Also, for the premium price of a Tesla, I expect things like the weather stripping and other basic features to top quality. They aren't--far from it in fact. All of the other EVs I drove had some elements of that same "all digital" poor design, but none of them had any apparent defects in the basic structure of the vehicle, or the poor steering, etc. And they were comparably priced (Rivian) or less expensive (the others, save Mercedes).
Now if you were complaining about Tesla's dearth of physical buttons you wouldn't get any argument from me...
In fact the Bulbs are burnt out for the backlights and I just never bothered to take the dash apart to fix.
The radio is a little more conplicated since it’s a CarPlay model. But all the functional controls are on the steering wheel (volume, next/last etc). So short of answering a call, or changing from a podcast to Plexamp I rarely have to divert attention.
In Model 3 and Model Y, it is clear that Tesla is cutting corners where it can & the gap between those and a Model S Plaid is stunning.
The Rivian, EQS, Mach E and Taycan were head and shoulders above my Model 3, but also in a slightly different price range.
My car feels like a Toyota with a Tesla touchscreen the way it feels inside (at least it understands my accent when I ask it to change the temp on voice). The Kia EV6 GT is probably a close comparison or the new Prius in the way it looks.
Definitely overpaid to get access to the highway Supercharger network. My friends drove from SF to Chicago round-trip in a Model 3 in the winter break and when Tesla starts charging Rivians everywhere, it will be somewhat of a game changer.
Because of that, I think Tesla as sort of a Ford meets Exxon, they make a trickle of money off the chargers, more if they have CCS - I'm actually waiting for them to stab me in the back and ship a Tesla with a standard CCS, making me carry around a "dongle" to charge my old model.
But by the time they perfect their software my car won’t receive updates anymore.
Tesla is absolutely a premium brand, the cheapest vehicle Tesla offers is a base model 3 for $42,000. Where as a Nissan leaf starts at $28,000. Nissan actually understands how to build a widely affordable consumer model. Tesla only knows how to build “premium” vehicles with poor build quality and an autopilot that can’t stop running into fire trucks.
I was close to ordering a Rivian until I saw Ford dumped their ownership of the brand a few months back. I highly doubt they have the ability to scale and turn profitable without a major, driven backer like Ford or Elon. Which is a shame because the vehicles look beautiful.
1. Excellent but north of $100K
2. Tesla
3. Solid EVs that are reasonably priced, but the wait list is > a year
4. Low range crap
The cars that this guy was talking about are in category 1, so, yeah, Tesla is actually the cheaper option.