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Comment by steelframe | Hacker News Reader

My fresh-off-the-lot 2024 Toyota GR Corolla got nearly its entire side mangled by a red light runner on day 8 of ownership. Mind you this is a brand-new model, first released in 2023. Once my insurance finished dragging their heels on doing their assessment -- as they didn't yet have any of the parts for it in their internal database -- it took another week to get on the schedule with one of the ~20 auto body shops in a 15-mile radius of where I live. An entire door and two windows needed replacing, along with a fender, trim, and so forth. The shop apologized that some of the parts were delayed by a whole week, and in the end it took 5 weeks to restore the vehicle to its original state.

And this sort of thing is precisely why I chose to go with an established automaker with a strong reputation for reliability and serviceability. This has become so much more important to me than almost any other feature in a motor vehicle.

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> And this sort of thing is precisely why I chose to go with an established automaker with a strong reputation for reliability and serviceability. This has become so much more important to me than almost any other feature in a motor vehicle.

Jaguars are not known for reliability. Indeed, I got rid of my 2012 XJ L after its coolant system failed catastrophically one too many times (which was "two times" - first one, okay, so be it, happens again, no thank you).

However, at some point the dealer bricked the entertainment console (of course tied into everything else), and it was an all in one unit that they had to replace...

I am near Seattle. "Well crap, how long is that going to take?" (thinking the car is several years old at this point, and not a high volume of sales). "Oh, we should be able to have a new unit installed by the end of tomorrow, unless we have to get it sent from England, in which case, end of day after tomorrow".

One of my other cars is a 2019 Jaguar I-PACE. It's generally been rather reliable over the past 5 years. The main problems have been how it tends to like to brick itself when something electronically doesn't go quite right.

For example when I had it turned on and running the A/C on the Edmonds-Kingston ferry it decided that the suspension was borked and refused to release the emergency brake once the ferry arrived at dock. You know what happens when you can't push your bricked car off the ferry? They put cones around your car and load everyone else on the ferry around you while you try to explain to the tow company on the phone how you have a luxury AWD EV bouncing back and forth across the Puget Sound that needs to be winched onto a flatbed.

Then when the auxiliary battery died it decided to roll into the middle of a parking lot and gradually glitch out and clamp down on the emergency brakes again as the main 12v battery then died, and you get to have it winched onto another flatbed as it's also impossible to release the emergency brakes once the 12v batteries have given up the ghost.

Hence why my most recent vehicle has a clutch pedal, a stick attached to a gearbox, and an emergency brake attached to a lever via a cable.

I really liked the Jaguar, when it was working.

I'll not own another.

Absolutely, if you value more how the product and service responds to 1/1000 event , if you value how your daily driving experience is more then Tesla beats the Toyota hands down.

I am not trying to diss you, i kind of value the same things. I own a Toyota hydrogen fuel cell car , and I bought an expensive experimental car is because it was Toyota and the support that would come with .

However every buyer has different priorities, risk minimization while common , also why most big companies would buy from IBM or SAP instead of a startup or pay license for redhat linux or oracle Java. This also means you objectively have poorer experience and are a cycle or two behind in innovation, most are not okay with that

I don't think that's true. A GR Corolla is going to have a nicer interior than a Tesla, it'll handle (much) better, and I bet it's a lot more fun to drive too.

almost always an electric motor will beat any combustion engine , just because of how torque works, plus the lower center of gravity and the rear engines makes the Tesla hands down more fun than a hot hatchback.

FSD is not full self driving but is still miles and miles better than anything Toyota has.

My Toyota which was their flagship research platform still struggles to do lane assist on sharp curves .

You may have other parameters of course , but GR Corolla is poorer than a Tesla in many parameters a lot of customers value (which is why it sells)

Having tested FSD, I prefer the system in my 2020 Hyundai. It doesn’t cover as much road, but it’s extremely predictable and pretty simple to use.

I found that FSD would randomly require intervention at the most inopportune times. I’d simple prefer to be hand driving into those situations than have to jump into reaction mode.

I've owned a Tesla and now currently own 3 (non-Tesla) EVs.

Let's just say we come from different planets when it comes to automotive aesthetics.

that we probably do.

Neither of those planets are outliers though ? which is why they both sell in quantities in excess of million units ?

How's the hydrogen working for ya?

Quite well for my needs . I have clocked 25k miles in 2 years and i have had no issues or complaint

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