Tesla is easily 10-15 years ahead of all other manufacturers.
Well the majority view is that the Porsche Tycan is a better car, but at a different price point - considering the (im)maturity of the market 10-15 years seems a stretch, particularly considering there are some great cars coming out like the mini electric.
Battery tech, motor tech, vertical integration, and (arguably most importantly) overall efficiency, Tesla is ahead, and probably by many years.
Tesla also far ahead in effort/time out into developing self-driving, though the jury is obviously still out on how meaningful their approach finally turns out to be.
Sorry but pretty much no one cares about efficiency after you break 300-400km range
Here is an example: recently the Audi app which you use to control the car from your phone was down for two weeks for server upgrades. I have worked in IT and software for almost 20 years now and a 2 week outage is unimaginable.
How about the charge range or stability control? Any idea about the battery's expected life span? What technology do you think Audi is behind on?
My impression has been that Tesla nailed the charging network, charge range and raw straight line performance. Everything else they half-assed, i.e. the stuff I care about on a daily basis feels cheap.
* Rear hatch will occasionally just open by itself. There was a TSB from the dealer to resolve this where they reprogram your keys and adjust the sensitivity of the kick sensor but I'm still skeptical. The audi app should alert me if the hatch has been left open for more than X minutes with the car off.
* Audi App in general is very slow and unresponsive. Sometimes I'll try to precondition the car and the app just spins for minutes and then silently fails.
* The onboard charger can run with either 50% of 100% of a circuit, nothing else. If you are at a shared 240 or 120v system where there is a lot of load (RV camp ground for example) your car simply won't charge.
* Electrify America is a mess. You can google this and see thousands of examples.
* There is no regen or one pedal driving. You can manually activate regen by pulling the levers on the steering wheel but the behavior isn't consistent and the regen isn't strong.
* There is no way to enable "creep" mode like how a traditional automatic ICE car behaves.
* There is a feature to schedule charging for those who have off-peak rates. You have to set this every single time you use the car.
* The virtual cockpit and 360 camera occasionally fail to initialize so you just have blank screens.
* Consumption is extremely high. For reference for Tesla people a good day in an etron is 400wh/mi.
* Vehicle nav map shows me gas stations, no way to search for charge stations.
* Vehicle still has ICE based service reminders built in.
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Now for things that are going to get someone killed:
* The vehicle rolls backwards on hills. This + lack of creep means that you have to feather the gas. There is a "hill hold assist" which will randomly kick on but it's not reliable. Stop and go traffic in a hilly area is very annoying.
* When parking the vehicle will roll backwards or forwards for about a foot until the brake catches. This could easily entrap someone in an enclosed space.
* If the vehicle is "on" or "off" isn't completely clear as a user. If you put it into accessory mode it looks exactly the same as the vehicle being on sans one small green line. I've accidentally put the vehicle into neutral with the vehicle in accessory mode while parked on an incline and it began rapidly rolling away (the thing weighs almost 7000lbs) while I tried to pump the non operational brakes.
* Vehicle automatically shuts off climate control after 30 minutes of idle. I'm glad I learned about this while waiting for someone instead of when I had left my dog in the car.
* Getting out of the driver seat shuts off the car completely when in park. See prior points about climate control and rollback.
I could go on. This is just what came to me off the top of my head.
That's INSANE. No wonder why they need chunky batteries!
Our Model 3 cruises at around 200 Wh/mi.
Also, the Model 3's climate control times out after four hours. But you'll get a notification when that happens and can re-enable climate immediately thereafter.
It's unfortunate that VAG took shortcuts
400wh/mi though, oof. That would be about as expensive to operate as my current gas-powered vehicle (both around 10c/mi).
Model 3 Performance can keep up with 120K+ Tycan.
And Model S leaves a Taycan behind it like a the Taycan was a Ford Focus.
> particularly considering there are some great cars
People made the same argument in 2014 and all those cars came out. People made the same argument in 2018 and all those cars came out.
And non of that changed Tesla growth or margin (other then to the positive).
I mean it’s obviously an absurd claim anyway, Tesla is less than 15 years old and clearly the other car companies aren’t starting from scratch.
Besides, the Taycan now starts at $79k, not $120k. You are comparing the cheapest Tesla against a higher range Porsche. It’s pretty much cost competitive with the Tesla Model S. Not everything is about performance anyway, I doubt I need more power than either car - a comfortable driving experience and build quality would be more important to me if I was in the market for one of these cars (which are all more than I would want to pay for a car).
The Mercedes EQS is getting pretty good reviews and the specs look good, so I'm not sure about that. It looks like a direct competitor to the Model S.