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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

Is it not just the case that there simply hasn't been enough time to work out the kinks?

The Tesla Model S is only ten years old. So my 20 year old bulletproof Japanese petrol car is twice the age of the entire class of modern day EVs.

My petrol car could probably have done the first ten years of its' life with oil changes and nothing else at all. I mean, it's done the last few years that way. But there's been a century of serious engineering work to get it to that place.

And yeah, having owned a Tesla, the earlier models at least were designed to be fun luxury toys. Even something like the windows - frameless, auto-retracting things that can freeze in winter, vs a mechanical wind down thing on a Civic or whatever.

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The EV drive trains are simpler, but they've come along with some silly bits like having to electronically open the glove box from the infotainment screen. Is that mechanism going to last 20 years? How about the pop-out door handles? I'm not optimistic.

I'm sure the police are going to love that one. "License and registration?" "Sorry officer, they're in the glove compartment and when I tap the button it just makes an angry grinding noise."

These are Tesla things though. My VW EV has normal door handles, glove box handle, air vent positioning, manual seats, etc etc.

They may be "Tesla things", but they're in no way related to Tesla's being an EV. The same gadgetry could very well be attached to an ICE vehicle.

The Rivian suv is even worse like this. I was waiting for the suv to come out and now that it finally did I guess I'll just get a 4runner.

It doesn't boggle my mind that there are people with no sense that think a car with just a big touch screen and nothing else is a fresh new and therefor better idea, but it does boggle my mind that there are so many of them that a whole car actually gets all the way to mass production like that, all the engineers and ergonomics people and managers and execs that all had to sign off on all of that... that does just plain flabbergast me.

You need to navigate screen menus to AIM THE AIR VENTS in the Rivian suv.

The Lyriq also has an electronic glove box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sirCpkqvpE0&t=59s

Very possible we'll see the same in the Blazer, and maybe the Equinox too.

Which puts you in the stupid situation where if your 12v battery is dead, you can't even use the car's paper manual to look at the jumping instructions. The process has of course been made more complicated by the addition of a scavenger hunt for the positive and negative terminals hidden under separate plastic covers under the hood.

The 12v battery in an EV shouldn't die, but failures in the system to automatically keep it topped up are not unheard of, and batteries do go bad eventually.

To be fair, even many of the latest ICE vehicles have a lot of electronic/motor-driven frippery. I bought a new vehicle over the summer and, in spite of having a fairly generous collection of pushbutton controls, still has a ton of automatic controls--e.g. shifting the drivers side rearview mirror to reverse--that aren't really necessarily and are presumably expensive to fix when they break.

This isn't limited to EVs, though, right? My 2012 VW TDI won't open without a key fob (even though the ignition is still key-driven). How is that a "feature?" Just let me unlock the door with my key. I am very much against "infotainment" systems, and I wonder if some makers will begin/continue to offer models that do not have a tablet in the middle of the dash.

If it's like most VW's that I've seen with no apparent way to unlock with a key, the physical key mechanism is hidden under the door handle trim piece. But maybe you're just saying that opening with the key is not provided as a primary option? For better or for worse, the "feature" is aesthetics.

Huh, so there's some magic panel or something? I'll have to poke around.

Look for a little rubber flap under the drivers side door handle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OECOoNYZXmk

I have no idea about electronic glove boxes, but electronic window openers are cheaper and more reliable than manual window openers. Sure sometimes an electronic window opener won't open the window when it's frozen shut but that's a good part of the reason why it's more reliable -- many a manual opener has been broken putting too much torque on a window that's frozen shut.

In terms of whether it’s poor/reliable design, I think the failure mode and dependency chain is much more important than capabilities. The glovebox example has two key features your windows example does not:

1. If the glovebox fails for any reason, there’s no workaround and it goes to closed. (I don’t know whether it’s true there’s no workaround, but that’s what we’ve got suggested here). This would be akin to the window failing, and reverting to full-open position with no way to physically pull it, or convince it to stay in current position.

2. If the infotainment system fails, the glovebox is taken out with it. Because of 1, the glovebox is taken out 100% — not just the convenient infotainment style of usage. This would be akin to, well, the same. The death of the infotainment system is the death of your windows.

3. There could also be the reverse dependency, not in play here (afaik) — the death of the glovebox mechanic may equate to the death of your infotainment system.

That is, the question isn’t whether the individual component is reliable in and of itself (which is less a statement about Tesla and more of their suppliers), but whether they’ve tied things together such that one failure creates a cascading effect — and done so unnecessarily. And in such scenarios, whether backup strategies exist.. (your tire shouldn’t blow, but if it does… there’s an extra tire in your trunk and shitty-but-enough tools to get by). And as I understand it, Tesla has produced a masterpiece of unnecessarily coupled components, particularly around the UX.

So it’s not surprise to me that they see higher UX failure rates — they seem to design the car intentionally to have no degraded experience allowed; either everything works, or nothing does

The Model S has frameless windows. If the window opener fails you can't close or open the door.

They use the fact that they are electronic to add gimmicks.

Regarding the pop-out door handles - this is a fascinating video on how the Tesla Model S door handles design has been refined and made more reliable by someone who used to work at Tesla (SuperfastMatt) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bea4FS-zDzc

>I'm sure the police are going to love that one. "License and registration?" "Sorry officer, they're in the glove compartment and when I tap the button it just makes an angry grinding noise."

The only reason they ask for your papers is because it's an easy ticket to write or pretext for fishing if you don't have them. They look up your info based on the plate regardless.

It's interesting that Tesla, one of the newest automakers, has far more issues than the EVs made by the established players. So it may be less that the Model S is only 10 years old and more that Tesla itself is relativley young and inexperienced.

For issues with drivetrain etc -- absolutely. But it seems that a lot of the problems center around fit and finish of the body of the vehicle, trim, accessories etc -- stuff the industry has decades of experience with. It really sounds like quality was sacrificed for efficiency there.

“The industry” also had decades of time to perfect their process, and afaik there isn’t some giant knowledge-sharing system in place for new manufacturers to get all the insights of “the industry”.

A new car manufacturer is going to have issues in fit and finish for the first few years regardless as they figure out their tooling process.

I’m sure quality was sacrificed to some extent, everyone does it whenever they can, but I wouldn’t expect a new company to be at the same level as one that’s been doing it for decades.

But aren't most components actually sourced from third-parties? In which case, their experience with the traditional manufacturers could be reused. The French manufacturers, for example, don't produce their own seats.

I don't expect the auxiliary (as in not engine / drivetrain related) components to be radically different just because they're attached to an EV-powered car. Or does Tesla actually manufacture everything?

Body panel fit is a pretty common complaint with Teslas (and is definitely an issue, my own has gaps in some areas but none that I deemed extreme, I’ve seen some bad ones out there though). That would be an example of something that, IMO, can only be perfected with time. The body panels might be similar to other cars, but it’s something that each manufacturer is going to have different issues with because of the variability.

I don’t think I’ve really seen many criticisms of commonly available parts used in Tesla cars. The one big one that comes to mind would be the eMMC recall which, similar to what I said above, Tesla figured out after years of heavy writes to the component. It’s something that could have been avoided had there been some centralized group to give best practices for automotive or industrial development but that just doesn’t really exist.

> Is it not just the case that there simply hasn't been enough time to work out the kinks?

Obviously. Any such report (accurate or otherwise) would show you a snapshot of how things are right now. It won't tell you why or predict how the reliability might change.

It makes perfect sense that Tesla would still need to iron out issues related to build quality (unlike automakers who have been working on those for decades), and that other automakers would have to iron out issues related to the electric drive train (less experience in that front).

It's a lot easier to catch up on sticking batteries, an esc and some brushless motors into a good car than building a good car. Elon succeeded, he got other manufacturers to start building quality EVs.

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