Comment by seshagiric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seshagiric | Hacker News Reader

My experience as a Model Y owner:

What works:

- best in class software quality. Both various controls (lights, wipers, electronic parking brake etc.) and infotainment work just right.

- Navigation is quite good, especially considering it automatically adds/ suggests charging locations as needed.

- Steering assist (automatic lane and speed control) is quite handy. I never felt the need for trying out autopilot.

What doesn't work: it's just one thing for me: you cannot trust Tesla:

- Battery mileage. My model Y is supposed to give me 330miles on a full charge. For the recommended 80% charge it should be ~260 miles but in reality, I get 125 miles in winter and 200 miles in summer.

- Price drops. Cars depreciate but to have a $10-15K price drop right after I purchased really sucked. For this reason alone, I will never buy a Tesla again.

- For a 70K (model Y) car, it rattles, and they will charge 30$ to test for rattling.

- I haven't faced them but I often read about poor quality issues like cracked roof, wheels falling off (yes !).

I’m surprised to read software quality as part of what works. I test drove a Y and found that every setting had to be changed through voice commands. I saw the glass roof and thought it might be retractable. I issued the voice command “Open Sunroof” and it responded “Opening Sunroof.” Nothing happened. I said it again, same thing. I said “Close Sunroof”, and it said “Closing Sunroof”, but again nothing happened. Finally I drove it back to the dealership, where I was informed there was no sunroof! What was the software doing??

You should try asking it about the heated seats in cars that don't have then unlocked.

> Steering assist (automatic lane and speed control) is quite handy. I never felt the need for trying out autopilot.

Steering assist + TACC is what Autopilot is.

You're probably confusing it and Enhanced autopilot (changes lanes, takes exits) or FSD (city streets BS).

That being said, Autopilot is IMO the best of their software, EAP is like a midpoint and FSD "Beta" will actively try to kill you at times (personal experience).

I do agree with your battery points though. If I tap into the Tesla API for my car right now they even have three ranges calculated out (time of sale stated, ideal, and real).

>Price drops. Cars depreciate but to have a $10-15K price drop right after I purchased really sucked. For this reason alone, I will never buy a Tesla again.

Aren't all cars like that?

They dropped the price of a new model a few times recently which meant used cars dropped that much more. I think that’s what is being referenced here.

Otherwise, the (mostly) static nature of Tesla models kept the used Tesla market in decent shape

Yeah, say I brought the car for $70K. 2 weeks later Tesla reduced the price by $12K. So, it's now $58K, and then you add depreciation...If I were to sell the car today (within 1 year of buying) I'd be looking at $35-40K!

I bought a GTI in 2018 for $28k. I could fetch North of $20k for it today. Granted its light mileage (37.5k miles). It's still held its value because it was a sub-$30k popular vehicle in a good year for reliability and going into a period of car scarcity.

The big factor is how far above the $30k floor do you reach. A rav4 hybrid keeps a much higher percentage of its value than a rav4 prime.

My Maverick went up in price after I bought it at MRSP. But that was a market anomaly.

There’s usually a drop some but that amount is excessive.

Japanese cars aren’t

I’m sorry for that painful price drop you experienced but that is on you for paying 70k, a price that literally and explicitly was jacked up for the purpose of decreasing demand in order to resolve the order backlog at the time. Don’t forget all other car makers were doing the exact same thing at the time so this isn’t a Tesla specific issue though Tesla was probably the most extreme.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com