250k+ miles on it had free service done on it maybe 3-4 years ago as part of a recall. The fact that a platform that old had enough cars still registered on the road is usually a good sign for that specific platform even given the need for a recall.

Sometime around 2004 or 2005 I had an 1996 Honda Accord with over 200k miles on it that I took to the dealership for some maintenance and was told it had a cracked engine block. The dealer said something to the effect "that's not suppose to happen" and offered me a loaner while they fixed it for free.

Why would it be catastrophic? That kind of reliability works just fine for other luxury brands. Tesla's should naturally be better anyway due to the simpler drivetrain and lack of maintenance.

I think that is a lazy business model, selling cars at a very low margin just so that you could make money by planned obsolescence and high cost replacement parts.

I would rather buy a car for more money that's engineered to the best possible attainable engineering perfection than one that is not.

Often, those more reliable cars are even cheaper and made in massive production. Given Teslas goal of accelerating the change to sustainable energy, it would be in their best interest to make the best possible and reliable car they could at the highest possible production numbers, instead of leaving a competitive advantage for toyota to take over reliable scalable production. Besides I would argue the purpose of the model 3 is a mass market vehicle that is really nice, and not just a niche "luxury" vehicle as is often implied.

I don't think BMW's business model is lazy. You'll come up against design decisions again and again where the trade-off is performance vs. reliability.

Toyota would more often choose the latter, BMW the former.

I disagree with the proposition that performance and reliability are categorically mutually exclusive.

With the difference that Teslas have Lithium batteries. Mobile phone batteries become so crap after a few years... Anyone have an old Model S and want to share their experience?

>Tesla’s should be better if anything due to the simpler drivetrain and lack of maintenance

Eh, their reliability is much worse than other brands, even luxury brands.

https://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability-by-brand?min=2016&...

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

If it "works" it's great. But, once out of warranty it can be expensive and delayed before you can get your car fixed. On my S, I had to replace 3 door handles, drive unit, screen, TPS, passenger mirror was replaced, and a few other things. This was ~3 years of ownership and < 30k miles. Many of these things had a long delay before they could get fixed. I was in a loaner for over 3 weeks while they fixed the drive unit.

My father had an X that got bought back due to never being able to fix the rear door sensor. It would open a foot and freeze. He also had a handful of other issues. This was in less than a year of ownership.

My neighbor with the 3 got into an accident. It's ~6-8 months for them to fix their rear bumper. Additionally, one of the seatbelt adjusters and one of the AC vents rattle. So he stuck a piece of foam in there. His charging port has frozen and needed a manual release. And he says the screen sometimes doesn't come on. The nearest dealership is 100 miles away. He got an appointment, drove, got a loaner, drove home. They were 'Unable to reproduce' the rattles/screen issue. So he had to drive back and pick up his car with nothing getting fixed.

What did Tesla say when your neighbor insisted they revisit the issues again before he drove back?

He went on a ride along with them. But, they basically went around the block and it was fairly smooth. He said the AC vent was more noticeable at highway speeds, but they didn't want to go on the highway as they had their "own route".

Additionally, the screen was working when they were there.

That sounds exactly like my experience with a Nissan dealer.

If you understand how cars work, you should know that an electric cars will probably drive 1million miles. It has less moving parts than cars. Engines - 500parts, transmissions 2000+ parts. Tons of friction, heat, wear and tear. Electric cars are so much simpler and if anything will prove to be much more reliable than cars. If anything that's what those companies have to worry about. Why would anyone want to replace their car when they can just replace battery? i won't be surprised if this is the reason Tesla is almost treating it like a modern day product with software upgrades. I suspect in the future, they will have it where you can just replace the exterior panel to get a new car and have the interior easily swapable as well.

Id be more worried about the hassle/cost to repair all the “little” things that can really add up if parts and service are hard to find.

Windows, door handles, air conditioning, bumpers, radar sensors, sun roofs, seat motors, wiper motors, door hinges.

No really an issue at all. You can just use the Tesla parts catalog and call up Tesla to order a part. No middle man like AutoZone that get's a cut of the profit.

https://epc.teslamotors.com/#/catalogs

As the market scales up, OEM parts are going to be a thing.

There is a big risk you swap one kind of issue for another... It's no longer head gaskets blowing - now the issue is obscure software bugs which trigger constant rebooting causing the car to be undrivable, or a temperature sensor broken making it think it's at -273 C. A Tesla engineer could totally erase and reset the car to fix it, but when the cars 10 years old and on its 3rd owner, that engineer has probably retired, and a third party can't do anything because the car software is encrypted.

What's your evidence that electric vehicle are more reliable than non-electrics? EV advocates make this claim quite frequently, yet I've never seen any evidence to support it. In the case of Tesla, their EVs are actually much less reliable than ICE and diesel vehicles (though I blame their problems mainly on Tesla's rush to production, and not on producing EVs per se).

Tesloop released a very interesting review and summary of using "eHawk", the 2015 Tesla Model S over 450,000 miles (724,000 km), which is one of the highest mileages globally.

https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...

https://insideevs.com/reviews/350883/tesla-model-s-review-45...

What makes this particularly interesting is that the car was mostly charged using super chargers which accelerates battery degradation compared to regular home/Level 2 charging.

There's low amounts of evidence because electric cars are so new but common sense would dictate that the simpler a machine is the less it will break all things being equal. Even if the current generation have issues, applying Toyota's continuous improvement paradigm to the process will ensure that they quickly speed up.

There's substantial complexity in Tesla's various black boxes full of electronics.

A Tesla's battery pack is a hell of a lot more complex than a full, sheet-metal gas tank. The charging, balancing, and protection circuit is more complex than a filler neck and screw-on cap, etc.

Electric motors that run in factories out last generators.

If recent history is any indication, I don't believe that walled garden software will make for repairable, longer lasting, customizable cars rather than being used for planned obsolescence.

> Why would anyone want to replace their car when they can just replace battery?

Or why would anyone want to replace their battery when they can just replace the top of the car?

Peoples’ needs and tastes in cars change overtime. I’d like to see a future where you retain the “skateboard” of the car but swap the cabin and skin of the exterior relatively inexpensively.

I wonder how the Tesla lease economics work out? Their lease is different than others in that you don't have th option to buy at the end of the lease--allegedly the cars will be going to an upcoming taxi service.

Anyway, if Tesla will be assuming all the mechanical/reliability risk/unknowns, does a lease work out better?

> If you buy a camry or prius you know almost for a fact, that your going to drive 200k miles without a problem, and if there is one, its recognized as an engineering failure and the dealership fixes it for free - and fast.

Nope, I had a Prius develop a problem where the entire dash display died at 105k, there was a previous recall for selected units of Prius for the same fault (not my S/N lot), but when it happened to me, I had to pay for a new one. You can see online where hackers fix the problem where it's a manufacturing fault with cold solder joints coming loose in the power circuitry. Complained to Toyota corporate about it, and they sent it back to the same dealership manager to rule against paying for it. Talked to other Prius owners that they did the same thing to. Makes me think twice about Toyota warranty coverage.

200K miles is nothing. There are a few Tesla Model X/S's used by the Taxi service Tesloop that are 450K+ miles.

Tesloop's "eHawk", the 2015 Tesla Model S over 450,000 miles (724,000 km), which is one of the highest mileages globally. A Model 3 can easily surpass that since hey are not as complex as the S/X.

https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...

Except the model 3 doesn't have an unlimited mile warranty for the battery. eHawk got two ~$5-7k batteries for free which wouldn't happen with the model 3. Additionally, they get a fair amount of "goodwill" work and inspections done. If you add in the costs for the two batteries that were replaced the TCO would be above that of the town car. Additionally, most taxis these days are hybrids which have a lower TCO than the ford. 20 mpg vs ~50 mpg, with a more reliable platform as well.

Yup. I absolutely agree. this is exactly why tesla is not on the top of my to buy list.

it's about total cost of ownership. All it takes is a couple of bad door handles (1500$ each) and a broken drive unit (10K$) and now your total cost 16K, just in repairs! if depreciation is roughly 15K over 10 years, then the cost of ownership doubles!

Why are the door handles that expensive? What can even break about them?

They automagically extend out only when you're nearby, otherwise they're fully recessed into the car.

Man I’d love to just throw a tesla engine into like a Corolla. I’m sure there’s good reasons it’s not like that but this is some stupid bullshit to have to wade through.

Your numbers are way off. Where did you get these figures? Citation needed...

Model S (most expensive) door handles are $750 and the new revisions fixed this issue (2016+ model years). Or if you're adventurous you can DIY it and buy a replacement part/rebuild kit for $175:

https://evtuning.com/products/model-s-door-handle-rebuild-ki...

Drive units are about ~$3-5K based on anecdotes from invoices by actual owners. This was in 2018, they are much cheaper now.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/charged-for-new-driv...

i've seen the 1500/1300$ figure thrown around a couple of times by tesla owners: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/door-handle-replacem...

As, for the drive unit, I thought it used to be 10K maybe it's a bit lower now

>camry or prius you know almost for a fact, that your going to drive 200k miles without a problem

Is that stated explicitly in the warranty or just marketed by 3rd parties (i.e. You), so that the seller cannot be held accountable?

There are only a couple dozen parts in a Tesla. Electric cars are much simpler in terms of mechanics, and everyone knows the more moving parts, the more likely it's to break. They don't need oil, there's no combustion, etc. Pretty much all you have to worry about are the tires and the battery. The battery is rated to 500K miles.

Edit: wow the downvotes. You guys fall for media attack campaigns too easily. You can see the talking points (Look at the forums!!!!, This X person reported Y!) Even though we all know the loudest people go to the forums to complain, that's not an accurate representation of Tesla owners. And it's not even a valid complaint, it's a complaint of complaints. If you have a reason why it's unreliable, post it, don't point somewhere else or use a talking point.

You guys have fell for the car industry and oil/gas industry's propaganda. You guys are now defending them and attacking an electric car company trying to dethrone them for the good of humanity.

Read the Tesla forums about the reliability issues they have, and awake to the marketing spin of "fewer parts" being conflated with more reliable.

Anecdotes. I can find disgruntled users on any forum...

Where are your sources that the less complicated drivetrain is more unreliable than an ICE drivetrain? Where are you sources the battery is not in general reaching its mileage rating?

https://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability-by-brand?min=2016&...

Dismissing information you don't like as anecdote is not a healthy thing to do. Making up things to argue against is also not a healthy thing to do. No one in this thread even mentioned drivetrain. The issues with Tesla service wait times and reliability are well-publicized and mostly revolve around things that have nothing to do with the motor or battery [1][2][3]. Tesla just sucks at quality control and has a really bad service parts supply chain + network.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-16/tesla-ord...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/some-tesla-customers-experie...

[3] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

I'm not dismissing it, I'm highlighting the fact that these are a few datapoints and not a real study. You have yet to link to a real scientific study.

Propaganda, pure and simple. Those articles are paid for by the oil/gas/automobile companies.

Can you point to one major issue that they cover? No, they are all written with a negative tone, highlighting small things and blowing them into a big deal.

> from scratched bumpers to moisture trapped behind the headlights -- the order of the remaining 85 Model 3s was called off.

Big deal, and the 85 were supposedly called off for other reasons. Depends who you believe.

> “I’m still thrilled by the car, because it’s just so much better than anything I’ve driven before, but the quality of the service and some technical parts are seriously worrying,” Rouven Volk, who said by email that he ordered his Model 3 in February and was slated to take delivery less than a month later.

Fair enough, but the first part is important. Also, just one data point. All these articles just cover a few people. There is no big study to indicate reliability. And the overall reports indicate Tesla owners love their cars.

Yeah there is propaganda mixed, but there is also Elon propaganda which you clearly have taken and believe as if it's your own idea.

Imagine owning a car which has a fender bent into the tire and no parts supplier or body shop is prevented to work on it. Your warranty for free rental car expires at thirty days, so now you sit with a $50,000 decorative statue and paying for a rental car out of pocket? These things can happen and do happen with Tesla and can't with almost any other vehicle.

Maybe Tesla will fix the issues, but I'm not going to pay that much for a car I can't have fixed.

https://www.tesla.com/support/body-shop-support

> In addition to Tesla Body Repair Centers, we’ve partnered with the world’s best body shops to form the ever-growing Tesla-Approved Body Shop Network. We demand the highest standards from our Tesla-Approved Body Shop Network, through rigorous training and assessments of all the technicians that will work on your car. To schedule an appointment, please contact the body shop directly.

I've entered my address and I found a dozen near me. And I live in the middle of nowhere.

Looks like they released this program 2 years ago. Seems they are addressing the problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com