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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

It is truly strange how much hate Tesla seems to get from people. I recently bought a model Y. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the best car I have ever driven, or even been inside of.

1) It's fast (very fast).

2) It looks great.

3) The in vehicle display looks fantastic, and is extremely responsive. It feels like the difference between using an iPad or using a cheap ($50) android tablet from aliexpress.

4) The in vehicle speech commands are excellent.

5) The autopilot is excellent.

6) The mobile app is excellent.

If you are seriously confused as to why Tesla owners are so fanatical about their cars: go drive one.

It shouldn't surprise people that these vehicles are sold out for the near future. They're actually just that good.

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I have wondered a lot, though: does that mean other people would love it too? Could it be that it's somewhat unusual (it is), and that its unique qualities are super clear to everyone, and so the people who buy it love it, and the people who choose not to buy it would indeed hate it?

(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)

I seem to get a ton of compliments on it, at least (although that is likely more about the appearance than anything). And my friends who have ridden with me also seem to love it.

Hmm, re: tactile controls: these at least for me are replaced by the steering wheel controls and voice commands.

>voice commands

Voice commands are worse for traffic safety than driving on the legal drink-drive limit:

https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/10/new-hands-free-technologies...

That's an interesting point. Though anecdotally I find the folks who really hate them sometimes have some really odd misconceptions.

I expected to hate the lack of tactile controls, and the lack thereof was one of the biggest things that kept me from buying one for a long time. I didn't realize that it had voice commands that worked well enough (for me) that touching the screen while driving is generally unnecessary, so that it was a moot point.

I think it’s like the difference between the iPhone and an Android. Lots of people will say there’s basically no difference, some will say the Android is better, some will say the iPhone is better. It depends what qualities you care about.

Teslas go fast, feature aggressive and opinionated design choices, and run bleeding edge software. If those are very important to you it will be an amazing and peerless experience. If you don’t care about them or prefer something more conservative, it may be an awful choice.

I wonder about the same thing in the context of the defects; it's perfectly possible to like (or, as some people put it: 'love') a car, while at the same time having issues with it.

Things don't need to be perfect to be likable, but I suppose if they get irritating or too inconsistent then that's where the common "unlikable" border starts.

If I were to buy one of the very-software-controlled cars right now, I'd expect that it would be imperfect, do some weird things, but at the same time be much better than my previous experiences.

When I bought my 2000 Honda Insight, I was harassed, verbally assaulted and (in several cases) purposely run off the road. People were seriously offended by a hybrid back then. I warned everyone back then that rode in my car. My mother and future wife experienced it first hand.

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.

I agree on all points. I've had my Model Y since August and it's, hands down, the best car I've ever owned (or driven). I loved re-building and driving my Porsche 914 and my old VW Golf GTI was great. I had an Audi A4 Quatro for 20 years that was my pride and joy. The MY outshines them all.

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.

I would really like to get a Model 3, but with a few adjustments. First, I'd like to put in a dash full of physical buttons, dials, and switches so I'm not reliant on the touchscreen (so I could do things like adjust the wiper delay without taking my eyes off the road when it is raining). Second, I'd like to be able to open the door if a slight freezing rain keeps the window from rolling down (yes, the car has to roll the window down a bit for the door to open). Third, if the touch screen (which appears to be a consumer-rated part, not an automotive-rated part) goes out I'd like to still be able to drive the car (this goes back to the first item).

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.

Agree with most of this, but to rebut points 5 and 6:

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.

For 5 (Autopilot) it is definitely more useful in certain situations.

Long distance road trips? It's a god-send. We often drive to Montana (~600 miles each way) and autopilot does 99% of the driving.

That said, tons of cars come with "lane keeping" now days so that specific feature isn't unique to Tesla.

Cruise control is the absolute worst on my Model 3, I've had to stop using it on my most frequent highway route, Highway 1.

It will randomly stomp on the brakes as hard as possible, when there's a slight curve and a car in the other lane. It's terrifying to me and to all passengers. Completely unusable. (And still you will find me in other comments here saying it's my favorite car I've owned... there's a lot going on here I guess.)

This has not been my experience at all. I would say that cruise control is enabled for about 90% of my driving in the city, and nearly 100% on the highway.

I have had it brake hard when (for instance) somebody is turning into a driveway, so they come to a stop in the lane. But...I am still paying close attention, notice this before the car reacts, and lightly tap on the brake to temporarily disengage it. It has just become a part of driving the car.

>Siri

Voice commands are worse for traffic safety than driving on the legal drink-drive limit:

https://www.iamroadsmart.com/campaign-pages/end-customer-cam...

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/10/new-hands-free-technologies...

Sorry but you misquoted me. Siri Shortcuts isn’t Siri.

It’s the iOS automation tool, and the context was controlling the car via the app in lieu of directly in their app, which isn’t something you do while driving.

The fact that you can say the voice command “open your butthole”, and the Charge port opens.... no other car company would ever do that. There is nothing like a Tesla

what a sales pitch

It also farts

Exactly the same here. I recently got a Model Y in mid-January. It's by far the best car I've ever owned, the most fun to drive, the least stressful, and it just makes me smile every time I get in it. The interface and UI is incredibly intuitive.

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.

Those 1..6 are probably my “important list of car features number 95 through 100”

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 would go even further on #3, it isn't like an iPad vs an Android tablet, because Android isn't bad, the only issue there would be hardware responsiveness. More like iPad vs a 2010 feature phone for most infotainment systems I've ever experienced.

Eh, they're not that great. The problem I have with cars is that most cars in 2021 should feel like a Tesla, but auto manufacturers are allergic to innovation for some reason. So much for Audi's "Vorsprung durch Technik."

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?

And to counter how you feel:

Every time I sit in a Tesla my first though is "Ugh, couldn't they hire som Scandinavian designers at least?" because it is butt ugly. Also "goddamn this car feels like a toy, use some damn quality components instead!" The plastic-y feel does not belong in a car priced like a Tesla. Feel a Mercedes or BMW's plastic and then a Tesla's. Worlds apart.

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