Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

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It’s unfortunate since Lucid was supposed to be “Tesla, but with adults in the room” and so far.. this is actually their second full production recall.

A few months ago they recalled ~500 vehicles which at the time was basically all they had made, for a serious suspension issue. Yes, again, only a small % actually had the defect, but they were all recalled in for inspection.

I really really want Lucid to succeed, as a 2018 Model 3 owner, the Lucid Air is a more interesting upgrade to me than a Model S/X.. with the stalkless yoke, crazy acceleration but underpowered brakes, etc.

However I do not want to be an alpha tester at this price point, and am not going to be a buyer until theres a service center a reasonable distance, and 1000s of cars on the road. Lucid is still publicly stating a now reduced target of 12-14k 2022 deliveries, but we are 5 months into the year and they have maybe delivered 2k at best. They’ll be lucky if they deliver half their goal.

They can probably flounder for a while given the level of Saudi funding, much like Rivian can with the Amazon funding..

At the $100k price range the MB EQS or Porsche Taycan are pretty cool, but hard to get hold of.. and you are back dealing the the old boys network of dealers. Lots of stories of people being asked to pay 5-figure dealer markups since they know they can get away with it.

The sweet spot might be the Genesis GV60 which is basically a luxxed up Ioniq 5 with every luxury feature you could imagine thrown in, instead of offered as $1-2k options each. While the Koreans are trying to sell the US on the concept of a luxury Korean vehicle, they are basically throwing the kitchen sink of features in. Stuff like Active Noise Cancellation, Vehicle to Load charging, all the fancy drivers aids, maximally adjustable/heated/cooled seats…

>taycan

Porsche already had 9 recalls for things like suspension, brakes, lights, full power loss, then there is this:

"“Six out of ten Porsche Taycan” ever delivered have a problem with battery management that affects and damages battery cells, requires replacement of cells and batteries, and is causing vehicle fires, according to a source working at Porsche's headquarters in Zuffenhausen, Germany.Dec 1, 2021"

Yes but a Porsche/MB/Tesla recall is me taking my car to a shop within 30min or less of my home (or in Tesla case, mobile tech comes to me most often).

With Lucid, it's still unclear they even have a service center anywhere on the east coast yet. There are 2 scheduled for northeast in "summer" and "fall".

Lucid & Rivian have still delivered something like 10-15 cars in all of NY state vs 600+ Taycans (who yes has had a multi-year head start on sales and decades head start on service network).

Tesla went through the same exact phase, relying mostly on mobile technicians where possible. Some Tesla owners were without their cars for months waiting on available service capacity and parts.

Yes that's kind of my point through the thread. If people point to Tesla's service as inadequate in 2020-2022, imagine how it was in 2015.. and you have Lucid/Rivian.

There being recalls kinda feels like it lends credence to the 'Tesla but with adults in the room' sentiment.

Consumer EVs are still an emerging technology relative to combustion vehicles, and so you're bound to be an "alpha" or "beta" tester to some degree. I would hope, however, that the attitude towards defects would be to identify them as such and recall rather than slapping a #WONTFIX on it which I feel is what I hear often from Tesla owners.

Especially considering all the problems Teslas have been having. Seems like every week I read about someone being locked in a burning car or the autopilot driving into a pile of schoolchildren or something.

Making cars is very hard--cut them some slack.

This is not a great time to buy any efficient car. Things were easing until gas prices jumped up ... and the recent lockdowns in China probably haven't helped.

It's a good idea to wait for a more opportune time if you can.

> This is not a great time to buy any efficient car.

If you're not limited to luxury, there are plenty of options.

It is very hard, and theres a different between cutting them slack and writing them a $150K check :-) !

It's not entirely clear they are going to ramp up faster or better than Tesla.

There are already credible leaks that they have followed some of the Tesla playbook - running out to Home Depot for "parts" and enlisting white collar office staff for help in final assembly..

> you are back dealing the the old boys network of dealers.

We are still toward the end of the early adoption phase, but in the long run, the established brands is where EVs take hold. In 5 years everyone will be able to roll up to that network and drive home in an EV the same day, if not sooner, and take advantage of that network for service, etc.

Exactly this. As much as people bitch about dealerships, and some of them truly do suck, the business model is well established and clearly successful. The newer EV startups are just converging on having the same model by a different name.

> As much as people bitch about dealerships, and some of them truly do suck, the business model is well established and clearly successful.

So the Lindy effect sort of suggests the dealerships will be around for a while - but the real revenue model of a dealership is the return customer for services.

The main change with EVs is unpredictable on that side - one, they don't need a lot of periodic maintenance (like regen cuts brake wear for highway driving), but on the other hand there are almost no user-serviceable EVs & I doubt there will be any in the near future.

So I wish the dealership model goes the way of the travel agent one. It's not that travel agents weren't useful or successful, but that without one more people bought tickets and flew to places.

From that PoV, I think the model might converge closer to Carvana or Shift rather than a traditional dealership with loaned inventory (or Roadster.com). Especially when the car I want to buy is actually in Sacramento and only needs to be on a truck to a city when I want it.

It’s great to have a service network. It sucks having to haggle with these clowns when buying a car. Direct sales you get price transparency. Even dealers showing inventory online neglect to mention that they want a $10K ADM until you try to buy the thing in person. Or only if you buy $5K in accessories. Or only if you finance. Or only if you get some BS extended warranty/service contract, etc

I agree that some dealers are pretty shady. Some are great. Knowing in advance which one you're dealing with is close to impossible.

I don't set foot in a dealer any more without working the deal first by e-mail. Then I bring in the purchase contract and pick up the car. No last minute fun surprises. I've also had fairly good success looking the finance manager in the eye and telling them point blank I will only be wasting their time by repeating 'no' if they insist on asking questions, just give me the final paper to sign and the keys to the car. "I will be modding it, I care not about your extended warranty, kthxbye"

I’d give them a chance. Then doing a full recall is the responsible move and in the long run should establish confidence. I doubt Tesla would have done a full recall for something as “trivial” as the displays sometimes failing. In fact I’m pretty sure Elon knew this was a problem with Teslas from the get-go (the displays were not up to spec) and shipped the cars anyway and made everyone sign an NDA who had an issue.

I think the precariousness of Tesla, horrible service network, and months wait times on repair parts well into the 2019-2020 pre-pandemic time frame should chasten anyone who wants to buy an EV from an even smaller firm who are 5-8 years behind Tesla on the growth curve!

What's the deal with the service network? I've only had good experiences. In one instance they sent a tech out in a service vehicle and in other cases they either gave me a loaner or a $100 Uber voucher (due to the pandemic parts shortage, my car shipped without some non-essential components--it was that or wait until they had the parts before accepting delivery).

It's hit or miss. Mobile techs coming to replace small things like filters/charge ports/etc are great if you are in range.

If you have an accident and are waiting months on a body panel - not great. In this case your insurance probably helps with a rental.

On other warranty type service, being stuck with $100/day Uber credits for a week or two since its near impossible to secure a loaner at the NYC area service centers sucks if you bought a car because you wanted a car, not an Uber. I went into service center in 2018 for an annoying rattle on delivery, ~2019 rear motor go out, and ~2020 HW3 upgrade. Mobile techs did a 2020 charge port repair and 2021 air filter replace/duct cleaning.

I do have some glass work I've been sitting on since 2021 because I don't want to deal with being carless for a couple days.

So lower maintenance than an ICE, but in under 4 years I have have 5-6 service interactions of which 2 were show stoppers.

That makes sense. I've always had same-day fixes, but that's because I never had a critical failure (so I could come in when they had parts on hand).

These seem like normal growing pains for a new car company. It’s a brutal learning curve!

They just have to make it through this curve before running out of money and positive brand association.

100% - I want Lucid & Rivian to succeed, I just don't want to spend 80-150K to be their beta tester. People vastly under estimate how hard scaling is. Tesla was producing ~5-10K cars for many years before they hit the 100K level with the Model 3. It could be 5 years for Lucid & Rivian to become regularly available, serviceable car brands like Tesla just started to become in say 2019 or so.

I personally don't think anyone should be taking on a loan / spending any large % of their income buying from them and planning for them to be your primary vehicle. They are sufficiently low volume & high risk to remain rich man toys for a while!

Even when I bought in 2018 it felt a bit unsteady, with plenty of valid rumors they were going to fold.. including Musk later saying they were days away from bankruptcy during the Model 3 ramp up!

In fairness, Tesla had to solve all of the hard problems from scratch. They paved the way for other EV manufacturers, so those other manufacturers should have an easier time.

The crazy thing is that Lucid & Rivian were only founded a few years after Tesla..

So while in theory it should be easier now, I don’t think it has been in practice

Exactly. It's played out at virtually every EV manufacturer, regardless of their experience. General Motors, for example:

GM advising some Bolt EV owners to park 50 feet away from other cars in case of fire

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/gm-advising-some-bolt-ev-own...

People love to dig on Tesla, but they're through the gauntlet & emerging out the other side -- easily a multi-year headstart. Everyone else still has a lot of pain to endure...

The Bolt recall isn't a GM issue, it's a LG battery issue. Which... GM isn't the only company using LG batteries. The Hyundai Kona, for example, got hit with a similar recall. Ditto the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid. Ditto some home batteries. I'd be unsurprised if Ford has to do one for the Mach-E.

Many components of the traditional automakers' vehicles are outsourced to common suppliers. That doesn't give them a free pass when the vehicle doesn't perform as desired -- it's a product defect regardless of which supplier owns the root cause.

That becomes their problem when the headline reads “Bolt Burns Down Home and Dog”

What is the charger network like for non-Teslas in the US, and how do the ranges realistically compare?

The Tesla network is still better, but the non-Tesla network is adequate and growing faster. There have been teething problems on the chargers, but it seems like that has improved over time.

A number of EVs have similar range to Teslas. Some of the older ones that began life as compliance cars are a little low. But even a Bolt, which basically costs half what a Tesla does, has about 260 miles range. Though in my experience the Bolt more often estimates range accurately where my Tesla consistently overestimated range by a good margin (I had a P3D, which is likely most of the reason why).

Yup. Depends on region. In NYC area, Tesla supercharger network still has more locations and way more chargers per location than the CCS networks. Further, Tesla continues to expand as fast or faster than EA’s CCS network.

Range is funny because Tesla on paper is the best, but in reality they tend to overstate by 10-20% whereas some other makers understate by 20%.

So for example many have seen a 220mi Taycan and a 310mi Model 3 get the same range in real world.

You really have to read a range of websites tests between models to compare.

Another interesting facet will be how the batteries age. Some early EVs didn’t cool their packs well and degraded fast. Some makers sort of overprovision their packs with capacity you can’t use, in theory if that is released by software as you age then the impact is lower.

For example on a Tesla you are likely to see 2-3% loss per year. That means a 2018 310mi Model 3 now only charges to a claimed 280mi. Then detract 15% for real world use since they overpromise, bad weather impacts, only wanting to charge to 80/90%, only wanting to go down to say 5-10%.. and you are probably stopping every 180mi.

I have a 2018 model 3 with 35k miles and capacity is at 300mi fully charged. At least that one data point is better than what you suggest.

Mine only charges to 280mi now and I am at way fewer miles, so YMMV. I think its region dependent, maybe my car got more hot/cold cycles, etc being parked outdoors in NYC for years.

Yeah, mine was in ideal conditions (bay area, garage) so that could definitely be a factor.

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