This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind.
Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.
Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect.
Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.
Its not the isolated parts of a car that makes it good, its the whole package. (yes that works both ways. )
A lot of the tech in the Tesla vehicles is truly innovative. Look at the seemingly simple cooling bottle they use, which is the best in the entire automotive industry (and patented by them):
I keep hearing people talk about fit and finish problems with Tesla vehicles, but I simply don't see it. I was so paranoid when I took delivery of mine that I literally brought a measuring tape. They've long since fixed the body panel problems and it manifested itself more with older Model S/X and the very first batch of Model 3s. This "problem" is pretty much gone, and this argument is like beating a dead horse.
Even Bob Lutz thinks Tesla has good fit and finish now.
"But, when next to the car, I was stunned. Not only was the paint without any discernible flaw, but the various panels formed a body of precision that was beyond reproach. Gaps from hood to fenders, doors to frame, and all the others appeared to be perfectly even, equal side-to-side, and completely parallel. Gaps of 3.5 to 4.5mm are considered word-class. This Model 3 measured up."
Agreed, I have a 2019 Model 3. My car does have a few panel gaps that are not the exact same width from one side of the car to the other, but you are literally talking about a millimeter or two here or there, no one would ever notice. I've never heard of anyone complaining about the paint job on a Tesla, the paint on ours looks perfect. The interior seats are super comfortable, probably the most comfortable car seats I've ever sat in, and I've never seen any defects with the seats either.
Overall Tesla's customer satisfaction is really, really high. Most owners are extremely satisfied with their cars, even if they have a few warts. They really are the Apple of the automotive world.
> Overall Tesla's customer satisfaction is really, really high
That's because most of the owners have new cars.
Wait until they need to have their car serviced by Tesla or until their batteries degrade and are subject to a forced OTA "upgrade" that removes capacity i.e. Model S.
Aye, I've dealt with Ford and Mazda dealerships that were utterly abysmal. Others were better. Hit or miss quality of dealerships and service centers is not a surprise and not a flaw of the brand per se.
"But Tesla is a luxury model that competes with Porsche and should make me feel fancy and be super nice etc etc" ...eh kinda, but not really, IMO. The S model does but future models are aimed at a more down-market segment and are going mainstream.
It's still pretty variable, actually. Mine is pretty good (built 9/19), with only a few discernible misalignment. But other people who have taken delivery in just the last couple months have had terrible alignment. Maybe most are perfectly acceptable, but it is incorrect to suggest it is a completely solved problem.
Does it really matter long-term? A lot of people seem fixated on it. I get it if you are buying a car at the moment. Then there’s an innovation vs. quality issue. For the company though, it seems like it should be far easier to catch up on the quality of the trim as it’s purely executing on something many OEMs have already figured out, and there are proven, known ways to fix those types of issues?
Less than 0.5% of owners say they are dissatisfied with the exterior appearance of their Tesla (including paint issues)[0]. And quality has continued to improve since then.
That is, by far, the most extensive and reliable source we have on this topic but please point to any other study that might say the contrary.
Pretty strong selection bias here, if people were turned away by the lacking build quality they wouldn't be an owner. Also a pretty huge post-hoc rationalization gap here
Just saw a 2020 top spec model 3 that still has a few misaligned gaps and bunching seals in the doors. The leather around the back where it was punched out is creased. It's a great car, but the for and finish sadly still has a ways to go.
Yea, Tesla is selling cars sight unseen which makes minor cosmetic issues a very low priority for them. It says less about build quality than their sales model.
Personally I doubt most customers notice or care, but it’s an obvious thing to criticize.
Here in Brazil for quite a few years it's been standard to not see a new car for days to weeks after buying it, even on traditional brick-and-mortar dealers where you can test-drive a different car of the same model before buying yours. I don't know about the luxury market.
I was skeptical of Tesla, I didn't buy it when all my friends got it. The car seemed bland inside, devoid of any fashion/art/decor etc. The panel gaps .. ughh..
I test drove it 3 times. Hated it the first time in 2018. Late 2019, I used auto-pilot on 880 and 101. I was sold. There isn't a car available now that can drive on Autopilot with that confidence. I don't let it drive on auto over 30mph, and under it is where it really shines, takes the edge off of bumper to bumper traffic. I bought it.
I took delivery on the last day of year, was a little pissed off at Tesla, that they left me with little choice if there were any issues with it. I got home, saw no issues and felt relieved. I now love the car. The Audio is turned on the moment I open the door. The temperature is set to my liking and I glide with one finger press. There are no keys, and my car knows I go to work in the morning, so the directions are set. I get on the freeway, usually bumper to bumper, set autopilot, chill out and listen to radio. I think I am a much happier person now.
I live in a rainy area of the country. Periodically my car annoys me to the point of cursing, because the auto wipers are extremely stupid. And because there is only one non-touch/voice control for them, you're kinda stuck.
I also wish it would not refuse to unlock about 10% of the time. I may just get the fob.
I haven't bothered asking Tesla to explain the unreliable unlocking, since it seems to happen to almost everyone else periodically, and some people quite a lot. I just take the phone out of my pocket and hold the door handle open for a while until it figures it out. After 10 or 15 seconds I usually just take out my wallet and use the RFID.
I also started using sentry mode even in my garage, which helps tremendously, because it seems like the root cause is the car going to sleep.
Usually for me it's unreliable only when line of sight from phone to car is blocked. That's with an iPhone. I hear Android devices have more issues.
Edit: And the new fob is awesome. Different tech from the old one as you've probably heard, with different security/convenience tradeoffs. (With the old one being more secure, but to an insane level, and the new one being ever so slightly less secure but still very good in my admittedly fuzzy understanding of it). No issues whatsoever since getting that.
Do you kill the Tesla app on the phone regularly? It takes a bit for it to unlock the phone in that case. Did you try changing your phone? (Not to be offensive, just curious)
Yes this is a good point too. It makes sense that there might be some delay added when the OS has to start the app in the background to respond to an event the app has registered for (...didRangeBeacons...) and maybe one of the reasons they recommend against killing the app!
It does annoy me that my Mazda takes forever to go from turning the car on to Spotify playing via CarPlay. There’s even a pointless popup warning you not to get distracted that you have to click through.
Total non-sense; this might have been true about the first ones off the line 2 years ago but hasn't been the case for some time. They also seem to be selling them faster than they can make them so even if true which it isn't the market doesn't seem to care.
People have been upgrading Tesla for years already. There are been some very extensive surveys about Tesla reliability (about all kinds of defects) and owners say they are overwhelming satisfied, overall: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-tesla-model-3-survey...
I hear this fit and finish critique of Tesla often. But the whole package of a Tesla is clearly compelling to people, who are willing to pay a luxury price for it.
High end Volvo’s are a good example of old-school quality — gorgeous interiors, beautiful trim. But they’re still predominantly internal combustion engine era designs. The height of it from a luxury finish standpoint. But, Tesla’s different.
Maybe it’s that petro cars reached a peak, and the only way to really differentiate has come down to “door sound” and body panel alignment measured in nanometers.
Fit and Finish are exterior indicators of the quality of the entire vehicle. If they don’t care enough to make the panels line up, what assurances do we have that they do care enough to torque all of the bolts correctly, to ensure that the motor is mounted correctly, to ensure that the suspension has been properly calibrated?
Also, the condition of the body and the interior matter more to the vehicle’s resale value than the condition of the rest of the car - again they are indicators of the quality and care taken with the rest of the car.
Is it? Getting the spacing down so its not noticeable by humans is doing manufacturing and assembly with tolerances measured in whole millimeters. It’s easily the largest possible tolerances allowed within the manufacture and assembly of the car. It should be some of the easiest manufacturing and assembly to be done.
If they can’t manage tolerances measured in millimeters, how can they manage manufacturing and assembly tolerances measured in the thousandths of a millimeter?
Internal combustion engines require intense tolerances. If your cylinder head is 1mm out of spec you're going to have serious problems.
But if the wire winding bundle for the electric motor is 5mm out of spec? You'll be fine.
The areas in a Tesla where tolerances are actually important- the batteries and PCBs- are subject to completely different engineering practices. Nobody's going to get cross trained from fitting door panels to placing SMCs... which is done by a robot anyway.
Do you (literally) kick the tires of a car before you buy it?
Engines aren't built on the body assembly line, they are also subject to completely different engineering practices, and have their own set of workers. And robots, too!
If they wiring bundle is 5mm out, you're going to have a bad day, shits going to burn.
If the doors are misaligned it either means the chassis is deformed, or at best the hinges are misaligned.
That doesn't bode well to what happens in a crash, or if it rains. Are the seals oversized to account for slop? what happens when they get old?
If I'm dropping $100k on a new car, I want to make bloody sure its built well. That doesn't mean that people won't buy them, far from it.
Look, I get it, Tesla is new and shiny. But lets not over-rate them. They have parts that are very well built. but the software, chassis and interior are not part of that.
This is like saying they must not have computer chips in the car because of door tolerances and yet clearly they do. Maybe they just don't care about exterior fit and finish?
"But they’re still predominantly internal combustion engine era designs"
This is implicitly saying that what matters is not even the specific car you are buying, but the image of the company and their entire lineup being electric.
This cuts in the opposite direction for me - it is a significant reason why I wouldn't buy a Tesla (other than the price). The company is so tied to Elon that if some sort of scandal happened to him, it would instantly taint owners of the cars.
Tesla has never done commercials, they don't do ads in magazines, they don't pay people at football games to talk them up. They have a website, they make blog posts. Imagine if Ford never paid for those endless car ads. Or your local chevy dealer stopped advertising all the time. Tesla doesn't do marketing in the sense that they don't pay for ads.
in the article: "This is the takeaway from Nikkei Business Publications' teardown of the Model 3, the most affordable car in the U.S. automaker's all-electric lineup, starting at about $33,000."
Looking at very low mileage 2019 Teslas for sale on Autotrader, in the $40-50K range is about right. The cheapest used 2019 model 3 in the whole US is more than $33K. And the only 2020 examples are much more expensive.
You can argue forever about technicalities, but $33K is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In fact, I would say if you are comparing brand new 2020 cars, $50K+ for the model 3 is more realistic, and you should take into account the discounts other cars have.
That shows that Nikkei did not do their research. $33k is Tesla's deceptive advertising of "Price after Est. Savings". The cheapest car actually costs $40,000 plus tax.
The Chevy Bolt is priced the same as the Tesla Model 3 and has less 'luxary' features. For example if you want leather in the Bolt that's extra where as it is standard on the 3. Other things the Bolt doesn't have at that price are Autopilot, DC Fast Charging, etc...
As someone whose car recognizes traffic lights (though not with perfect accuracy), it is the most useless feature I've ever seen. Right along with recognizing garbage cans. I would not pay a dime extra for the visualizations, especially since they're quite inaccurate in many cases. So, many, cones, even when there aren't really any cones.
There’s no leather in the Model 3. But the seat material (“vegan leather”) is very nice.
I don’t think of the money spent as buying luxury. What it’s buying are the other amazing aspects of the car. Performance, range, efficiency, connectivity, updates, safety, etc. which may have some overlap with features of luxury cars, but it’s better to think of it as a next generation car where you are paying for that new tech, and any luxury touches you may get, while not measuring up to a teak wood console in some other car, are bonuses. Instead of the teak wood and alligator leather cigar holder or whatever, you are getting AWD that beats the pants off Subaru, Audi quattro, or anyone else, and all the other amazing things Tesla gives you.
False, you cannot buy a Model 3, or any Tesla for that matter that doesn't have leather. There was a planed cloth seat for the model 3 but they scrapped that.
Is it real animal skin? As someone who opts out of leather interiors in cars, and knowing that Tesla sells well to the SV crowd, I'm surprised that there'd be no way to buy a tesla without killing some cattle.
Yes, polyurethane, which according to testing, performs better than real leather in the rubbing/scratching tests. Durability in general is superior on actual 'premium' leatherette/vegan leather offerings.
Sure, you can make crap leatherette material that is way too hot and sticky and feels like cheap vinyl, but that's not what this is.
These seem like legitimate but insignificant issues.
As long as it is functionally sound, I don't think minor cosmetic issues will materially impact public opinion. The general public is unaware of body panel alignment as a concept.
Agreed. There is a reason that the Camry has been the best selling car in the US just about every single year since 1997. Boring reliability is very attractive to a lot of consumers. Enthusiasts will put up with Tesla quality in order to have the technology, but appliance car buyers are much less willing to accept that.
"I don't think minor cosmetic issues will materially impact public opinion" is exactly the opinion of the Detroit car companies before they started losing market share to the Japanese companies. They've never recovered. The Japanese were widely regarded to be higher quality machines, and the fit/finish was a big part of that perception.
Did you personally see this? Or are you just repeating what you saw somewhere. I gave my model 3 a close look before I bought it and found none of the mentioned problems.
There have been some pretty egregious examples posted in the last month or so on r/teslamotors. So it still happens, though I don't know why. Mine is basically fine, though I'd say it isn't quite up to the level of fit and finish as my Camaro.
> And yet, Tesla costumers constantly poll as the most satisfied of all new car owners.
I wonder what the demographics are exactly of people who buy Model 3's, is it their first $40k+ vehicle?
One thing is abundantly clear, the people who are super excited about "new" tech in Teslas aren't following motor news. People seem to have no clue whatsoever that a lot of the tech you can get in a Tesla exists in other cars as well. Tesla is definitely at the top of the pack, but they're not ahead of the pack.
It looks exactly like when Apple announce a "new" feature, and all the Android owners moan and bitch that their phones have had this feature for years, yet all the apple owners are super happy about their new iPhone with this new cool feature that they've never seen before.
They "shouldn't" be happy, but due to marketing warping people's perceptions, they are. I suspect something like that might apply to Teslas and the people who buy them. If you've never owned or driven a BMW 3-series or similar, and then switched to a Tesla Model 3, I perfectly understand why you think your Tesla is the best car you've ever had.
What is the marketing and hype that tesla is doing? they don't have paid ads. The make announcements and blog posts. Meanwhile, every other legacy car company pays millions a year in paid ads, my local dealers must spend 100k plus a year. What car has the web browser like my tesla that lets me use tesla-waze? What car has the apps that tesla does? Sure, there are some cars with a few things. No electric car until this year has the features that my 2012 tesla model s 85 has, including range but also including all the tech. 6 years ahead, some specifics:
> What is the marketing and hype that tesla is doing? they don't have paid ads.
That is exactly my point, yet their announcements always make it to the tech press, because they are the darling of the tech world.
> Meanwhile, every other legacy car company pays millions a year in paid ads
When was the last time you saw an ad for a Mercedes S-class, Audi A8 or BMW 7-series?
I'm betting never, because those companies don't really advertise their most advanced cars to a mass market. And when they advertise them, they highlight the luxury and sophistication, and shut up about all the tech. So people generally don't know about all the stuff they have, and those cars are loaded.
> Sure, there are some cars with a few things.
I don't think you know what the state of the art is among the other car companies. Mercedes launched automatic lane changes before Tesla did, for example. Audi had stop&go cruise control before Tesla even launched Model S. BMW has had night vision pedestrian detection for years, Teslas don't have that. You can't even get a HUD on any Tesla, yet pretty much every other car brand offers that as an option on some of their models.
> No electric car until this year
That's a bit unfair considering the other car makers haven't really put out any electric cars with the same looks and features as their existing gas cars before now.
> 6 years ahead, some specifics:
1) Yeah, I already read the article that this post was about, not just the HN comments.
2) There are zero specifics in that article, it talks about a single thing, and that is that the core processing unit of Teslas are way ahead of the competition. Cool, but not exactly informative or specific.
Indeed. Great headlights (without paying for the upgrade that much of the competition requires), great safety, great acceleration, great stereo, great nav, great handling, etc.
Don't look at my GMC then. Panel gaps are bad. Paint so thin you can see through it. Rattles and squeaks everywhere. And the electronics are of course garbage.
> Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.
I'm not in the US but people in my region comment how all US vehicles have poor panel quality. I've spoken to paint shop employees and garage mechanics who say the panels of US cars have gaps that are embarrassingly large. In the mind of a buyer that makes you question overall quality.
And never buy a white car either they rust because the panels don't get warm enough to drive out moisture.
It's all relative, in the American southwest nearly every car is white, it's the only color that's livable. Moisture is the least of their concerns there.
I think you’re missing the point of what consumers find valuable about Tesla cars. It’s not the body or fancy interiors. The tech is what people want and because of that, cosmetic issues is an ok tradeoff. Of course, as other companies catch up on the Tech side, they’ll need to fix those issues, but they’ve got time.
It's true that people who have brought Teslas have accepted Tesla's current build quality. But it's the people who haven't brought Teslas where the company's growth will come from!
The worry with things like gaps between panels isn't just cosmetic - it's that the process control to achieve "reliably waterproof even after 15 years" is harder than "visibly perfect"
There was a time when a sunroof was a liability on a car as they so often developed leaks. People who can remember this time aren't looking to return to it :)
You seem to think that disposing cars like iPhones is a problem. Sure, it's an environmental problem, and not what people who drive a Corolla for 20 years would prefer, but is it a practical problem for Tesla, or a huge opportunity? You know, look at Apple. They don't have to have everyone be a customer as long as it seems like the best people are and they make ungodly profits from each of them.
You can buy a car for one focus or another though. I think it is fair to assume technology is the main focus of buying a Tesla.
In the 90s there were a myriad of pragmatic sports cars built, with the focus on performance over fine details.
Door gaps has been a funny development, it's important aesthetically of course, but I think unfairly it has become a shorthand for a car's overall build quality.
People like tangible, easily understood, and (typically) one-dimensional metrics for assessing product quality. Look at: Mega-pixels for cameras back in the day, and sheet thread-count. Neither of those things is telling the whole story nor are they even directly related to quality. But people latch on to them because they’re a single number, and easy to compare.
No one understands what’s actually inside a car and what physically distinguishes a good car from a bad one, so they latch onto the one parameter they can actually see and touch and understand: body panel alignment and paint quality.
Is this purely an aesthetic thing or is it an actual structural problem that has an appreciable effect on the day to day operation or reliability of the car.
Or is your argument more that if they can't fix the 'easy' things then that is an indication of more systemic problems with the integrity of the car
I see Teslas daily and while they don't match the German Big Three (European built ones at least) on fit and finish, they aren't that far from your typical imported American car.
Nevertheless buyers don't seem to care that much about this.
People still have problems. I hang out on r/teslamotors periodically, and I own a recently built Model 3. They have gotten better, but some people have significant issues to this day.
Turns out that the average consumer of $40k+ EVs doesn’t give a shit about minor cosmetic issues if the rest of the car is years ahead of the competition. Maybe there is a lesson in there about always questioning priorities to ensure they are inline with the market.
There are other good EVs, and more in the pipeline. I think it would be more accurate to say that Tesla fans don't care much about minor cosmetic issues, because ... they're fans. This makes sense.
Drive a Tesla, I bet you'll find things you like that are way more important than minor cosmetic issues, which seems unlikely.
Sure when making cars at 5k a week or more, there's some mistakes. A friend had a piece of trim misaligned. Tesla came out, on site, and fixed it. He's pretty happy.
This is a brand new car company that has built manufacturing from scratch. 10 years ago, car companies had been manufacturing cars for decades. This stuff doesn't happen overnight.
I don’t plan on buying a Tesla anytime soon, but the amount of critics that seem to hate everything they do is stunning to me. They are producing an electric car you can buy. They basically forced other companies to produce electric cars you can buy. It’s awesome. Be a little kid again for just a minute...
"They are producing an electric car you can buy. They basically forced other companies to produce electric cars you can buy. It’s awesome. Be a little kid again for just a minute..."
This seems like a proverbial "reality distortion field" to me. The Tesla model 3 came out about 7 years after the Nissan Leaf, didn't it? And given a reasonable budget, it's arguably still not an example of a car "you can buy".
Yes, there were Teslas before the model 3, but there were also electric cars from other manufacturers for many years.
TBH, I think the idea that the Leaf from 7 years ago is in the same segment requires some distortion of reality. The Leaf is not nearly as sporty, had a much lower range, and also had a much less reliable battery.
The modern Leaf fixes these problems by being as expensive as a Model 3, and its still slower.
At $31k, the Leaf does not have fast charging and has a range of 149 miles. Want "Quick" charging at a peak rate of 50KW? That's the $34k Leaf, which still has a range of 149 miles. Granted, this comes with a tax break, but comparing MSRP to MSRP, the SR Model 3 looks like the better deal at 220 miles of range.
To get to 226 miles of range with the Leaf puts you at $38k. To also get intelligent cruise (standard on the SR+ Model 3 at 40k), you will need another couple thousand dollars on the Leaf.
The tax break and dealer negotiation do make the Leaf cheaper, but the list price alone really doesn't.
It's absolutely an early-adopter surcharge. At luxury prices, because that's the only way to start a completely new car manufacturer at this scale.
Most new car companies are small affairs that hand-build fairly simple cars at luxury prices from their garage. They get away with it because they offer something unique. So does Tesla, only they try to do it at scale.
Roadster 1.0 definitely was not a luxury car. It was just a proof of concept to show that an EV could be made that doesn't suck. It got attention and investors to fund the development of the Model S.
It’s in the same price range as an Audi A4, Mercedes C300, BMW i3, Audi TT, and Lexus ES. It’s an entry level luxury car. It’s twice as expensive as a Volkswagen Jetta, Toyota Corolla, or Honda Civic.
Yes, true. But generally electrics are much cheaper to own. Assume 12k miles a year and figure the cost to own for 10 years. Might be higher than the corolla or civic, but similar or better than the accord or camry. Generally it will be quicker, quieter, and safer than the competition and most (that can) would rather plug in at home than regularly visit gas stations.
So model 3 might be a luxury car, but the cost to own is clearly lower than any of the luxury cars you mention, except the BMW i3.
A Camry costs around $24,000. $16,000 worth of gas, at $2.4 per gallon, times the EPA 34mpg combined gas mileage of the 2020 Camry, is good for over 200,000 miles. And that's assuming that the power to charge your car is completely free--it isn't, even though it's less than the price of gas on a per-mile basis.
Around $24k, good luck finding one of those on the lot. At toyota.com the Camry pictured is $35,555.
Over 200k miles How much will you spend on brake pads? Brake Discs? Gas? How about the scheduled 40 Oil changes?
How about things outside of the regular maintenance? Belts? Catalytic converts? Timing chain? Engine mounts? Head gaskets? Spark plugs? Clutch?
How many miles will you burn driving to/from gas stations?
How much of your time worth finding, using, and returning from gas stations? Do you really want to visit a smelly gas station covered with signs about the cancer it causes (in California anyways)?
Sure a Tesla over 200k miles will burn a fair amount of power around 50,000 kwh (75 kwh per 300 miles or so). But the other consumables are few. Sure wipers, tires (replacement and rotation), cabin filters, windshield fluid, etc. But generally the electric motors have few parts, are extremely reliable, and don't require any regularly scheduled maintenance.
I've had 2 Subarus and a low end Acura Integra. And most maintenance I've had (except tires/and wipers) was for something that didn't exist on an electric car. Timing chains, spark plugs, oil changes, head gasket, catalytic converter, engine mounts, clutch, etc.
And the Model 3 can run up to almost $60k so let’s be fair and talk about the base model for each, okay? We’re talking about a price difference of $16,000 over a $24,000 car, and if you think a Toyota of all brands is going to require $16,000 worth of maintenance more than the Model 3, I would really like to know what that number is based upon.
So ignore performance, leather, safety, nav, 15" screen, and related improvements? Doesn't seem fair, the model 3 is a crazy more capable car, but ok. Maybe at least the hybrid ($28,430)? Or at least add some of the safety stuff like blind spot monitoring and cross-traffic alert? Keyless? Upgraded backup camera? v6 to get the 0-60 close to the Tesla?
Also ignoring the federal, state, PG&E, and similar incentives?
Even ignoring all the above I think the Tesla is still cheaper to own.
AAA claims that the average car costs $0.592 per mile. For above mentioned 200,000 miles that's $118k. Not sure there's a more "average" car than a camry. No oil changes, brake changes, gas, engine mounts, timing chain, belts, etc is going to significantly decrease that number for the Tesla. Sure electricity isn't free, but it is way cheaper than gas. There's a target I visit often in my town that allows 2 hours of free charging per visit, and where I work charging cost $10 per month. I could easily spend less than $200 per year for the Telsa electricity. Since June 2019 I've spent a total of $30.00 (5 visits) at superchargers despite numerous road trips to Stanford, Reno, SF, Napa, Tahoe, Downieville, etc.
Additionally it's looking like Tesla's last a fair bit longer than the equivalent ICE car. So at 200k miles you could just keep the model 3, or sell it for a non-trivial amount of money. Already hearing reports of Model S's making it to 1M km and the taxi service is switching to model 3's. Should have an ideal how well the model 3 does near 1M km soon.
So the $40k model 3 lost 5.5% after 1 year ($2,200). Presumably the camry is worse than the honda fit (#5 on the list). So it lost at least $3,000 in value in the first year. Amusingly the worst depreciation numbers are many of the Tesla competition (BMW, Audi, Jaguar, and Volvo).
So yes, I think keeping a Tesla for 200k miles will be cheaper than a Camry. More fun to drive, safer, and cheaper. Doubly so if you count wasting an hour or two on weekend for an oil change.... 40 times.
Having had ICE cars over 10 years old and over 100k miles I can say first hand that the maintenance costs can add up quickly.
What is your time estimate for a company to fix their assembly alignment and paint issues versus the technologies being years behind in a car? That’s the point here.
I don't know much about cars manufacturing, but it sounds easier to source powerful/recent chips than ensuring all of your factories produce high quality mechanical parts.
> Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.
Perhaps ironically, Kia has really upped their game in the past few years, to the point where I'd argue they aren't a good example for this comparison.
Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi - a technology that's been around for over 20 years. There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.
It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been focussed on the internet, computers and phones, and the car has become a tool like a pencil - it works well enough, and new models only see incremental changes.
They also do weird stuff like having on bus for the safety critical systems and another for fun stuff like the window lifter. Sometimes the infotainment uses a third bus! /s
> Yet most cars you buy today don't even have Wifi (...). There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.
On the one hand - and thank God; routing car controls over networks by default sounds like a tremendously bad idea.
On the other hand - while a lucky accident in case of cars, modern electronic devices also don't have these, but for different reasons. When was the last time you could make your phone call people and send text messages over wireless connection, via an API built into the phone? Last time I remember being able to easily do it was in the feature phone era.
Modern hardware is increasingly controllable through hidden, restricted, undocumented APIs, or public APIs that require installing third-party software, go through third-party servers, and involve signing some contract or accepting some ToS. That same API-providing-software then proceeds to exfiltrate any and all data it can get its hands on. I do not want any of that in a car.
I do remember talking about routing CAN messages over wireless in automotive standards meetings about 20 years ago. You would need to do something like this if we wanted to increase traffic density by creating linked "road trains" of cars that would all brake together. There was also the feeling that California might require a wireless connection to be able to do continuous emissions monitoring.
> There's no API for controlling them apart from a CAN bus which is barely documented, not wireless, not routable over networks, can't even deliver video feeds, and dates from 1986.
Is it ironic that this post was posted using tcp/ip dating from much before 1986.
Yes, it would be nice if it was open sourced or documented outside obd2 interpreters. (Though much of it is documented for an industry insider paying fees) or if it openly supported higher bandwidth.
No reason why a 20'x8' low voltage system needs wireless, especially given that similar systems often exist < 1' a way.
>It feels like car technology stopped when the generation of those born in the 40's retired. Ever since then, younger generations have been focussed on the internet, computers and phones, and the car has become a tool like a pencil - it works well enough, and new models only see incremental changes.
What kind of "car technology" are you talking about? It sounds like you're talking about traditional tech, not tech that increases the ability of the driver on the road.
Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.
Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect.
Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.
Its not the isolated parts of a car that makes it good, its the whole package. (yes that works both ways. )