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Comment by porphyra | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, it seems like people who clamor for physical controls are a vocal minority --- Teslas sell very well [0] and owner satisfaction is very high [1] despite the loud complaints from non-Tesla drivers online. It seems most people who actually drive Teslas are happy with them, and even controversial things like steering buttons take 5 minutes to get used to.

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-worlds-best-sell...

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

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Maybe it’s part of the reason that Teslas are involved in more fatal accidents than any other car manufacturer.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...

That study was already debunked. They had underestimated the number of miles traveled by a large margin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1gyznda/t...

The study was debunked by a Tesla exec posting on X and reposted on Reddit. Excuse me if I view that with a very healthy amount of skepticism.

The Tesla exec has access to the actual figure for miles traveled and why should he lie about something like that?

And just from visual inspection, it is evident that there are numerous surprises with the iSeeCars study that are difficult to explain. For example, why is there such a huge difference between Model 3 and Y fatality rates even though the cars are similar in most respects?

Another thing to note is that the number of fatalities is only a handful, often under 10 in a year. The standard deviation of the Poisson distribution would already give error bars of 30% at least, making direct comparisons between models meaningless.

Finally, if you read the accident reports, most of the fatalities are head on collisions with drunk drivers and not wearing seatbelts. Having physical controls for hvac or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with it.

> The Tesla exec has access to the actual figure for miles traveled and why should he lie about something like that?

Because money?

> why should he lie about something like that?

Nobody's that naive.

People are naive to trust the obviously wrong numbers from the iSeeCars study though.

I'd happily wager $100 that in a couple of years time we'll have the data to conclude that Model Ys were not 3x more lethally dangerous than average.

Would you take that bet?

Do we believe that “people buy them and they like them” should be the end-all argument to judge everything? I think it’s a datapoint but it doesn’t mean that the thing is good for society or people themselves.

Like 40% of people used to smoke. 40% of people are obese today. I’m not comparing these things to teslas in terms of harm (though funding musk is societal harm) but they prove that consumers can make very very bad choices and IMO do all the time

The vocal minority acts as a valid canary, probably most of the time.

People buy them and might still hate the touch screen. I know I hate my car's touch screen.

Just because people buy something doesn't mean they love every aspect of it.

I overall liked our Model Y, but the infotainment/touch screen situation was my biggest complaint.

We recently switched to an ID Buzz because our family outgrew the Y. The interior is a huge improvement over the Y (which, fair, it is a more expensive vehicle) and CarPlay is just objectively better than Tesla’s infotainment, but the rest of the software is pretty meh. I really miss a lot of little things like phone keys and a built in dash cam, though.

Teslas have a large driver base (note, likely doesn't apply to this forum) who don't know good engineering or design when they see it. They confuse "I spent good money on this" with "this is a good product".

Sorry, we all have our opinions and perspective, but money isn't the only value judgement.

I want my speedo in my easy line of vision on any vehicle I drive. I want to be able to demist my windscreen by reaching for a button I can find without taking my eyes off the road.

> Teslas sell very well

Someone's been sleeping for last 12 months

Citation needed.

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