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Comment by jgilias | Hacker News Reader

> “We make the best cars,” he [Musk] said of Tesla at a New York Times event last month. “Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?”

Ah, lol. You could’ve argued that Tesla was the best EV some years ago (not any car, mind you, just EV). But now? Since automakers who actually know how to make reliable cars have caught up on the EV part, that’s a pretty ridiculous claim.

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Since "best" can mean many things, it is good to refer to more objective benchmarks. On possibility are the defect rates of vehicle types in the same age categories. In Germany, cars must undergo regular official inspections. For new cars it is after three years, then every two years. The largest service company that carries out such inspections is TÜV. Their data from July 2022 to June 2023 for the first mandatory inspection after three years shows that Tesla's Model 3 has a defect rate of 14.7%, ranking it last out of 111 models. (The best was VW Golf Sportsvan having a defect rate of 2,0%.)[1]

However, these figures are subject to two caveats:

- TÜV inspections only cover aspects relating to road safety.

- If a vehicle had a defect before the inspection that was discovered and repaired, this would not appear in the figures. Owners of older vehicles in particular often have them checked by a repair shop before the TÜV inspection because they do not want to risk having to repeat the (chargeable) TÜV inspection.

[1] Source: https://www.tuvsud.com/de-de/publikationen/tuev-report/maeng... (in German)

>TÜV inspection because they do not want to risk having to repeat the (chargeable) TÜV inspection.

Thats not fully correct, a second check is much cheaper then the first one, and it's not super unusual to get it checked by tüv to see what you really need to repair.

in terms of reliability its not great in the UK either: https://www.whatcar.com/news/reliability-survey-most-reliabl...

For which magazine, tesla was such a drag on defects that it brought down the entire EV category

Wait, VW was the best?! who knew?!

> “Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?”

Musk has become so publicly toxic that he now needs to add this disclaimer when trying to pitch his company's product. Dude is becoming a detriment to investors in all the same ways he was a benefit 10 years ago.

Man's becoming more and more of a villain every week.

He's always had too much of an ego, but since Covid he genuinely keeps getting visibly more dangerous as time progresses.

You’re just getting to know him better

Could be both! Though I definitely think that his Twitter addiction has been a net-negative for his image. It's interesting to watch someone with so much money and ambition become a social media addict like the rest of us.

Sales numbers seem to tell otherwise. Tesla is the best car. I own one and agree.

That said, it’s not perfect as a car.

Also, what a ridiculous answer to criticism about quality from Elon. Just nuts.

Tesla makes good cars but to hide problems like a six year old in the hopes that no one notices is just so dumb.

It’s not whether you make mistakes but how you handle them when you discover them.

Sales are not always indicative of "best". Rather, it indicates popularity. Teslas are nice in some ways and were revolutionary, but build quality and consistency have always been crap and it would seem there are some major issues with all the self driving software.

I would argue that sales is indicative of the best as it best matches the desires, utility and constraints for the most people. It removes individual bias from the equation as individually naming the best is impossible.

Not disagreeing with the rest. I have not had notable build quality issues but I recognize that it is an issue generally.

The self driving part is a shameful disaster which I’ve stayed as far as possible. Didn’t pay for it and even the parts that come as standard are sometimes scary. Tho not as scary as some other implementations that don’t recognize cars stopped at red light in front of you and are happy to plough into them at full speed (looking at you Volvo).

> I would argue that sales is indicative of the best as it best matches the desires, utility and constraints for the most people.

If you assume consumers are rational, then yes.

But I think that's an incredibly naive stance to take. "Desires" will do a lot of heavily lifting to determine "best" since they will include a LOT of subjective measures such as susceptibility to marketing campaigns.

Besides, we all know the Miata is the best car. https://youtu.be/kp1kuo6xkbE?t=239

Sales-wise, McDonalds has the most popular burger, but it's hard to argue it's the best you can buy.

Not quite though, as many things influence sale. Availability is one of them. Someone already brought up McDonalds burgers as an example.

Availability is a constraint, price is a constraint. No?

> Tesla is the best car. I own one and agree.

How are _you_ defining best?

I do not own one, because I do not agree. They may have one of the best selling cars (in a given category), which is admirable. But that doesn’t mean they are the best overall.

After driving one (Model 3) as a rental, I briefly considered getting one. But after thinking about it, I realized that was because I liked their (to me) gimmicks. Overall, the vehicle was not the best to me.

I've driven 3 as rentals (2 Model 3s, 1 Model Y) and they all had issues. They all made a ton of noise on the highway (my 15 year old SUV makes less noise at higher speeds), cameras would randomly go completely out, screen would become unresponsive, etc.

Unrelated to reliability, I'm also not a fan of everything being controlled from a touchscreen. My wife wants one after driving a rental, but I think she too has fallen for the gimmicks.

I've rented several Teslas, mostly with Avis but some with Hertz. All of them are ridden very hard (thanks Uber) and, consequently, had heaps of issues.

Every single rental from Avis had a non-OEM replacement front or side window. One of them was replaced so wrongly, you could feel the air leaking through even when it was closed.

Almost every single rental also had two or more budget tires on them which tend to be louder and less energy-saving.

One Tesla had its rear camera pointed downward way too much. Unfortunately, because this car was Vision-only and lacked ultrasonics, and Vision-only Park Assist is slightly better than absolutely fucking useless, backing it in was a 2002-esque shit show every time.

This isn't unusual for rental car companies. They do the barest minimum repairs on their cars while charging you 10x the price if the damage is your fault. Scam life.

The Teslas I rented on Turo, however, were in great shape, including the Tesla that made me want to buy my own Model 3 (which is still going great 90k miles later).

That said, when I financed our Model 3 in 2020, there really weren't any other EVs and the non-Tesla charging network was practically non-existent. It's a completely different world now. I've rented many non-Tesla EVs. All of them are much better driving experiences. I'm particularly fond of the Chevy Bolt for a simple, cheap, no-bullshit commuter EV and the Genesis GV90 or Volvo XC40 Recharge Twin for something plushier.

I solely rent from Hertz (because of a big corporate discount). I used to rent cars frequently, though not as much in the past few years. Other than small scratches and other minor things, I’ve never had a vehicle with real issues.

The Model 3 I rented, from Hertz, didn’t have any visible modifications. But it was missing the outer lower plastic on one of the mirrors. The person at the desk said that they see that a lot (from a car wash?). It didn’t cause any real issues but did cause a whistling noise. When I initially got it, the Autopilot was not working (which I didn’t notice until after leaving the rental place). I looked up the error displayed, but it was pretty vague and the manual said to clean the cameras, which had no effect. Luckily I found online in Reddit or another forum that the next thing to re-calibrate, which fixed it.

Overall, I will rent one again, because they certainly are fun, but they are not what I want for a main vehicle, at least yet.

> One of them was replaced so wrongly, you could feel the air leaking through even when it was closed.

sounds like standard fit issues from a tesla....

The best that fits the desires, utility and constraints for you.

If it’s best overall then best selling seems to be a fair way of removing bias as it is the best for most people.

Tesla’s market dominance is largely a thing in the US, where there is, currently, very little choice (though this will change). In markets with more of a selection of electric cars, like Europe and China, it is less dominant. US sales don’t demonstrate that Tesla is best; they demonstrate that the major manufacturers see the US market as more difficult to address/lower priority (and they’re not wrong, for a variety of reasons).

> Tesla’s market dominance is largely a thing in the US

Tesla is behing VW in total sales, but the M3 and MY are the best selling EVs in Europe.

https://www.electromaps.com/en/blog/europes-best-selling-ele...

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/24/these-are-the-top-5...

Well, yeah, but that’s really more a consequence of a different marketing strategy than anything else. VW Group makes several minor variations of the same car under different brands. There’s a Cupra version of the id.3 and Audi and Skoda versions of the id.4, say, all under different branding. There are a bunch of other minor variants, too. Bizarrely, there will also soon be a _Ford_ version of the id.4 (the Explorer EV), though that would go under Ford’s total, not VW Group’s. Besides the Ford, VW Group could, if it wanted to, condense all this into three significant cars, plus the microbus, but that’s not how they operate.

Tesla is about 15% of the European market, joint-second. In the (smaller) US market it is nearly 50%. I think it’s reasonable to describe it as very dominant in the US, but not in Europe. It would be reasonable to expect this to change as US manufacturers go electric and as foreign manufacturers go electric for their US-targeted models.

I remember the first time I got into a Tesla Model S. I got a rental one just to see how it’s like. Was super looking forward to it.

Getting into it was a downer. I disliked the interior or rather the lack of it so much. Driving it exceeded all my expectations though. At that point it was the best EV, and one of the best cars on the street. Revolutionary indeed.

So, I can see how it could be seen as the best car for many people. Me? I’ll take an E-Tron, or a Taycan over a Tesla any day. I myself drive a KIA, and I much prefer it over the comparable Model 3.

And that’s before taking reliability into consideration.

I'd like to buy a KIA EV but it seems KIA doesn't want to sell cars. Even if you bought one they are holding it some for a year!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kia-canada-car-sales-1.706321...

That is KIA Canada shenanigans, not KIA as a general brand.

They seem pretty available here in Sweden, a friend just got his EV6 GT delivered less than a month after purchase.

Oh man, what a load of crap! Got mine in two weeks. A completely different market, and a few years back now.

VHS was a superior format to Betamax. I mean... their sales numbers proved it, right?

If they were only building them in volume

99 times out of 100, GFL getting an electric car from a dealer without a Eastern Bloc-like wait time.

My family waited for 2 years on a Lada in the 1980s.

Hyundai tells me there are dozens of Ioniqs available within 25 miles of me at a couple different dealers, and my local VW dealer appears to have several ID4s in stock.

My local dealer (only one within 150 km drivable radius) has 14 ID.4s in stock, but the inventory site says sold out for 2023.

A lot of modern western capitalism mirrors whatever the hell we had in the eastern bloc, with the caveat that neither the US nor the EU are 20-40 years after the greatest, most destructive war in their history.

That's definitely a huge factor.

The prices for vehicles from the other makes are absolutely insane for anything comparable.

I really, really like the design of the F-150 Lightning. If I could get it with 300 miles of range, rapidly recharge it on a trip and get it used for somewhere in the $40-60k range I'd probably get one.

As it stands, it's closer to 200 miles of range for $80-90k without the ability to rapid recharge (that I have seen).

Potential is there, but efficiency of production is not. Especially when they're publicly saying they still lose thousands on each one sold.

I mean, Donald Trump claimed that his steaks were the best, and, well, come on. Loud bombastic idiots claiming their thing is the best thing is just background noise; it is a big part of their _thing_, and shouldn’t be taken at all seriously.

> Since automakers who actually know how to make reliable cars have caught up on the EV part, that’s a pretty ridiculous claim.

Most are still years behind Tesla on the range or software quality part. Ask any Volkswagen owner, their software has gone to shit.

On top of that they're rare in numbers. Tesla makes more cars in a quarter than BMW in a year, and it's obvious that the focus of the "classic" ICE car industry still lies on huge, gas guzzling, high-margin SUVs.

> Most are still years behind Tesla on the range

FTA: "In July, the news agency revealed how Tesla had created a secret team to suppress thousands of customer complaints about poor driving range. The report, which found that Tesla rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars’ in-dash range estimates, sparked a federal investigation."

They are ahead in software side of things, so ... they fixed it in software :-)

Exactly, it worked for the Boeing 737 Max... for a while...

The end game for surveillance capitalism. Recording everything you do, storing it out of your control and then falsifying the data to screw other people over. They'll probably only get a small fine for it so all they'll learn is to hide it a little bit better next time.

You think this information will be used to make things better for you the consumer? This is war, and you're the enemy.

I don’t want software from my car manufacturer. I want a thing I can cast Apple CarPlay on.

Regarding range, pretty much any EV with a comparable battery pack (kWh-wise) is a peer. And there’s plenty of those now.

Exactly. Tesla’s overuse of software for everything is a bug, not a feature. I want knobs and dials and something to cast CarPlay on, and that’s it.

You don't want software, you just want a thing that relies on software. Got it

They don't want software they have to interact with through the car's UI. Everything relies on software these days, I'm sure they want their brakes to keep working too which requires software, but I think what they tried to communicate came through pretty clearly.

You said it yourself- even braking requires software these days, so the statement 'i dont want software from my car manufacturer' clearly makes no sense.

Maybe you could say 'you don't want UI software from your car manufacturer' but that's obviously wrong for the market as well- what about users who don't have an apple, or who prefer not to use their phone at all? Cars are moving towards more tech integration, not less, so the entire idea of auto manufacturers not needing to focus on software makes no sense. Zooming back out to the larger point, Tesla is clearly leading the software battle, and that's a battle that matters for consumers.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but braking should not require software. It should be a pedal physically linked (through hydraulics or otherwise) to four sets of brake pads. Maybe an exception for ABS, but even then, ABS can obviously be implemented without software or even electronics.

I get that brake lights can be mechanical, but man would those parts wear down and be unreliable. Also, having your trailer help with the braking is very nice (and communicated via wire).

I think the obvious interpretation is, "I want to be able to use my car without having to interact with its UI, I just want something I can cast CarPlay to". And that's understandable and unproblematic and doesn't imply that the car should be unusable without an Apple/Android phone.

Tesla's lack of CarPlay means it's far behind in the software battle for a whole lot of consumers.

That's an argument over semantics, having to preface any usage of "software" with a disclaimer about an exact meaning of it is not only cumbersome but pretty damn boring for any online discussion.

I don't think the original comment was made in a way that this nitpicking adds anything to the discussion. Cars have software for 30-40+ years if we interpret the way you are interpreting so it makes sense to ignore that meaning and actually reply to what was meant by the comment...

It's just very tiresome to have these semantics bickering when it's pretty obvious what was meant.

No less tiresome than your dismissal of my argument as semantics. I read the OP as asking to turn the center console into a dumb screen for use with a secondary device, or at least the allowance of any native casting software. That is obviously an absurd idea. Until Apple puts out a car, why would a car maker cede the center console to an indeterminate second platform? Do consumers want Apple play, or Android auto? No, they want the best possible navigation experience, and car manufacturers are not going to rely on third party platforms to deliver an increasing share of that experience (with music, navigation, games, movies) on that center screen. Forgetting even the customer benefit, automakers aren't going to pass on the monetization opportunities the console represents. [1]

My point might be overly deterministic, but it's not semantics. I'm saying software has already eaten the world, and if we're going to be making outrageous wishes, we should be wishing for the car companies to implement better UI software, not wash their hands of it. At least the former is achievable. Arguably, the latter isn't even desirable.

[1] https://www.hotcars.com/why-tesla-doesnt-include-apple-carpl....

This has gotten so far from the point of the original comment, which is that the software of VW and others is often worse. You’re not getting many buttons and nobs in those either, and the few you do don’t work all that well as they’re fake (capacitive) buttons now. You’ll be relying on the software UI for the bulk of the creature comforts of the car - not just stuff that can be replaced by CarPlay.

> Tesla makes more cars in a quarter than BMW in a year,

BMW Group produced 2,399,632 vehicles in 2022 (a decrease of 4,5% from 2021) with 2,100,689 being BMW's themselves.

Tesla produced 1,369,611 vehicles in 2022.

Not even sure where you heard that Tesla produced more cars than BMW.

> Not even sure where you heard that Tesla produced more cars than BMW.

From BMW themselves. Barely 65k cars a quarter [1], that's about 260k a year. Tesla meanwhile makes over 400k cars a quarter [2].

[1] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T041287...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/715421/tesla-quarterly-v...

> From BMW themselves. Barely 65k cars a quarter

No, you did not get it from BMW themselves. What you did get from them is that they produce 65k EVs, not cars in general. They produce twice as many cars as Tesla.

Some quarters are clearly different than others.

Volkswagen and other ICE car manufacturers are not IT companies like Tesla. They are holdings outsourcing design and manufacturing to Bosch, Magna Steyr, and others.

Yes, but they are doing another layer of quality control on whatever comes out of Bosch. Because at the end of the day, they can't blame Bosch for the bad quality of cars sold under their brand.

I'd much rather have a door hinge[1] from Bosch, a company that has manufactured a billion door hinges[1], than from a company that's figuring out how to design and manufacture door hinges right now.

[1] these are hypothetical examples meant to illustrated a mechanism.

> Tesla makes more cars in a quarter than BMW in a year

bmw sold >2million cars in 2022, compared to tesla's 4.2million since 2008.

> it's obvious that the focus of the "classic" ICE car industry still lies on huge, gas guzzling, high-margin SUVs

Well you said it yourself, it's the margins. I guess we can blame people then for paying those margins, buying those huge, gas-guzzling SUVs.

Meanwhile Tesla releases a huge (albeit not gas-guzzling in the traditional sense of course) pickup truck. (Whether it's high margin I have no idea.)

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