>As you seem to agree, the final product seems rather questionable, with incredibly poor reliability and build quality for a $100+K car.
I said "The final product might suck". I said suck from the point of view that it is a product design that the customers might not want. You read too much into it.
>The innovation and risk taking mainly seems to consist of cutting corners at the expense of the customer experience.
Absolute hogwash. Where do I even start?
The 48V architecture is going to lead to a much more reliable and efficient wiring loom by way of not having as much wire in the first place which is a constant frustration on some makes (looking at you GM). Not to mention that cost goes back to the customer in the form of savings or that money can be spent elsewhere such as a better interior.
Same goes for Gigacasting. Yes I seen the Whistlingdiesel video of the back breaking but all things considered, the castings will lead to more reliable, cheaper and "solid" driving cars.
Finally the drive by wire is an interesting risky move but again you are introducing a better driving experience(a big truck can have a turning radius both like a big truck and a tiny city car depending on the context) AND still have cost savings.
Theres more but really you can just google the endless amount of articles posted about this.
>Meanwhile, the other models are fairly stagnant.
Every new model that does come out seems to be a big step change. All they can really do right now is refresh the old models with a facelift. Yes they are hindered by their circumstances. The Model S and X are made in a legacy mess of a factory that should be scrapped. Its been dragging along with really antiquated tech and design. If you read the tealeaves its possible they will abandon California and shift production to Texas after the Model 2. That makes the most sense. Start with a fresh platform.
>The supposedly "self driving" car cannot even reliably get its windshield wipers to work automatically, it's not particularly good at parking itself, and it seems to be not much closer to autonomous driving (which was supposed to have been achieved in 2017) than 8 years ago. Meanwhile, competitors have released products with actual, if severely geofenced, autonomy. And the robot seems to be pure demoware.
Have you tried these systems?
You know its funny, I've been paying good money to rent every single EV for a day or so to do a long road trip with the hopes that I find my next 15+ year car to replace my aging one (Mazda 3). So far every car has disappointed me in various ways but let me tell you, in regards to auto driving, the autopilot on the Tesla is miles ahead of the competition. I wish it was a feature on other cars. My standards are REALLY low. Just be able to drive on the highway and I will take care of the rest.
Bluecruise and Supercruise both act like a super nervous driver "ping ponging" back and forth on the highway road. The Tesla is super solid and assertive. The first time it did an automatic lane change, I freaked because after the mess that was bluecruise I didn't trust these systems.
Instead it blew me away with how clean and solid the driving was. I was super non trusting but it really impressed me. I really think the Tesla is amazing for highway driving (again only tested highway as I am only looking at bare minimums). The windshield wipers auto starting dont matter to me when the rest of the system works so well. It does not work great other cars I tested anyway (ford and chevy). I mean they are passable and on the Tesla the rest of the car dazzled me so much that I overlooked the wipers.
Tesla's crime is that sometimes they try too hard. The other companies don't try hard enough. In my testing the Tesla had an extremely competitive product and at least on the metrics you mentioned they are top tier and the others are not even in the same realm. The tesla fails on other ways in my testing such that it isn't the perfect car for me but it was close to the top.