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Comment by ke88y | Hacker News Reader

I think that reputation already died in the last 2-3 years.

It's now pretty common in my circle to hear people say they'll pay a premium to not own a Tesla. Primarily because of lots of bad experiences with build quality/repairs, but also because there are now lots of high quality alternatives. Namely Rivian and Lucid, but also the legacy automakers (two friends bought mach-es recently and there's a smattering of F-150 lightnings.)

The fact that Musk has adopted the public persona of a crazy uncle who doesn't get Thanksgiving invites -- and is heavily associated with the Tesla brand -- doesn't help either.

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Musk is pretty much the whole reason. People have a much easier time remembering sleazy business practices when there's a celebrity CEO whose personality matches the crime.

If you think about the CEOs of major corporations, the only ones who are personally memorable for the public are founders. How many exceptions can you think of, memorable personalities that were hired as CEOs or rose to become CEO of established companies? Lee Iacocca is one, barely. Carly Fiorina manages to be forgettable even though she ran for president. I'm sure there are more exceptions, but not enough to invalidate the rule.

So why can flamboyant or quirky people like Musk or Zuckerberg not get hired as CEOs of huge corporations? At least part of the reason is that being bland and forgettable is part of the job requirements. It makes it that much harder for the public to remember the sleazy things they learn about a company. A crime committed by a faceless company is like a natural disaster. A crime committed by Tesla is easier to see as human evil, because we can see how Musk revels in his unaccountability. There's a story: evil person did evil thing. And an obvious corollary: evil person must be prevented from doing more evil! If Tesla had replaced Musk with a faceless professional CEO, there would be no story, just "bad thing happened for inscrutable reasons."

Our caravan has been a pile of shit, which I’m sure anyone who’s ever had a caravan can attest to.

Anyway. We are looking for reliability and imagine my surprise when Kia, of all brands, came out king of generally affordable reliability. Plus their EV reviews reasonably well.

A lot has changed in 10 years for vehicles I guess…

Kia is always a mixed bag. On the most important fundamentals they produce a good value vehicle. But they are able to reduce prices by cheaping out a bit on drivetrain components. E.g. axles and CV boots that wear quicker, just slightly cheaper parts. If you watch the Munro Live videos when they tear down an analyze the engineering, they often concur with this.

And it's all fine if you drive your vehicle for <150,000km (100,000miles) and then sell or move on, but my experience with them is that after that they start to have mechanical parts issues. Which makes sense because they've effectively optimized for the most common consumer vehicle ownership pattern. But.

I've never heard a good story about a caravan, period! I do sometimes wonder if caravans are particularly crap vehicles for intrinsic reasons, or if targeting families means you have to cut costs which reduces quality (kids are $$$$$$), or if perhaps the driving habits of young families (lots of short trips) are particularly rough on vehicles of that type. Maybe all three conspiring.

IDK about Kia, except that they're doing pretty well on the EV front compared to other legacies. But in general, 10 years is at least one product cycle, so I guess it's not that surprising that reputations-vs-reality mismatches appear on that time frame. It is weird though.

Depends on the model year. The one we bought in 2003 only needed regular oil changes and a new set of tires every few years. We did have to get a rebuilt transmission just before its warranty ran out, but didn't pay a dime for that ("Not a dime? Really?" Yeah, well, I was a trial lawyer before going into tech). The 2013 is still running and other than normal maintenance the only problems we've had are with the sliding door coming off its track and one of the stow-away seats getting stuck. In both cases YouTube saved the day. Don't get me wrong, I really hate the look of that car. It definitely is not an identity statement. But given the astronomical prices of new (and used) vehicles right now, we're probably going to keep it for a while longer. Here's hoping that changes. Soon.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Kia's more or less just Hyundai, these days, isn't it? Like, a Kia Nero (electric version) is much the same thing as a Hyundai Kona.

The problems that were unique to Kia cars were predominantly in the engine and transmission, so it's not exactly a big surprise that removing those two parts means they make better cars.

I don't know much about Lucid, but Rivian in its current form is not sustainable. Their cars are incredibly overweight and overengineered, their COGS/BOM is out of control, and with the end of ZIRP I'm not sure they have the time and financing to fix these problems at the burn rate they are at. Don't get me started on their "environmentalist adventure vehicle" marketing that's putting 7000-pound cars on mountain trails.

I'm a lot more excited about Hyundai/Kia and Ford.

I agree, and drive begrudgingly in any case. I'm merely observing that "Tesla" used to be a signal brand and it's now somewhere in-between "cheap plastic brand" and "anti-signal brand".

> Don't get me started on their "environmentalist adventure vehicle" marketing that's putting 7000-pound cars on mountain trails.

Car adventuring as an ends unto itself is something I just don't get, and since I can't really say anything constructive or nice about the entire activity/scene the EV component of it is a bit of a red herring.

AFAICT, R1T is a decent e-F150 alternative if you need to tow. Buy, yeah, driving through wilderness for no particular reason is kind of idiotic.

Do those people who say they will pay a premium to not own a Tesla already own a Tesla? Because all the people I know who own a Tesla say it's the best car they've every owned to the extent that they wouldn't consider any other car.

Are they also in the market for an electric car? I said I would pay a premium not to own a Tesla, largely because of Musk. And then it came time to buy an EV: and there just isn't a vehicle under $100,000 that performs better under 100mph. And range? The Kia EV6 GT, which costs $5k more than the Model 3 Performance (or $12,500 because it doesn't qualify for the tax credit), is slower 0-60, has only 200 mile range. The Model 3 could have 26% lower range than advertised and still have 10% more range. So .5 second faster 0-60, 10% longer range, for $12,500 less.

> Because all the people I know who own a Tesla say it's the best car they've every owned

I only know three people who own Teslas, but all three have little positive to say about them, and one of them will tell you at length about how he regrets buying his if you let him.

It's for that reason, not my dislike of Musk, that if I were in the market for an EV I wouldn't even consider a Tesla.

Are there quality alternatives that dont cost six figures?

Basically everything coming out of Detroit is sub-100K. Even the tippy top trim of the e-F150 MSRPs just below 100K. Sedans and mid-size SUVS tend to be priced comparably to Tesla's offerings.

Lucid are expensive, but their entire product line is basically a Model X competitor and prices are comparable.

If their stock price is anything to go on, they channel perfect futuristic cars out of a time void and will bring about a utopian post-scarcity society.

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