Comment by lgkk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lgkk | Hacker News Reader

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I used to have a '18 Model 3 Performance (P3D as they were called then) and I sold it after a little less than 3 years.

1. The interior quality was shit. By 10k miles everything was rattling and the quiet nature of the car meant even with bass thumping everything was just annoying af.

2. The car software felt like it got worse. I had bought FSD for $2k back in 2018. I thought it worked fine for that price. As it became more expensive, and pretty much 5x in price, I thought it was a ripoff. Around 2021 it felt like FSD had gotten way worse. More phantom braking, more getting tripped up and literally pulling into another lane for no reason, etc.

3. Going somewhere farther away became a huge PITA. It was fine waiting at a supercharger 20-30 minutes the first like two months. After that it became a hassle and eventually something I would dread. What a collossal waste of time.

I ended up going back to ICE and I probably won't ever get an EV again unless there are substantial improvements or even hot swap battery stations.

Yeah EVs are "cool", but at least for me if I'm being completely honest and not lying to make myself feel better, the allure wore off pretty quick.

I holding onto my hybrid until the industry comes to its senses and realizes that PHEVs are the solution to electrifying daily commutes with sensibly sized batteries while simultaneously sidestepping range anxiety for long trips.

This is the true wisdom. However, the industry needed to realize this fact about 5 years after the Prius/Insight hit the market in 1997ish.

Now? You have a choice as a carmaker: invest 50 billion dollars into PHEVs which will be mere stepping stones to then having to invest ANOTHER 50 billion dollars into EVs, or you just bite the bullet now and do the 50 billion ICE-EV upgrade. Figures obviously arbitrary.

If our government was smart, it would have taken one look at the Prius/Insight, realized that every single commodity consumer vehicle should use that architecture (for the regen braking alone) and mandated it to be in all cars/trucks by 2010.

Oh well. It's too late now.

I've been lightly car shopping in the past few weeks, and from chatting to salespeople, that does seem like the trend that's coming.

You might have bought into musk's used car salesman pitch and were not one who used their car for just commuting. Few years ago things he said most ppl followed then he bought twitter and things went a bit south for him (putting himself in the sh!t show that is politics) and now EVs.

For me the thought of plugging in my car at home and cutting gas station visits by half or more sounds great! Yet I road trip frequently and if I'm paying tons of money for a car the experience better match that of an ICE car(no problems working in cold weather like Fairbanks AK, EV chargers need to be in every nook n cranny of this and other countries like gas stations are & most importantly don't inconvenience me making me wait 15 to 60 or more minutes to charge my car on one of my road trips when I paid thru the nose for an EV/Telsa).

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