I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well.
The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait.
The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (!), and then a constant stream of non-sensical errors while driving, which cause it to beep loudly with no way to stop it.
Dear reader, do not make my mistake, do not buy a Tesla. But not for the usual anti-Tesla propaganda reasons. Autopilot works great. Even the weird "falcon wing" doors are actually very good. It's just that the quality is awful and service is both overbooked and doesn't actually fix things.
I've never regretted a car purchase more.
PS. Does anyone in the bay area want to buy a Model X? ;)
[ slightly edited version of a reply i made a week ago on the CR article]:
I have a 2017 Model X that I bought new. The EV part is great, its everything else that sucks. Since I've had it, I've taken it for service for the following:
o Arrived w/o Tow pkg (Tesla "forgot" it, was installed via service center appt)
o falcon wing doors improperly adjusted, leading to wind noise and water intrusion
o Loud wind noise and fogging passenger side windows: Due to improperly installed "triangle" window on passenger door
o Worn half shafts caused shudder under acceleration, replaced at ~20k miles
o fogging drivers side A pillar camera after rain, leading to "navigate on autopilot unavailable"
o Drove in "low" mode to preserve half shafts, caused excessive tire wear. Wore inner rear tires down to a puncture around 30k miles. Replaced tires and had car re-aligned to run in "low" mode.
o Half shafts replaced again at 38k miles
o Upper control arms shot around 39k miles, car just out of warranty, and Tesla initially wanted $1k to fix, but eventually fixed for free after I complained.
All in all, I'm thinking to get a different car since I need a car that works. I don't want a non-Tesla EV since the charging options for non-Tesla EVs suck. I'm currently looking at PHEVs. Ironically, I'll probably unload the Tesla for another EV only if/when Tesla opens superchargers up to other EVs.
How much of a loss would you take if you sold your Model X right now? They are not very available new, so I assume you would not loose too much money. Mine has actually gained a bit in value over the last 18 months or so..
> Worn half shafts caused shudder under acceleration, replaced at ~20k miles
I owned a 2016 Model X, and I got the dreaded half-shaft shudder after only 5k miles. When I took it in to the SC for evaluation, the tech driving the car blurted, "Oh yeah, there it is! This happens with all the Model Xs" when moderately accelerating uphill and the car shuddered quite a bit.
Fast-forward 20 minutes, I'm sitting at the desk with the SC rep, and they say, "Yes there was a shudder, but that's normal." That was the 11th -- and final -- issue I had with that car. I traded it in for a Jaguar I-PACE shortly after and never looked back.
PHEVs make more sense to me anyway. For the majority of trips they run off the battery which makes them just as good as a BEV, but they have no problems with range and they are a whole lot cheaper.
Range absolutely is an issue for people who have owned an EV. More importantly, it is an issue for people who haven't owned an EV. Claiming it isn't a problem because current EV owners are OK with it is preaching to the choir.
But even if range really isn't a problem, a PHEV makes more sense to me because they are cheaper and make better use of our limited battery supply. A PHEV with 50 miles range will be just about as efficient as a BEV for the vast majority of driving, but it gets by with a much smaller battery pack. We have the battery supply to make nearly every new car a PHEV, but we could only make a small fraction of them BEVs.
I live in the UK and recently went EV-only (miss our Q7, perfect family car, etc). It's not the range I'm worried about, but the infinite flakiness of the various chargers I tried -- I'm not exaggerating when I say that about 50% of the time I fail to get the damn car to charge due to either the charger being offline or random glitches (could also be due to my fairly new Q4 e-tron). I am considering a Manchester-Isle of Skye road trip, and I'm not yet sure we'll actually go through with it.
TL;DR less range anxiety, more "getting stranded because of unreliable chargers" anxiety
PS: I should add, having 3 small-ish children is definitely the major factor here, were I alone I couldn't care less that I had to wait a few hours for trickle charging, might as well get some work done
PPS: speaking of glitches, the Q4 e-tron lane keep assist is incredibly panicky and has constant mini freakouts whenever something strange happens to the road (e.g. lanes splitting on the motorway, passing parked cars on narrow roads, etc.) -- thankfully it's just annoying (slight jerk and vibration of the steering wheel) and not actually dangerous
> Range isn’t an issue for anybody who has owned an EV.
I've owned (well, leased) two EVs. Range was definitely something to be closely monitored at all times and trips planned around it, which I classify as an "issue" since I had to worry about it so much.
Car buyers who are unhappy with their Teslas should look into their local 'lemon law', which can be very consumer-friendly. In CA, for example, the lemon law covers you up to 18 months after purchase, and if you satisfy any one of the prongs then the manufacturer will be required to buy the car back from you. Summary of the criteria: [1]
• for defects that could cause injury/death, the manufacturer has tried unsuccessfully to fix the problem twice
• for any other defects, the manufacturer has tried unsuccessfully to fix the problem 4 times
• the vehicle has been 'in the shop' for a total of 30 days (need not be consecutive)
We had a VW that qualified for lemon law relief, and VW was forced to purchase the car back from us, including sales tax. There was a minimal amount that was not refunded, to reflect the month or so that we got to use the car before it started acting up.
Unfortunately I've had so many different problems that Tesla has only had the opportunity to look at each one once or twice. And none of them are of the "injury/death" kind, at least as far as I know.
Had a lot of friends buy Teslas in the past few years. Exact same story: Faults everywhere, long waits, poor service (albeit super friendly and with a smile).
One friend has received his Model 3 back twice now with the problem not fixed at all. He's resigned to just living with the problem until the service backlogs are lower.
It has been interesting to see how tolerance for these quality issues has waned as the shine of the Tesla brand has started to wear off.
The early adopters were True Believers. Elon was changing the world, and to admit any fault was to interfere with The Plan. So they tended exceedingly defensive of Tesla, well past what the outside world considered absurd when they actually admitted the problems.
Tesla has expanded outside that market, and to a person who is looking for a more or less reasonable car, that matches other cars in the price bracket, you're likely to hear nothing but good things about Tesla from the usual sources.
And then you get one, and realize that they're failing basic quality control things that literally every other auto maker worked out 20 years or more ago, and their software has all the stability of beta smartphone software.
None of this is new. It's just that anyone who said anything of the sort, or pointed out that you can't have 10x the sales on 1x the service centers, or such, got shouted down as a Tesla-shorting big oil shill for an awfully long time. Now, people who don't really care about Elon or The Plan are discovering that a Tesla is a bit of a crapshoot. Some are fine. Some are lemons. And God help you if you get a lemon, because the service experience (remember, according to the True Believers, dealerships are the spawn of Satan) is horrid.
Elon Musk was the only person willing to build out a whole charging network and that was the biggest factor in the adoption of EVs. That IMO did change the world.
Its possible to love something for its good qualities and accept the bad.
"With historic reliability concerns but an intensely loyal following, Tesla took the top spot for overall owner satisfaction among the 27 brands mentioned in survey responses."[0]
So, you're admitting that computer-based self driving cars won't be a thing?
Clever, but probably not what you think you're arguing for...
Silicon Valley has a regular, predictable, very tedious pair of arrogances when it comes to things like this.
1. "We are as gods in the synthetic world of the internet, because we know Code. Therefore we must be like gods in the external, physical world!" It's perpetually on display, and Tesla is an amazing case study here. After deriding those dinosaur, idiot, legacy automakers for their horridly slow, glacial, obsolete factories that mixed humans with robots on the assembly line, instead of being purely robot based and running at sonic velocities... the Model 3 and such are produced on something that's virtually indistinguishable from those "dinosaur" lines. GM, Honda, Toyota... they've all been trying for the "lights out dreadnaught" car factory since the 80s, and have all concluded that it simply doesn't work. It's cheaper, faster, and more reliable to have humans in the loop, and run the line at their pace, than to solve the problems that increasingly look like "full general purpose AI."
2. "A human visual system is just a couple shitty cameras and a neural network. How hard can it be?" The answer is, "Exceedingly hard." The human visual system works at a far better angular resolution in the core than Tesla's system does (the Tesla "narrow" camera has a 4x worse angular resolution than the human eye core, and the human eye is really good at scanning that high resolution core and merging details), and the neural network behind it is an awful lot more complex than anything our computers can emulate. My three year old makes fun of the "green moons" and "red moons" in the sky after showing him the video of a Tesla confusing a low moon for a yellow light, because he can tell the difference between the moon and a traffic light. And I guarantee his visual processing system is capable of an awful lot more than a Tesla, in practical real world situations. I don't trust him to drive anything faster than his Power Wheels, but... well, neither do I trust a Tesla to do that.
A multi-sensor fusion based system has some hope of working with current technology. Vision only? Not a chance.
A few different things. IMO we don't really need full self driving, at least not in the next 10 - 15 years. The anxiety that it induces in city streets, pulling out at intersections, etc isn't even worth it. With Tesla your hand is already on the wheel, you're hovering the brake, just drive the car. It's really dumb when you think about it.
All we really need is better adaptive cruise control which is what Autopilot and Open pilot is. IMO it works flawlessly, takes the stress out of driving. It's really a solved problem at this point. I'd say 3/4 of all the miles I've driven on my Rav4 have been on Open Pilot.
I have a model S P85+ that is now 8+ years old. Its the best car I have ever had, bar none, and I have had nice cars before. Its still smooth, powerful, comfortable, silent, safe and I still love to drive it. I have had issues with it, over the years, but every single time, Tesla stepped up, sorted the issue in the most convenient way possible, sometimes working my driveway, sometimes by driving a loaner to my office. I have never had a car that was better or service that was anywhere in the same class. I will likely never buy any other brand of car. Dear reader, please buy a Tesla, its the best car out there, its the safest car for your family and its made in America, by a company that is showing all of us that America can still innovate, still lead the world.
I have had issues in every car I have ever had, including luxury German and Japanese brands. Over an 8 year period, on a car that broke so much new technical ground and with a level of support that is so absolutely fantastic, I consider the issues I had to be not significant, detracting very little from my overall extraordinary experience.
"But Honda know a lot about making cars. Tesla tried to disrupt the entire process. This is where hubris gets you "
Can you clarify why disrupting the process is hubris? There has been many historical examples of outsiders coming in and improving old processes in many fields. Why is it hubris to disrupt the car manufacturing processes?
It is very common for disruption to happen with cross disciplines. It seems to me that it worked in this case with a software dev going into the auto industry.
> But Honda know a lot about making cars. Tesla tried to disrupt the entire process. This is where hubris gets you
Tesla did disrupt the entire process and where they are now is 5 years ahead of every single major manufacturer in EVs, including Honda. Honda, Toyota, VW, GM are in for an ocean of pain as we transition to EVs and China floods the market with cheap, quality offerings. Their complacency is exactly the wrong kind of hubris and they will be luck to end the decade as major manufacturers.
When was the last time they drove a loaner to you? As I understand it, that level of service was discontinued a few years back (a relic of the luxury S/X only days).
I certainly salute you for your tenacity with the brand. After I unloaded my 2016 Model X, you couldn't convince me to touch another one of those cars with a 10-foot pole.
I'm a Tesla hater, but I think it's reasonable to assume their quality will dramatically improve as they get production figured out and stop hacking things together to meet their numbers.
Well, Musk actively avoids the Toyota Production System which seems insane and offends me as an engineer. So I don't think quality will improve until he changes his stubborn tune.
I think the Detroit automakers have the same mentality. It's almost like there's this racism belief that the Japanese could never have figured something out that Westerners haven't.
GM proceeded to ignore everything that worked at that plant (and still does, nevermind what that article says). They flat out refused to learn from Toyota even when they saw it upfront.
We live in a racist world. You either accept it or be blind to many of the problems of the world.
I mean this is the same guy who camped out at the factory for like 3 weeks to iron out all the production issues with model 3 and scale production up to meet demand, and it more or less worked. Perhaps you don't need the Toyota production system after all
I've had a Model3 for three and a half years now (very early VIN). It's been our primary and for much of the time, only car. It's been fantastic, and I've recommended it to everyone, and three people I know have purchased 3s/Ys as well and have also been super satisfied. Is it flawless? No - upon delivery the read badge was missing and the glove box had a gap. Went to get it fixed. Year after that the front arms needed replacing. A few months ago the charge port actuator stopped working (you can still lift it manually) - clicked a few buttons in the app and a guy came by to fix it on our driveway.
We have a secondary ICEV and we both hate it and mock it. It is actually one the best ICEVs in its class, but fundamentally, all ICEVs are irredeemably terrible. It needs replacing soon and I've been through every single EV out there considering alternatives, but in the end we have to replace it with a Model Y.
Teslas are not flawless cars, but they are, simply, the best cars.
I have a six year old Corolla. No issues at all. We put gas in it and have tire rotations and regular oil changes.
My Corolla is like my AirPod Pros. It just works, every time, consistently. Personally, I just want a car that has no hassles and is dependable above all else. I’d like a cold A/C on hot days and a good heater on cold days.
I guess my point is - I’d love to drive an electric car and not have to go to the gas pump. But I’m not willing to deal with all the myriad issues I so often hear about from Tesla owners. I’m not interested in paying a premium for some auto maker to alpha, beta, and pre-prod test their product before getting it to modern manufacturing and reliability standards.
Can you elaborate on what makes ICE vehicles "irredeemably terrible"? I can never understand what I'm missing. I have two:
One is the cheapest car made by a major manufacturer, and the cheapest trim model. I have no complaints about how it drives, I actually enjoy it. But on very hot days, the AC has trouble keeping up, and an electronic display has been only intermittently functional for some time. Naturally, being a special electronic display, it costs some $600 to replace, so I haven't bothered. On very long drives (5+ hours), it does wear me out more than the second car.
The other is a crossover. It is slightly more comfortable than the hatchback. The AC is definitely powerful enough, even on hot days. It is much more pleasant to drive on long trips, I think primarily due to the lanekeeping and automatic cruise control. My only real complaint is too many controls are on the touchscreen - basically any AC controls other than temperature and fan speed.
When I ask other EV owners, it seems like all they can say are "it's really quiet" and "it has amazing acceleration." But my cars are already very quiet (sometimes I am not sure if they are on) and I never need any more acceleration than I have - I avoid accelerating hard in general, since it wastes gas and I'm sure also battery. And given the problems I do have with my cars, it seems like the average EV is going to be worse - if I don't like touchscreen controls, surely buying a Tesla is not going to make me happy. So what is the factor EVs have that just blows ICEZs away for the average Joe? I just don't get it.
EDIT: I guess another one they frequently mention is "not having to go to the gas station", but a five minute trip once a week isn't really causing me much hardship, especially if I'm going in to buy lottery tickets anyway.
Also, for example a Prius has an solid 450 mile range, takes less than 10 min to refuel to max range, which generally coincides with the passengers need to refuel and/or pit stop. Someone told me that a Prius can drive all day at 85-95 mph, 40+ mpg. A multi-state trip across the US West sounds ghastly in a Tesla, logistically speaking. My Tundra has many times been days out in the bush w/o a gas station, because I carry cans.
I look at a Tesla as a lower functioning, and obvs from all the comments, much less reliable machine. People love them! Guffaws.
(I have nothing against EVs as a technology: when I can buy a 450 mile range, 10 minute refuel, as reliable as my Prioids and Tundra EV, for a similar price, I will.)
At least the average Tesla owner disagrees with you.
"With historic reliability concerns but an intensely loyal following, Tesla took the top spot for overall owner satisfaction among the 27 brands mentioned in survey responses."[0]
Mine - a UK Prius plug-in 2013 - still, after all the recalls and software updates, skids forward uncontrollably if you’re braking and hit a drain lid, because the traction control goes loopy somehow.
I’m not defending Tesla here, but let’s not pretend the established manufacturers don’t run into safety issues when it comes to the clever software under the hood.
These kind of ABS issues (braking over a big bump, normal braking to an extremely slippery surface with just one wheel, etc) are pretty common among many cars. They basically all use one of a few ABS systems from Bosch or Continental with the parameters set to match the chassis / tire / etc setup.
>Teslas are not flawless cars, but they are, simply, the best cars.
Pffffrt. By what metrics you would measure that aside, it does feel like you've never been into high quality cars. A Mercedes Class S is a veritable massive step up compared to a Tesla, for similar prices. Recent EVs like the Ioniq 5 are very much matching the Teslas in everything
> Sucks that others had problems with it but everyone I know including ourselves couldn’t be more happy with their Tesla
This is my experience talking to everyone I know with a Tesla. Not saying the complaints aren't real, but the internet really does bring out the selection bias when it comes to people having issues with their purchase. If you look at Consumer Reports for most satisfied car purchases, all of the Teslas make the top 10.
There's been no shortage of "I bought an EV, had an ICE rental, and can't believe how horribly awful this awful horrible car is!" articles in the last decade, just find one. They're all the same.
They tend to go on about noise, vibration, the awful smell of gas stations, and a variety of other common and tedious complaints. Ok, yes, we get it, you're smug and have to prove to everyone else how amazing your purchase was, but must you write the 500th version of the same article?
Or you can just accept that every vehicle is different, every vehicle has different quirks, wants to be driven/ridden differently, listen to what it tells you, and go from there. Yes, you can flog an Insight around a twisty road on the paddle shifters, but... that's not what the car wants, and it's not very rewarding to try and make it drive like something it isn't.
An EV isn't an ICE isn't a PHEV isn't a hybrid isn't a rotary isn't a...
Even among theoretically identical vehicles, they often enough aren't, after enough miles. I drove buses for a while, and they tended to be purchased in lots - two of this, four of that, etc. Even among the "sister buses," they were different. Some were smoother, some seemed to have more power, some were wired differently. Know the quirks of each bus and you were going to have a fine time. Miss that 947 really benefited from turning off the AC compressor off a stoplight, and you would struggle to keep a schedule on the weekend. But man, that was a sweet cruising evening route bus. On the campus circulators, 926 and 927 were best run in first gear - they were big four cylinders (something like an 8L 4-cylinder) that were really prone to shifting into 2nd, and then getting stuck lugging along barely above idle instead of shifting down to 1st if you were on a bit of a grade. Keep them in first, it was fine on those routes (first was a pretty tall gear on them).
And it goes on. Instead of whining about what a vehicle isn't, enjoy it for what it is, listen to it, drive it how it wants to be driven, and you'll have a good time. It's just not good for clicks.
I'm worried that manufacturers see people accepting Tesla quality and follow suit.
I just read an article about Fisker following the "Apple model" where they stay lean and outsource all production. Uh, yeah that's great for a $1,000 phone but when I drop 50x that on a rolling death machine I expect quality to be controlled from end to end and kept in house.
Other car companies do outsource, but it's tricky. Toyota, for example, invests a ton in building long-term relationships with suppliers. [1] But Toyota is the exception here. The more typical oursourcing relationship is one of low bids and dangerous incentives. As Toyota shows, it's not impossible to get it right. But I think it's reasonable to be concerned.
For something priced as high as the TM3, TMY or TMX, I find it hilarious that someone would spend even more money just to bring it to parity with other the automotive "luxuries" such as sound deadening. Mind you, most of these luxuries are have been provided by other economy cars at <50% of the cost for _decades_.
Just as an observation I don't think the new money buying these cars understands or has ever sat in an actual nice car at the same price point. It's reminiscent of bay area housing. Crap quality, outrageously expensive, and with plenty of people with no other life experiences willing to defend it at a moment's notice.
I don’t think they’ve ever sat in a crap car either. Most of those are better. The four Teslas I’ve been in feel like I’m sitting in a bottom end Android tablet or some hospital equipment.
You assume incorrectly that people paying for Teslas are buying luxuries "such as sound deadening". They are buying an EV, 0-60 performance, touch screen operations, over the air updates, etc.
"I don't think the new money buying these cars understands or has ever sat in an actual nice car at the same price point."
I'm not sure why you would turn your nose up at people who have different preferences. I guarantee you that there are Tesla buyers who also own other expensive cars at similar price ranges.
We’ll see how the new EVs entering the market change things. Most of the Tesla owners that I know purchased it as their first car.
I will agree the powertrain and tech (not the god awful screen) are the best in the market at the moment. Maybe it’s just me, but a vehicle needs to cover the basics before anything fancy such as the acceleration will sell it.
There are people who will charge between 3 and 5 thousand for you to have your factory-new Tesla delivered to them so they can fix panel gaps and a laundry list of the most common complaints before they deliver the car to you...
... and a scarily large number of people who think this is a reasonable proposition.
A friend owns a 2020 model 3. The paint job was worse than my ass end 8 year old Citroen C3 so he spent the entire value of my ass end 8 year old Citroen C3 on a ceramic coating for it. And it still looks worse. I’d be so pissed if I’d spent on a Tesla and got that back for my money.
Sandy Munro asked Musk about the terrible paint in his interview. Apparently they fixed their paint process in Dec. 2020. Until then people had to get paint protection film, ceramic coatings and mud flaps to keep the paint looking decent.
Other than the noise sealing, that doesn't really say much negative about the car though (but that could be personal preference). That just says the person you know has plenty of money to customize the interior of the car in ways the manufacture doesn't offer.
So does my $1K Open Pilot on a significantly cheaper Rav 4. Also you don't have to put hands on wheel. If you have to put your hands on wheel for adaptive cruise control you might as well just drive the car.
Model X ownership is a breeze far from the Bay Area. My mom’s model X has gone in at least a dozen times and there’s never a wait for an appointment. The local service center is excellent.
But then I see all these examples of Tesla owners having to fix issue after issue after issue and saying "it's not so bad I just lost an afternoon each time going for an apt"
I've literally heard from Tesla owners that one of the perks of owning a Tesla in a densely populated tech-heavy area is all the industry networking you get at the service center.
I have an early build 2018 Model 3 Performance. I have experienced almost zero quality issues. I use Autopilot frequently and have experienced phantom braking maybe 5 times ever in 3+ years, and certainly isn't a deal-breaker. In fact it's improved dramatically since I first got the car.
I feel like all I ever hear from outside the Tesla owner bubble is quality issues, complaints, weird problems I've never experienced. When I talk to other Tesla owners, they also are confused by this phenomena, because the vast majority I've talked to have the same experience as me; complete joy in the product, very few if any complaints at all. Especially relative to any other car I have owned or is available on the market today, I wouldn't recommend buying anything else.
When people talk about annoying Tesla fanboys, this is the core of problem. On the one hand you have the public perception of Tesla cars, based on reviews like this one. Then you have actual experience from the *majority* of owners being the exact opposite. Tesla certainly has issues, but so does GM, Ford, and every other auto maker. Reviewers rarely shout these issues in the headlines. But with Tesla it's always different.
What are we do to about this instead? Why is every review of Tesla highlighting the flaws, whereas every review of non-EV cars highlight the positives? How come Tesla owners don't get to write about their positive experiences without being called fanboys or shills?
I owned a BMW 328i for 20 years. I loved that car dearly.
I've now got 94,000 miles on a 2018 Model 3 long range. It's more fun than the BMW in every way. Handles better, accelerates faster, it's much quieter inside. The sound system is much better than the HKs in the BMW. It's more comfortable. I can drive for 4 hours straight with no discomfort.
I don't have autopilot cuz my insurance guy wouldn't give me a discount if I bought it. Once he does, I'll add it.
Regarding service: It's on the 3rd set of tires and I replaced the cracked windshield.
Can you explain what significant improvements BMW have added in the last 20 years? I'm not a car guy but from my perspective, BMWs have only added incremental improvements.
I'm sure the drivers behind you were thrilled to learn it didn't bother you when your car decided to randomly brake.
>Why is every review of Tesla highlighting the flaws, whereas every review of non-EV cars highlight the positives?
Amongst other things, because other constructors aren't taking every opportunity to jerk themselves about how you're the pretended best in the world when they're just a mediocre constructor selling overpriced cars with bad build quality and lying on having level 5 autopilot at every occasion.
> How come Tesla owners don't get to write about their positive experiences without being called fanboys or shills?
Because ultimately, your feelings about the car gets overshadowed by the fact that Tesla is at the bottom of every single reliability study. They're worse than Jeeps, ffs. That's a new record.
Well, maybe this will change when the reviewer doesn't find water in the trunk of the car after washing it? Or when their car doesn't brake for no reason? Some things are simply not acceptable for ordinary users who are accustomed to other companies' quality standards. Especially at comparable price point.
Commenting just to say that I've had a Model 3 since 2017 with zero issues. Anecdotally, I have tons of friends with Teslas and haven't heard a single nightmare service or build quality issue from any of them.
Autopilot has been great -- probably over half my miles driven. Still a work-in-progress for city streets but FSD improvements have been pretty impressive from what I've observed on YouTube.
Service has been pretty great too actually -- the appointment booking process I just went through to get new tires felt like the future since it's completely through the app. My only wish is that they had better loaner availability in CA. In TX the availability does seem better though since I moved here.
Super impressed with the range, performance, the modernity of the interfaces and thoughtfulness of features. Feels like the future.
Sort of shocked by the build quality including a latch that got stuck and wouldn't allow the door to close. Managed to get it wedged open with a tool on hand, but could see it being a showstopper / tow truck moment for many.
The quality / bs issues seem fixable so it's hard not to still feel optimistic about the platform on a whole, but one would hope between the record debt / demand / and liquidity of that org at the moment that they are briskly addressing.
I was an early-ish adopter of the Model 3 (2018), and I couldn't be happier with it. I've had zero hardware quality issues, and one software issue where it did a cold reboot one day and forgot my personalization settings. But otherwise it's an absolute pleasure.
However, big caveat: I absolutely do not use Autopilot, nor do I ever plan to. I bought the car because I love to drive it -- the way it handles, the way it accelerates, etc. The only "automatic" feature I've used is literally the cruise control, i.e. maintaining a set speed on the highway. That's the farthest I trust it to do anything automatically.
Being tangentially involved in the field of machine vision / machine learning, I understand the limitations of the current technology, and am appalled at how brazenly Tesla is rolling out this half-baked functionality to users, and marketing it as if full self-driving is just around the corner, when in fact it has a long, long way to go.
I don’t know how to square this review with my own experience of owning a Y for a year. The autopilot is nearly perfect, noticeably better than a human driver in stop and go traffic on the highway. Given the history of downright dishonest reviews by old school car people with an irrational hatred of Tesla, this review really should have been accompanied by video evidence of phantom braking.
The switch to vision-only seems to be the cause - I've seen reports of people with radars installed that are on the autopilot beta program which got them the vision-only autopilot deployment, and they reported that they suddenly started getting a bunch of phantom braking. Reverting back to the version with radar for those with it installed reportedly fixed it.
So people who've bought recent no-radar Teslas are having a different experience than those with older models.
Yes, sometimes it has phantom braking. For reference, on a 9 hour drive to LV from my house, it happened maybe 5 times, and they were all fixed with a mild press of the accelerator. If this is a deal breaker for you, don’t get a Tesla. If the failed promise of FSD is a deal breaker for you, don’t get a Tesla (I don’t have it and don’t want it).
Other than the minor issues (for me) of occasional phantom braking and broken FSD promises, the car has been amazing. Build quality was perfect, it has run incredibly well, and it is simply a joy to drive.
My friend ordered his a week after I took him on a ride, and he doesn’t think he will ever own a car that’s not a Tesla (I disagree with him, because competition will be a thing at some point, but he’s directionally correct).
Many of my other friends have made their deposit and are just waiting for their number to come up.
Rather than read reviews, talk to people who own the model you are planning to purchase (same model and similar “model year”). Then take the car on a test drive. You will probably know at that point if it’s for you or not.
Maybe I am old-school but 5 times in a 9 hour drive seems unacceptably high for a potentially dangerous event. Is it incorrect to believe the car brakes at full braking force? Is there some predictor of the car making this error that makes it easier to handle?
> Is it incorrect to believe the car brakes at full braking force?
For me, that is incorrect. I would not consider it dangerous at all.
For me, it was more like lifting off the accelerator for a split second if I were in full control.
One time that my car did brake aggressively was when an 18-wheeler was gradually easing into my lane (not on Vegas drive). It was probably a slight over-reaction, but probably one that would have saved my life if the truck had veered into my lane (likely dodging something or sleeping truck driver).
I have heard of people getting the aggressive braking phantom brake experience, but I haven’t. It’s also trivially easy to address just by pressing the accelerator — the driver is supposed to be paying attention.
Fwiw, this is a deal breaker for a Tesla for one friend of mine. She has motion sickness that is frighteningly easy to trigger (autopilot or even just me driving, and I’m not an aggressive driver). She’s a bit of a motion sickness snowflake, and she readily admits as much.
Predictions seem to be the following:
1. Driving into the shadows of 18-wheelers.
2. Driving into the shadows of overpasses.
3. Driving on roads that are reflective and have weird patterns on them. I don’t know how to describe this. My buddy and I consistently experience this a time or three going up the mountain towards Tehachapi between Bakersfield and Barstow. My guess is that this problem is or should be solvable by machine learning (same phantom braking at same time of day at the same place with driver override).
My biggest complaint about autopilot is that it aggressively turns the brights on at night. I’m not sure if it is outside of legal or reasonable use of brights, but I just find it easier to take full control — I try to be a friendly driver.
One last thing that I didn’t mention in my original post — using autopilot in stop-and-go traffic is an absolute dream. It takes a ton of hassle and stress out of that type of driving.
One of the themes I'm noticing in these subthreads is that some people have a really high tolerance for errors, while others shudder at the thought of a vehicle doing anything it's not supposed to.
I'm in the latter camp. The idea that the car might randomly override my inputs in error at any time is downright frightening to me. Blows my mind to see someone so casual about it, simply because they've yet to have a more extreme incident, especially given that others have.
I think where people come down on this is owed to something fundamental in their nature/wiring.
> The idea that the car might randomly override my inputs in error
I don’t recall ever saying anything like this happened.
My discussion about phantom braking is when autopilot is on. There is no input from me unless I have to or choose to take over.
If you don’t want any of the automatic features (autopilot, lane assist, FSD, etc.), they are all trivially easy to turn off or not use.
Seriously, just go drive one. The way you talk about a Tesla, as though it will just yoink control at any moment from someone who wants full control, is about as far as you can get from the reality.
The idea of “tolerating” undesired behavior in a driver assist process in a car seems… pretty normal? That’s why settings exist — you don’t have to tolerate anything that passes your own tolerance threshold.
I don’t know how many folks you know in real life who actually drive teslas, but the narrative that you describe and the narrative that the people I know who own and drive teslas are about as far apart as it can get. [1]
[1] There is a caveat that folks who bought new models right after they were released had a lot of build issues. That’s pretty unforgivable from the Tesla side, imho. That said, it’s a known issue. Let other people guinea pig the new models. Tesla eventually gets it very right.
>My discussion about phantom braking is when autopilot is on...trivially easy to turn off
Seems odd to have to disable features based, not on one's preferences, but on one's tolerance for errors, especially given that--even without full autopilot enabled--some of those features would be considered active safety features.
"This feature can help keep you safe, but it also might make mistakes, so tap here if you don't want to roll the dice".
In any case, my main point was around the fact that people have such a wide tolerance for errors. I think it's interesting and I was suggesting that it's something more intrinsic to the individual, which I believe is one reason people's opinions on Tesla seem to be "polarized". You'll probably never see those errors as a big deal. I'll probably never see them as not a big deal.
>I don’t know how many folks you know in real life who actually drive teslas, but the narrative that you describe...
I know a few. I don't really talk about their cars with them. And, in any case, it seems like their experiences would vary based on which models/years/updates they've experienced, which features they use and, of course, their tolerance for errors and other problems.
In general, I never really considered that I have a Tesla "narrative". If I owned one I might care enough to have one. My only concern is that the company is too cavalier about safety issues, to include the name "Autopilot" itself, which seems to want the cachet of what the term implies without the responsibility that comes with people trusting it.
>the absolutely bizarre way you’re talking about Teslas in these comments is a narrative.
Yeah, I think what's bizarre here is that your own narrative is so important to you that you can't stomach even the mildest critism of Tesla without feeling personally attacked, or even imagine anyone not having a Tesla "narrative".
So, of course, the fact that you charge people with having a narrative is in itself bizzare. Then, you casually make these odd statements like, "I don't know if you know anyone in real life who has a Tesla", as if it's a unicorn vs. a fairly common motor vehicle.
It's very much a marketing-fueled "us vs. them" worldview you seem to have there around a car. Tesla ownership is clearly an important part of your identity, which may also help explain why you're motoring around with "Autopilot" on and not a care in the world that the vehicle is making errors and braking when it shouldn't.
"looking at the Autopilot status and navigation prompts means having to gaze well down toward the bottom of that display. That means taking your eyes a long way from the road. A simple gauge cluster or heads-up display would solve the issue, but none are available, a curious omission on a car costing this much."
Hard to comment on the phantom braking without experiencing it myself though.
While it's pretty obvious that many manufacturers are coming out with their own EVs, there seems to be something of a bubble that isn't paying attention or totally ignores this.
It will be interesting to see how the EV space evolves once there are mass amounts of competitor vehicles available/on the road.
Specifically interesting to see how it affects valuations for these companies.
I suspect Tesla's growth rate will slow considerably once there are comparably priced options from mainstream brands. E.g. F-150 vs Cybertruck. Or even a car from Apple, though that's many years out.
How obvious does the inevitability have to be to start denting valuations?
There's still the self driving story, but it does not appear they've made material progress on the hardest 20% of it. Most brands will have autonomous highway driving without much issue, and that's where 80% of the value is anyway. And likely Google will beat them to the punch on the taxi side.
I'm in Texas, and there are stereotype supporting large number of truck owners around. Of the ones I've spoken to about Cybertruck, not one of them are interested in the body. People like how their Fords/Dodge/Chevy trucks look, so taking the design so far away from the norm just seems like an odd decision. Worse than the original Prius design.
(I think the shape was probably not a mistake on Toyota's part. A lot of people were buying them partly because they wanted other people to know they had them, and the shape indicated this very clearly.)
I can't understand the deal with the electric F150 or almost any other modern pickup. They all have full sized 4 door interiors now, so as the truck has gotten bigger, the truck bed (the actually useful part that distinguishes a truck from a car) has gotten smaller. They are usually under 5.5 feet now, so there's many types of furniture you can't really move in them, which you could move in older, smaller pickups. Any idea? It kills the electric F150's attraction as far as I'm concerned. A 2-door model with those little vestigial jump seats behind the main seats and a longer bed would be a lot more useful.
I think there is a reasonable argument to make that (many) pickup trucks are purchased for aesthetics and the "usefulness" of them as trucks is largely irrelevant. As one friend pointed out, a work truck should be expected to be dirty and any truck that isn't dirty is just meant for show
Useful as a truck, yes, but now you have to buy a second vehicle to haul the family. Crew cab pickups are basically minivans in that they aren’t great at anything but acceptable for alot of things. I have a 2018 F150 crew with the longer bed, I’ve towed trailers, hauled furniture and equipment for friends and family, taken it out for a nice meal and gotten it muddy as hell off road. If I’m intentional about it i can get low 20’s mpg but rarely drive it more than 50 miles. I haven’t commuted
for work in four years.
That's why you're seeing things like the extended bed options of the new tailgate designs. Also, most people don't need to carry 6'+ items. They do need to take the ankle biters along and maybe haul some stuff in the back. The trade off seems to be accepted going by number of units sold. If you keep the 6' bed plus the comfy backseats as you've mentioned, it no longer fits in standard garages.
> hey do need to take the ankle biters along and maybe haul some stuff in the back.
But, that is why they have SUV's and minivans I thought. It is only now sort of sinking in that pickups are no longer used much as work vehicles. Yes I agree about the excessive length keeping the crew cab and long bed. In fact I think the current F150 is already too big. So that's why I miss the old 2-door style with the long bed. I mean what is next, a Miata-like sportster with 3 rows of bench seats?
Smaller truck bed still allows for carrying/hauling things larger than the truck compared to an enclosed SUV. Besides, when it's time to move, do you call your friend with an SUV/crossover, or do you call the friend with a truck?
You mean the truck bed was never more than a styling accent? Say it ain't so! All the people that need it have long figured out they would rather use a van.
I'm curious as well, though I am slightly more bullish on Tesla. I chose one after being a lifelong BMW owner and having no interest in an electric, it was after seeing how little car I could get for 50k that had me go check out a friend's Model 3, and being very impressed. Cost of ownership is considerably less than comparable cars so far, and I've had a couple minor issues, similar to some BMWs I've had.
I agree overall fit and finish trails the luxury brands, but looking at what 70k gets you from audi is a joke compared to tesla. Clearly the other manufacturers are quite a ways behind in both battery tech and autopilot tech. If I had a 100k to spend on a car, I might pick the Porsche electric, but certainly everything else seems to fall far short of a Model 3 in that price range and I'm not aware of anything catching up soon.
They are well ahead in many respects, and clearly have the edge for now. But it's inevitable that the market will be flooded with roughly equivalent EVs in the next few years.
Ford was dominant in ICE for awhile too. Being a leader affords you additional margin and runway, but very hard to believe it will be lasting.
Look at the Rivian and F-150 for comparable cars. I believe the range may be slightly less, but keep in mind, Tesla still buys most of its batteries from Panasonic. They aren't super proprietary tech that's fully manufacture in-house, though I'm sure they had a hand in the design etc.
Lucid has more range than a Tesla I believe, though is more expensive. EV is in some ways easier than ICE, due to fewer moving parts. But certainly a totally different skill/tech. There are many more new EV startups than there were for ICE at least.
I do agree that self driving can be a strong differentiator if it improves more. In some ways improving it's capabilities makes it more dangerous until it passes the "no need to pay attention" threshold. E.g. the better it is the less humans will pay attention, so there needs to be close to zero critical faults for people to safely rely on it.
From the examples I've seen, the self driving seems very far off from this level when city driving. But not speaking from personal experience. And highway seems like a mostly easy and contained problem, that is unlikely to be a differentiator for long. Most new cars have auto-follow and lanekeeping already which gives you 90% of the benefit in the highway context.
> I can't conclusively say that it's because of the missing radar, but I can say that our Model Y is bad at detecting obstructions ahead. Really, really bad. The big issue is false positives, a problem that has become known as "phantom braking" among Tesla owners. Basically, the car often gets confused and thinks there's an obstacle ahead and engages the automatic emergency braking system. You get an instant, unwanted and often strong application of the brakes.
I could be wrong, but I didn’t see any mention of taking their car in for repair or service. I’m a pretty big Tesla quality control skeptic — seeing the after-delivery issues people have with panel gaps and other issues stops me from buying an otherwise exciting car. But the safety system being defective is something that would prompt me to take the car in for service immediately. Did they not do that?
I honestly find this review quite frustrating. It seems like such a glaring flaw there would be an entire article dedicated to interviews with owners, a conversation transcript with Tesla service, and maybe even a note about how responsive Tesla is about fixing the problem. Instead, it seems like they found the issue, decided that it was acceptable enough to not get fixed, and published.
I can see this being fair, but it doesn’t strike me as the most honest unless every shipping car has the same problem.
I mean, "phantom braking" seems like a pretty obvious term for such behavior. Never had it on my laser cruise-equipped Golf R, nor on our radar-equipped Tesla, but it's immediately intuitive what they mean by it.
I will say, the Tesla needed to have the "brake warning" moved to 'late' from 'medium' to not making annoying alerts from time to time, which is something my Golf did also, but even more rarely. I only had the Golf for about 30k miles because I somewhat-unexpectedly bought the Telsa 3, which is now up over 53k miles.
I've had a Model 3 for 2 years now. Best effing car ever (I owned 3 prior to it). Haven't had a single issue that wasn't my fault. Service is super convenient, informative and fast. The lack of clutter, instant and sustained torque in addition to unreal handling, makes every other car, in its class or above (test driven cars twice the price), feel like a toy and pure junk.
So abso-lutely buy a Tesla if you've been on the fence.
These (+ reliability concerns) are pretty much the reasons why I decided to wait until buying a new car. BMW has said they'll introduce actual self-driving features (as in, they'll assume legal liability) in 2022. While I'm on the fence on whether they'll actually deliver, if manufacturers like BMW are willing to commit to such timelines it gives me hope these features aren't too far away from being commonplace.
When are they going to build a small, cheap electric car? Model S, X, Y, 3 all those cars are heavy tanks.
I'm quite tired of those companies always aiming for rich customers. If Musk was really for the environment, he would try to make those cars affordable.
I guess Tesla doesn't have the production capacity to make a high production cheaper car yet?
They are beyond production capacity with "rich cars" (IMO Y and 3 especially are firmly middle class cars). Why would they go into a market that's even higher volume and lower margins when they can't cover the more profitable market demand ?
If anything, other manufacturers are trying to get out of that market segment because regulation is making it too unprofitable to be in (eg. mandatory safety features, CO2 emissions rates for ICEs), a lot of A segment is not getting refreshed in EU/is being discontinued. You will probably see small "expensive" cars like Electric Mini and Smart cars.
$60k electric cars are mostly an upper middle class thing. I haven’t met anyone who is under $100k/yr individual income and bought a Tesla. (Excluding bank of mom and dad)
There are tonnes of reasonably priced PHEVs from other manufacturers, that are IMO great choices for people who simply want reliable, flexible cars that use very little gas. For example the PHEV versions of the Toyota RAV4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Santa Fe and Ioniq, Honda Clarity, Ford Escape, etc. Fully electric for city driving, gas when you need it for long trips, reasonably priced, from manufacturers who have been making reliable cars for decades. More practical and generally cheaper than fully electric cars.
Tesla are a luxury brand, and they know it, I think they’d have trouble competing in the more mass market/practical space. They’ll probably move there eventually, but I’m not surprised they’re sticking with their more luxury niche for now, they’re probably not yet capable of keeping costs as low as traditional car makers, while keeping quality high. They’re basically still learning how to build cars at scale.
There was a recent Sandy Munro video, where he basically stated that because the Chinese started on the EV bandwagon much earlier (due to executive fiat) They simply have more options...not because they are any more genius, but simply because they had the time and the drive to actually work on the damn thing.
He was called to consult on various cars, and by seeing the progress of their operations, he can see that the Chinese have strengthened their supply lines, removed a lot of the kinks and ramped up production and are getting good with design and fit/finish quality.
There is talk of a Model 2 being exactly that car. Personally I'm happy with my Bolt(random fires notwithstanding) and find it fills that niche. If the Model 2 is out next year when my lease expires I'd consider it, but I suspect I'll stick with the Bolt since it will be fairly mature by then. I don't like the idea of buying a newly designed vehicle before the faults have been shaken out.
Well, the reality is that they also have to create and run a profitable business, as well, which they would have failed at if they started with cheaper vehicles. It seems likely they'll go downmarket eventually, once they have the scale to survive off of the lower margins that come with cheaper cars.
Exactly. They won't lower their prices and margins until their months of backlog clear up either because of less customers buying at that price point or more cars being build.
This makes me weary about considering the Tesla Cybertruck. Besides the author, the amount of topics or personal stories about the quality of Tesla vehicles looks alarming.
Tl;dr: The critical flaw is random braking in the mandatory crash avoidance system because they replaced radar with cameras + computer vision which has a lot of false positives in their current production software release.
I'm curious: Is the reason cost, availability or ideology?
In theory cameras should work fine, given that humans are pretty good at driving by just using our eyes. Of course vision will never be theoretically better than radar/laser. But should be good enough in the long run, and cheaper/more flexible.
My question is, what level of resolution and processing power is necessary to interpret inputs accurately though?
Just anecdotally, seems like autopilot is many years away from being close to autonomous. Self driving is an 80-20 kind of problem... The 20% of hard stuff seems completely unsolved by Tesla, judging by YouTube videos, reviews etc. Personally I think Google will beat them to the punch by many years
The cameras in a Tesla are not 576mp (which is the closest approximation or estimate of our eyes), and nor do they have 21 stops of dynamic range (same).
And they also don't have 16+ years, minimum, of 24/7 "non-machine learning" to augment their judgment.
Our eyes are only really high resolution in a tiny patch, and after some initial learning most of vision is a solved problem by the age of 3. That's not to say that Tesla is any closer to using cameras and machine learning to replicate human vision, just pointing out the comparison doesn't really make sense. There's no reason to think that 576mp cameras and 16 years of training are necessary or sufficient. We'll just have to wait and find out.
I disagree with your second paragraph. Not all of your first 16 years are spent in driving situations (especially not 24h a day) but Tesla’s have driven many years in total and almost all of them can be applied to improve the AI running in all the cars.
Anybody familiar with the design Tesla uses for self driving?
Do they simply input video clips of common scenarios and what the correct output should be? Is it just a single neural net, or are there rules hard coded in? Multiple neural nets handling different things?
I assume there are many approaches to automated driving that are effectively dead ends. But would be interesting if just having enough video clips/correct corresponding behavior was enough to build a fully functioning model.
This source says they are only 1280×960 which ML reduces to 160x120 depth grid?
Seems crazily low resolution to me and also somewhat amazing they can do what they can with that (which I think doesn't matter much as it's still scary if they can't avoid obvious concrete obstacles or do the opposite brake ing op says)
A camera will never match radar range finding in adverse conditions. Those times where you'd like the safety features you're paying a premium for to actually work.
That's true, though it may be acceptable if more economical. For most geographies, very poor visibility scenarios are quite rare.
If it costs 10k more per car to support radar for example, then it's likely not worth it. If the cost difference is marginal, then I agree, may as well use whatever sensors are best.
I think what happened is they had a bunch of orders they couldn’t deliver because they couldn’t get shipments of the radar part in 2020. So, they decided to go vision-only for autopilot and now they’re scrambling to get to parity.
I may have missed this, but did the reviewer ever definitively, clearly say the conditions under which he experienced phantom braking? Was he using autopilot, or was this automatic emergency braking engaging without autopilot engaged? Those are two very different scenarios. If it happened with autopilot engaged, I'd want to know what type of road he was driving on.
One other thing I'll throw out there - many comments here seem to chalk up the possibility of phantom braking to the fact that Tesla has moved entirely to a computer vision system in the latest model Y, and that the lack of supplemental radar couldn't possibly be effective. Subaru's Eyesight system is 100% based on computer vision (unless you are reversing), I've driven 45k miles with it using adaptive cruise control and the always-on automatic emergency braking. I've experienced a phantom alert once or twice (the car momentarily thinks it sees an obstacle, both times thick smoke from a manhole in front of the car) but I've never experienced anything like the "phantom braking" he describes.
I know I'm talking about a different manufacturer, but I think it's misinformed to say that computer vision alone can't pull this off when other manufacturers clearly have been for years.
My understanding is that the car is randomly braking even when the optional self driving feature isn't used because they attempted to replace a long-time tested radar-based crash avoidance safety system (mandatory in US+EU) with something based on cameras + computer vision because of ... reasons.
I had a near miss recently because the light was red at the intersection and I was pulling out of the u-turn lane. The Tesla driver in the lane closest to the interstate decided to floor it as soon as the light was green and came within 5 feet of hitting me.
So this is how you get views and clicks these days - make a couple of factually incorrect statements, refuse to do any research, put a FUD clickbait in the title, and bingo - you are a "popular" "journalist".
Ok so who has the biggest anecdote? CNET has the platform, and it’s an ad sponsored medium willing to hit pieces for a fee. I just like to argue on the internet for fake points. I recently owned a 2015 Lexus LX570 that engaged emergency seatbelt tensioners (and I think engaged auto braking too?) every time I came across a steel plate road cover for construction. Something about the solid metal hit the radar system just right and caused it to panic. And caused me to damn near have a heart attack every time and swerve, hitting something else. That’s dangerous, and it’s Lexus flagship model. I traded that in for a Model Y.
I have occasionally had phantom braking, and I think the collision warning system is a little frenetic, but phantom braking beats the hell out of phantom acceleration (Ford?), or you know, not braking when it really should (most other late model cars on the road today, and also many new cars currently for sale). I consider it an annoyance but not a safety concern unless there’s some jagweed tailgating me. If you are an appropriately responsive driver with your hands on the wheel and feet ready to engage the pedals, you can trivially override the braking. Only if you tune out does it become a problem. Was the author not safely piloting his vehicle?
The real reason I can tell this is a hit piece is that anyone reviewing the Model Y knows that it’s nearly perfect in every way, maybe a little too expensive, maybe a little cheapish materials in certain areas, but the real massive failure is that the suspension is borderline intolerable on routine city streets. Still thinking about trading it in for that reason alone.
Elon, if you or anyone at Tesla read this, please for the love of all that is good give me an option for variable suspension modes. I got the black turbine wheel upgrade that CNET rightfully said to pass on because, while the look absolutely amazing, I feel like I’ve become one with the asphalt in a bad way. I can’t use the cup holders because my coffees shoot out of the little sip holes at every minor bump. Maybe it’s just me coming from a soggy bottomed LX.
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The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait.
The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (!), and then a constant stream of non-sensical errors while driving, which cause it to beep loudly with no way to stop it.
Dear reader, do not make my mistake, do not buy a Tesla. But not for the usual anti-Tesla propaganda reasons. Autopilot works great. Even the weird "falcon wing" doors are actually very good. It's just that the quality is awful and service is both overbooked and doesn't actually fix things.
I've never regretted a car purchase more.
PS. Does anyone in the bay area want to buy a Model X? ;)