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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

The newest Tesla's (eg. The 2024 model 3) don't have indicator or wiper stalks. They have two very non tactile buttons in the steering wheel to indicate. These buttons are impossible to press when you're rotating the wheel (eg. At a roundabout where you're turning but need to exit. In fact I don't think the current design should be legal given how dangerous it is.

I want a new car but cutting nessesities to save a few dollars more than anything else has ruled out 2024 model Tesla's. It may be Musk's insanity that led to this but the end result is the same. The newest models of Tesla are no good.

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> cutting nessesities to save a few dollars more than anything else has ruled out 2024 model Tesla's

It turns out that not all lessons from building rockets make sense with a car.

Trimming weight is a huge benefit in rocket design. The less weight the rocket has, the more fuel it can carry, and this mass ratio has a non-linear effect on how much, how far can you carry. Rocket failure is a part of life which you just accept and can iterate.

But mass ratio just doesn't have the same importance for cars. Safety, reliability, usability are kings. Few kilograms extra are unimportant. The recent Cybertruck's accelerator pedal issue was quite illustrative there.

The windshield wipers are anannoyingly bad design.

If you want to alter the wiper's setting and if you don't press the little wheel-button just right or a few seconds too late then you change the radio volume or station, depending on exactly how you hit the button.

Yeah they broke the auto wipers in a past models update when they decided cameras were enough and got rid of the $1 rain sensor. The broken auto wipers weren't a deal breaker till the recent change to remove the stalk completely though.

Yeah, it seems like a fairly small thing until you're in rain, and the wipers are going crazy over a few drops of rain, or are too slow during a heavy downpour. You're constantly interacting with this awkward setup to change the rate the wipers work at, and it's fairly easy to accidentally change the radio station or volume.

Does anyone make an EV with a user interface modeled after every car I've ever actually driven?

I hated driving the Model 3. It was like an iPad on wheels. Does anything out there have normal turn signals, normal windshield wipers, a dashboard that's in front of you, and doesn't slam the brakes every time you relax your foot a little bit?

If you are used to Big3 (4) vehicles, get a Big3 (4) vehicle.

I can tell you as an automotive EE though, everything has questionable choices right now. If I wanted an EV, I think the RAM 1500 is the least offensive then the GM.

Maybe the Blazer EV but you need to deal with the screen a bit more.

I have a Chevy Bolt, it’s fine. it feels like any Chevy, more or less. I wish it charged faster, but it gets the job done

I know it's an old platform by now, but the Nissan Leaf is very much a normal car but with an electric motor. Everything has a dedicated physical button. The speedometer has an actual needle that moves around a dial. My biggest gripe with it, is its single phase AC charging and Chademo DC charging, but for my driving pattern it's not that big of a deal.

My SAIC (MG) is a regular car with an electric drive but quite usual otherwise (including software issues)

An F-150 Lightning, with one pedal driving turned off seems like it'd fit the bill

I’m renting a polestar 2 and it’s great.

I drove a Subaru Solterra for a while, and I really enjoyed it, and it felt like a traditional car, not like a crappy tablet with a (pretty good) car bolted to it.

Except the Solterra's range was kind of short and charging was more painful than a Tessa. Tesla really has charging down, and that's a big deal if you cannot charge at home or work. Teslas charging is both faster and generally works at more stations. The Solterra seemed to have more trouble syncing up, and the plug wasn't as common, so you had to plan ahead more.

I hope it’s not hard for Tesla to pivot back to making normal cars with reasonable interfaces. the EV transition is coming no matter what, and nobody else has ramped up their production capacity enough, so we’re going to be mostly stuck with Teslas, unless BYD figures out how to sell cars in the US

I don't think it is cost cutting I think it is preparing for the future where things are automated and they don't need human intervention. Example Tesla does a great of auto cancelling the turn signa if the setting is enabledl. Auto wipers, not so much.

While I don’t disagree that Teslas have some strange design choices… is location of the wiper switch a complaint on the topic of Elon Musk? Do you think that was his call? Is he the one who did you wrong?

Or is everything so tied together, so conjoined to ideology that bad Tesla equals bad Musk? Should I hope for a SpaceX explosion because Elon thinks we should control our borders more?

All I see here are meek people looking for more ammo or easy points in the culture war they seem to want so badly. Careful what you wish for.

No it's the opposite. I don't think the drop in sales has much to do with Elon at all unless it was him personally that led to these dealbreaker changes.

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