Tesla Model S review: A good first impression | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model S review: A good first impression

money.cnn.com

47 pointsPaulMcCartney42 comments

A review does not include the words "Turns are accomplished (or so I'm told) with hardly any body lean...". Not a review but a short ride in a $100,000 car - so no surprises that the reporter found some elements nice.

Mind even this stage managed puff piece had to end with a reminder that "Tesla faces the mundane challenges of producing the car profitably in relatively high volumes...".

Puff piece? Did you read the whole article through a neutral lens? Here are some excerpts you might have missed:

> At slow speeds the Model S feels disappointingly like a hefty, battery-laden electric car. With a light foot on the accelerator, it shuffles from stop sign to stop sign with all the eagerness of a fat man asked to change seats on an airliner. You can almost hear it sigh.

> Fortunately, for me, the brake pedal works just as well as the accelerator nicely preventing me from rear-ending cars ahead after each startling burst of speed.

Even the quote that you took out of context was a begrudging acknowledgement that it was believable that the car would handle well given the low center of gravity, but that he'd have to wait to say for sure.

Am I the only one who's not impressed at all by the touchscreen-based interior of the Model S? I can find the button I want to hit/knob I want to twist to adjust the radio or AC by feel in my current car, so I don't have to look at it while driving.

Buttons are good! I'd like buttons with little screens on them so that they can always display their function in the current "mode," instead of having to be labeled with multiple things in cases like that, but I'm not seeing the benefit of going full touchscreen. On a phone or tablet it's extra screen space for displaying content—but I don't expect to be browsing the internet or looking at a photo slideshow on the center console of a car.

I predict that touch interfaces in cars like this is a fad that will pass and people will look back on it as an embarrassment.

I'm patient, I can wait until Tesla figures it out with their 2nd or 3rd generation sedan.

What always goes through my mind when I imagine buying one of these is, "my laptop battery died after two years". How do I know the same thing won't happen with this car? If not two years, what happens to this car in 5 years, 10 years?

Is there any guarantee this car will be drivable in 10 years? Is there even a process for replacing the battery? What would it cost?

The tesla battery costs approximately $40k to purchase and replace. There was widespread coverage of Tesla Roadsters being 'bricked'. Essentially more than a few Roadster owners reported that if the car was left sitting idle for more than a month or so it was rendered useless as the battery requires a constant trickle feed of electricity if parked up over a long period of time.

It was discussed at length here on HN too:

http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3618946

Yeah - this is FUD that was pretty quickly debunked:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/02/23/0310255/why-tesl...

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1073289_tesla-battery-br...

http://green.autoblog.com/2012/02/23/tesla-bricked-battery-s...

You may wish to have another read of some of your sources which clearly indicate that Tesla's can be bricked.

The argument is not about how easy they are to brick, it's about the fact that the entire car is rendered useless if bricked unless you're willing to pay $40k to get your vehicle back on the road again.

If the cars were easy to brick there would be a significantly larger number of documented cases than what currently exist.

While it's safe to assume the Model S could be bricked, we actually don't know. And if it is suitably difficult to brick, it is no different from a regular car being rendered inoperable due to mis-maintenance. Finally, 10 years of decent use would outdo many Audis (certainly my own).

Correct. My statements are with the Roadster.

Claims that bricking is caused by mis-maintenance are false. leaving a car idle for a few months in secure storage isn't mis-maintenance. The requirement to leave the Tesla on a trickle charge is almost completely obfuscated in the guidelines and Tesla purposely downplay the information.

This is just FUD. This is nothing to do with Tesla, and just the case with most battery chemistries. Even if the article is true, it has only happened to 0.2% of Tesla cars and it would be solved by a £15 solar charger.

More relevant comments on slashdot

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/02/23/0310255/why-tesl...

...it has only happened to 0.2% of Tesla cars

In the automotive industry, 0.2% is a huge figure for concern.

The comment you linked is in itself factually incorrect. Firstly, when a Tesla battery dies, towing isn't even an option. The vehicle has to be completely lifted from it's spot and placed on a truck as the wheels can't be released on a dead Tesla.

Secondly, it misses the semantics of the claim. It's not about battery failure, it's about how the battery itself discharges over a prolonged period of time as Teslas, even whilst switched off and completely stationary, require a minor amount of power which progressively drains the cells.

After a period of time, the cells are entirely depleted and the structure of the Tesla battery means they can't be recharged and require replacing entirely. It's been acknowledged that it's a fundamental flaw in the Tesla powerpack that has not yet been resolved.

In response to your "towing isn't an option" comment, it most definitely is. Any decent tow truck driver will get that thing towed. Jack up the front end of the car, put a roller underneath, jack up the rear end, and winch it up the tow truck. My father used to tow cars and we would do this pretty often.

It should be stated that all of Peroni's claims apply to the Roadster and not necessarily the Model S.

There is an 8 year warranty on the battery in a Model S, with mileage depending on which capacity version you own.

Oh that's a start. It's still hard to swallow that a 50K+ car will be worthless in 8 years.

I talked to a sales rep in one of their stores and they said the Roadster with the most mileage has 160K miles and the battery is still at 70% capacity. Not worthless but definitely less range.

160k miles isn't too much to sneeze at, and it's not unheard of for ICE cars to have 30% loss of power over that mileage. It still does hurt a bit thinking that you're buying a car with an expiration date built in, though.

People don't seem to remember that Tesla's car won't be consuming any gas for that 8 year period and that the only (almost) maintenance cost is changing the tires/breaks once in a while. Also the average ownership length [1] is less than 5 years.

Take all into consideration and a base Model S at 50k is closer to a 25-30k car.

Combine all the "not spent" gas and maintenance cost and you can very well afford a new battery 8 years down the road.

[1] http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-of...

A lot of the "gas" you wont be spending money on would be because the range is pretty small.

Next weekend I will be hopping into a car that has sat outside the house doing nothing for a month or so and drive it 1,000 km to the South West of France. I will stop briefly on the way to fill up with fuel (10 minutes?). It will be dark for quite a lot of the time and the car will have the headlights on. Oh - it might even rain so the wipers might be needed. The journey should take about 12 hours including the section where we cross the English channel.

A couple of weeks later I will do the reverse journey. No fuss at all. How many days would it take to do the same journey in an electric car?

Answer: you rent a car.

If you go a month at a time without using your car, then the financially optimal number of cars to own is zero. Since you own more than zero cars, then your ownership is based on reasons other than financial ones.

Which overlaps nicely with Tesla owners: anybody who buys a $100,000 car is doing it for reasons other than financial ones. They just have different reasons than you do.

P.S. Not judging here. My wife owns a BMW, which is also more than just a way to get from point a to point b.

WRONG! "you rent a car" is not a unit of time!

An electric car is completely inappropriate for that use.

Just the same as a Miata is inappropriate for a family of 6, or a smart car is inappropriate for guy who has to haul lumber, or a minivan is inappropriate for a single guy in his 20's.

Yet all of those cars sell enough to carve out markets for themselves.

But all of those cars would make the same journey without any problems - you are confusing carrying capacity with the fundamental utility of the things we call cars.

That's a whole different discussion/argument by itself.

For most transportation 400km is plenty. That's a week of transport for my family and me.

Next weekend I will be digging an in-ground pool. I will use my backhoe and complete the digging in about 6 hours. No fuss at all.

How many days would it take to do the same digging with a spoon?

(unstated, but strongly implied point: Therefore, spoons are worthless)

If someone can afford an electric car, especially a Tesla, they will probably just fly first-class to their destination, where they will undoubtedly have a second electric car waiting for them.

So my estimate would be about 1-2 hours.

Gas is about $1,000 a year, very roughly. (10000 miles @ 30 mpg @ $3 a gallon. You can of course change those numbers in either direction.)

8 years may not quite pay for a new battery. It depends if you can extract any value from the used one.

In California, where most fuel-efficient/electric cars are sold, gas ranges between $3.50-$4.00/gallon (or above $4.00 during periods of "high demand"). Gas in the areas targeted by Tesla (i.e., Beverly Hills) starts at $4.25 and goes up from there.

Also, very few cars on the road anywhere in the U.S. get close to 30mpg, excepting hybrids and 2012 or 2011 versions of some (but not all, or even most) smaller sedans. The most popular models of the most popular sedans of the last decade, i.e., the Camry, Accord, and Civic, do not get 30mpg--they tend average around 22-25mpg in real-world conditions. MPG is even worse among the luxury cars that compete with Tesla.

Consequently, the gas cost savings experienced by Tesla owners would be significantly greater than $1,000/year.

Where gas is more expensive, people will tend to have cars with higher MPGs.

MPG is even worse among the luxury cars that compete with Tesla

That's the key question. If someone is getting a Tesla because they care about mileage, they probably were not driving a 20 MPG car beforehand. If they were getting it to show off that they can afford a $100,000 car, then maybe they were.

Electricity isn't free. It is usually cheaper than gas, but it's still a significant cost to charge cars like this.

Tesla Roadster's have been on the roads now for 6 years, and I think you'll find it is pretty hard to find one at any significant discount off it's MSRP.

Tesla also offered a $12000 replacement plan for the Tesla Roadsters, so you could get a fresh set of batteries if there was a failure.

really? What kind of person spends that much on a car, then keeps it for 8 years?

I mean, Tesla, I think, did the right thing by going for the luxury market; people there are accustomed to considering a ten year old car essentially worthless. (Yeah, a ten year old BMW still runs, but for what you pay to keep it running, unless you have the auto repair hobby, well, you probably want to get a new one.)

Battery longevity is going to be a huge problem when these cars move to the economy market. But for the luxury market? I think that the technology is just fine. Using an 8 year old car, to them, would be like me using a cellphone from the '90s. (Personally, I think Tesla needs to be careful to provide luxury service; Charge a little more and roll that 8 year 'no questions' battery warranty into the purchase price. I mean, if I'm going to spend $100,000+ for a car? clearly I'm not trying to save money... but also clearly I expect a 'premium' experience. I mean, the nature of ridiculous high end cars is that they are less reliable than a Toyota, but the service had better be goddamn good.)

I don't know the specifics of this model but most electric cars on the market come with a lease agreement for the batteries - you don't get to own them.

I also understand that the batteries need swapping in a lot less than 10 years.

Most cars only have a 5-year powertrain warranty anyways.

Your powertrain won't cost $40k to replace unlike Tesla batteries.

OTOH, replacing an engine does usually cost a good 70% of the value of the car, with labor and all.

Agreed however it's significantly more difficult to render a complete engine a write-off and most of the component parts can be individually replaced. Not so with Tesla.

But there is a huge difference between the length of a warranty and one's reasonable expectation of a functional lifetime.

My last car only came with a 4 year warranty (now expired) but I bet it is still driving just fine in another 10 years.

An earlier (favorable) review of the Tesla Model S

http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2012/07/06/review-tesla-mo...

also seems to have been based on a rather short test drive.

". . . . The car’s flat, floorpan-mounted battery pack (85 kWh) accounts for about 30% of the significant total vehicle weight, 4,642 pounds. And yet, with a C-of-G comparable to that of a Ford GT supercar, the Tesla corners like it’s tethered with magic. What do you call that?

. . . .

"Out on the street, suspended with the speed-adaptive air suspension, the Model S has an utterly unshakable, gantry-like vibe to it, even with the big meats in the wheel wells. And yet, given the constraints of our test drive, I can’t really describe the car’s handling. I’ll need at least three months to be sure."

Gearhead websites like Jalopnik and TTAC have taken Tesla to task for only providing extremely short press junkets to reviewers - assumably so nobody will ever get the thing down to empty and have something bad to say about it in their review. To me it shows a lack of confidence in their own product.

I personally hope the best for them, but to this day it remains to be seen if they can actually deliver the 50k Model S to a customer.

"but to this day it remains to be seen if they can actually deliver the 50k Model S to a customer"

I was under the impression that customers have been receiving the Model S for the last month. Not all reservations have been filled, but they have started filling them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com