Tesla Model 3 Owners Are the Happiest Car Owners, According to Consumer Reports

Maybe it's a placebo, but it seemed to help!

Not that gas cars are much better but is the "happiness" that people don't have to go a dealer and the fix is magically downloaded? Or something more than that?

Personally it would freak me out that every single thing is tracked and saved and sent to who knows who, forever. People like to argue there's no such thing as privacy but oddly they still have shades on their windows.

Also - not sure if it true - I heard that most Tesla controls are touch screen, and as a person who does not want to take eyes off the road, that probably would not work well for me. I could do almost everything during driving in fractions of a second without looking, purely with muscle memory.

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw/microsoftjoke.htm

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.

For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."

My main quality complaint is the road noise. The tires just howl and the wind is loud at highway speeds. I wish I’d waited a few more months and I could have gotten the double pane glass.

Regardless it’s been a great car.

(I've driven one for about 10 minutes. It was fine, and maybe I'd love it if I drove it longer. Lack of tactile controls for radio and AC are a big bummer, though.)

(edited)

When I sit in a Tesla, I'm like, cool feels like tech we should have had in cars over a decade ago? Great, I guess.

Honestly, if you took away the fact that it was an EV, and it had just as nice a computer in it, I'd be perfectly content.

I mean seriously, I can control my light bulbs with my phone, but I can't do it with my car?

5) I don't trust the cruise control at all. It will frequently disengage for no good reason (e.g. a car parked on the side of the road). If you don't have your foot on the accelerator (which you typically won't when in CC), the cark decelerates HARD suddenly with little time to respond.

Obvious fix: Option to disable "adaptive" part of cruise control, so it doesn't automatically disengage.

6) The app is kinda quirky. For example, if you open the "Charging" screen, the start/stop charging buttons jump up the screen slightly after it's done loading the list of superchargers. This frequently causes me to tap "Stop Charging" instead of "Start Charging".

Obvious fix: Offer Siri Shortcuts to all the car control functions in the app. That would be a killer use of shortcuts.

I think there are 2 things going on with Tesla… the first is similar to what I went through and the second is simply jealous have-nots. You can criticize something you don’t prefer, but once you cross the line and harass/threaten, you’ve officially become a piece of shit.

Another item (for me, although I recognize that it doesn't apply to others). Most of my daily trips (back when I commuted to work) were less than 50 miles per day. So I really don't need to haul around (and pay for) a 300 mile battery most of the time. But for times I do need it, I may need more than 300 miles. So I'd rather give up maybe 200 - 230 miles of battery range in exchange for a gas engine that would directly power the back wheels (while the electric powers the front wheels). This engine would only need enough horse power for cruising speed plus a bit of spare power, as the electric motor would be used for acceleration and the gas motor would be used only on longer trips (where the car would act like a traditional hybrid). This should be about an even exchange in weight and cost. I haven't seen any plugin hybrids that do this (where the gas can directly power the car, and have more than 50 miles range on the battery -- many phev cars (like the Volt) have the gas power a generator that drives the battery charge and electric motor, and others like the Ford ones have a small electric-only range.

It's hard to put into words, but Tesla has built the future of automobiles today. It feels like everyone that ignores that is just hanging onto the past unnecessarily. Like modern plumbing was invented and they are still saying that an outhouse is fine and questioning why would you need to take a shower everyday. For those of us who have seen the future it's just ludicrous.

Now, I'm not saying that Tesla is perfect and there can be no improvements. Simply that Tesla has shown us the future and there can be no turning back. Electric cars are here to stay and ICE vehicles are relegated to history.

Are there any annoyances in software? Does anything feel misplaced? What % of users report something rattling in the interior? What’s the road and wind noise? What’s the service costs and experience for standard service things like brake fluids, air filters? How is the build quality, especially the paint quality (I heard early Tesla models easily chipped big flakes)?

I've even got Siri Shortcuts setup to do things like, "hey Siri, open trunk", "vent windows", "prepare for launch" (turns on heated seats/steering wheel, sets climate control, opens garage door based on the current wifi network, etc).

Everyone who test drives it falls in love with it, including one individual who began working to get out of his BMW X5 lease.

And I've had the privilege of driving higher-end German cars for years. There's absolutely no comparison to the Tesla; the Tesla is superior in every way.

The Model 3 is by far the best car I've had. Had multiple Pruises, a boat of a Chevy Impala, and driven lots of rental cars when on trips to places without public transit.

And despite all this, I'm still slightly ashamed to say it's my favorite car, because I'm no fan of Musk. Whatever team at Tesla is building this is great, but I have a feeling that it has very little to do with the singular person who wants to take credit...

Regarding the 'everything else seems heavy'-feeling: that is exactly what it feels like to me as well. Not in some absolute term of 'therefore it is bad' but the difference is quite present. With a lot of cars it seems like driving it is an effort, and it is presented as being an effort and almost praised as a universally positive property of the car.

At the same time it's very weird to see the polarisation within the world of car users as if you can't have both. If I were to drive to get some job done, I really don't want to drive 'with effort' or have a car that 'shows some effort'. I want to get from A to B and do the thing I wanted to do, not 'work the car'. That is a strange realisation when you drive a lot of previous-generation cars and don't have an issue with that right up until the moment you get the ease of an EV that just 'does the thing'.

Base level Model 3: $34k (with tax rebate) [2]

Average sale price of a new car: $39k [3]

Not sure what point you are trying to make here.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/the-2022-porsche...

[2] https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#overview

[3] https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-the-aver...

Wealthy people tend to demand much from their luxury purchases and have many options, so customer satisfaction is often lower for luxury brands, which is why Dodge outscored BMW, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus.

If you look at the list, you see Hyundai outscoring Porsche as Hyundai exceeded expectations more than Porsche.

But Tesla scored highest in terms of Tesla customers wanting to buy another Tesla as their next car. They do have good product people at Tesla and are doing a great job there. But I think part of it is that Tesla doesn't have many good rivals yet, so if you are wealthy and are determined to drive an electric car, you are much more likely to want to buy another Tesla whereas if you don't care about that then you have many more options.

The list:

Tesla

Lincoln

Ram

Chrysler

Subaru

Hyundai

Porsche

Dodge

Mazda

Toyota

Kia

Mini

BMW

Ford

Audi

Honda

Volvo

Volkswagen

Lexus

Jeep

GMC

Chevrolet

Mercedes-Benz

Buick

Cadillac

Nissan

Infiniti

Also Tesla's go against pretty much everything that most car enthusiasts want. Personally that's why I'm biased against them, I hate having to use a touch screen to open the glove box, I hate having to press a capacitive button to switch on the turn signals, and I hate the attempt to take away the driving experience and control from the driver. Of course for the average person, a lot of those things are pros not cons.

Happy people are more likely to buy Tesla?

1: https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/car-makes-highest-average-c...

2: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/01/what-do-we-know-about-t...

I've often thought that this is a major inherent problem with trying to estimate the "quality" of a product or service by taking the average of user reviews. If a product has high ratings, does that mean it's actually better than the alternatives, or does it mean it has flaws that cause the more discerning and critical consumers to gravitate to other options?

My understanding is recommendation systems can attempt to model and compensate for such biases. (At least, I recall seeing descriptions of how this was done way back in the Netflix Prize days.) But recommendation systems usually have their own issues with transparency and trustworthiness.

What I frequently want is the answer to a very simple question: of people who have tried both of two options I'm considering, what fraction prefer one over the other?

There's very few people who have the same kind of non-bias as I do here but then again my single opinion is merely anecdotal.

Given that sandwich, it's in the same class as an iPhone and beats headphones. A non-flattering description would be "tinsel and tack parading as luxury and class" but honestly, that was my impression of the porsche boxster and bentley continental as well.

My orientation for luxury is certainly non-existent. I feel such "touches" are inconvenient and grandiose.

But like with beats headphones or to a lesser extent, the iphone, this acts as a filter. This product (model 3) isn't for me and I'm fine with hyundai's ioniq or kona ev.

So yes, I think it's more a personality type that the car attracts than anything else. But again, sample size of 1 here.

I'd expect the same kind of happiness response from Ford F-350 owners.

I know probably at least seven people who bought expensive two-seat performance cars that run on premium fuel and use very expensive tires that wear out quickly, in addition to other costly maintenance items, and they absolutely are the definition of a sunk cost fallacy.

The majority of the people I know with such cars that have found them to be expensive and impractical are unwilling or unable to sell them because they don't want to admit to themselves that buying the thing in the first place might have been a mistake. They all ended up buying another much more practical car (corolla, civic, etc) and using that for most daily purposes.

My opinion is that this phenomenon can be seen with almost any very expensive status symbol car. Not just Teslas.

Probably a $120k model S is a better example than a $35-45k model 3, but even so...

They need to invest in some ANC that other brands are brining on.

If you really want a quieter car, the Model S is rated as one of the quietest cars on the road.

https://insideevs.com/news/505768/tesla-demand-q2-sold-out/

You just have to make an occasional stop at a Supercharger, or one of the many venues around town that offer free trickle charging while you shop.