A year ago, I would have chosen a new Tesla, hands down (disclosure: I am probably not gonna actually buy an EV for as many years as I can eke out of my trusty Subie).
Nowadays, I have chatted with numerous folks that have purchased alternative EVs.
The Tesla owners still seem the giddiest (There's a lot of 'em around here), but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse from any of the other brands.
The one that brought the Rivian, is every bit as giddy as any Tesla owner I know.
I think that Tesla has managed to establish itself, and will last, but the free ride is over.
I bought an EV earlier this year. I ended up with a LR Model 3 because the dealership model really sucks still. I called Hyundai and VW dealerships in the tri-state area around me, and none of them could say when I'd be able to actually get a car. Instead I went to Tesla's website, placed an order, and got an ETA. Super simple; loved that experience.
If it weren't for the crappy dealership model I probably would have bought the Hyundai Ioniq instead.
It's not just the ETAs that are pushing me away, but just the entire dealership process generally is annoying. I wanted to order a vehicle from GM and I have tried close at least 10 dealerships at this point in the PNW. No one is straight up on the process of either getting an order in or what pricing will look like or when they might get an allocation. Some just say "sure, you're on the list" but who knows what that even means. One dealership (Bellingham, WA) wanted 25K deposit to even take an order.
I basically gave up on that vehicle not because I can't wait or am not willing to play the price, but the BS process of going through one of these dealerships is too infuriating. Rivian I put my order in and at least I have an order date and understand that I'm in the queue and should be sometime MY24. If Cadillac came out with the exact same process as Rivian and it said I could get my vehicle ordered and enqueued for 12month deliver I would do it.
I think some companies just distribute cars between dealerships and let them sort it out, others allow people to actually order a car they like. I tried with Toyota, and they weren't able to get me the car I wanted or even tell me where one could be around, for months - and looks like different dealership don't talk to each other so unless I make deposit with every dealership around, I won't be able to get what I want. Subaru, OTOH, allowed me to place order for exactly the vehicle I liked and get ETA (though not a definite date, just approximate) - even though lead times are still pretty long.
I think this is why Ford has said it’s going to do electric vehicles direct. I can’t remember if they’ll use a different brand or not.
In Utah, where I am, it’s going to be a bit of a hill. I hear we have some laws to protect the local dealerships. Tesla dealers are just showrooms here and I don’t think they sell anything on-site. Could be wrong about all this.
> Rivian I put my order in and at least I have an order date and understand that I'm in the queue and should be sometime MY24
Is that "Model Year 24"? So they gave you an estimate of a year-long window, but also did not guarantee the date? How is that much different than "Youre on the list" with a traditional dealership?
Dealership lists are more like we'll call you if one comes in, and we'll call everyone else on the list right after. First one here gets to buy it. Also, if we have a buddy that wants it, we'll give him a heads up before we call you.
Exactly. Also, many of them are very coy about what dealer markup will apply if they ever do get an allocation. You could also be on a list at a dealership that never gets an allocation for you, because they don't get many cars and there are too many people ahead of you. It's not only opaque but also untrustworthy.
I guess it's just in which inconvenience you pick.
It seems like there is no EV that is free of something stupid that the car manufacturer is making you put up with.
Maybe Tesla it's these general annoyances. Or collision repair or out of warranty service annoyances.
I test drove a VW ID.4. It sounds like if I bought one I might deal with annoyances (markups, delays) trying to buy the car because dealers are annoying. The flip side is if I bought one and it needs service I can walk home from the local VW dealer to my house pretty quickly. Hyper Local service is rather nice.
> If it weren't for the crappy dealership model I probably would have bought the Hyundai Ioniq instead.
I went looking for a Bolt EUV recently (that price point for Super Cruise is really attractive), but they were marked up everywhere by upwards of $6K and it's impossible to reserve one from the manufacturer and actually get any guarantee that it will be purchasable at the listed price.
One thing to note about BMW is that they are heading in a direction that is not going to be good for anyone if the entire industry adopts it.
An $18/month subscription for heated seats. This is quite frankly absurd. And I know, Tesla is the one that started it (partially), but for things such as heated seats, this is taking it completely to the next level.
Soon enough we will start seeing microtransactions to even turn the car on? Not a good look for the automotive industry as a whole and shame on BMW for this.
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.
Not just that they are cracking down on their parts as well. I can no longer get brake pads or rotors at OReillys or AutoZone. I was forced to use crappy knock offs for the same price as I couldn't wait on ordered parts.
Went through the same thing with a recent starter replacement. They no longer offer OEM bosch (this was oreilly not sure about AZ) and they no longer sell Bosch OEM even remanufactures.
Again they explained to me this was due to BMW themselves.
I'm going to ride my 328i into the ground, but once its repairs outweigh the value of the car (doing the repairs myself now, had to become my own mechanic to avoid a $1700 bill and 2 week wait for a starter replacement),I am never touching one of their vehicles again.
When in the dealership in Seattle 2 years ago for an oil change and fluid top off/inspection it was a horror show.
They only added about 3 quarts of oil to my car out of the almost 7 needed after a change (light came on immediately as leaving and oil level was - null-). They never did their whatever-point inspection, never did the fluid top off, and left my oil filter cap loose! My 'account manager' was supposed to go over some stuff with me- never saw him. Was told he'd left notes on my file- did not.
While waiting I saw three different people come in with problems with their EV batteries no longer charging. The 1st two were told they'd be covered under warranty. I heard the reps talking amongst themselves about how bad it was getting and whether there would be a recall. 3d person was a lady who was pissed as she'd just had her battery replaced under warranty, it'd happened again and this time they wanted her to pay for a new one. She threatened to sue and they comped everything they could think of for her.
Now with this heated seats fiasco BMW has officially nuked the fridge.
Edit to add- if anyone is interested check out the starter replacement [1], absolutely fucking ridiculous the way cars are now engineered to stop the layman from affecting their own repairs.
Used to be starter replacement was something anyone could do and was all of two to four bolts and a wire and took ten minutes of time. You could even just replace the solenoid half the time for a few bucks.
I've now replaced brakes, rotors, control arms, shocks, struts, starter, window actuators, headlights, radiator, mass airflow sensor, ECM, spark plugs and ignition coils, cleaned the O2 sensors etc. Some of the steps are insane especially the radiator which was 600 just because California ones have a stupid sensor on them that cant be used on an off-brand radiator.
So much blood and sweat because why leave room to work on anything.
Tesla buying experience is way better but the ETAs are famously off. Mine has been pushed back 4-5 times and always about 3-4 weeks before it's due to get delivered, so it's impossible to plan around.
Yeah, the ETA wasn't incredibly important to me for planning purposes. It was just nice to know that I was getting <exactly this car> in <roughly this timeframe>. As opposed to "keep calling and maybe we'll have a Hyundai Ioniq allocated to us that'll arrive a month or two after, oh an enjoy your $10k 'market rate adjustment' to the MSRP."
Fwiw my car was delivered in the middle half of the original ETA, but I know that others have had lots of issues with their ETAs.
You can order a new car, configured as you like, with almost any brand. You'll get an ETA and a tracker that shows when it's going into production, when it's leaving the factory, when it's on a ship/boat/truck to your dealer, and when it's ready for pickup. You can get most dealers to agree in writing not to add any markups if you reserve a car with their dealership as the delivery point. That's how most people are buying EVs of any make right now, not just with Tesla.
You technically can sometimes, but in my experience it's really difficult to actually do that. Dealerships get limited custom order bank allocations, and if you're not really early when the MY order bank opens your order will potentially slip a model year or even more (at least for in-demand models).
For Hyundai specifically I was looking for the Limited trim, and I've been told they're only allocating custom orders to dealerships with level 3 chargers. And even then the order bank for MY 2022 had already been closed when I started shopping around. I would have had to wait for the MY 2023 bank to open.
I've done it twice with VW for ID4s. There's no special time period to order, and you don't need to talk to a dealership first, you can order from the VW website any time. If your car doesn't go into production until after a model year rolls over, then you get that newer model year.
Also, the strange thing is it is off in both directions. I had a family member order a Model X with a 5 month delivery timeline. He was super surprised to get the call to arrange delivery 3 weeks later.
In 7 years and 7 months, my 2015 Nissan LEAF has been CHAdeMO charged exactly twice: once before delivery and once while I owned it. CHAdeMO has been practically useless since day 1.
Even with that and the limited range, I bought the right car for our usage pattern and have been overall extremely happy with the car. It's been relatively trouble-free (one visit to the dealer for some combined warranty work on the battery, Takata air bag recall, and some other recall or other, all of which were taken care of for $0 and included a free loaner car while it was being done), otherwise requiring two sets of wiper blades, some washer fluid, and one tire to have a nail hole plugged.
When I say we bought the right car for our usage pattern, we paid around $21K (net of government credits) for a car that will still do 75 miles on a charge. Before COVID, my commute was 16 miles round-trip and had chargers at work. After working remotely, I drive the car much less and our two-driver family has a traditional ICE car for any longer trips. We both prefer the LEAF for around-town errands and it gets more drives than the ICE car does. I think once in 7.5 years we had a conflict where we both had more than 100 miles to drive in a day and I worked it out by charging the LEAF during my day. It's been a non-issue and getting a car that's given us >7.5 years of drama-free service for $21K has been great.
OG Leaf owner here, and like sibling, we might have fast charged it twice. To me, fast charging is something useful for road trips. But if you take an OG (or even later model) Leaf on a road trip, that's your own fault. Eleven years of ownership, our upscale golf cart gets us to work, shopping, and everything else we thought we'd use it for when we bought it. And when we bought ours, it had 100 mile range (if you babied it), and no real charging infrastructure to speak of. We knew what we were getting into, and we'd do it again.
> now that most fast-charging stations don't support CHAdeMO
According to the US DOE, we have 4450 CHAdeMO stations and 4583 CCS stations in the US at the moment. No major charging network has started building CCS-only stations yet, though EA plans to in the future. I don't see why you're feeling that remorse, your charging network is large and continues to grow, despite your car being discontinued in the next 2-3 years.
I've owned two Nissan LEAFs (2012, 2018). The things that would give me buyers' remorse are faults of the car, not anything external. Like, not charging any faster than 40-50 kW, charging at half that speed once the battery gets hot, losing 10% of its range to battery degradation after just 3 years, and offering no upgrade path to keep the connectivity features working after AT&T shut down its 2G then 3G networks.
> Bit of buyer's remorse from a Nissan Leaf now that most fast-charging stations don't support CHAdeMO.
Yeah, that's a bit annoying. In the US, many(most) still do, but there aren't going to be many (if any) new CHAdeMO installations. Even more so now that Nissan itself dropped CHAdeMO in the US. The Ariya will be CCS.
That said, if you are in a city, L2 should continue to expand and hopefully you'll be able to top off during your normal activities.
We got the leaf too. Its great for day trips, around town.
The charging situation for electric cars for road trips is still a thing... It seems to have found a standard in CSS. I expected there to be adapters, but apparently making adapters is slightly non trivial as there is a lot of chatting between the car and charger.
Hi, I'm a Volt owner. We purchased it almost 6 years ago and are still thrilled with it. The 50'ish miles of EV range covers 95% of my wife's driving, but she can also take it on road trips w/o having to find a place to plug it in.
None here. I bought a 2015 Leaf in 2017 with 19k miles for $8,500. At 75k mile now with zero issues. Just plug it in at night and drive it around town. It's a glorified golf cart, but it works great.
I hear this a lot about Tesla: "I would have chosen a Tesla, but now..."
But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their dealer networks, which were never a joy to interact with most of whom, Hyundai and maybe Nissan excepted, are just bringing out their first serious EVs.
Yeah, Tesla is overhyped. But their competition mostly, still, sucks. Nobody has, and nobody will for at least another year or two, make even a slight dent is demand for Tesla cars. Yes, Cybertruck is dumb. Yes, there is no roadster. But VW has apparently completely screwed their software stack. That is a much bigger failure.
The same can be said about SpaceX. SpaceX's value is highly dependent on a kind of telecom network that was a failure several times before when tried by Motorola, Microsoft, etc. Starship could fly soon, or next year, or in 5 years and it would still revolutionize access to space. Cost overruns? <cough>Boeing</cough>
It's all relative. Hype and image polishing is everywhere.
But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their dealer networks...
Are you assuming that this is news to the naysayers? Or maybe the naysayers are fully-informed, and they still say, "I'd rather deal with a traditional dealer than buy a Tesla"? Because that's what this naysayer is saying: better to deal with the devil I know...
But for instance, most people aren’t familiar with the outright corruption the Hyundai leadership/owners enjoy in Korea. Because they don’t tweet about it, and actively cover it up. Their owners embezzle money, bribe officials… makes Elon look like a saint.
So i’d posit, you actually don’t know that particular devil.
There were recent stories in the US of a Hyundai subsidiary parts plant using child labor in the US. They blamed it on a staffing agency. But, yeah, labor relations is a contact sport in Korea.
In Ford's case, a dealer network with no ability to negotiate (Ford told them the pricing was fixed) so there goes the biggest complaint. Other than that, I get a local business I can sue if something goes wrong and regulated by local authorities. Sounds better to me!
Experiences are highly mixed. The Tesla mobile services is a joy for many people for any kind of smaller issue. They just show up while you work or when you don't need your car.
The software support in terms of updates is very good, and you still get updates to years old software.
Where they struggle is not enough service capacity and parts shortages. What you would expect from a car maker growing 50% and the service capacity has not grown as fast.
Two of my acquaintances have EVs. One owns a Tesla and is....not thrilled. The other has a BMW and is pretty thrilled.
One of them has had what I would describe as a luxury car experience - fit and finish is perfect, and every detail of the car has been clearly thought about carefully and engineered to work precisely, and it was the cheaper of the two cars.
The other person got the Tesla. It's an acceptable car, but is wasn't cheap, nor is it luxurious. The quality just isn't there.
> but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse from any of the other brands.
The only solid reason I've heard to buy Tesla over others is for the Supercharger network if you travel a lot or can't charge at home. Everything else comes down to preference.
Nowadays, I have chatted with numerous folks that have purchased alternative EVs.
The Tesla owners still seem the giddiest (There's a lot of 'em around here), but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse from any of the other brands.
The one that brought the Rivian, is every bit as giddy as any Tesla owner I know.
I think that Tesla has managed to establish itself, and will last, but the free ride is over.