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Comment by waiseristy | Hacker News Reader

I would buy a car from a traditional automaker every single time when given the option between the two.

I'm really excited to see how Rivian, Canoo, Lucid, and the like handle thousands of vehicles being reworked from their first year or so of shoddy production.

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There are pros and cons to each. I've got a couple of BMWs, but when buying an EV, going Tesla was a no-brainer. The other mfgrs just felt like a slap-dash job of bolting an electric motor to a traditional car, whereas Tesla was a slap-dash way of rethinking the entire car! :)

Seriously, I was years into Tesla ownership when I saw BMW ads showing people dancing around, taking their phones out of their pocket, and holding it to the door handle to unlock the car, like this was some high tech innovation. [1] Are you joking?

There are MANY things established automakers do, but innovation is not typically one of those things.

1. https://www.bmw.com/en/innovation/bmw-digital-key-iphone-as-...

The nice thing about the traditional automakers’ shortcomings is they are visible before you buy the car. I prefer knowing what the trade offs are.

With Tesla, I feel like an Elon edict could pull all spare parts from repair stations in order to hit new order goals. Or some other nonsense; it would be impactful and unexpected.

There is still uncertainty even with a major auto mfg, but I expect their institutional knowledge to be better and less subject to the whims of Mr. Musk.

Fair. I've had no such issues in the 3.5 years with the car, but certainly "will they still be in business in 6 months" was a real concern leading up to the purchase.

Assuming you looked at or seriously considered the i3 - in what way(s) was it 'not good enough' for you to stick to your favorite brand?

I'm not a big BMW person but I always liked the i3. I never got that close to buying one so I'm open to the idea there's some big catch or drawback I just didn't look closely enough to see.

Great question! I actually test drove one on a lark ~2 years before buying the Model 3. At the time, Model S aside, I basically pictured electric cars as economy cars. As in, why on earth would you pay $40-$45k for a BMW commuter appliance EV instead of $30k (or whatever) for a Leaf? Once I drove it, I got it. It was a legitimately nice car inside; it clicked. "Right, for the same reason people pay more for premium cars that are powered by internal combustion motors!"

I had to take it seriously because around the time we got the 3, PG&E was offering something like $10k in rebates on the i3 on top of state+federal credits. I never got serious about pricing, but to me that suggested that I could have a new i3 for $22.5k, or less than half the price of of a Model 3!

The reality is that the i3 serves an entirely different market. Yes, our Tesla sees 99% commuting miles, but when buying a "nice, new" car (which is novel to me), it kind of needs to be able to do it all. I found the Range Extender solution on the i3 to be pretty janky, and I don't remotely trust DCFC networks that are not-Tesla. This might be FUD; after all, non-Tesla DCFC was probably better in 2018 when I bought my car than Superchargers were in (say) 2015, but it's useful FUD. The range on the i3 is simply too short. You can't really take it anywhere, and I want my nice new car to be able to take me to the mountains, to see my family 500 miles away, etc.

Now, of course, for the money savings, there's the usual "well, rent a car for the 2 times a year you take a long roadtrip", and that's probably the rational solution, but I don't really feel that buying a car is entirely rational; I think it's largely emotional, and people construct post-hoc justifications for why buying the car they WANTED was the CORRECT choice.

I ended up selling a nice roadtrippable car for about $30k when we bought the Tesla, which means if we had bought the i3 I'd have kept the other car, and it would have been a more expensive proposition overall, to own a less capable EV.

Then, later, I bought a diesel SUV that's very nice for roadtrips so I guess the Tesla doesn't have to do it all, but, hey, like I said, it's not all rational.

Oh, and the i3-- it drove REALLY well. I was super impressed by the power and handling. I couldn't believe the grip on such narrow tires. I loved the interior, although the exterior was a bit of a mixed bag for me. We'd have to charge it every single night for commuting, where we charge the Tesla every 3 days or so, but honestly that's not such a drag, it would be more of an issue on days where you want to cover a lot of miles in one day. (lots of errands on a weekend day for example).

yeah I think a lot of traditional automakers were slow to get rolling on electrics.

Feels like Ford is taking the electric f150 seriously and I think their future kinda rides on them nailing this so I hope they do.

The numbers of electric F-150 planned is pretty pitiful. Even if they take it seriously, they don't have the battery supply to truly scale it anywhere close to where they need.

I feel like it's been at least 5 years of people saying "Real automakers are going to eat Tesla's lunch as soon as they start delivery cars next year".. and it just keeps not happening. To be fair, it's legitimately getting closer.

I have absolutely no interest in the Cybertruck, the Rivian and the F-150 lightning are equally appealing to me for different reasons. Although I don't need a truck!

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