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Tepix

The obvious reason is that there were too many returns. I hope Tesla gets its quality issues under control.

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PR dept dissolved just ahead of the "no questions" return policy. No questions, no problem.

They have a de facto PR department. Go ask Elon on Twitter. You may or may not get an answer.

For reference[0].

0: https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24697610 )

Elon's twitter is effectively the PR department now:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1317008759286243329?s=20

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1316837174457896961?s=20

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1316513925878480896?s=20

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1316454693489516545?s=20

This might be the thing that sinks Tesla. The man is a lunatic. If I were on the board of Tesla, I’d want him the hell off Twitter entirely.

There's a saying, I'm not sure as to the origin, 'If it looks crazy and it works, it's not crazy'.

Not sure whether you'd disagree in this instance, but if so I'd sure like to know why.

And how many years was Madoff a successful investor returning great ROI if you gave him your money?

Madoff and Musk are not even in the same bracket. Musk is an actual entrepreneur (albeit one that should learn when to keep his trap shut), Madoff is simply a con artist.

Ah yes, the old "Those aren't real cars and the rockets aren't actually landing".

Sure, you'll look like an absolute genius if you turn out to be right.

Every business wishes they had a lunatic half as talented as him.

It's possible. It could be random corporate restructuring too, since they now have an "External Relations" department.

https://www.prdaily.com/what-teslas-move-to-eliminate-its-pr...

My employer loves to move people around while creating and dissolving groups. I've had a few title/group changes where literally nothing about what I did changed.

I suspect they do that because it allows them to couch terminations as layoffs. Just move everyone you want gone into a new group and lay off that group. It's not personal when the whole group is being downsized.

Not really obvious. This policy applied only if you didn’t do a test-drive, and anyone I know who bought a Tesla did a test-drive.

How do you test drive a pre-order? Y just came out.

There are various showroom & service center locations around where you can schedule a test drive. Y came out in February.

I was talking about pre-orders. I never Tesla drove my 3 but was offered to take a model S for a weekend. My buddy never test drove his Y.

I didn’t, but you don’t know me. Your original statement still holds.

Or they realize they have a business model where people are willing to fork over serious money to test drive a Tesla for a week.

While I think we all know about Tesla's quality issues, I think there's also an issue of people not realizing exactly what they are buying, so they treated that first seven days like a long test drive.

Why shouldn't they?

Because if that's what you want, you should rent a rental vehicle for $300, not a brand new one.

If Tesla (or some other car company) says try our car for seven days and if you don't like it, bring it back, why would I pay $300 for a rental if I thought I was going to like it? Especially with a Tesla where there's a lot of fiddly details and mid year changes, a rental may be a lot different than one you can buy.

Some rental sales agencies do it the other way --- rent this car for a week, and if you like it, the rental cost goes towards the purchase price.

$300 would rent you a Corolla for a week, not a Tesla. A quick check shows that would be closer $1500 for a week.

Obviously, but the reason is unclear. Quality issues? Or people abusing it by taking a 5 day citytrip and bringing it back? etc

I think you can only do it once, so using it as a "rental" seems unlikely.

Given how excited I was for the Model 3, and how disillusioned I got after handling one for a few days when a client brought one in to have some equipment installed in it, I'd suspect it's some combination of quality issues and simply varying expectations. Tesla makes a LOT of decisions differently than other automakers, and there are plenty of people who love that, but also some who realize they're not comfortable with the car trying to outsmart them so often.

And that's the sort of thing that might not sink in on a 20-minute test drive, but which you'd definitely feel after a few days.

I got a new 2021 vehicle, not a Tesla, but with the latest assistive tech that they are putting on even low-end cars now, and while it is pretty neat, even from a "traditional" manufacturer it doesn't seem fully baked.

My first drive on a rainy, foggy night, everything went haywire, although given the limited ambitions of the systems, it wasn't serious.

The recognition of speed limits somehow failed so that it thought it was 70 mph everywhere. It couldn't recognize the lane markings, so it's jiggling the wheel and flashing warnings when I'm in the fast lane on the interstate, and for an instant I think I'm hydroplaning. Not helpful.

I think it has radar cruise control, which I haven't tried out yet, but I'm not sure if I trust it. And I sure hope the auto-braking doesn't do anything weird. It did warn me a couple days ago that someone stopped in front of me to turn left, but if I couldn't see that, I would still have had an accident.

Yeah, I work in advanced safety systems, and I'm pretty comfortable with most of those things. They have their limitations, and there are times when they should be turned off, but on the whole I appreciate them. Blind-spot warning in particular, but that's pretty old now. (Incidentally, the auto braking likely would've kicked in if you hadn't reacted on your own, but it's set to not touch anything until it's at the panic-stop point. This is partly to keep drivers from getting lazy and relying on it.)

What bugged me about the Tesla was the controls more than anything. There's no "off". There's no manual anything, and the overrides are buried so deep in the touchscreen, heaven help you if you forget where one is located. The car knows when it should be on, and when it should lock and unlock, and if you have different ideas about those things (heaven forbid you want to leave it unlocked while it's parked in a garage), you're going to have a bad time.

I gotta call those folks up and ask for my deposit back, I'm never gonna use it.

How many people do you think, realistically, would risk tying up $30k+ for more than 5 days dealing with return processing to take a car on a road trip? Do you really think that's more likely than excess returns due to quality issues?

Eh, rich people can be both high liquidity and fickle.

Maybe you get an annual bonus that puts $30K in checking, and you lend that to musk for a week.

My credit card has a limit of just shy of £30k (insanity, I know). In the UK (and I'd bet in Europe) there's a 14 day cooling off period on all financing. You could take out a £30k car loan, drive it for a week, and cancel the loan?

Most (all) dealerships are not going to let you pay for a 30K car on credit card without someone soaking up the 3% merchant fee.

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