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Comment by constantly | Hacker News Reader

Speaking for myself, but although I loathe Elon and deride Tesla’s build quality, there’s truly nothing like driving around a Plaid Model S for it’s absolutely tearjerking speed. The weird steering wheel continues to annoy, however.

Stepping back though, one can get a performance Model 3 very inexpensively, relatively, and as far as I can tell or have seen, no other manufacturer outside of Porsche (with BMW making some minor inroads) has electric cars close to as fast.

So if given a choice between a ridiculously fast Tesla and a, say, much slower Volvo for the same or more money, I’ll go with the Tesla. Not that I base the entire purchase on acceleration performance, but all else being relatively equal I will be driving a Tesla until others catch up.

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> no other manufacturer outside of Porsche (with BMW making some minor inroads) has electric cars close to as fast.

Off the top of my head, the Ford Mach-E GT and the Kia EV6 GT are also sub-4 second cars.

I expect the blinding acceleration to become just a feature most EVs have some version of. Even the Bolt is pretty quick for a compliance car (nearly as fast as a VW GTI, the quintessential hot hatch).

Personally, having owned a Model 3 Performance, I finally figured out that there was such a thing as too much power. It's a great party trick, but as a practical matter I think I'm quite happy with anything sub-5 second.

the plaid, i believe, is sub 2s. it is a vanguard product. i believe they use the same motor in the semi- so, in hindsight, they started with impractical fun but had an eye on practical power down the way. This is rather smart, no?

I couldn’t disagree more.

Anything that does 0-60 in under 10s is fast enough for me. I’d rather have a quieter and more comfortable ride. I have an actual race car to race on an actual track and don’t need to endanger myself or others going Plaid speeds on public roadways.

I have a 5 year old Avalon Hybrid that was in the bodyshop and rented a Tesla for a month and it was awful. Brand new and it felt like I was driving a Wish.com golf cart. The only redeeming feature was the supercharger in my building.

I feel you, I was chatting with my dad and he said something similar. Your framing as either or though isn’t quite right. I’ve found that the Model S is quite comfortable and quiet inside.

I also think it would be a very cool experience to drive a race car on a track, and I’m glad you get that experience. But I don’t see my interest in that extending or being prioritized enough to make the time and financial investment for such a specific thing. But your framing is again problematic, probably unknowingly, because having a car that can go fast and “going Plaid speeds on public roadways” with the race car comparison conjuring images of irresponsible drivers is almost entirely orthogonal to actually owning such a car.

The acceleration of the model 3 has already helped me avoided a few accidents.

That acceleration isn’t useless.

that’s not the experience most of the drivers desire

I'm not arguing, but do you have a source for this? I happen to agree with GP. I'm 55, I want a quiet, comfortable car. I don't care about performance.

Nor is it the experience anyone with a Tesla experiences. Nothing else comes close to Tesla in build quality (My wife's Subi Forrester is a flaming POS in comparison) or driving experience. Every other car company makes vehicles to make money, and fail on target after warranty (or in the case of Ford during warranty costing Ford billions in warranty costs). Tesla seems to "break" capitalism, they make their cars to last and NOT break.

I'm intrigued by this. I own a 2017 forester and it is rock solid. I, my family, many friends, have all owned Subarus extensively, and build-quality/fit-and-finish have never been an issue, including on some quite old vehicles.

I would very much /like/ to own a Tesla, but I hear so many bad things about loose panels, road noise, touchscreen interface, problem getting repairs, and even that the Subaru's adaptive cruise control is better than the Tesla. It's hard to justify moving away from a brand which has been absolutely reliable though.

So I'm very interested in hearing that your experience is that the Tesla has actually been better. If you don't mind: which Tesla model/year do you have experience with? I'd be interesting in determining if they're getting better, or started out great and perhaps getting worse.

There may be regional differences. Most people I know that have teslas complain about shocking build quality issues, with the exception of the cars built in China.

But Lucid Air Sapphire blows Tesla Plaid out of the water better top speed, range, interior, just nicer, better quality, and a not stupid steering wheel.

$250,000

Ok.

FWIW, you can get it with a normal wheel. In fact, the yoke is a $250 upgrade. Elon originally said it would only be available with the yoke but apparently he relented.

I did not know this! They didn’t have that option to my knowledge when I got mine. Probably doesn’t matter at this point as I’m mostly used to it, but good to know.

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