Roof blows off new Tesla Model Y
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
- Tesla's build quality is quite bad
- I hate Elon now because of his nonsensical tweets and trying hard to stay cool and relevant
- Tesla's false promises on Autopilot and Full Self Driving is a disgrace. They are at-least 20 years away from anything resembling close to L4, but still somehow siphon $8k from buyers with a false promise
- Model 3 is the BEST car I have ever driven. It is awesome, and I would recommend anyone in a heartbeat
Have you not driven any other cars?
Also, some other cars at the same price range have weird feature omissions like no rear seat-warmers or no automatic wipers, etc.
But yes it’s clearly not as well put together as other cars. I don’t see how these are mutually exclusive.
And other cars have had worse defects, (SUV rollovers, wiring fires, etc)
So yeah, I totally 100% get how you can simultaneously love and hate a car, especially if it's an expensive one.
Having said that - I've spent enough time on AMG forums to know that the same problem exists even if you buy a C63 or E63, the build quality of the interior just isn't great(while the mechanical engineering arguably is, those cars are very reliable when it comes to the actual mechanical bits)
But yeah, that's a weird segment that car is in. It's expensive, because the engine is expensive, but at the same time you're getting the exact same interior and fit-and-finish as the non-AMG versions of that class, which means an AMG S-class is very nice, while an AMG A-class is just not very nice at all. So yeah, your experience sounds exactly like what I would expect out of that specific model, and by just looking at the price tag, it's not very intuitive that that's what you're gonna get.
It’s odd people compare the Model 3 to a wide range of cars when it seems more apt to compare it to ICE cars like Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series. I think it’s superior to those cars, I don’t miss the amount of buttons they all have (buttons I personally never use). And I feel like all car interiors have started to get very cheap.
> Tesla's build quality is quite bad
> Model 3 is the BEST car I have ever driven
I feel compelled to ask, what else have you driven?
Tesla cars also have far more trunk space and highest in class safety ratings. They also have an 'appealing' design which includes the titular panoramic roof.
Now the car is unpolished across the board. Be that manufacturing, interior materials or general care for UX. But those things matter far more to enthusiasts. Your average family owner cares more about all of Tesla's positives.
If Tesla can provide good customer service and aftermarket support, (which it has historically been terrible at) then I can see the other shortcomings not being deal breakers at all.
Now my dream car will stay the Mazda 3 2021. But, I am a certain type of weird.
What about handling in corners, etc., ride comfort? Genuinely curious. I have driven a (2016?) Model S a few times, and wasn't hugely impressed with the handling (beyond as you same, the very valid straight line acceleration and linear-ish power curve), compared to my Audi, or Jaguar.
The new 2020 model S handles a lot better than the older models, but is still quite big and boaty compared to the model 3, at least assuming that you want a "drivers car".
That said, I love driving my model S, it's quite comfortable, and rock solid for "normal" driving.
that said, the feeling behind the wheel is completely addicting. i cannot go back to noninstantaneous peak torque. this is pretty lizard brain of me, performance is more than acceleration, but pinning your head against the seat is a ton of fun and when i purchased the c8 hadn’t come out so there wasn’t another 3 second to 60 option in this price bracket.
agree with everything upthread about build quality issues, UX is not great, hope you don’t live somewhere that it rains hard because the fastest setting on the wipers is way too slow, etc etc. still fun as hell.
Drives a lot like a higher end mercedes, E-class/CLS feel. Smooth, powerful, good handling but not a tight suspension. My previous BMWs had better handling with better suspensions. Still, when comparing the Model 3 to similar ICE vehicles, the Tesla was hands down a better buy in my opinion.
This is the first time I've ever heard people saying "heavy" as a pro. Any car is heavy in a sense of staying firmly on the ground. The rest is steering, suspension, and rubber; a tiny cheap Fiesta ST on good tires and dry tarmac handles like it's on rails. It'll go around a corner much more eagerly though, being about 60% lighter than a model 3.
"In addition to its near 50/50 weight distribution, Model 3 was also designed with an extremely low polar moment of inertia, which means that its heaviest components are located closer to the car’s center of gravity.
Even though Model 3 has no engine, its performance is similar to what’s described as a “mid-engine car” due to its centered battery pack (the heaviest component of the car) and the fact that Model 3’s rear motor is placed slightly in front of the rear axle rather than behind it.
Not only does this architecture add to the overall agility and handling of the car, it also improves the capability of stability control by minimizing rotational kinetic energy."
Source: https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-lowest-probability-injury...
This also has some safety benefits such as low rollover risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L24xzJkCGdk
https://fastestlaps.com/tests/95pv46ue63rt - Tesla Model 3 Performance does not win big over BMW M3.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/bgxie8/electri...
It's also funny how you claim it's PR. When it's actually physics at work when it comes to low center of gravity.
http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/centre_of_gravity.html
http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/age11-14/Mechanics/Statics/te...
The 0-100km/h times for M3 and Model 3 is 3.9 and 3.2 seconds respectively and, essentially, 20%. The difference in peak torque (helps in acceleration out of corners) is smaller, 550 N/m and 639 N/m, about 11%. Power (helps at high speed) difference also less - 317kW and 340kW, yet Tesla win here too. Model 3 is even slightly wider (2cm, about 1% wider), which should help in track too. And after all that, a whopping 0.1s of win.
Tesla borked their very first Roadster, despite the fact that they had to provide only drivetrain to it and everything else was done by Lotus. The analysis above suggests that they are still do not get driving as opposed to drag racing.
That is a factual statement! Let me ask you this. Have you driven a decent mid-engine sports car like a Porsche 718 Boxster and a Tesla Model 3 performance? I have. They both handle quite well.
>The 0-100km/h times for M3 and Model 3 is 3.9 and 3.2 seconds respectively and, essentially, 20%. The difference in peak torque (helps in acceleration out of corners) is smaller, 550 N/m and 639 N/m, about 11%. Power (helps at high speed) difference also less - 317kW and 340kW, yet Tesla win here too. Model 3 is even slightly wider (2cm, about 1% wider), which should help in track too. And after all that, a whopping 0.1s of win.
Facts are facts, you can't spin it to suit your narrative. The Model 3 won while being heavier and costing significantly less is impressive. That was also prior to track mode being released and the new high performance package.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXyEgl9rFN4
> Tesla borked their very first Roadster, despite the fact that they had to provide only drivetrain to it and everything else was done by Lotus.
Do you have a background in automotive engineering? Elon Musk and the Tesla engineers said on many occasions, that the original Roadster only had about 20% original parts after they were done with the conversion. They also said that it would have been easier to start from scratch had they known the amount of hard work that had to be done.
> The analysis above suggests that they are still do not get driving as opposed to drag racing.
Terrible analysis. Randy Pobst (look him up) who is well respected in racing would tell you otherwise: https://youtu.be/aywleQX5lyA?t=202
Unplugged Performance Street Tuned Model 3 Beats McLaren F1 - Time Attack at Tsukuba Circuit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2dustv6utY
Tesla Model 3 prevails with two hill climb victories after Pikes Peak crash
https://thedriven.io/2020/09/01/tesla-model-3-prevails-with-...
Tesla Model 3 Performance Tire Rack Hot Lap
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgCf4aos0ZY
Randy Pobst Pikes Peak Hill Climb 2020 (Unplugged Performance Tesla Run)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvZMwiwnLVg
Pikes Peak Unplugged Performance Tesla Day 2
Let's do a bit of fact checking on this false narrative. Having worked in government. Most if not all financial transactions records are public record and can easily be traced.
The only known grant(call it subsidy if you want) that Tesla got from the government is a loan from the Department of Energy.
"In January 2010, the Department of Energy issued a $465 million loan to Tesla Motors" Source: https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla
The loan was to buy the old Toyata/GM NUMMI plant. That single plant now hires thousands of workers and produce thousands of electric vehicles a month. That DOE loan was PAID off 10 years early PLUS interest. Therefore, the American taxpayers made money and cemented the U.S. as a leader in EV market share.
Source:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-doe/electric-carmak...
Can you provide the rest of the $1.5B you're claiming? I can already predict you will link the Business Insider and L.A. Times articles. Both of which are inaccurate. They also did not provide sources where they got those numbers from.
Before you mention the tax breaks for the Giga Factory in Nevada. This has been a common thing for states to do. So that they can entice companies to build infrastructure. Because that can end up bringing in tax revenue in the long run. BMW have gotten hundreds of millions as well in just South Carolina alone. So that point is moot:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/25-years-ago-bmw-opened-shop...
https://www.dw.com/en/mexican-subsidies-for-bmw-under-fire/a...
Such credits are intended to go completely to consumers, but as many government programs have unintended consequences, or perhaps unadvertised effects, the producer just charges more for the item because they know the consumer is willing to spend more knowing they'll get the tax credit, only if they buy that item. Tesla even factored the credit into the price they showed on their website, which many complained was false advertising as it was very possible not to have $7500 in tax liability, but the vast majority did.
It became obvious that Tesla captured a substantial portion of the credit when they lowered the prices every time the tax credit dropped, meeting the people who "lost out" on the credit half way. They had quite a bit of room in their margins to attract new buyers with lower prices. Maybe not $1.5B of margin from the credits, but definitely not $0.
Not only that your logic is flawed, the math also doesn’t check out. Why? Not everyone who were the first 200k early adopters got the credit. Because you would have to owed the tax liability. Hence it’s called a tax credit and not refund.
Moreover, if we use the logic you’re claiming. Then BMW has benefited from it too! Since they sell the i3 EV. Same with other manufacturers that offer BEVs. Like Chevy, Nissan, Audi and Jaguar etc.
This is nonsensical. Nobody ever said "How do we make this drive better? I know! Let's make it heavier!"
More mass makes acceleration worse, cornering dynamics worse, ride quality worse and braking worse. There are literally no upsides.
It's very good at certain things, but let's step outside of the reality distortion field for a moment...
I think you are wrong here, in this exact point. More mass in the car frame makes ride quality better: you can have more weight in wheels (unsuspended mass) or more responsive suspension.
There is some nuance here though: more mass does potentially give you options in lowering the centre of gravity which can certainly help. Putting the batteries in the lowest point is a smart design move from this point of view.
In general, I'm not saying you can't make a heavy car have a good ride quality, I'm saying you can make it ride well in spite of the extra mass it has to deal with. Adding more mass doesn't magically let you have a better ride quality.
It's not well phrased, but it is better for the vehicle, if the mass is the same, just closer to the ground. Center of mass is lower down.
Electric cars have this due to the big heavy "sled" of batteries at the bottom of the vehicle.
I think you meant "it has a low center of gravity and so sticks to the ground". It's that, not pure weight - otherwise trucks would dominate F1 circuits.
<edit> Actually this seems less clear cut than I thought. I'd heard from David Coulthard's commentary that the reason for picking up was to cover the wear from other teams' eyes. A quick search suggests many people believe it's to do with weight. The weight explanation seems odd, since if the officials think the tyres are masking the true weight of the car, they can demand a different set are used for the weigh-in, but I can't find an authorative source either way.
So it may be to do with weight, or it may be to do with hiding tyre wear. </edit>
I got a 4 year degree in mechanical engineering and worked a full-time job building cars for a bit, and I still wrote down a line that sounds as stupid as it does.
But damn, I did not expect that line to draw as much attention as it did down the thread. Such is life.
That's... that's not how cars work.
Nevertheless: He means that electric cars have a "low center of gravity" which matters immensely in collision scenarios.
See this short video of a Model X in a capsizing test: https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/1310623334367989761?s=...
This actually seems kind of backwards to me? Car enthusiasts -- at least the way I think of "car enthusiast" -- are the ones who prioritize acceleration, speed and handling to a point where they're forgiving, at least to a point, of other flaws. Tesla also has a lot of tech enthusiast appeal, of course, and their best target market is right at the center of that Venn diagram.
However, I'd think "average family owners" are the kinds of folks who are way more likely to think that if they spent $60,000+ on a new car, that car should be as close to problem-free, and even maintenance-free, as realistically possible. They're not prioritizing for under 4-second 0–60 speeds. I mean, they'll also love the high safety ratings and trunk space, but if the car gets a reputation for reliability problems, they're going to remember there's a Volvo dealer next door.
Dimensions are in cubic feet.
BMW 330: 17
Kia Forte: 15.3
Honda Civic (sedan): 15.1
Telsa Model 3: 15.0 (combined front and rear trunk)
Hyundai Elantra: 14.4
Volkswagen Jetta: 14.1
Mercedes CLA-250: 13.1
Toyota Corolla: 13.1
Audi A3: 12.3
Subaru WRX: 12
No doubt Tesla vehicles have amazing crash ratings, they've really put together some structurally sound vehicles.
I could've sweared the Model 3 was a bigger than that.
I'm sure that many reading this comment will scoff. However, that car was living proof of one of my favorite truisms when it comes to driving cars in everyday traffic:
"It's more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow."
That Mazda was not powerful by any means, but it rode low and handled like a sports car. Fun to toss around.
All Tesla's have gearboxes[1], sometimes to the surprise of the owner when they learn they need their transmission oil changed after thinking they've been driving a car that doesn't need any oil.
Honda Accord
Honda Fit
Toyota Camry
BMW X3
BMW X6
Model 3
The driving experience is very nice, but I think my next car is going to be either a Porsche Taycan or another BMW SUV but I do like electric cars. I love not going to a gas station to fill up every week.
I don’t think I will get another Tesla. I think most electric cars will drive similar to the Tesla in 2 years, and what I’m looking for is a more solid, luxurious feel to the interior. The Model 3 interior feels very cheap and plastic vs BMW that feels nice. I hate the all-screen experience of the Model 3. The X6 was probably the best driving experience I’ve had and I miss it. I also miss knowing I can get in the X6 and drive anywhere in North America without thinking too deeply about it. I would have driven my family to Canada for a few months during the pandemic but we didn’t have a car that would reliably take us that distance from SF.
Apparently you can fly though?
You might want to narrow this down by location.
Take a 10 mile trip in Menlo Park (which they once called "urban" in a video) is different than a 10 mile trip in Manhattan... in February
So how about it has to take GP from his home to a destination 100+ miles away, the car has to park itself in a legal spot, and it must reverse at least once during the trip? And I'd like to see it done at least 3x, including once when it's not perfect weather (could be foggy, moderate rain, light snow - whatever).
it's the quickest car i've ever driven, by far. instant acceleration.
it's better than the day i bought it. my car has learned to do a lot of things through software updates. my aston had a nav system that was obsolete the day i bought it (new), and criminally dinosaur-land by the time i sold it.
hands-down best nav system of any car i've ever been in, and that's something you use with every drive.
hands-down best infotainment system. i have tunein, podcasts, radio, bluetooth, all on a giant screen that makes it super easy to pick entertainment while driving.
autopilot rocks, especially on highways. driving from florida to boston and back within a week was really no big deal. no way i could have done that in any of my previous cars without being exhausted.
it's surprisingly large for a car that's so stupidly quick. it fits five adults, plus a giant trunk in the back and a small trunk in the front. 0-60 faster than you want or need.
convenience is off the charts. you get to the destination and you just leave the car. it takes car of turning itself off, turning off the lights, and locking the doors. every time i rent a car now i am reminded just how many "things" you have to do each time you enter/exit. easier to not have to think about it.
it's got remote control. i can set the climate, make the car move, or trigger my garage door to open all from my phone. i can also track it when i park it via valet.
speaking of valet, it has valet mode, so when i drop it off the car's acceleration and top speed is limited, and the glovebox and frunk can't be opened.
i never have to stop at a gas station because it charges at home. so i always have a full "tank". it's surprising how awesome this is.
the list goes on... it's just a really phenomenal car.
The only place you see the instructions are on the phone itself or the display of the car. The build in shows the next instructions within the cockpit & HUD.
It has no access to the wheels, and in tunnels the GPS will simply not work where as the build in sort of does.
The build in depends way less on healthy Internet access (yes there are parts of Europe that I drive though with cripple G2 at best).
Mind you, I SWEAR by Google maps for driving (in Europe) since it is so current and predicts / reroutes better then anything else I've ever used.
Paying major money for updates of the build in also is a real pain.
I'd rather get the kinks out upfront whereas owning an aging bmw (or most german cars really), you get hammered on maintenance and unexpected repairs.
I don’t know what I would trust more - a 10 year old Tesla, or a 10 year old BMW
But Tesla's continuous improvement means parts aren't tied to model years and are often already hard to track down. They're not going to be made by third parties given the lack of scale.
I'm foreseeing small faults totalling otherwise perfectly good cars later on in the current generation.
If Tesla ramps up like they're claiming though, this problem will sort itself out.
A bit of a pain to be supporting some LTS versions, but not that big relative to the billions in sales you're supporting with it.
Should be interesting to see what does breakdown though.
What about a charger? Or random electrical errors?
I don’t buy the “less maintenance” part. Maybe stuff breaks less often but if it breaks, you’re screwed.
Anyway we’ll see. I’d gladly be proven wrong.
Also, there are other brands. I think everyone agrees EVs will eventually be more reliable, Tesla is just a worst case scenario with their “high volume” “beta release” (model S)
Yeah my '97 actually did have a leaky back windshield after the stripping got old enough. The lights fill with water on my father's '02.
Are you joking asking me if an old BMW has electrical problems? If you've never owned one the answer is yes.
My 98 BMW 316i never had issues
Compare it to a Honda at 200k miles or 10 years.
To whom it may concern,
I purchased an E39 M5 in 2000, which at the time was the absolute pinnacle of automotive achievement. No other car came close to the blend of utility, luxury, performance and driving ex- perience. I was thrilled.
After a few years of ownership, I began to be troubled by the frequency with which I had to visit the repair shop. It seemed that every few months something else had gone wrong, and needed to be repaired, or more often, replaced. All of the repairs have been done at an authorized BMW repair center, with only one exception when my passenger seat broke; BMW wanted over six hundred dollars for a repair that someone else did for me for $50.
Dino Belotti, my Service Representative, has been nothing short of fantastic. He made every visit as painless as possible. The problem is, there were far too many visits. I’m sure he’s got a special file in his drawer with my name on it that is significantly thicker than any other in his drawer. Or then again, maybe they are all that thick. One wonders.
As you can see, the list is quite extensive. Too extensive. In fact, despite only driving my M5 about once per month in the last year, the pace of repairs has not slowed down. The last straw was this past weekend, when I drove my M5 for the first time since getting it back from the repair shop the week prior, and it started to rain. Wouldn’t you know, but the wipers fail to function. So for that round trip to the shop I had exactly zero trouble-free drives in my car.
This is what I have had to replace on this car since I bought it new in 2000: * passenger-side mirror (twice) * interior rear-view mirror * clutch (erroneously blamed for noise when I had an engine problem) * flywheel (erroneously blamed for noise when I had an engine problem) * brake rotors * right rear taillight assembly (connectors had corroded/fused) * right rear taillight assembly again (connectors had corroded/fused) * navigation system including head unit * stereo amplifier * center console (twice -- once damaged during another service) * hazard lights switch * front cup holders (filmsy plastic that's a joke... I never use them and they still broke!) * passenger front seat (as noted, this lone repair was done at a non-authorized BMW service center) - the motor (yes, the entire motor. a $17,000 part) * the battery * front passenger-side blinker assembly * driver's side interior door trim * front spoiler * on-board computer * O2 sensor * parking brake * air-conditioning unit * air-conditioning unit again * central locking feature (keys needed to be replaced and reprogrammed) * two replacement windshields (one developed a crack randomly, the other due to impact) - transmission universal joint * gas tank cover actuator * passenger side rear-view mirror (third time) * front spoiler undercarriage panels * coin tray cover * shifter knob (just fell apart) * rubber moulding around the windshield * ABS brake pump (a $3,000 part) * brake bushings * final stage resistor (not sure what this is) * paint on the wheels peeled off, looking absolutely embarrassing. Had them repainted. That de- veloped spider cracks. Had them repainted again. I don’t know whose decision it was to paint wheels. Bad choice. * windshield wipers no longer work * BMW logo just peeled off the front of the car. The irony of this last defect is not lost on me.
With only a mid-level understanding of how cars work, I have to think long and hard about what parts of the car I bought that I haven’t had to pay to replace. The above list reflects only what I could remember at the time of writing this letter. I’m sure there are many more repairs not listed here, but on file at Vista BMW.
I am a huge fan of BMW, and when I bought the M5 for me and the X5 for my wife, I sincerely hoped that we would stay within the BMW family for a long time. I wanted my M5 to be a car that my son could drive some day. I love it that much. But given this track record, it is unfortunately a car I can no longer afford to keep, nor can I in good conscious recommend that anyone I care for buy a BMW.
My repair history has changed me from a fan of BMWs, to someone who cautions others about buying them. I do not know what, if anything, can bring me back into the BMW family, but I thought someone at the highest level of BMW should know of my experience.
There are plenty driving old BMWs.
My 15 year old Volvo suv with V8 runs fine. No leaks either
It’s mainly electrics and the front suspension.
-Proud Toyota Corolla 2006 owner with 0 maintenance issues.
Side-note: service at Tesla used to be golden. When they first started, they all knew they were pricy cars and everyone expected some growing pains leading to QC issues. It was great - they would loan you a top-model performance tesla while your car was in the shop (great up-sell!!!), they were doing far more of their "mobile service" (super handy, they drive to you and fix the car where you are), and you would get one agent that called you almost daily with an update.
As they have expanded more towards mass market they have gone the way of google - trying to automate humans out of the loop. It's basically a miracle to talk to a human at a service center now, everything is "schedule it in-app where you get 200 characters to explain your issue, we send over an estimate, you can't call to discuss it either approve or don't, drop your car, use our SMS platform for 100% of communications because email might "violate your privacy" (read: leave a data trail), handle the fact that different agents get your SMS at different times and some have no idea what the history is, handle that agents now "have to reply to all messages before they leave" and you're getting hurried "here's my panicked update" messages at 11:30 at night.
I personally feel they missed an opportunity to offer "luxury service lanes" for folks buying the luxury line when they went mass market.
I can't stand it when support is crippled by "policy" - half the time I think they can't either.
This forces everyone into the same malfunctioning funnel, and it doesn't appear to work for the employees either.
Tons of respect for Musk's accomplishments, but I hope it doesn't go the way of Google which is famous for nonexistent customer support...
[0] "Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. "
[1] https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
I have a 2011 F150 lariat trim truck, and it is not only swanky on the inside, but isn't phased at all by hauling timber, logs or back woods dirt trails that smaller vehicles get stuck in.
One of my favorite features, though, is that there is NO touchscreen. Every control is a physical button or knob, and I can use any of them from touch and muscle memory alone.
I fully expect the truck to survive another 200k miles or so, but dread the day I have to get something newer.
Mazda is the only company doing it right these days.
But the kicker is that the infotainment system has a touchscreen, but the touch functionality is _disabled_ if the car is moving, because they think it's a hazard to have a person operate it while driving.
Physical buttons are so much more durable.
In this scenario, though, I would be most concerned with scratching the screen. That, And replacing a broken knob is surely cheaper than a gigantic touch screen should it be actually damaged.
Except for one: The Tesla screen. I'd still prefer no screen at all, but Tesla seems to hire software engineers who understand that human factors are a thing, and who seem to have an actual degree in computer science.
Also with gloves. Large parts of the planet may appreciate that.
I think we're going to collectively realize that putting touch screens on everything is a mistake. It prevents you from being able to use an interface unless it has your attention / you are looking at it.
But I also have owned a car in 12 years, have only rented 4 cars in that time, and borrowed a parent's car occasionally when visiting them, so I don't really know if BMW's work is really ahead of many others or if they're more standard features you see in all cars.
The key with owning a BMW is to do all of the maintenance yourself. That brings the cost of ownership back down to planet Earth.
I've replaced the water pump twice, high pressure fuel pump once, and the radiator. Plus a few odds and ends.
If I had paid the dealer for this work, I'd be totally in the hole.
One thing I will give BMW is that they know how to design a chassis. The car has all of the original suspension components and the steering is still as tight as the day I got it. No clunking, no rattles, no bouncing, etc.
Not to mention the little stuff, like the window regulators and sunroof self-destructing, the ignition tumbler corroding and disabling the car's internal bus so the lights freaked out, or the headlight mountings disintegrating.
As the owner of an E46 that I purchased used at 100k and now sits defunct at 155k I'm baffled by your comment. I'd fix everything on that car and four unrelated things would break the next month. "Preventive maintenance" wasn't oil changes and brake pads... it consisted of half-replacing major systems at regular intervals.
Maybe they just got their shit together on the newer models, but yeesh.
VW's commitment to the electric market with ID3 and ID4 is a big deal, given that the success of their Golf/Touareg platforms. VW/Audi fit and finish are second to none, along with their size and ability to compete at the entry-level price point.
Also, it's a really simple car aswell (which is great in my opinion).
I feel like this car has been hyped up so much that once I had the chance to drive it I was massively disappointed.
If you enjoy the Model Y more than the M3, then you prefer it to a car that has much higher cornering performance, much higher acceleration from the 0-60 all the way to 155mph, and of course the M3 is a much rawer experience.
If you don't, that's fine, it's just that the M3 wasn't made for you.
As for the Model 3 performance, I agree.
You should compare it to a BMW X6 or 6 GT, both of which are also not sportscars but still on the sporty end of the SUV like spectrum.
If you want to compare a fun to drive Tesla with a BMW I would take the Model S and the M5, both are large comfortable saloons designed to be fast.
I think I've seen people advertising, literally, "Ship your brand new Tesla to me, and I'll get the body work/alignment perfect and ship it on to you" services. Not sure how real, or valid, but something of an indictment.
> - Tesla's false promises on Autopilot and Full Self Driving is a disgrace. They are at-least 20 years away from anything resembling close to L4, but still somehow siphon $8k from buyers with a false promise
Yeah, at this point it's almost Kickstarter-esque (for better, and worse).
Hah! This kind of service exists for top-tier saxophones. Spend $6,000 or whatever for a Selmer Paris horn, then take it to a technician to "set up" the springs, pads, etc.
Nevertheless it is pretty sad when GM is knocking out junk with better body/panel QC.
You would think they'd have learned something about manufacturing mass market automobiles in 100 years of business...
If GM developed a tight-tolerance process & machinery for the Corvette, it's probably a wash (capital cost vs standardization of process) to just apply it to their other lines, albeit relaxing the specs to increase yield.
I'm not saying GM has been innovating continuously, but my experience with long-lived processes is that instantaneous improvement is far harder than continual improvement (iterating fixes), due to the specific variables and lagging feedback in play.
Decrease quality, retain enough customers, make more profit.
It's the same for TVs. Spend 2000€ for an OLED TV, then 300€ to have it calibrated.
You can blame today's rushed run-fast-break-things work culture that push engineers and line workers to their limits. Especially true of what I know from people that work/have worked at Tesla.
As a history - old 1960s Mustang, 1990s Dodge, 1990s Pontiac, 2000s MB ML AMG, 2000s Ford(s), 1990s Jaguar, 2000s Suzuki, 2000s Honda(s) (I loved the Element. Great car with small kids - if they made a new one I would buy it!), 2010s MB C-Class, 2010s Porsche(s). Hum. I am missing something...oh well.
My brother worked at a car dealership a few years ago. He'd sometimes have people driving some 20+ year old economy car asking to test drive a Nissan GT-R. When he told them they would have to run a credit check before even doing the test drive, the customers changed their mind.
Did he perhaps lose a couple possibly genuine sales? Maybe, but likely not.
Heck, I wanted to create an appointment to test drive a Subaru BRZ and I had to put down a $500 deposit to "reserve the car so they don't sell it before then", which would have been 100% refundable if I chose not to buy the car. I did end up buying the car, but they never charged a deposit at all. My brother said that they probably never even actually recorded my credit card number anywhere, and the supposed requirement for a deposit exists purely to eliminate joy riders.
This is only true if you prioritize car ownership. I have a crappy car that isn’t fun to drive, and I’m happy with that.
For example, switching from an expensive Audi car with fantastic handling to a mid-range Mazda diesel because it's much cheaper to run. Or because you live in a city and decide that you want a smaller car for easier parking.
Or because you want to switch to an EV, and can't afford a Tesla. I'm sure a Nissan Leaf is a lot less enjoyable to drive than many similarly priced ICE cars.
I know it'll be a downgrade from my current car, but my wife can't help but to stare longly at the empty HOV lane during rush hour.
In a more realistic and practical way, an EV will end up being the "faster" car after all.
But it is laughably far from the “best car [I] have ever driven" - which was the quote I was responding to, and which is the basis for the parents’ argument.
I also miss my 1974 Datsun 240z. What a cool car that was.
I don't think that encompasses "pretty much everyone".
I wouldn't really call it better, just... different.
Out of the people I know, most say the best car they ever drove was usually something incredibly engaging and fun, but unreliable and terribly unsafe by modern standards.
My dad's 70, and my entire lifetime he's never shut up about how great the little british sports cars he drove in his 20s were. Most exciting car he's owned by a long-shot in my lifetime was a Saab 9-2 Aero.
I reckon there's two peaks, one when you're young and dumb enough to just go for what you want, and again when you're old and rich enough to buy what you want again. Between that everyone's hauling around kids or just trying to save money.
I borrowed a 2019 Tesla 3 last summer from a friend while he was out of the country. Really fun, and I overall really enjoyed the electronics on it.
Afterward I had my finger over the buy button to order a Tesla, but after finding out that in my state, the insurance for someone with an entirely clean driving record in their 30's was still around $400/month, making the total cost including loan nearly $1000/month. I just didn't need that type of expense in my life right now, given I work from home (I made this decision Oct 2019, and in retrospect, wow how right I was).
This spring, I bought a 2005 Porsche Boxster instead for $15k. What a car! It's not as fast as the Tesla, but is way more fun to drive, turns more heads, and has held up significantly better than I can imagine a Tesla holding up. It doesn't have auto driving, but even on a 13 hours road trip you want to drive it the entire time. More comfortable in every regard, with a much better suspension too!
Fastest: The one I own now, a Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 (the one with the 350HP supercharged AMG motor.) Yeah, a Chrysler sports car is weird. Other than raw power/speed (and styling, which I love, but is admittedly polarizing), it's not the best car I've owned, but it's very good in most ways, fun to drive, and suits me. I like it enough that this is my second one, after the first got totalled a few years ago. Impossible to nap in at a rest area on a road trip, though.
Coolest: I owned a Ferrari Dino 308gt4 for 25 years, and it was my daily driver for nearly 10 years. Italian cars are an illness, but a fun one. Unless you're rich (I'm not) you need to be able to wrench most maintenance and repairs yourself, and need a good non-dealer mechanic to pick up what you can't. Not really that fast, but everyone thinks it is. Traded a year-old RX-7 and $1500 for it in 1988. If you're willing to put up with poor build quality, go buy an old Italian car - it'll be way cooler than a Tesla.
Most fun: Fiat X1/9. Tiny little targa that really is a baby Ferrari - owning this car first saved me tons by recognizing many Ferrari parts were identical to Fiat parts with the decimal point moved over. (e.g.: identical thermostat: $8 Fiat part, $80 Ferrari part!) Proof a car doesn't have to be fast to be fun, but I eventually added a stroker crank and big-valve heads with dual Webers anyway. Bought for $1500 when I was in college and taught me enough about Italian cars to make buying the Ferrari possible.
Best at speed: '91 Alfa Romeo 164S - the big 4-door sedan. The S is not just a badge - probably a third of the car is different. That's fine until you needed parts shipped from Italy b/c they didn't stock them in the US. Wonderful car, though. Definitely the best-looking motor I've owned, with all those polished aluminum intake runners like a nest of metal snakes on top. The first time I drove it on the Houston Tollway, it felt like I was going about 80, but my eyes disagreed - I looked down at the speedo and saw 120!). Really nice family road trip car.
Most reliable: Chrysler again - 1992 Le Baron 4-door with the beautiful jewel-like Mitsubishi 3.0 V-6. Picked it up as a reliable solid car for my wife when our second was born (killer deal, $2500 under book), and it was without question the most reliable car we've ever owned. It wasn't exciting, but was such a good car that we wound up keeping it for many years longer than we'd planned. We put about 130K on the car with pretty much nothing but brakes and oil changes.
Best quirky car: '87 Merkur Xr4Ti. Bought new for my wife. Fun, roomy (absolutely amazing what will fit in the hatch with the seats folded down), quick, comfortable. Would have kept this one much longer if a boneheaded mechanic hadn't zapped the electrical system. Ain't nobody got time for electrical demons!
Most disappointing: Oldsmobile Aurora. Beautiful car, wonderful motor. Really heavy though, and despite handling pretty well, it couldn't hide that weight. Seats looked nice, but were impossible to get comfortable in. Mileage was barely better than the Ferrari. Had minor electrical demons from near-new. Wanted to like it a lot more, but didn't keep it too long.
Best all-around: Strange to be typing this, but 2007 Chrysler Pacifica (crossover, not the newer minivan). Bought new for my wife at only $2000 more than a good used one, but with a much-improved engine, nicer options, and an unlimited powertrain warranty, which was a good thing, as it ate transmissions every 2-3 years. Without question the best thought-out car we've ever owned. It does everything, and does it well. Surprisingly quick with the big 4.0 V6, roomy (originally planned to get a trailer hitch to help kids move back and forth to college, but never needed it, since everything fits inside), comfortable (the best roadtrip car ever!), stable at speed (will cruise all day at 100-120 mph (not really that fast on many Texas highways), amazing brakes, and freakishly good gas mileage (36 @ 80mph with the first transmission, 30-32 with later ones). You don't expect it, but it's really nice to drive. Other than the transmission problems (actually caused by motor mount failures), the car was dead reliable. Sadly totalled by a Jeep-driving "wench with a winch" rear-ending us at a stoplight.
So yeah, we've had some weird cars, but quirky can be fun. Counting the kids' cars, we've also had a Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Isuzu, Ford, Hyundai, Saturn (probably worst overall), and Plymouth/Mitsubishi, but although almost all of them were good, most aren't really standouts for the "best" list. (Though the Maxima, RX-7 Turbo , and Conquest come close.)
Maybe we'll pick up an off-lease Stelvio Quadrifoglio or Trackhawk in a few years, who knows? More likely one of those than a Tesla...
I knew these types of cars must appeal to some people but i've never "met" anyone who likes\loves the design
Family had a variety of Honda and Toyota sedans I tried.
Would have to agree that Model 3 is by far the best car I have driven. I wouldn’t trade it for any other car in the world, except maybe a Model Y.
Then there’s the service. I got an indicator on the massive screen telling me that the radiator needed service. I called the Service center and was told by two different people, “that’s not possible because our cars don’t have radiators.” I said, “look, I’m not the technician here, you are; but, I am reading you the message that the car has on the screen.” Finally got someone who acknowledged that, yes, Tesla’s do have radiators and I brought it in. When I picked it up, the Air Conditioning didn’t work. In the middle of Summer. I called them and told them and they told me there were no openings for service for 6 weeks. After arguing with the service manager for 20 minutes on the phone, he agreed to have me come in the next day and, sure enough, they’d forgotten to reconnect it when they were working on it.
Was it the worst car I’ve ever owned? Honestly, it might have been. When I factor in that it cost over $90K, it’s definitely the worst car purchase I’ve ever made.
I put over 200k on my 2013 Corolla, and that car still felt new except for a plastic pin that broke the first week on the rear driver quarter panel. I was on a road trip with my wife from Houston to Vegas and heard a flapping while on the highway, I pulled off and saw the panel was loose, I pulled off at the next town, got some super glue from a pharmacy and a stick from the side of the road, and that held solid until I traded it in for $2500 off a Chevy Trax this year (we moved to Upstate NY a few years ago, and we now need the AWD).
I’ve been tempted for Tesla many times. Sure being green is cool but the complexity of engineering puts me off.
Electric cars have less moving parts. They should be more reliable and well built than a gas guzzler but I couldn’t say that for Tesla. Too many bells and whistles for my need.
Comma.ai satisfies my hands off highway autonomous needs for <$1000 on my 3 year old RAV4 hybrid.
Just great value for money.
The only things that went wrong were a speeding ticket and an exploded tire after 5000 miles. In hindsight it was a stupid trip to take - the people at the tire shop in Arizona were split between laughing and looking very concernced - but that little truck kept my self-sabotage from turning into a disaster and made the whole thing a fun experience.
I had completely unrealistic expectations about what a car should be able to do, and it lived up to them. Even after the 200,000 miles that usually marks the end of a car's life.
In general, if you want to find reliable cars, look at the old models that you still see on the road. Those are the ones that'll last awhile on the cheap. I still see plenty of Toyotas, Hondas, and Chevies from the '80s puttering around, and it warms the cockles of my heart whenever I do. I get the feeling I would have had the same experience with an old S-10 or Ranger. I wish modern pickups came in smaller sizes...
Musk's solution to Tesla being unable to make "Full Self Driving" work is to redefine "Full Self Driving" as a slightly better driver assistance system and blame regulators.[1]
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1121787_tesla-full-self...
I have heard many, many Tesla owners complain about build quality, but others say it's fine. It appears to be hit or miss, which is typical for a poorly optimized manufacturing process. Some cars come off the line in good shape and others have ridiculous problems or bad panel alignment, etc. Tesla's support is also apparently a fucking disaster, which is a common pattern with Silicon Valley companies... even large and cash-flush ones like Apple and Google. SV does not do support or customer service after the purchase.
Elon's behavior on Twitter is nuts and makes me concerned about him. His COVID nonsense is the worst so far. Hopefully he holds it together long enough for Starship to be fully operational before he completely loses his mind.
while other automotive manufacturers have robust supply chains and networks, tesla doesnt. most of your parts (bearings, panels, drivetrain) all come from California and only from the factory. It means they can save a ton of money by foregoing a traditional network but in return, repair shops are often on the hook for weeks or months of outstanding invoices waiting for parts, and have to gingerly explain to customers why their new model X will take 4 weeks to get the window fixed.
This isnt to say Tesla uses a ton of custom parts! chargers and electronics are all rebranded (or stock) webasto. parts for the brakes are Ensco or industry-standard (mexican) forged parts. you can work on these yourself but god in heaven help you if Tesla finds out you didnt go through them. In some cases parts for the car are significantly better in the aftermarket. You can improve steering and handling significantly if you eschew Elons pet rebranded control arms.
From what Ive heard, be very careful with the giant television in the center console. repair parts (if youre not from the golden coast) can take months, installation or replacement is a bear, and the controller for the unit has to be shipped back to Tesla before they will even send a new one.
I don't see why all the fanboys get their panties in a knot when people point this out. To everyone who actually knows anything about cars or manufacturing it's kind of a nothing-burger that everyone expects will slowly go away with time.
It's a low cost design, not a great design.
I'm not a car guy and never even touched a tesla so I'm curious what's bad in them.
But I designed interior parts, so it's my own Engineering take. Tesla's were not competitive at all. The gaps between panels were so bad, you could stick your finger in it. That's not just an appearance issue, kids and adults will mess around with large gaps and put stuff inside.
And features in the interior were non existent. (Especially for a luxury car)
I guess meaning is relative so 2020 luxury means curves, a tablet and skateboard battery pack.
I guess that's inconvenient to mention?
b) You are commenting on an article that talks about a Tesla loosing its roof. That's a new one on me, and I'd thought I'd seen it all back when I was an auto mechanic.
But the thing is, I've never had any issues that rendered the car undriveable or unsafe, and service has always been a joy to work with. Every problem I've encountered has been addressed quickly and effectively with no hassle or charge. So, I'm willing to forgive some of the rough edges, and I suspect this is why they get such good customer satisfaction ratings despite the relatively high number of issues.
Back in the old days when I lived far away from a service center, they once drove hundreds of miles with a flatbed to come pick up my car, and dropped off a free loaner at my house while my car was in the shop, then came back and returned my car and picked up the loaner a few days later. (The loaner was also a nicer Tesla than the one I owned.) They really do go above and beyond to resolve issues as pleasantly and conveniently as possible.
I did test drive a 2013 S and I decided to wait until they matured at that point but now they seem to have gotten their act together in most cases.
They're actually on par with Audi here in Norway when it comes to customer satisfaction so it's not all bad [1]. Only Toyota, volvo and BMW beat them. They had a dip due to an overcrowded service department at the launch of the Model 3, but they hired a ton of people and trained them.
Now this roof falling off is one area they could improve greatly, factory Q&A. There should be a bumpy test track where they take all their vehicles for a control drive before shipping them to eliminate issues like that roof.
[1] https://www.tu.no/artikler/tesla-gjor-et-byks-i-kundetilfred...
I don't know about you, but my expectation for what is nominally a luxury car would be to have paint standards better than British Leyland in the 70s.
There is nothing about a Tesla that suggests they are trying to make it appear luxurious. Where are the expensive materials and ornamentation?
They are trying to make a futuristic car.
It's like how the Tacoma has been the turd of it's segment on paper for 20+yr but still flies off the shelves. Clearly the metric don't tell the whole story. In both cases there's an emotional value proposition that's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
And since I know in advance that this comment is gonna piss off a hell of a lot of people here (if I had to pick a demographic that will have both a Tacoma and a Tesla in their driveway HN would be about the perfect fit) I'll ask in advance if any of those people would like to tell me why I'm so wrong.
I must know more. What's wrong with the Tacoma?
Basically, Toyota has been too afraid to touch it (lest kill the golden goose) for approaching twenty years.
I haven't seen a Tesla interior so when you say "all controls" it's a bit concerning. I'm assuming you're talking only of non-driving related control...
Everything else is in the touch screen UI.
edit: I bit more than I originally thought, but not much. (gear selector, lights, and cruise control also have manual interfaces)
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/JO/model_s_eu...
[0] https://www.motortrend.com/cars/subaru/outback/2020/2020-sub...
They do. You can control many things with voice in Tesla.
I don't know the comprehensive list of things you can use it for, but so far I used it to:
* Change temperature
* Play a specific song
* Set navigation to a new destination
I didn't put switching music tracks (next&previous)/adjusting volume on that list, because those can be easily performed using the scrollable button on the steering wheel.
It's like playing an old text adventure without the manual, so you don't know the verbs. It uses too much thinking to try to come up with different words while also trying to drive.
We can argue how far away that is etc, but that's the mission statement.
Yet they continue to manufacture cars with legacy, tactile steering wheels. Curious.
That's still required by federal (!) law, cf. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/393.209
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...
[0] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/why-is-mazda-removing-all-touch...
[1] https://jalopnik.com/honda-follows-mazda-by-ditching-some-to...
Then I read about red light is specifically used in car dashboard lighting and airplane cockpits because it helps with night vision. What I thought at first was just an ugly colour choice was actually a very subtle design decision to help while driving at night.
It always reminds me how complicated and multifaceted good design is. There are always trade offs to consider, but minimalism as a design trend often seems a little too willing to ignore those trade offs and will sacrifice traits like safety, efficiency and flexibility for the sake of cost and simplicity.
Given that there is a stream of not-red lights shining at me in the opposite lane, I've been skeptical of this claim since Nissan did it in the 300Z like 30 years ago. It's there to look cool, not be useful. There's a subtle design lesson in there as well, I'm just not sure what it is.
We were instructed to bring flashlights, but cover the lens with a red layer, to keep the pupils from closing too much, so we could both look at stars but read our star charts.
The headlights in the other lane don't disqualify the benefits of using red lighting inside the car.
I don't even have a Tesla, I have a 2013 Prius which has an array of buttons for everything instead. The only knobs are the miniscule (and hard to turn) volume and tune buttons on the radio. They made a token effort but placing indentations on the heater temp and fan speed buttons but after five years I still can't operate anything on the center console without taking my eyes off the road.
I love almost everything about my Prius but the person who designed the interior to look like a Starfleet shuttlecraft should be shot.
Touchscreens in cars are a disaster, in general. They're a bad technology for the use case. They're more so in a Tesla, because Tesla relies on them far more heavily than any other manufacturer, and gives users no alternative for most functions.
Cars should be designed to minimize touchscreen use, not maximize it.
My points was that designing the interior of a car like a cockpit becomes kinda pointless when the driver isn't doing much driving.
I don't think anyone believes that Tesla will have actual self-driving cars, which don't require constant driver attention, within the lifetime of the cars currently being produced.
But obviously Elon is the CEO and you are not, so if you are right then it will be his failure.
In fact, the reliance on a touch screen is why I've stricken Tesla off the list while shopping for an EV. I currently drive an old BMW and I love the interface. There are physical buttons for everything and there's no unnecessary fluffy stuff.
The most-modern vehicle I've driven whose interface I've liked was a Skoda Fabia.
On my dad's old land rover, you can literally operate the radio wearing blindfolds because everywhere is simply placed. It responds instantly, draws no power, and shut up when you aren't using it. His current car just gets in your way, even if it has more features.
Not a friend, just a former coworker I didn’t keep in contact with so I don’t have any way to follow up.
Touchscreens cut costs because you can ship the same hardware to all SKUs and change features in software. Buttons need to be added or replaced with fillers depending on the options that each car has.
I'm not saying that makes it excusable but I think the scale is important, other major car manufacturers have been around 4-5x as long.
By the mid 90s the domestics had more or less closed the gap. They just didn't apply the techniques and processes to the product lines they didn't care about (i.e. economy cars, they were selling SUVs hand over fist after all). And if you look at MRSPs for foreign and domestic economy cars throughout the 90s the prices more or less reflect the respective OEM's level of investment in those product lines. If you wanted an economy car you bought a Civic. If you wanted a shitbox you bought an Escort for less money.
I completely disagree with that. I bought a Cadillac in 2012. Its build quality was lower than anything I've seen from BMW, Audi or Volvo. I'm talking about really inconsistent panel (internal and exterior) gaps and misc vehicle rattles. It's also worth mentioning the Cadillac was the most expensive vehicle of the group and very much a line that GM cared about. I have no idea how Ford is doing, but GM is still not comparable to German/Swedish/Korean manufacturers.
I would even argue ford's model of manufacturing turned the last remnats of workshop based work into the mass producing factory.
They've only been mass manufacturing for about 4 years now; previous models are low volume models with a lot of hand assembly.
Musk says that manufacturing is a couple of orders of magnitude harder than designing and building prototypes. He's learning these lessons the hard way. If you can survive the lesson, it's the best way to learn them. Little consolation to those who buy the lemons during the learning period, though.
This is also a tale about America. Tesla's Chinese factory gets first place on a similar survey to the JD Powers initial quality survey that Tesla America got last place in. America just doesn't have the deep well of manufacturing knowledge that a new company like Tesla can draw on.
This is what would worry me as a potential customer. That the manufacturer selling me their product considers such disasters acceptable in order to ship a few more units. It's not that often lately than manufacturers are willing to do this (think GM ignition key scandal, rather than VW pollution cheating).
Is this serious? America has been offshoring domestic auto manufacturing for a couple decades now. The people who worked in those factories didn’t just die, they’re mostly still available for hire. There is no metric in manufacturing knowledge where America lags that far behind other first world countries, let alone the rest of the world.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/america-military-...
[2] https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/05/22/americas-ind...
There's an episode of This America Life about it: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
Tesla aren't starting from nothing, they're able to use all the existing knowledge about putting together a factory to build product.
Conversely, do _you_ really think that - evenly applying an adhesive to an incredibly smooth surface (repeatably) to bond it to a frame and have it undergo twisting, vibration, and extremes of heat and cold, aerodynamic effects / pressure, exposure to moisture, UV and atmospheric contaminants and retaining its adhesion for the expected life of the vehicle -
isn't advanced engineering?
All Tesla have to do is "buy the right glue", and then "make sure it gets put on correctly". That is a bit of production engineering but seriously it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in, and then check that it's been done.
>>> check that it's been done
Seems like they cut some corners here.
I'm not saying that attaching glass to metal is at the same level of complexity as semiconductor fab, but it's a far cry from using some Elmer's Glue to stick two pieces of construction paper together.
And yes, I'm pretty sure Tesla didn't create their own adhesive for the purpose, but I'm equally sure 3M doesn't have an off-the-shelf "Model Y Roof Adhesive, 500ml" product. Or perhaps they did, but the engineering constraints to develop it were those of normal passenger cars, sunroofs, etc., not taking into account the various forces acting upon a 4'x7' sheet of glass at highway speeds, or perhaps the temperatures or speeds of an industrial applicator robot (or conversely, the slowness of a human applicator).
To go back to your original assertion, no, it's not hard to lay down a bead of adhesive, place the glass in and check that it's been done. If in fact the failure mode was 'Failure to apply adhesive', well, that's a fairly egregious and easy to spot problem. If it's 'adhesive failed for unknown reasons after a short period of time', that's an altogether different problem.
Repeat this step with literally every weld, seal, screw, or other component. Then get it right for hundreds of thousands of cars regardless of the condition of the factory line and workers/robots.
de Havilland was making airplanes for 33 years when the famous Comet crash occurred.
Manufacturing is a learning process. There's a lot of engineering in every detail, and there will always be room for improvement.
I suspect there’s some sort of NIH thing going on.
Ever talked to somebody with little to no software experience who will tell you how easy it should be to just slap some code together to build a the next Google? It's like that.
I used to build test equipment for aerospace and safety critical equipment for coal mining. I'm well aware that even with rigorous control you're going to get some errors. But "the glass fell out because we glued it wrong" isn't a normal manufacturing error. It's a mistake that requires more than one process to fail.
Which is stupid in a world where you can drawn on 150+ years of manufacturing experience.
Sure, in IT and tech it might work, but those fields are relatively young.
Your logic suggests either a) they haven't bothered hiring people experienced in quality control for car manufacturing, or b) they have, and yet their cars are _still_ this badly made. Neither is a good look.
I don't know what the Tesla culture is like, but if it skews toward the tech "move fast and break things", just hiring experienced QA folks won't magically get everyone onboard to strict, controlled processes.
I drive a Subaru now. If I could get an EV version of my present car with comparable range, I'd buy it today and never look back. They say by 2035 they'll have electric versions of all their major models[1], so I guess... sometime in the next 15 years, for me?
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30613610/subaru-crossover...
If they made a Crosstrek/Forester-type vehicle with 300-400 miles of all-electric range, kept the ground clearance, roof rack, and usual interiors, I've always imagined that those vehicles would sell like hotcakes. I know I'd be interested in immediately trading up, in a way that I probably won't be otherwise for a long time.
They do one thing - they make solidly reliable 4-wheel-drive cars - and they do it quite well. But I've never seen them be the first on any new thing the industry is doing, no matter how good it is.
Market share of new BEVs in Germany, January 2020 to September 2020:
Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche: 33%
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi: 18%
Hyundai-Kia: 13%
Tesla: 12%
Mercedes: 9%
BMW: 8%
You don't have to wait, the competition is already outproducing and outselling Tesla in Europe. And all of these car companies have new BEV models in the pipeline that are going to further erode Tesla's marketshare, because Tesla has nothing in the pipeline for the European market over the next couple of years.
I think the list for Canada is even smaller, though I am not sure.
Here's hoping some more of those come to the States soon.
Producing cars in itself is not a new process from a manufacturing perspective, especially not the non EV parts. (like body work and structural work).
What kind of quality control does tesla have, when it is not able to reliably produce cars with the same finish and fit. Most manufacturers have been able to do this for atleast 30 years. it is not like the industry doesn't have solutions to tackle these issues at scale.
I don't think Tesla deserves a free pass with these issues, but I also think they should be expected.
Tesla gets held to a separate standard, and excuses get made for it, because people want it to succeed. I want it to succeed, too, but my definition of success includes making reliable cars. (And preferably sacking Elon Musk, but that's unrelated.)
Given there are a lot more of them made, seems like they are getting better.
(I am an owner of Model 3 and find it to be a joy of a car.)
Technically, this is QC (quality control), not quality assurance.
Toyota, GM, etc are sitting on mature product lines which are growing a few percentage a year. They can roll out a new assembly line and spend months fine tuning it before turning it up and shutting down the old one. Tesla has no previous assembly line to lean on.
It's pretty clear Tesla as a company values growth over delivering the best quality product.
The flip side of this is I've heard a fair number of people suggest that Tesla's service is good... stupid slow but eventually good.
Sure, I thought they had been pretty clear they felt reaching volume was critical to making BEV technology competitive (a larger revenue base over which to amortize development)
I hope it works better for them and their clients than it worked for Boeing and the 737 MAX operators and passengers...
It's so slow though that I don't think it can even be considered "good" anymore. Ok fine they eventually fix issues, but at the cost of you having a defective product for weeks/months?
I really want to buy a Model Y, but I just almost had to push back the closing date on buying a new house because it took longer to have somebody in their solar panel department send a single e-mail than it took for the bank to get me a mortgage. It took a lot of stress, over a dozen e-mails and about 3 hours on the phone before I was able to eventually speak to a human to resolve my issue. The whole experience has soured the brand for me, and from googling around my case is far from an outlier.
This luxury sports car business model. Expensive sports cars are very unreliable and delicate. But they are so expensive that providing very good custom service and repair after the sale is worth it.
They are trying to transform into a market where routine million car recalls kills the business and eats all profits. New cars are expected to work.
Are you being held against your will?
Tesla fundamentally disagrees with established ways of manufacturing cars and is still approaching it as a SV startup. They chase growth numbers, rush new models in production, will put home depot scrap in the cars just to keep the lines moving, and have no quality culture.
Company needs to go over very fundamental philosophy changes for issues like that go away. Just the time itself is not enough.
Japanese or Korean auto-markers turned around their quality over time, by heavily investing into that. Tesla shows no signs of that.
The argument that Tesla is not investing in improving quality is simply not true. Things like casting make far more exact parts and very repeatable. It also reduces 100s of parts, less variation, less manufacturing steps and thus mistakes.
They are investing in the most expensive paint shop you can buy in the market right now for their new factories and they just renovated the paint shop in Fremont (since then I have not heard of bad paint quality).
They defiantly need to do more but its unfair to say they are doing nothing.
I went along with a family member to a Model 3 test drive recently and it was surprising just how many little defects were there, considering the price of the car. While paint finish or panel fit isn't going to ruin a car overall, the fact the big easy-to-spot things are so clearly flawed does make one pause to consider how rigorous the QA is for the parts under the surface.
Your doctor doesn't take your oral history for fun, it's data. Now, just like a medical doctor we should weigh anecdotal data accordingly, but it's still data.
Here for example we can tell BMW/Audi reportedly sometimes make production errors. Tesla reportedly don't always make significant (to the commenter) production errors.
Sure, that's not terribly useful. It's still data.
/bugbear
The doctor takes your oral history to assess your health. Knowing that $x percent of family tree has high blood pressure means they can more accurately assess your risk of high blood pressure. For the population of “literally you”, your oral history is data. Now, if the next patient came in, and your doctor said “well, the last person in here has high blood pressure, you might have it to”, that’s an anecdote.
Similarly, telling somebody ~”My instance of $product worked great” isn’t really useful info for them. That’s a sample size of 1 out of a massive number.
Plus, Tesla has very high consumer satisfaction and low maintenance cost. Is that enough data for you?
Apropos of anything else, I'd not be so surprised that the cars Tesla probably hand picked for test drive events are the cream of the crop.
Aren't these components that should be ok at least after 17 years of Tesla?
After watching Rich Rebuilds on YouTube I came to the conclusion they are just not very good cars.
It's a good stock to ride the sucker wave on though.
O, please. I own both BMW and Tesla, and while BMW is more refined car, service and quality miles better with Tesla. BMW gets obscure error codes, and then dealership lazily tries to fix it for weeks (this year BMW spent 7 weeks at the shop, last year 3 weeks). Tesla needs service, technician comes and fixes it on your driveway!
You can buy an equally boring looking car to the Tesla 3, say a loaded Honda Accord, and avoid the finicky bullshit that comes with the BMW.
Unless the parts aren't in stock. Then technician comes and fixes it on your driveway, 2-3 months later!
Can you explain this, what compared unfavorably
I remain to be convinced, have at it ...
The Model 3 wins on acceleration, though, no question about it.
Actually, Tesla nixed essentially their entire QA for the production line years ago because it was slowing down production.
I have a Model 3 so I'm not just some hater! Tesla's Customer Service is seriously bad.
Complaints about Tesla's fit and finish extend back to before they were mass producing vehicles, when they theoretically should have been able to hand fit them. So I really don't buy any argument about it being a problem with scaling up; they just seem incapable or disinterested in fixing this.
That's not true. Similar things happen with all car makers, but if you pick up your car from a car dealership, the dealer will quietly fix the cosmetic issues because they want to avoid a bad reputation.
Calling a blown off roof a cosmetic issue tells a lot about your expectations on car quality.
They’ve been around a while now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I think at this point the obvious conclusion is that they just don’t care. Like, it’s not like Toyota locks their process engineers in a basement. If they wanted to hire experts it’s just a question of money.
This seems likely to go badly for them as competition heats up.
Really, Tesla would probably benefit enormously from Musk stepping back and becoming president or CEO-in-name-only.
People keep saying this but I always see way more critiques of Tesla and Elon than the opposite.
My opinion on the matter is people love pushing back on whatever appears popular. Whether or not it's just a few idiots on the internet with little to no real influence and transform into the powerful strawman others love taking down.
I have no skin in the Tesla game. I'm not much of a car guy. But I just recently bought a new vehicle and I ruled out Tesla because of that story from last month. I was looking at cars when that story came out. I don't know if stories like flying roofs, and the wood and the other stuff only make the news because they're Tesla and maybe these things don't happen all that often, but that non-standard parts thing really made me steer clear of Tesla while shopping for cars last month. It seems like so many of these things just don't happen to other cars?
I'd be totally comfortable with the wood load spreaders from last month's stories or the fact that some of the cars are built in tent factories. I don't think those issues are blockers. I do think they have a general need to improve their quality and fit/finish, but those are in some cases things that must come from experience and track record of mass production, but I think those are unrelated to scrappiness.
(Disclaimer: I am short $TSLA on the basis of comparative valuation only, not because they are incapable. For that, I'm short $NKLA.)
What are you comparing the valuation to? Other car companies? Revenue? I ask because when there are so many emotional investors in a stock like Tesla, I've found it hard to rationalize the price. For that reason, I'm nervous about going short or long for any length of time. That said, I've had a lot of success day trading the price action.
I also find it somewhat telling that Tesla sold $5BB of $TSLA into the market in early Sept. That might suggest that they thought the near-term market conditions were as good as they were going to get for a while. This is (IMO) a wonderful company with an excessively premium market cap.
Can someone in the automotive space comment if there’s really no legal/regulatory consequence for haphazardly jury rigging stuff on the fly like this?
People have lost a boatload of money doing that.
Or were you being sarcastic?
Thus, recalls are only used by other automakers for problems discovered after a unit has been manufactured and shipped, not for problems discovered during the assembly of a unit. For example: if vehicles 0-99 were shipped before a problem was discovered with a component in unit 100, vehicles 0-99 gets recalled, and vehicle 100 stays on the factory lot until the replacement component is ready and installed. Vehicles 100-125 might get built before the replacement component is ready depending on how the automaker has structured their factory line and whether the component is a critical component, and if so they also remain on the factory lot. Vehicles 126+ are assembled with the replacement component so they get shipped after assembly is complete.
Very Very doubtful. There is some accountant math that goes into those types of decisions. If that car made it all the way to the buy off ride and into manufacturing with those components and it was found later that they failed faster than expected or didn't always work quite right. They are not going to hold those cars back unless it causes a catastrophic and probably fatal, to the occupants, failure.
Otherwise they will hope it will fail outside of warranty and charge your for it.
If the dealership sees a particular failure mode and reports it to GM, then they’ll issue a TSB (or maybe even trigger a recall). But in doing so, they’ll only pay a fixed fee to the dealer.
Instead, what happens is that the dealer has an incentive to build a local knowledge base on how to fix the common problems but not share it with GM as they can bill the repairs hourly.
(The specific failure mode he used as an example was inadequate weatherproofing in door electrics. The local fix was to pop-rivet the bottom of a plastic container in the right place so as to improve weather resistance)
Car manufacturers don't do that anymore. They learned from Ford's mistake with the Pinto. Also, it costs significantly more to replace parts by recall than it does to simply hold back vehicles at the factory, on the order of 10-20x as much $$$, since there are additional legal and regulatory requirements associated with recalls, and generally releasing a car with known flawed parts means treble damages come into play in any legal proceeding (meaning, 3x damages awarded to the plaintiff).
If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
Do you drive with a smartphone now?
> If I could buy a Cybertruck that functioned without a connection to the mothership, I would.
They work offline: https://www.quora.com/Can-you-still-drive-a-Tesla-if-its-off...
Everybody always brings that up. I don't love it, but yes I do, and I trust Apple more than I trust Tesla.
> They work offline
They somewhat work, and it's not clear for how long. If it goes a year without being able to connect, is it fine with that? Or will it stop working until it's able to update?
https://www.mazda.co.uk/cars/mazda-mx-30/
Not sure how much “out” does it have to be to be considered “out”.
Things that people like about EVs and Teslas specifically: 1) The driving experience is very special. Startling acceleration, single-pedal driving, near-silent low speed operation. 2) Operating costs are very low. Next to no routine maintenance, inexpensive "fuel". 3) Class-leading safety due to low CoG and lack of engine in the crumple zone. 4) Great software that is updated frequently over the air. 5) Arguably the best proto-self-driving/advanced driver assistance that gets better over time. 6) Hands down the best charging infrastructure and experience.
The build quality issues are real, but tend to be overblown by the media. The looks, inside and out, are definitely polarizing. I personally love the minimalism but would like better materials. But it's inarguably different, and for lots of people that's exciting in and of itself.
Is that why I always see Tesla cars continually flashing their brake lights? Is it even possible to just coast?
Maybe regenerative braking is also when the brake lights turn on.
My comment was also referring to the drain on the battery due to resistive heating used to warm up the cabin...not range efficiency on the battery due to cold temperature.
My Googling shows that Tesla went away from resistive to heat pump in the model Y...so, I think my comment is germane to Tesla except model Y.
And 4) could go either way:) no one is able to disable bits remotely on most cars, or at least until BMW get their subscription service going for heated seats and radio stations.
Wow
Speaking for myself, I actually quite like the design of the Teslas. They are very smooth and have a quite different approach than most mainstream makers. I dislike especially the overly edgy brutal look with huge radiator openings, which has crept into the car market since 2010. Maybe it is me being a physicist, but I can also appreciate how the design maximizes aerodynamic efficiency, even if that means other compromises. Which is partly responsible for Teslas leading in range tests. As I like simple elegant shapes, I appreciate how from the front edge of the windscreen to the very back of the car, there is a single smooth curvature of the roofline.
The members of the sub are generally quite reasonable, but it's consistently pruned of content that could be damaging to Tesla. I read it for many years until that started to creep me out.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/j6jc7w/a_forma...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/136377865@N05/sets/72157658490...
The suspension is the one part in a car, which is easily inspectable by just looking at it. And which has not changed much over time. Any competent mechanic should be able to check it. If there were fundamental issues with Tesla suspensions, the net would be full of reports about it and of course authorities would have acted, but beyond that one crusader against Tesla, no one has claimed they are unsafe. Actually, by most accounts, the Model 3 is one of the safest cars you can buy.
However, the suspension of any car is a vital part that is exposed to the outside and exposed to wear constantly. While most electric cars don't require much maintenance - Tesla does not have a maintenance plan any more - the brakes and suspension I would have checked by a mechanic at least biyearly, as this is a very important mechanical part you want to be serviced before there is a failure.
2. Someone has observed a large number of otherwise undamaged Teslas with this peculiar failure and is documenting it.
Which one of those is more likely...? If you search for "suspension failure" at teslamotorsclub.com there are a surprisingly large number of results too.
3. Suspension damage is common in vehicles that have been in accidents.
There are legitimate threads about suspension damage due to failed components and/or improper assembly on TMC, but that's probably not what happened in most of the vehicles in Keef's Flickr account.
(IMHO a low-speed impact of the sort that doesn't cause other damage beyond minor scratches and dents should not be enough to break suspension parts.)
(It's not only Tesla who does this, but perhaps they have been cutting it a bit too close, given their relative inexperience compared to other auto manufacturers.)
The suspension is a part which can be easily inspected on a car and is one of the parts which is not different on electric cars. Any mechanic can inspect it. How does it come, that beyond that crusader, no one called out Tesla for this? Neither the authorities, nor any mechanic working on Teslas. Check the teardowns by Sandy Munro, who is an automobile expert. He criticised many things about Teslas, but not the construction of the suspension.
Parts can be weakened internally and break suddenly, especially those of the cast-alloy that Tesla uses. The aerospace industry has extensive knowledge of that process, and the methods required to detect such defects are well beyond "easily inspected".
Does this mean they expect a roof to fly off even when things are done "correctly"? What happens when they make the inevitable mistake?
Normally I'd say this is a PR disaster but just like other companies which command blind, unwavering loyalty, Tesla can also afford such disasters knowing that opinions will stay the same no matter what. Whether you love them or hate them this will do nothing to change it. Tesla is a very emotional choice no matter which side of that choice you land on.
He was told to Tweet about it and that media would pick it up, sounds like it worked.
The uneven alignment at the gap between the roof frames in Tesla Model Y (shown at 10:20) though is quite unsettling to behold. Both of the presenters agreed that similar misalignment will never had passed Toyota QA.
I'm sure that the car is structurally sound but it was mind boggling how cheap it felt. It was almost like the interior of super low-end model for emerging markets, but with a large touch screen in the middle.
Also the back seat isn't roomier, the dad had his legs spread and said it's just as roomy...I think using a touch screen to move the vents would annoy me very quickly. My family car is a Honda Odyssey and it annoys me that the fan speed on the AC is via the touch screen.
"Unexpected Convertible" - science.times.com
"Tesla Accidentally Produces Model Y Convertible" - thedetroitbureau.com
"Tesla convertible?" -- fr24news.com
"Tesla Model Y Turns Convertible" -- carbuzz.com
"Tesla Model Y convertible anyone?" -- auto.hindustantimes.com
The nature of manufacturing is that 1-in-1000 problems only show up after a few thousand have been manufactured.
I personally wouldn't buy a Model Y (or any new Tesla model) until the production line has been running for a year.
In general, anything Tesla related gets more coverage than an equivalent issue for any other car maker. I remember a few years back when Autopilot accidents would make national news while any other generic car wreck doesn't cause anyone to think twice.
Since Tesla has less than 1 million cars built IIRC, it's actually much worse of a problem. Other automakers have hundreds of millions of cars on the road with different designs, each with potential problems.
Yet something safety critical like a roof falling off happens rarely, but get recalled.
Has there been any Tesla recalls?
However, if different things keep going wrong at a smaller scale... That's a problem with management and process, not a single mistake echoed at scale.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/audi-recall-a4-a5-a6-q5-d...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-power-defect-causes-some-t...
Oh yeah this part is for sure true. I remember years ago a Model S got in an accident and had a small battery fire, and it was all over the news. Meanwhile Ford had a major recall going on for cars literally spontaneously catching on fire while driving, and nobody paid any attention.
...If water and contaminants got into the cables of certain model trucks as a result of snow or ice seepage, and those water/contaminants caused corrosion, and the block heater cable was plugged into an electrical outlet and active. This happened for 3 trucks out of 847,000.
Corrosion-related recalls are fairly common for automakers, because it's hard to anticipate which interior components will face corrosive elements, or how frequently, or in what amounts, due to the wide variety of geographies, climates, and uses that vehicles get subjected to.
Tesla has issued corrosion-related recalls itself, multiple times, including in 2018 and 2019, and these similarly did not make national news.
Mercedes recalled tens of thousands of cars this year for sunroofs that could blow off: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/mercedes...
I think the fact that you didn't hear about this recall, to the point of not even believing such a thing could happen, while you did hear about this one case of one Tesla roof blowing off, illustrates the point nicely.
Edit: Someone else pointed out that Corvettes were also recalled for roofs flying off: https://www.corvetteblogger.com/2009/12/28/gm-issues-recall-...
Kinda like the "child slave labor" issue raised during the shareholder's meeting: Some people wanted to compel Tesla to address the problem ... minutes later Musk eliminated the problem by removing cobalt use.
Who writes the explanation in a way that is convincing and clear to the public?
You are literally describing a PR department
> On Monday, Walter Chien said that he spoke with a Tesla representative, who said that "everything was done correctly" when manufacturing the car. "To me, that was more concerning," Chien told Business Insider.
That's a... no? Situation normal, carry on, everybody... concerning, indeed.
He must have found the ejection feature, still in beta.
https://theaviationist.com/2020/04/09/report-released-on-fre...
It sounds like you encountered a high-performance self-lightening model. They're very avant-garde in the racing divisions.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2020-initial...
Held off on both occasions due to these quality reasons.
The Tesla cars seem like an IOS update ( what they used t be) - better to sit back and wait to see what breaks, before doing it.
That is kind of a scary story, I would love to see a post mortem but that doesn't seem to be a Tesla thing.
also Elon Musk, to product management: why don't we have a targa option? that looks amazing
I feel like this could be an expected behavior for any extremely new car if that is the case.
These aren't T34s that are driving off the line and to the front. It would certainly have been cured by the time the car made it to the customer. I'm betting their QA process didn't accurately catch and remediate all the cars moved down the line after the glue machine ran dry.
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How and why, we'll find out after Elon figures out how to blame it on the driver.
/sarcasm
No other automaker gets this pass(except maybe Jeep vehicles).
Anyway, as bad as Tesla quality is, customers getting new cars from new companies should have little expectation of quality. (Although Tesla made it's first car in 2006, at when do they stop getting such sympathy?)
So then the more aspirational type want to emulate them, but they want it newer and shinier and with a warranty, so they wind up with the substandard SUV which is the new Wranglers.
Exactly the same story with Land Rovers in the UK, incidentally.
It's a completely impractical and inconvenient car. But I still love it because it's fun to drive and it can, in fact, go pretty much anywhere.
I love the Tesla. I wouldn't say it's built badly, but it's not on par with an import in the same price range. I like it for other reasons. It's unlike any other car. I love the way it drives, I love the features, it feels futuristic. I would challenge anyone to drive a decked out Tesla for a year and then go back to a regular car as their daily driver.
This same experience with a Ford logo would end in a negative review.
The new in-dash systems in the Subarus and Ford E-Mustangs appear to be on par with Tesla, usability wise, and unlike Tesla can be used with physical controls.
Probably the scariest statement in this thread, given what we know about the reliability of software.
The Tesla head unit makes the current automaker's head units look super reliable and as solid as a rock. OTA software updates do have their benefits, but it seems like it leads to compromising quality for pushing features of questionable utility out the door.
I get really disappointed when I see Tesla implementing really unnecessary features like Rainbow Road (the over-done SNL "more cowbell" skit) and fart mode. Focus on the reliability before making these features.
Tesla shipped 139K[1] cars last quarter and 1 roof blew off, nobody died, and now they are unreliable ? Now compare that to existing automakers that have had years more of manufacturing experience, six sigma bullshit, etc and look at the largest recalls[2]. (Ford recalled 7.9 million cars in 1996)
People buy Tesla because they are much more efficient than combustion engines, have superior technology, and a lot more fun to drive .. and maybe it makes you cool to IDK.
I really do not understand why everyone on HN hates tesla so much ...
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/2/21498558/tesla-q3-2020-ve...
[2] https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/27/autos/biggest-auto-recalls/
And yes Tesla is unreliable, there's no debate here. A new car company is going to be unreliable. And why are you using Absolute numbers? 1 roof, 7 million Ford cars. You made a statistical error here.
And what is this about combustion engines? It's 2020, everyone sells an EV. Only Tesla sells a low quality EV.
Re statistics error - what error did I make ?
Re combustion engines, have you tried to do a road trip in a non-tesla EV using charge point. I suggest you try and then report back about how bad the experience is.
Not all Teslas are ordered online.