I had similar experiences with a modern Volvo. (XC40 T8 EV). Modern cars seem to be absolutely terrible.
It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
If I was to buy a car these days (which I'm not, I don't have nearly enough money for that), I'd want something with as little "computer" in it as possible. Just a box with 4 wheels and an engine, or maybe a battery and a motor, maybe a heater for when it gets a bit cold, and I'll throw a bluetooth speaker in the back seat if I need something to listen to
Just to note the trade-off here: modern cars are much safer in crashes than even cars from ~20 years ago, and the less computer you want, the further back in time you need to go to find suitable cars. There are nuances to the safety thing: some brands were/are safer, more popular car designs today tend to have some features that may worsen safety (taller cars are less stable, heavier cars handle worse, big heavy cars are worse for pedestrians).
How much safer are they? I can totally believe that the crash safety of cars improved hugely in the 90s - that's basically when large crumple zones, computer modelling of crash performance, airbags, seatbelt pretensioners etc were all developed.
But 20 years ago was 2005. What's changed on a modern car since 2005? There's obviously a lot more safety features (and these have increasingly been part of the crashworthiness rating cars are given). But if you crash into a wall at 40mph, how much stronger are they?
A lot. Probably the biggest single change was the introduction of the small overlap crash test by the IIHS. It turns out that the standard frontal crash tests are quite unrealistic; in most frontal accidents, the driver swerves to avoid something but clips the corner, rather than just slamming into something head-on. Cars designed to perform well in the standard frontal crash test often performed miserably in the small overlap test.
Compare the same model before and after the small overlap test:
The safest cars basically saturated the safety tests. To the point where car companies are making up their own tests, simulating much more dangerous collisions.
I wonder if there's even any citations that can directly show that a 2024 car is "much" safer than a 2004 car. Without relying on NHTSA's safety rating system, which is an indirect proxy at most (and probably has changed multiple times for "reasons"). And without being confounded by changes in regulatory measures.
I'm struggling to find the original document/page I read on this, but largely, "a car having better parts is due to the road having features that benefit these parts due to generations of studying the way cars behave in that set of circumstances.
Autos are designed around and for the roads they will serve, not vice versa. This is the bane of auto manufacturers who want to make one tail light housing for all their cars in all their markets.
it's a bit more easy to read data comparing for example safety in Euro market vs American market (there are fundamental differences in safety thoery; lighting, ride heighgt, weight, engine size etc. As opposed to looking at changing trends in one market over 20 years, which are largely stylistic.)
I think it depends on what you're trying to gauge for safety.
Pre-2000 satedy improvements were heavily about WHEN you get into an accident...
Post 2000 it is heavily is heavily DON'T get into an accident, and it's heavily electronic. Anti-lock breaks, lane change vehicle detectors, unintentional lane change warnings, auto-breaking before collisions.
I certainly agree with the general vibe that cars do too much now, but I'd rather have a dumbified 2010+ish car
Perhaps structurally but the tech stuff isn't improving safety.
With the absolute slightest bit of fog, excessive humidity, rain or snow by Mazda tells me one of its radar systems isn't operable and to please drive safely.
I don't know what Mazda you have, but my Mazda CX-5 2017's radar systems are MUCH more reliable than the Volvo XC40. The CX-5 maybe failed a handful of times in the years I owned it, but the XC40 failed almost every time the weather was bad (rain, cold, mist, etc)
> The next car I am going to buy is probably going to be older than my current one.
I've also come to this bizarre conclusion. Cars are rapidly regressing. I currently drive an '09, and yearly maintenance costs have begun to approach the value of the car. I'm not sure how long I can economically keep it on the road, but what would I replace it with? A '24 Driving-IoT-Nighmare?
Depending on your locale, you're going to need to replace all suspension, steering, exhaust, frame peices etc. on that 09' car you bought used for 6. Will quickly approach 20k in time and money, and at that point, most people bite the bullet and deal with new car bullshit/payments.
I live in salt belt in US, have a 14 year old hatchback. This year alone I have had to replace 2 of the 6 control arms, rear rotors, all pads, parking brake cable (ugh), strut/shock assembly up front , clutch and brake masters, rear wheel hubs, trailing arms. That alone is like 4k in my time, nevermind the parts or if I brought them to a shop.
last year I did clutch job, vent/purge valves, intake cleaning, timing job....easily 5k
I am very jealous you have somehow avoided these things with the Clio. Idk how mazda managed to make my hatch out of seemingly rust.
Spare parts for clios are there practically free, since it's so common - also mechanics like them, since older models are very simple to service.
Largest parts I had to replace so far were exhaust (60€ for part) last year and exhaust hatch (I don't know if that's the correct english term for that, 80€ for part) this year. Brake pads I had to change twice so far, but it was also pretty cheap.
With my mother I have a joke that rebuilding my clio from scratch would probably cost me less than tire change on her merc.
The only annoyance I have with it is that it's eating through light bulbs at annoying pace, since electricity in the older clios tends to be a bit funky. But okay, that's a 5min change usually.
The backup camera is entirely analogue, zero computer required. All manufacturers use the same couple of camera modules which output standard composite video, which is why even nice cars have obvious analogue artifacts and distortions.
Even OEM headunits usually just consume a standard composite video input and switch to it when it has a signal.
This information is valid up until at least 2020, but it might be changing as cars get more advanced cameras and stupid-er head units. I bet Tesla just uses their existing cameras.
>not beeping if seatbelt not fastened
Also trivial to do with analogue electronics, which we have done for decades.
speed limit warnings are a dead end though. Impossible to do without some sort of technology to know what the "current" speed limit is.
I especially love the collision detection that goes "BIBIBIBIBIBI" and the screen goes red saying "BREAK NOW!". All of this happens regularly when I'm dodging parked cars in small streets at very low speed. The message appears about half a second too late anyway (assuming I have instant reaction time, which I doubt). I'm glad it doesn't break automatically at least.
Also it reads speeds signs but it has no idea when they no longer apply, or doesn't read the new one, or reads a speed sign from an adjacent road, or sometimes just imagines it.
Try buckling all your back seat belts. Recently US cars are required to annoy you if back seat passengers are not buckled in; many (most?) manufacturers are not putting in weight sensors to see if there are rear seat passengers present; they’re just putting in seat belt buckled sensors.
Our previous car did beep when there was any weight on the passenger seat while the seat belt was unbuckled, which is extremely annoying when you just put a bag there.
Another annoying thing was that in order to use the navigation from the car, you first had to agree to obey the traffic rules or something. I already do that by participating in traffic.
I don't think this incessant beeping for every little thing, nor requiring clicking though extra screens, is useful and I doubt it adds anything to safety. It's distracting and annoying and I start thinking about why the car is beeping this time, instead of focusing on the traffic.
That's the really big problem with this design: the car should not draw attention to itself; my attention should be on the road. Also, when it does beep, it should at the very least make clear why, and you should be able to turn it off.
I remember when i was a kid and the cars started dinging when your seat belt was unbuckled, and my family (and everyone we knew) went out and bought empty buckles that just plugged into the seat belt latch, to defeat the dinging and let you drive without your seatbelt in peace. I wonder if these still work to defeat the more and more aggressive warnings.
People will look for workarounds regardless. Some people just become irrationally incensed if you suggest that they aren't perfect. It's really frustrating. There's an entire subset of the population that lives life explicitly thinking "Rules are for everyone else and I deserve everything"
Next time you go to the grocery store look at how many carts don't get put away. The exact same people who do that will freak out and start a war if their car gets scratched by a loose cart.
Don't believe my takes? Go to a local city or school board meeting and see the utter insanity that comes from people that you will be shocked to learn are a middle manager at some company or own their own small and successful business.
Some people genuinely don't get that the world isn't about them, and I think we have drastically underestimated the percentage.
You'd be surprised how many "normal" people initially revolted against seatbelt laws and protested through noncompliance. Even the people who accepted that seatbelt use was safer, refused to use them because of the usual "The Government Won't Tell Me What To Do!" mentality.
"I will endanger my own life, just to spite the government that will never know about how I'm spiting them unless I die."
I can understand not wanting the government to decide how they live their life, who they can and can't marry, how they should identify, which bathroom to use, etc. But I'd think no-cost life-saving stuff is not a hard decision. Same with vaccines.
I've had a new Toyota Corolla over the weekend, and the beeps were driving me nuts.
The car reads signs, and beeps everytime it detects a change in speed limit. If you go over the speed limit, even if its 1 km/h the car starts beeping as well.
I never drive really fast, when the car says I'm driving 1 KM over the limit my GPS speed usually is 5 below. This makes the signals extra annoying.
They should have used beeps when you're 10 or more over the speed limit or something like that so you don't get spammed with notifications all the time. The system being as it is, I'm 100% sure I will get it removed by a tuning shop.
It has always been common for cars to estimate your speed a bit on the high side, because there's always a margin of error, and that way you don't accidentally go over the speed limit while thinking you're still below it.
But for a car to start beeping (or worse, interfering), they'd better use that margin of error in the other direction.
I can't stand all the beeping. It is wild how police are so against using mobile phones while driving (and they are right) but allow all these other distractions to run rampant in modern cars and distract drivers.
How we allow massive touch screens in Tesla's and other modern cars is beyond me.
I normally drive a 15 year old car, and recently traveled and had to rent a car at my destination. This thing was infuriating and constantly annoying in so many ways. I had to return the first one because I couldn't figure out the touch screen (!!), and the replacement I got just beeped and booped constantly for reasons unknown. I couldn't even figure out how to use the radio. It kept asking me to log in (to what??) just to use the nav system.
Of all the signals of "I'm getting elderly," who knew I'd first start feeling like this from trying to use a car?
It feels a bit counterintuitive to go for a Bluetooth speaker over 3.5mm?
Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.
Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?
> All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
Conversely, I pair my phone once when I get the car and I never need to worry about messing with it again; it's just connected when the car starts. I don't even need to take my device out of my pocket or bag.
On top of that I get hands-free calling if someone calls while I'm driving, I get steering wheel media controls, I get voice controlled media selection (play playlist foo, play artist bar, etc.)
I would prefer 3.5mm over Bluetooth, but keep in mind most people get their music off their phones and (almost?) no modern phones have headphone jacks. Dongles are a thing, but meh.
Additionally, modern Bluetooth devices have very little friction in my experience.
Ye. Many modern phones are *@*$ too. My wife is still bitter about not having a 3.5mm jack on hers she unknowingly bought 5 years ago. So much trouble ...
However if more than one person will use the car (incl. as passanger) the annoyance of Bluetooth is even worse.
We have a dongle in the car that is protected by a sworn oath to never be removed from the cabinet along with some charger cables.
Multi user seem to be the major pain point. I think linked and active headphones blocks the car too.
There is just so much stuff that can make the abstraction of automation leak and you have to spend more time fixing it this one time than saved in the total lifetime of the car with a simple cable.
This is going to become nearly impossible in Europe, it may already be in some places due to regulations restricting old vehicles due to emissions. ADAS requirements and other laws forcing manufacturers to implement all sorts of restrictions: just as an example, from 2024 on all new vehicles must implement ISA (Intelligent Speed Assist) that limits speed based on GPS and signs recognition. Anecdotal, but many cars built since mid 00s are ticking timebombs due to their endless electronics faults that will cost drivers a massive bill at some point if not multiple times over their lifespan, good luck finding those proprietary boards that have dozens different variants incompatible with each other for one single car model and have not been produced for years or decades. And if most car manufacturers are utterly incompetent at engineering lasting electronics, let's not get into software that they dedicate the least paid and most desperate SwEngs to work on. Coming to an abrupt halt from cruising speed on an highway is a common failure mode I've seen more than once dictated by insane ECUs programming, for example. I'd like to believe miniaturization and just maturity in the industry will make those sort of issues less prevalent for newer cars, but I'm not hopeful about it.
All software is like its makers full of attention-whoring.
Its a nasty side-effect of the "identify with your work" ethics.
Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.
Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.
It's usually a product-management failure that causes this. If you make your UX sufficiently invisible your department becomes invisible, and you get de-prioritized for promotion.
Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.
I doubt it's tied to the commercial "millions" is probably easily met through the search blurb "AI overviews" or people who have accepted it on their phones or google homes
Chat GPT i want you to play user on any App i start, click all the dark pattern buttons and notifications. Pretend to be interested. Fill out the surveys. Then present the app without the cruft.
> just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.
It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.
If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.
Of course you get some issues with 33 year old cars. I let my 31 year old mx5 go but slightly regret it - it needed ~£3000 spent to renovate but then they keep their value as classics. Getting replacement parts can start getting tricky.
Well, not exactly fall apart but there were rust holes you could see through. It would have needed at least some welding to get through the mot and ideally a fair bit of bodywork stripped back and replaced.
Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.
They just don’t die. My 16 year old one seemed end of life 10 years ago and when I holed the sump, I was resigned to getting it wrecked.
After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.
Next time just glue a piece of aluminium on the inside of the old sump with JB Weld or a similar type of heat-resistant epoxy. Been there done that after my wife holed a few too many sumps by driving her Skoda over overly high obstacles. The first time she did this I could follow her track in the tractor to where she parked the car for me to tow it homes, the other times were out in the bush - she's a veterinarian which takes her to places where roads are afterthoughts. I just swapped between sumps, repairing the freshly broken one in wait for another turn. That car has been sold and she has not yet managed to hole the current one but I know from experience this works just fine.
Because they only have features of 90s car, not 2020s car. It's just shockingly bare. A lot of times coupled with dull drivers so must be some confirmation bias too.
This one is just silly since it's not making any serious money to manufacturer.
That said we shouldn't stop car evolution because one shitty manufacturer fucked up. If you wan't one - you can always buy a Lada, they were perfect since 70s...
I mean, my 9 year old Clio drives fine with pretty basic software. Whereas when I see a Tesla on the road I try not to get too close out of fear it will do something random and dangerous.
The cold weather alert especially gets on my nerves. I appreciate the heads up, but I don't appreciate the HUD crying wolf about stuff that doesn't require my immediate attention.
This is my biggest bugbear with VW (and related) cars. The "it's below 4ºc" message has the same warning tone as messages about tyre pressures, engine malfunctions, etc.
Mine is the "grab your steering wheel" alert when the lane-keep assist does too good of a job staying in the lane and it doesn't receive any steering input from me for too long of a period.
I do have to say that after test-driving a number of different vehicles before buying my Taos last summer, that I appreciate that VW continues to use real buttons for most inputs - although I do understand a number of their other vehicles use capacitive touch buttons.
Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.
There was a good (?) video on the subject the other day, it was mainly about Volkswagen / VAG but highlighted the software problem.
Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.
But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.
Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.
Auto programming is the prime example of Conway's law.
Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.
No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!
I'm afraid a lot of the tech is either necessary by law or necessary to get a decent safety rating these days, so you can't make the simple cars from yesteryear.
Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.
Should front facing cameras be required by law (in USA) too? The bonnet height of USA vehicles appears to be adult shoulder height. If you're 5ft/150cm tall or under they're lethal.
I have a 22 Miata with all options, which is about shortest hood you can get in the us.
The vehicle HAS A front facing camera, it takes up a huge portion of the front windscreen. There's no way to see an image from the front camera.
Is it there to....To tell me if i'm...about to crash? it has no automatic cruise or anything. Absolutely puzzling.
Another gripe about this car; "car play" works about half the time. Maybe. 20 percent of the other half, whole display freezes until I restart the car. Mazda can't figure it out and what am I gonna do, lemon it?
mye 15 year old other mazda hatchback connects to bluetooth instantly as soon as i turn the car on and begins to play music.
I have a ‘21 Miata with the same gripes. The CarPlay situation got slightly better with an OS upgrade last year – now it only crashes about 10% of the time, and 75% of those recover on their own without needing a power-cycle.
The lack of adaptive cruise is baffling. We test drove a ‘15 CX-something-or-other in 2014 and it had the ability to brake automatically (dealer was very interested in demoing this feature). I assume it also had adaptive cruise, so it’s wild that a 6 years newer sports car wouldn’t have that feature.
Probably. Could have two classes for forward visibility, one that didn't and one that did.
I wouldn't make the camera a free for all though, it makes sense for pretty good direct visibility to be a design priority (so the camera would be required on cars that had okay but not great forward visibility and it wouldn't be allowed to build anything else).
Sure, but a screen, even a touchscreen, is not mutually exclusive with buttons. My Toyota has both, and after setting up the navigation, I can go the whole way and do everything without touching the screen.
What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?
It's ridiculous that any of these things need microcontrollers. My first car's door had a little joystick that physically moved the mirror around, presumably using pushrods or something. The door lock was a physical device you moved up and down, and had a motor connected (power door locks were fancy). It also had cranked window controls, not so nice. But power windows didn't need a computer either.
We keep taking things that worked fine without a computer, adding a computer, and ending up with all the problems of a computer but with little extra benefit to the user.
No, there genuinely used to be purely mechanical mirror controls. You'd twiddle the little joystick and it would more or less adjust the mirror, in a way that at least in my experience was slightly imprecise and rubbish, but definitely didn't demand any electronics.
> What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
When I worked in the industry, we had four different CPUs of different architectures on one small (fit in your hand) circuit board, each running its own software and communicating with each other via buses on the board. This was for controlling one single function in the car.
Strictly speaking, I would say that single circuit board was 4 separate computers. It quickly adds up.
Ideally yes because if the microcontrollers can be replaced by a central macro-controller computer you can then update it all more easily. You make the whole thing more software defined.
Which is the problem. A lot of separate micro controllers will probably never need an update. We have now had microcontrollers in cars for decades, and they almost all worked fine without updates. Its only recently, with the more software defined systems, that we have needed updates.
I'm not in a position to know but from reading around a lot I think the VW ID3/4 ended up having a nightmare update scenario because early hardware was buggy.
I know from working at a phone company that hardware absolutely has bugs and it's only reliable as long as you're changing very little. If you start having a system where you're trying to optimise everything e.g. to save power when not in use and allow lots of customer choices in how things work then you're going to choose new microcontroller hardware and software and it will have bugs that have not been ironed out over the years.
The stories I read about ID3 updates going wrong were about certain controllers not successfully acknowledging their firmware updates. So I can see a strong temptation to make it all vertical - to have control over everything so you can ensure it works before you order 200k of them. Instead of having 60 suppliers all providing their interpretation of your bus protocol, each with unique bugs you take the whole thing into a single design.
I can also see it being far more conducive to have a smaller number of bigger and more homogeneous microcontrollers each of which might not be perfect for every job but since they're all the same you only have to provide 1 software update solution and you can test the shit out of it.
To add, I recall a fair proportion of ARM's sales (as per annual report) were for automotive use, so we a lot of this were processors that compared well to what you would have run a desktop on a decade earlier so reasonably sophisticated systems potentially, just kept simple by being single purpose.
In the name of $DEITY: WHY?
I would pick without thinking the car without the child tablet attached to it, too.
We will be forced to switch to this kind of stupid cars by regulation, or planned obsolescence, not by choice.
Not entirely regulation and planned obsolescence but because cost.
Coding in the climate controls on the touch screen has a fixed cost that doesn't really increase with each car built. Adding multiple physical buttons, does. Even if each button costs cents to make.
I think google's prev ceo once said something like,
"Computers should have been invented before cars". They took it wrong, computerizing cars before reaching level 5 automony was a mistake.
I spent 2 * 1 hours in a 'fresh' car some time ago, it was a nasty experience. It had all these 'backseat driver' functions, like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.
The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.
It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.
This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.
>like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.
These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.
Where I live it's a common hobby to tune and style cars, so I'm hoping these people will have figured out how to make future cars tolerable when I'm forced to move off the old school machines. Maybe it'll be possible to switch out the ICE for another powertrain, without at least some of the annoying christmas lights.
> And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away.
It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.
Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.
Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button.
/end rant
I have the same car and the thing I like most about it is that it doesn't have a giant screen and looks more like a traditional car. I can't say I've had the same issues (or any issues besides the slow infotainment system). I do agree that the amount of notifications are excessive but that seems to be the case with all newer cars.
It all doesn't quite work well enough to justify all the new tech. My 7 year old car is pretty good, it has a small 8 inch screen which does car play/android auto and has nice buttons and dials for all controls. No distractions!
I have SOS Inoperative in car. Contacted the dealer, it seems like it can be software issue - where update will fix it… But I have to pay for it. Pay for a software bug!
For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!
Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.
I test drove a Lexus NX350h and RX350h not too long ago, and modern Lexus cars also have an issue of taking fancy tech too far:
- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.
- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.
- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.
On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.
>"It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability."
Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.
If anything the current JS-centric world view at least puts someone in charge of the "user-facing" parts.
Before you had all these backend-focused people who despised building HTML pages in charge of user experience. You know the kind of people who think the user is the database not the actual users.
Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.
Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.
>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.
> In 2024, Volvo renamed the battery electric XC40 to the Volvo EX40, aligning it with newer battery electric models such as the EX30 and the EX90.
Which makes me think Volvo sold their cars with the old name but other engine options, electric being one of them. They split "XC40" into "XC40 (ICE)" and "EX40 (BEV)".
The XC40 T8 EV does exist. I know, because I owned one. It was a 2022 model I think, got it late 2021. The renamed it a few times after that. I basically had one of the first XC40 EVs on the local market. I ordered it before they were in the showrooms.
EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.
I disagree with that. I really like the Android infotainment system because 1) voice control actually works and 2) built in Google maps is all I want in a car and they work very well.
As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
My Renault Megane e-Tech has Android and it was far better than whatever the other cars used.
One point Renault did right was use beefy enough hardware. They went[1] with an automotive Qualcomm Snapdragon, while it seems Volvo and others went with an Intel Atom.
All I know is it's smooth like a good tablet.
While voice recognition is not perfect in Norwegian, it was also by far the better one. A lot of room for improvement though, like if I say "call Merete" it won't find my contact named "Merethe", which is pronounced exactly the same here.
English is not my native language so I'm yet to find a car where this works. But it's not a problem with the car, it's Google's voice assistant being useless for anything other than English sounding names. I can say "Google call Janusz Zawadiadzki" and there's exactly 0% chance it will work. It just can't do it. Don't get me started on it trying to read texts that aren't written in English when the system language is set to English, it's hilarious.
>> picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
It freezing and losing sound and generally being in all kinds of non-operational state isn't due to the hardware being slow, it just doesn't pass muster for automotive-grade software which should never exhibit any of these behaviours no matter what.
I'd be pretty surprised if any other voice assistant would do better in this instance. I can't speak for how useful it is outside of English but I am fairly confident whatever the manufacturer comes up with would be much worse.
Regarding the freezing and all the other issues, I've not experienced any of that at all. It's been rock solid for me. We didn't buy it at release though which is maybe why we have such drastically different experiences. We have also bought a used one for about 50% of the original cost which is why is another reason I'm probably more forgiving than you, if you had purchased it brand new.
As an owner of a 2020 V90CC (which was the last of the Sensus models), I have to disagree. I’m never buying another Volvo based purely on the terrible software experience that Sensus provides. Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay, random crashes, features that simply don’t work, map updates that are permanently “installing”, blasting me with 1-2 seconds of radio at full volume at random when I’m playing from my phone.. zero acknowledgement from Volvo on the issue (we can’t replicate it).
I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.
I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.
Ha, it's funny how everyone has completely different experiences it seems. I've owned my XC60 for over 5 years not and literally genuienly had zero issues with this car - software or hardware wise. Never had a single software crash.
>>Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay
I don't know, that just never really bothered me? I use the built-in satnav anyway since it's necessary for the hybrid system optimization to work.
> yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out.
I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...
I have owned Model S since 2018, now driving my second one (Raven).
The first one was just poor manufacturing Tesla has been known for forever.
Second one is however the disaster. So many sounds while turning the steering wheel, driving on tiny slopes, braking etc. forced me to convince the service center to replace the suspension, arms & half-shafts (all under warranty). None of these steps helped, service center proposed to try another service center "where there may have more experience" and called the squeaking the feature of the vehicle.
I visited 3rd party garage, got more information about possible sources and concluded it is probably impossible to fix it.
So here I am, driving the $80k car that squeaks like 30 years old rusty Ford, attracting attention at the parking lots.
Won't be buying a next one for sure.
The error was to buy a second one after "the first one was just poor manufacturing".
I never saw manufacturing quality improve over time from car companies.
After my Nissan car started to have transmission problems that would cost thousands of dollars to fix (among various other small issues), I sold it as quickly as possibly and swore I'll touch the make again.
Subaru burned me on this. I bought my wife an outback. It started to have transmission issues with a full transmission failure at about 145k miles. This is after a life of small problems here and there that didn't really impact performance.
It was a known issue between 125 and 150k miles. Subaru's solution was to extend the warranty to 100k, as if that did anything at all.
We got rid of the broken one, and the one that I drove as well. I'll never go back. I loved those cars, but that's so shady.
I am too tall/long legs to feel comfortable in the Model 3, range of 75D was a bit limiting when traveling with family and I couldn't and still cannot imagine driving ICE car again. The manufacturing did not bother me too much in the interior as all cars I ever owned or rented had loose, squeaky plastics, and body panel gaps were tolerable for me.
Let's remove Musk from the equation, because you can like or (most probably) hate him, but I own a Tesla and I have the opposite experience. Everything worked out of the box. Just one piece of hardware started to fail (the charger plug making some noise) and they changed it in warranty.
First: has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it. Because comparing it to a Clio just because the Clio worked, well, seems a bit off. a Clio is a car, a fully functional Tesla is a gian iPad with wheels. There's a huge difference.
Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
Third: No doubt that a car with all these defects _must_ be changed, or fixed immediately at no cost of transportation, or offered a compensation to get it back. I think the owner should _also_ contact a lawyer and try to get a refund. I'd not accept this kind of treatment.
Agreed, the quality of the product should speak for itself. We've got people saying they're unreliable, and we've got people saying they're reliable, and that's true for literally every car manufacturer on the planet, so this doesn't tell us much. Anecdotal stuff aside, there's studies done on these things, thankfully, and Tesla consistently ranks poorly. See for example this one (this is just the first one that popped up when I googled "car reliability study", it's probably better if you find your own sources):
Adding another source: TÜV Report 2025 (in German)
In Germany you have to get your car checked every 24 months for its road worthiness (think general doctor checkup but for your car). If it fails, you are not allowed to use it until it's fixed.
At the first general inspection after purchase 2-3 years out, 14.2% of all checked Tesla Model 3s had issues. Comparing that to other models that are on record in sufficient numbers, its a high rate of failure. VW ID.3, for example, had 5%.
It seems that they fail the TUV for two reasons: bad suspensions and rusted brakes. The first one is on Tesla, but the second one has to do with regenerative braking vs real braking. You are supposed to slam your brakes one or two times a year so they don't get rusty, but a lot of users aren't following this and can go a long time without using their brakes because regen braking is so convenient.
PHEVs will run their gas engines after they have not been used in a while in order to keep the gas in them from going stale, it seems odd that the braking system on EVs doesn't do the same for the brakes
If the user just uses regen braking, they are never hitting their brake when they are moving. You would have to work it somehow into the regen, but the stopping curves are completely different for the two, so you would probably wind up surprising the driver if you decided to arbitrarily engage the brake rather than use regen.
Your assumption is that regen and braking have the same behavior and are interchangeable, but I don't think that's the case beyond both of them being used to stop.
It's not. It assesses road-worthiness (aka safety), not reliability.
That article is often quoted in sensationalist media to smear Tesla. Look for actual mileage data and they are one of the, if not THE most reliable vehicle.
Our car inspections are handled by German TÜV, and they do not inspect superficially. If, ~14% of a single brand of car which is ridden with LEDs (which should live forever when compared to halogens), advanced drive systems and other stuff are failing, and has to be re-inspected because of they can't meet the standards, that's pretty bad to be honest.
Failing TÜV means your safety critical systems have problems. This means brakes, suspensions, lighting (front and rear), screen wipers, etc.
So they check for pretty basic, but crucial stuff, and they're tested in a pretty detailed way (brake fade, stopping power, etc.). If your car is failing in just two years in these areas, you're not reliable, and your car will not age well, period.
My 25 year old car aces the test all the time, and the biggest complaint I got on my report is "Your wipers leave streaks, LOL!".
Nope, I don't. I only do its normal interval services. I don't like the cheat the system.
> Also, this doesn't sound environmentally friendly to me.
I'm planning to buy a new hybrid. On the other hand, it has a cat, is our family car since the beginning, so it's in a very good shape emissions-wise (it's tested regularly). Newer cars are better, of course, but it's not an oil burning, smoking, smelling smoke-stack. Its exhaust isn't covered in carbon even.
It's safety, yes. To fail this test there can be any number of causes but for Tesla they specifically mention light, axle, and breaks as failure points.
The 14.2% was for cars receiving their first Hauptuntersuchung (main inspection) done every 24 months (so 2-3 years old cars). If a car model has that many problems while competitors in a similar price range and use model don't, that could point to an issue with part quality.
Other than lights, the problem with control arms and brakes are known. Brake service is recommended and ignored because unlike VW, et all - there's not stealership model to charge you $500 a year for worthless maintenance.
No it doesn't. Service intervals are dependent on mileage. You should be detecting the problems and fixing them at regular servicing.
Ignoring brake checks is endangering life. Even though you have regenerative braking, brakes are used way more often in automatic and gearbox-free cars due to driving dynamics.
Just because there's no so-called stealership, ignoring brakes is not justifiable. So, I can mark Tesla as an irresponsible car company, with a bright and bold marker.
Thanks for narrowing my future car choices and pushing Tesla more out of my mind.
You can mark whatever you want with your bright and bold marker. It doesn't make your argument more sound.
If you are worried about the brakes, brake hard occasionally to avoid rust.
Alternatively, you can charge the car up to near 100% if you go on a roadtrip. Regen will be limited initially so you will be able to use your brakes without braking hard.
If you are still worried about the brakes, go to an independent car mechanic regularly and have them checked.
It's as easy as that.
Nobody is preventing you from doing service even though it's not deemed necessary by the vendor.
Your comment doesn't seem to be about the actual issue but about some form of generalized Tesla brand hatred.
I'm not a person who keeps grudges, or hates things in general. I just take note what companies do, and change my choices based on my observation. VAG also took a good hit after their dieselgate scandal, and not recovered much in my mind, for example. Stellantis is also not doing well, and I was considering a vehicle from them, so I'm not so sure anymore.
I don't live in a flat city, of course I'm worried and aware of my brakes all times, and know how to condition and refresh my brakes.
My problem is Tesla's service policies, like ignoring "recommended" checks on a car. Oh sorry, I can go to an independent mechanic to further spend my non-existing time, you're right.
What's more interesting is Tesla not having brake pad thickness warnings, which our old 1999 Fiat Tipo had.
Being apologetic about problems doesn't make your arguments any more sound, either.
No. You are obviously not doing that. You take note of what the media emphasizes in an obvious press campaign that oversimplifies the actual information to a degree where it becomes borderline useless in order to reach political goals. This is not the same.
> You take note of what the media emphasizes in an obvious press campaign that oversimplifies the actual information to a degree where it becomes borderline useless in order to reach political goals.
No, I'm not doing that. To be frank, my exposure to cars, engines and related technology goes back 30+ years,. I'm not naive enough to read a single article and change my mind about Tesla, "because Elon bad, so Tesla bad".
I'm not someone who sees his car as a black box. I can diagnose, disassemble and service my car to a certain degree (and recently did that by logging weeks of data from ECU because my mechanic was not able to pinpoint the problem, and I diagnosed the problem myself). I'm also not afraid or refrain from getting my hands dirty.
If something, this article I have read is a literal drop in a bucket of things I have read only about Tesla. My information consumption about cars is increased again recently, because I'm planning to buy something new, but I'm already familiar what I might be getting under the bonnet with every choice I make.
So, you're projecting your assumptions onto me, and not only your assumptions are wrong, what you're doing is also wrong.
If that's the case, then please cite reliable sources about the exact issues that occur and what Tesla did or did not do to mitigate them or let them slip.
If you'd have those, you could have posted them earlier here in the thread.
First, I don't keep bookmarks of everything I read, second I can't record conversations I've had with people owning cars I'm interested in and store them in publicly accessible places.
I understand that we will not be able to meet somewhere in the middle. Also, I'm not someone who'd leave personal opinions and experiences to appease and please someone.
So, have a nice day. Hope your cars never break down and give you infinite joy.
Let's play your game, then. The URL contains a list of links I have found in my browser and YouTube history, mostly about Tesla, in 20 minutes. I especially searched for Tesla, since this is what we're talking about.
Moreover, I failed to find some of the links I wanted to add, which were more positive ones about Tesla, nonetheless (e.g.: the famous consultancy which gutted a Model S and found very good engineering alongside some rookie mistakes).
Now, this is your turn to provide me information about how I'm mislead, and what Tesla does instead. Waiting a similar links trove from you, since you claim that you're very knowledgeable about the subject matter.
If you translate the article and read it, you will find that there are a lot of reported issues with the headlights. It is hard to find exact information on the actual issue in detail, but I'd suspect it's about the calibration of the headlights in most cases. That's a minor issue and calling it a reliability problem doesn't seem accurate. Also quite conveniently, they don't really mention that Teslas have significantly more mileage on average than other electric cars when they have their first TÜV visit. It's common for the German press to blow things like these out of proportion when they don't like a brand.
I think the German car industry and the press around it as a whole have a serious corruption issue.
I am sure HN has made up their mind already and this discussion wouldn't have an effect on your opinion anyway, so please feel free to continue downvoting.
> you will find that there are a lot of reported issues with the headlights.
Correct, but you just happen to leave out the mentioned issues with the brakes and axles as clearly stated in the article.
> In addition to defects in the brakes and axles, the Tesla also has a particularly high number of lighting defects.
If you want to point out issues, which is absolutely fair, please don't cherry-pick.
> but I'd suspect it's about the calibration of the headlights in most cases
So its a guess on your part. Lightning defects can mean any number of things.
>Defects in the lighting such as defective bulbs, broken or blind lenses or incorrect adjustment are significant defects.
Incorrect adjustments are part of it, yes, but if that's the case I would argue something with the construction of Tesla's lamps is not done correctly. Other manufacturers seem to have fewer problems. That or Tesla owners don't service their cars often enough. Regardless, it guessing on our part unless we have access to detailed data.
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You linked to an article that is over 10 years old. Besides that, ADAC, which that particular piece is about, is not the company responsible for doing the TÜV inspection, nor is it the one to actually publish the report.
> I think the German car industry and the press around it as a whole have a serious corruption issue.
The car industry I can agree on. The emissions scandal is a particularly shady example. As for the press, I'd take a more neutral stance. There are absolutely a large amount of low quality news papers and magazines pumping out hot garbage. Others do offer much higher quality writing and research.
Look, HN people don't like Tesla. A lot of German people in positions of power don't like Tesla. Suddenly an article appears that explicitly highlights Tesla vehicles as not passing TÜV because they allegedly have quality issues. The article mentions no details. If you search for details on Google, you get a list of very similar looking articles all citing the same statement from a TÜV person. None of those provide any details on the actual issues. If no details are provided, the only thing to do is guess.
It's really quite clear what's going on here.
The TÜV does not assess the reliability of a car. The reasons for a car failing an inspection after 3 years can be manifold. It doesn't mean that the car "won't age well" or anything along those lines.
If you dislike Tesla, then say it - it's fine. No need to support vague smear campaigns.
In fact, right now Tesla has the best electric car technology available on the market. Along with the best charging network available on the market. And the best software (light years ahead of the competition) on the market. Also they don't require you to service the car for a long time. That makes German people especially afraid that they lose their car manufacturing, selling and servicing business. And rightly so. No smear campaign and no comparing apples to oranges will save them from reforming and restoring their competitiveness in a very long painful process.
What do you mean suddenly? The report is released every year. There's nothing mysterious about news pages, especially those related to cars, writing articles about a yearly report.
The article mentions no in-depth detail because it is an excerpt from the full report which you are free to purchase and read if you would like more information.
The reason Tesla gets mentioned is twofold: electric cars have been a topic of discussion in Germany for quite some time and the failure rate of Tesla Model 3s is significantly higher than other comparable cars.
I don't know why you have it in your head that this is some big conspiracy by Big Car TM.
Yes, TÜV does not assess reliability of a car, but road-worthiness. Evidently something that Tesla has a larger problem with than other manufacturers. I don't know why, nor do I claim to.
I don't care about Tesla. Neither do I care about VW or any other manufacturer for that matter. They are profit oriented companies that are selling you a product.
> In fact, right now Tesla has the best electric car technology available on the market.
By what measure exactly? The best isn't a measure and as of right now a subjective statement.
> Along with the best charging network available on the market.
Again, subjective. What do you mean by best? The amount of chargers? The cost/kWh? Location? And what market exactly?
> And the best software (light years ahead of the competition) on the market.
Again, subjective. You complain about an article having no detail, then make statements praising Tesla as the best electric car but provide 0 evidence or numbers.
Just because you like something, doesn't mean I have to as well. I'm not a mechanical/electrical engineer so I cannot speak to their car technology or reliability. I do know their software, because I drove one for work reasons for 3 months. You might like it and get along fine with it, I don't.
I didn't buy a Tesla because their choice to start placing all functionality into the touch screen is counterintuitive to the whole point of the car: getting me safely from point A to B. Other manufacturers, including VW are horrendous at this as well. I didn't buy a car from them either.
> Also they don't require you to service the car for a long time.
Given the percentage of their cars failing the inspection, perhaps they should.
And yet Tesla has industry leading brand loyalty, what do you think is a better predictor, an opaque number computed by Consumer Reports from an unknown formula that combines feedback about non reliability items from users who bother to respond to consumer reports questions, or what 87% of consumers decide after experiencing a Tesla?
Surely the problem lies in a high variance in the production of later models.
Like when you visit a stellar restaurant and come back years later to realize the magic sauce was a chef who left.
Also, yes, it sounds risky to buy a car without being able to drive it back when it immediately breaks. I can also see myself as a victim of that because of experiences like yours and mine: Teslas are the most purchased EVs, they're everywhere, surely you'd know if their reputation is tarnished for other reasons than the mascot being unpopular.
They do have less panel gaps and other minor flaws, because the people putting them together in Germany actually care (and have unions and proper working hours so they're not exhausted).
I am not sure how much unions are present in German Tesla factories. They are certainly very present in every other German car factory. Tesla does not accept unions. In Sweden, which is unionized to a higher degree than Germany, Tesla's service (no factory there) is in continuous labor conflict with Tesla who thinks they can act as irresponsibly as their owner.
Audi costs easily 2x for abysmal specs and reliability. Kia/Hyundai is better deal, but they are such bare cars it's almost like driving 90s Toyota. Spec them out to base Tesla (i.e. power seats, power liftgate, heated steering wheel, etc) and price is 1.5x higher.
if you drove them you would say otherwise. I have Tesla S and Audi eTron, price comparable ($90k) while the difference is like between a Harley and Vespa.
and I am the least Tesla “fan” on the planet and think Elon is the saddest person that ever lived on this planet
it's a known problem with 2024 models, the article points to that. So while tesla may be aware of it, the public unconscious might not be (like the author wasn't), as its a new-ish, and frankly absurd problem to have.
I meant to say: I think the quality varies both per factory and over time.
There's a lot of complexity in industrial production. From the outside it looks like there's only the classic and the revamped design., but I've heard that the internal components are often far from the same.
"first gen" Model 3s didn't have an emergency rear door release for when the electrical one failed. they've since added that to more recent generations.
but- a car company that doesn't see the need to have emergency rear door releases has systemic issues. someone, anyone involved in approving that design could have said "no. i will not sign off on this", but they didn't.
it makes me wonder what other corners they cut, and whether those cut corners could kill a driver or passenger- because they're not going to cut corners on anything that would be immediately apparent in daily use: it would be detrimental to sales.
Removing the ultrasonic parking sensors was a downgrade, but removing the radar wasn't. The vision stack was consistently superior to the radar at the time they stopped including them; today it's leagues ahead. Even if you have an older Tesla with a radar sensor, it's been disabled in software because the camera-derived data is so much better.
The scary thing about radar is how terrible the raw data is, and how utterly compromised the filtered data is. Stationary objects have to get substantially filtered out when driving at high speeds, otherwise false positives would be unacceptably common. This affects all brands of car with radar.
This shouldn't be surprising. Subaru managed to jank together Eyesight using a couple of cameras and an in-house team, and they were able to make it outperform radar in most respects. Unfortunately they didn't think to make it self-calibrating, so it requires a trip to the dealership any time you replace the windscreen.
You are replying to an anecdotal blog post to say that a comment that is just an anecdote is not a useful contribution?
You think it's useful to have a blog post to reveal the shocking truth that mass manufactured products aren't 100% reliable? A lemon could be produced by any auto manufacturer and the customer could have the same experience
> Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
From middle of Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary is as far as Houston to Austin drive. No border or customs controls. Vehicle insurance issued in one, is valid in both. You only have to spend few euros to buy a vignette (road toll). I don't see your point.
Well, that's a valid point, but if you look at e.g. Poland, even that there are three repair centers there, there are places in there that are much (2x) further away from a service center than the drive from Slovakia to Budapest.
One thing I don't understand is why the author doesn't just use the legal provisions of statutory warranty. Any cost of delivering the faulty items to the seller are on the seller, not the buyer, in Europe in general.
The Musk aspect is pertinent in the respect that he's mythologised for his innovation in Tesla and SpaceX while his detractors state that he merely bought into innovative companies, and they had to actively manage him to minimise his interference.
So in one view, he is indeed the guru of legend, and is responsible for the successes of Tesla and SpaceX, so a good candidate to refactor the federal government.
However, if he's responsible for their success, he's responsible for their failure. And this is a massive failure in manufacturing, in quality control, in after-sales service, and in just plain ol customer service.
But, if he's just a canny investor and his best companies succeed by insulating the company from him, then why the fuck is he touching the federal govt systems?
As for "buying a car in a country with no service" - the parts shortage looks to be global, so local market wouldn't help that.
"has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it" This reads like gaslighting, trying out a car that works and getting one that doesn't wouldn't have changed their outcome.
I too have the opposite experience. I've had my late 2022 Tesla Model Y and I like it just as much as I did on day one. In fact I like it more now, since the car has received several new, big features after lots of software updates.
I live within 15 miles of two Tesla centres, and so far I've only had to use them once for a minor sensor issue, which was serviced at my property at no cost to me. If I didn't have any Tesla centres within a couple hours' drive I probably wouldn't have bought the car.
The safest bet in EVs is to buy one from the Korean manufacturers - they have the tech figured out (and have had it for a few years), they make everything from 'car but electric' to 'Jetsons spaceship', they're reasonably priced, they have cheap and abundant parts, have mechanics who know how to work on them, and they don't have an 'X' factor CEO.
I like the concept of this, but they just don’t feel to be “nice” places to be in like some of the European marques. The Volvos are about the most comfortable “normal” cars I’ve been in, the Kia’s / Hyundais/ MGs / Toyotas feel like sitting on badly covered sofas on a wishy washy suspension platform, without enough sound deadening.
Those are completely different marks, from completely different countries, and completely different aims and feel.
And as someone who drove multiple cars, from multiple East Asian and European marks, I suggest you try drive newer cars, because your opinions don’t match 2024-2025 MY cars from those brands (except for maybe MG, and Toyota, but both aren’t designed or sold for the driving experience. Toyota leaves it for their Lexus brand, and Chinese marks don’t even try to compete on that yet).
The modern (2023-2025) KIAs (is that what you’re referring to?) have been horrifically crashy in terms of suspension and ride compared to the Germans in my experience. Definitely wouldn’t be for me. We’ve got a 2024 Skoda Octavia VRS and had a 2021 V60, both of which seem to be a much more sensible ride than the (both e and non e)-Niro and the Stonic. The sportage was a whole other level of rolly, and we don’t really get non SUVish-but-not-really models in the UK. Even my 2010 325i was a whole other level of comfort compared to what is being produced by the eastern markets today.
We have a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and we test drove lots of cars, and love, love how this one feels. Great suspension, grips to the road, crazy fun acceleration. Granted, some 100k+ luxury sedans probably beat it out, but we're really happy. Volvos were ok? I didn't super like them, a bit more cockpit feel to them. Maybe that's the difference between us? You want it to feel more like a cockpit of an aircraft and I want something chill and comfortable?
The Kia's we tried were mostly great (The EV6 felt like a cockpit though) - the EV9 was awesome but we couldn't convince ourselves to get such a large vehicle.
I drive a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 and I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve had to deal with plenty of bugs and there’s some weird (although probably minor) UX issues, but the kicker is it’s now been at the dealership for over a month. It’s a complete brick because the ICCU died and it’s hard to get a replacement. I’m guessing because so many others have died as well. I also don’t think I’ve bent a single rim on any other car I’ve driven in the last 25 years but on this one I’ve somehow bent 2.
ICCU issue affects a small % of ioniq 5's. Unlucky for you of course.
Really like the car and recently I met taxi driver who uses one and said he has over 400k km on it and still doing well.
There is one annoyance with the back seat belts which tend to flip after use, so the metal part of the seat belt hits the car frame making noise. Other than that its a really good car.
> The safest bet in EVs is to buy one from the Korean manufacturers - they have the tech figured out (and have had it for a few years)
Not an EV, but I have a 2022 Kia Sorento with a fair number of weird software bugs-e.g. the sound from the navigation system randomly stops working and I have to restart the car to make it work again; the car tries to read speed limit signs using machine vision but its capabilities are too basic so it reads them incorrectly (in particular, conditional speed limits which only apply under a certain condition, such as at certain times of day, for heavy vehicles only, it will treat as absolutes)
Is their EV software better? Outside of cars, my experience with South Korean software hasn’t impressed me
My daily driver is a 2020 Kona Electric (a buddy of mine drive a Kia Xceed; my understanding is that they use the same software). No software issue to report or that I remember. The only issue I have is more taste than problem (the way the highlighted road is displayed on satnav is better on Google Maps IMO).
I find the OS perfectly boring, and I like it that way. Most of the car functions has physical, clicky buttons. The one that doesn't are justified IMO (navigation, pairing bluetooth, etc.).
I've lived in Japan for the past 10 years, where I didn't own a car the entire time. A year ago I moved to a place where a car is more or less needed. I bought a used 2015 kei car for around $2800 cash. It's awesome.
There are zero screens, touch or not (not counting the instrument displays). Everything is operated with the old buttons and dials, though the windows are electrically operated. It has a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port (which supports USB audio). I haven't measured exactly but its fuel efficiency is fantastic, probably 70 mpg or more.
It has very common parts and can be serviced basically anywhere in the country. I see tons of the same car on the road everywhere.
Downsides of course are the engine is fairly weak, and it's not as safe in an accident compared to bigger cars. But if you're driving in a country where everyone else is driving small cars, that's less of a concern.
I don't know what the point of writing all that was, but I'm just glad to not be in the same car situation as the OP. It doesn't have to be that way!
My last car in the states was a 1999 chevy prizm, manual transmission. Such a cheap and fun car, though I can't say it was particularly reliable. Still got $500 for it at CarMax, even though the A/C wasn't working and it had a ton of miles on it.
For you and anyone else who might find this relevant. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but with pointing out that "taking delivery" is a significant moment in the purchasing experience. If there is a problem with the car, don't drive it off the lot. Once you have, it's your problem and not the dealer's.
It's effective. I consulted once for a food delivery chain that has wronged a customer - a food order that was delivered wrong and they foolishly refused to either right it or refund it.
The customer went to the length of buying the domain of the type _company_ is terrible, started to collect reviews from other allegedly wronged customers, and SEO it to the first position in Google search results when you searched for any of the food items or the company name, above the company itself.
As a result the company had to advertise a lot on Google to make sure it's own order links are sponsored above the complaint website. That costed A LOT of money, but if they stopped advertising, the online order business would die.
We offered to buy the website or pay the owner to take it down, at basically name your price, and the owner refused any deal, out of principle.
It's amazing what an unreasonably determined individual can do
$12 is a small price to pay compared to the opportunity cost of having a bricked car in one's garage for months on end, multiplied by however many individuals they may have saved from the same pain.
The .sucks TLD is supposed to be for the express purpose. In reality, it's a way to extract anywhere from $250/year onwards from companies to not have tesla.sucks in the wild.
start writing paper letters instead of e-mails. Usually companies take those more seriously. Paper letters means "ok he is really talking business now".
That's were the "good friends" part comes in, a dinner invitation every once in a while works for me, but I'm sure you can find a lawyer that charges a small amount for the same thing.
This “summary” is so wrong. You left out half of the article describing problems with the camera and on-board computer leaving every modern feature of the car useless, which is a known problem affecting a huge number of customers, and which they promise to maybe fix in three months. The only problem you mentioned in your summary, the mysterious battery loss, isn’t even officially acknowledged let alone promised a fix.
And what’s the point of a “summary” when TFA opened with a very good two paragraph summary of the situation? Can’t even tell if it’s gaslighting to make light of the problems, or some stupid AI summary service running amok.
I'm sorry to have to say this, but buying a Tesla in 2024 is a terrible choice - the car is horrible to drive, not to mention customer satisfaction, reliability and ethical concerns.
Hyundai and Polestar are way better electric options that are actually enjoyable and comfortable to drive
No, it is objectively not "horrible" to drive, the Model Y was the world's best selling car two years in a row for a reason.
But OP has clearly received a lemon, and Tesla service has a well-deserved reputation for being extremely slow when they need to fix any non-trivial issue. And in the OP's case buying the car in a country with no official Tesla presence is making things even worse.
> Model Y was the world's best selling car two years in a row for a reason.
I have no idea how it drives, and I am pretty sure the answer is not "horrible", but the sale numbers of a car that is ordered mostly online without test drives doesn't mean anything.
Tesla is the #3 after BMW and Rivian, among brands "ranked on the average percentage of owners who said in CR member surveys that they would buy the same vehicle again."
Reports can vary depending of the duration of the reliability period.
A while ago we saw here on HN a report from Danish mandatory technical inspection that showed that Model 3 were failing inspection much more than other EVs.
Reliability is a bit vague, it also depends on your mode of purchase (new, second hand) and how long you plan to keep your vehicle. People who only lease cars and swap them every 4 years need a reliable car out of the factory but don't care if everything start to fall appart after 5 to 6 years. People who keep cars for 10 to 20 years or who buy second hand have different requirements. The later will likely buy cars that would have already been fixed in a recall but need a car whose parts are cheap, easily serviceable by an independent mechanic and whose general reliability is good in the long term.
Nobody's complaining about the reliability of 20-year-old Teslas because the first Model S rolled off the assembly line in 2012. (Yes, I know, Roadsters are older, but they're modded Lotus Elises.)
The handling - the car understeers, every model I've driven (S, 3 and Y). I've not driven a X or truck (which I suspect have the same problem) or the Roadster (which I suspect doesn't since it's basically a Lotus with electric power train).
An slight over steering car is far easier to drive.
I thought these are inherent in electric cars (because of the heavy batteries) until I've driven a Polestar which is super nicely balanced - almost the best handling consumer car I've driven since the Baby Benz (yeah I'm that old), so it can be done.
Tesla is aware of the problem and they tried to fix it with torque vectoring in some variants.
Sure, they will go well on a long stretch of straight highway, which is what americans care about, but it's a different story in curvy european roads.
Around here, I’ve been seeing a lot of non-Tesla EVs. There’s also a lot of Teslas (mostly 3s and Ys). There’s a few Cybertrucks. I’m not a fan of their aesthetics, personally.
Some of the Hyundais look neat. That company has come a long way.
I was behind a brand-new Tesla Model S, a few months ago. Looked like about a $90K trim package.
The trunk was slightly out of line. Probably not enough to affect the seals, but plainly visible.
It would likely have taken two minutes with an Allen wrench to fix, and the fact that a car costing that much, was allowed to leave the factory in that condition, does not speak well for their QC.
While I understand the trepidation of supporting an organization whose leader openly makes Nazi salutes, I would not assume that South Korean chaebol leaders or Chinese conglomerate business owners have any better ideals.
Volvo’s owner is a front man for the Chinese government, who are supposedly not averse to ethnic cleansing, as far as I have read.
> On Sunday December 1, when I got home, I tried to update the Operating System again. No luck. Same problem again, the download hung halfway.
This is a common problem. I also have a severe dislike of the Tesla updating process. I have the feeling that it's made for people who have a garage with 24/7 wifi. Without that, you're out of luck. In Okt and Dec of last year I have spent 4 hours per month on updating. This is with a 2020 Model 3.
The solution by the way for this problem is probably to go into the service mode and reinstall the software [1]. It will give some nasty warnings but it should work. I tested it myself once and for me it worked.
Another note:
> But this is Tesla, and it seems like no one is behind the wheel.
Yes that's true. It's very hard to get support and I also have some gripes about how some serious problems are not fixed. Tesla does have amazing online manuals though so that does alleviate the situation a bit. Also, if I need service I learned it's best to just walk into the service centre and ask there. They are very reasonable then. Just don't try any digital way. There is no point.
Cars have had computers for decades now. Before the age of OTA updates, whenever one of those computers had a problem, a recall was issued and you needed to physically take the car to a dealer, probably pay some kind of service fee, and have them plug something into a hidden slot somewhere to flash an update. Other times they'd just swap out the physical computer (call it a "part") and throw out the buggy one.
I don't like the modern 'car OS as a service' system where every month or so defects need to be fixed for some reason, but OTA is a hell of a lot better than the system before software updates became available to consumers.
That’s simply untrue. The old way was definitely better because, with OTA, the manufacturers will succumb to the usual web-software bullshit of “we don’t have to sell them something that actually works now, we’ll just push the update later”. I mean, it’s a car, I can easily take it to a garage and do so for anything else that might be wrong (if I can’t fix it myself) so I don’t see the problem in doing so for software patches. OTA doesn’t solve many issues for me but it sure as hell will create new ones.
Better than shitty software that, say, has serious issues with stuff as simple as connecting a phone via Bluetooth, and can't be upgraded on your own at all, no, it has to be done at an authorised dealership.
Oh yeah that’s the other thing. The software still has multiple bugs. But in general I appreciate the updates. I just wish the update process to be (much) easier. I have sometimes been sitting an hour at the dealer at night just to download the update. Feels like a massive waste of time IMO. I bought the car so that it can provide service for me not the other way around.
Ironically, have you tried any modern vehicle with good software? I can install updates at any point in time as long as they're downloaded through my, uh, Tesla app.
Every modern car has, at least, a media player interface. Why wouldn't you want to be able to update that software to support changes in CarPlay, modern apps, etc?
I stoped reading when the writer admitted, that he bought a Tesla in a country without official dealership. Common sense tells me not to do this. That’s the situation when EU consumer laws start failing. That’s very brave, but not clever move at all!!! Having service center 300 miles away is too far. It’s not lot of statistics, but I know cases where guys needed replacement parts before new other brand car reached 5000 miles. Importing car can go well, but can go horribly wrong as it’s written in the article. Especially when Tesla is known for being rather young car brand with varying car quality.
> That’s the situation when EU consumer laws start failing
That is not true at all. You have EXACTLY the same protections no matter where you purchase from in the EU, and there is a lot of assistance set up specifically to help handling cross-border issues.
I do agree that the distance is definitely an issue for service though - its exactly why I haven't purchased a tesla
In theory same EU consumer protection everywhere. In the reality one needs layers in seller’s and buyer’s countries. Then the law can be exercised for many thousands euros.
Edit: had this situation in 2024. BMW sold a faulty car with international warranty. When the buyer found broken rear differential BMW offered to cover 3% repair cost. So the question was to sue BMW or pay 4000€ for by warranty covered repair out of own pocket.
> In the reality one needs layers in seller’s and buyer’s countries
That is also not true at all. Under EU consumer law, the consumer can bring a case against the seller in the consumers country. Please stop spreading misinformation.
So how do you start? Send a letter? Make a call? Serious question, how you force a megacorp to listen to your problems?
Edit: there is this classical problem description at the very end of the article: “He promised me that on Monday, January 6, 2025, someone from the Sales Department would contact me.” And that’s the end. Nobody will listen to an individual. Lawyers know the back door and suddenly things start happening.
They will inform you of your rights and tell you what to do next.
Generally you need to register a grievance with the company and wait 28 days for resolution. If it is not resolved, then it depends on the form and value of grievance as to how it would proceed. In your example of BMW, for example, as it is below 5000 it would likely be a small claim (which would probably cost around 200 to file - the fee is charged by your jurisdiction so will vary - and you would claim the money back as part of the judgement if you win).
But I would recommend just contacting ECC-NET and doing what they say.
Thanks. Sounds reasonable. But I never solved anything without lawyer. After a letter from a lawyer everything is solved my way next day. There must be some magic.
No problem. A lot of people are unaware of their consumer rights, so please share it forward.
In the case of making a small claim (where it is a monetary claim under 5000), it may have more weight than a lawyers letter (as you are effectively suing them at that point), and they will then be on the hook for settling the filing fee as well, whereas you would otherwise be paying for a letter from a lawyer (although sometimes that cost could also be recovered through the small claims track). You just need to make sure you follow process (28 days notice, etc - again just contact ECC-NET to be aware of the correct process).
Of course, there are occasions where a lawyer may be needed (just as there are for domestic disputes), but being aware of your rights in advance will let you know if you have grounds without the need to pay a lawyer for consultation.
Also worth pointing out again that your EU consumer rights are identical for domestic and cross-border disputes - but for domestic disputes, you can contact your local consumer protection agency instead of ECC-NET as you may have MORE rights domestically (higher small-claims limits, for example) - although i expect ECC-NET would simply refer you in such a case
How is it related to having a car that basically doesn't work? When you buy something, you expect this thing to work, then, maybe in a few years, you will need to go to a dealership.
You know, when I buy brand new car I expect it not to work. Some adjustments must be made. As valid for BMW as for Tesla. Start with level of all lamps, angle of wiper arms, tire balance and silly wheel alignment. It’s enough to leave the factory, but mostly poor settings for daily driving. And since the car is under warranty I will not fix these by myself.
Even if the OP had purchased Tesla from an official dealership, but he will still have to wait three months for the part. Nothing in the blog will change if he has bought in an official country. Additionally, Tesla does not have official dealership models; they operate through direct sales.
He also bought it without test driving one. Not the best judgment. Now I love my Tesla as much as when I bought it 3 years ago, but with it being my first EV I treaded as carefully as I could. I booked multiple test drives for the Tesla as well as for other EV brands before taking the plunge.
I've seen lots of reports in Sweden where the climate control stops working when it's too cold. It's funny to read posts in a thread where they post every winter like clockwork. Of course, if you're subject to this, Tesla is unable to fix the problem.
Overall, this seems like a car brand with many pitfalls and "special" service culture. Together with the CEO radicalizing himself, I don't see any particular reason to buy them.
How can we help people not get into those situations? At this point it's trivial to find information like: if you buy Tesla you've got a decent chance of issues; if you use PayPal as a seller there's a decent chance they'll take your money; if you use godaddy there's a chance they'll steal/ransom your domain on expiry; etc. It's all out there, yet people still give them money. How can this be stopped in the first place?
Consumer protection laws. Almost every company has known issues with it. But consumers should have boundaries for what's acceptable and what crosses the line. And those boundaries are set by consumer protection laws.
If every wronged customer can sue the seller due to a clear breach of the law, then the seller/manufacturer quickly falls in line and stops being a nuisance to society.
> Mandatory binding arbitration will still be an issue.
No, because consumer laws can outlaw forced arbitration. They usually trump any contract law, so even consumers that agree to arbitration may not be required to go through with it.
For example, in Germany, any arbitration agreements must be separate from the sale/service contract with consumers[0]: "Yet, arbitration agreements with consumers require that stricter formalities be observed: such arbitration agreements must be signed by both parties separately from the main contract to which they relate (section 1031(5) ZPO)". You cannot bake one into the contract to which it relates. The seller may insist the customer signs an arbitration contract, but the sale contract cannot be conditional on agreeing to arbitration, so the arbitration becomes optional rather than forced.
Of course, I understand many countries do not have such strong consumer protection around forced arbitration. This is why more consumer protection is needed.
A colleague of mine bought a Model 3, which he has mostly been happy with.
But, since there aren't any dealerships / service points anywhere close, he has to drive 12 hours to the closest one. He got some error, I think it was the tire pressure sensors/tire pressure monitoring system, and had to drive 12 hours, sleep in hotel, and drive 12 hours back, to get that error fixed.
Two days after he comes back home, a new error with the AC pops up. Back on the road.
Local 3rd party techs can't do anything with it anyway. And since it was still under warranty, that's what he had to do. With that said, from what I've heard, they've increased their traveling / touring techs that will visit rural towns.
Hell, even repairing my 14 year old Audi is 50% mechanical work, and 50% knowing how to use the diagnosis / VCDS tool. I'm not even joking when I say that my electrical engineering and programming background has helped me more with fixing my car, than the mechanical skills I picked up in the garage. ¨
With very modern cars, there's just little one can do.
> . I'm not even joking when I say that my electrical engineering and programming background has helped me more with fixing my car, than the mechanical skills I picked up in the garage. ¨
Exactly the same reason my dad did a total change in his profession (20 years as a car mechanic). He was fed up with all the electronics making his life as a mechanic more difficult then it needed to be, and that was like 20 years ago. He had those think diagram books and needed to constantly dig into them to figure out what sensor was on what for the onboard computer and other issues. What was a easy fix job, became a nightmary because the sensors / computer kept triggering when issues got fixed (or where never the actual issue but faulty sensors that randomly triggered).
Maybe today things are easier with VCDS tools, but in his days, it was manual work.
He became a IT helpdesk operator after reschooling. hahaha...
I had one of those cars, great car (toyota) but there was a sensor that just at random loved to trigger on exhaust mixture, and then power throttle the car. Even had a tool with me in the car, to reset it with my smartphone, whenever it trigger. It was not a sensor issue but too tight tolerances set from factory. It was cheaper to just reset it myself, then risk getting updated software to fix it (and potentially create new issues as i read some horror stories of people getting software updates for that issue).
I am still driving a 15 year old Opel, that has barely any electronics (compared to "modern" cars). I really do not see the benefits of newer cars. It drives me from A to B, with all the basic conforts, so why change?
8% seems like a lot. Car usually stays plugged in at home so I haven't seen it drain. I wonder if it's having trouble since the cameras aren't working, and constantly trying to detect objects or something?
I'm ready to provide witness statement in front of court about the 8% per day battery loss from sentry mode on a 2022 M3P. It's not even on a busy street, just a shitty software. Not sure why you want to argue about that.
Edit: Sorry maybe this sounded a bit too rough, but unplug your car and check it yourself. It's like someone is siphoning gasoline from your vehicle every single day.
Pretty crazy that simple motion detection is taking that much power. It is absolutely shitty software.
The battery capacity on that car is incredible, you could put a 4090 in there and run it and it would maybe drain 8% a day, right? So something extremely irresponsible is going on.
Yeah, it is a lot, but it is the same in "fully working" cars.
Additionally, once you to the math things look bad: 8% of a battery pack of 60kWh is around 5kWH. 5000 Wh / 24h = 208 W.
200W to keep few cameras on and a small CPU/GPU to run the logic seems a lot. Especially considering that you don't need to analyze every frame of every camera. In fact, you could easily run one frame every 5 seconds making it ~ 1FPS analyzed (6 cameras) since the car is parked.
Additionally, you don't need to run heavy models on all the images. You can run some sort of diff to see if pixels changed within a tolerance threshold between the new and the old image and only if that's true then you run the ML models.
From my understanding the problem is that the computer just....doesn't sleep if you have Sentry mode running. It's not that it's sleeping for a few seconds and then waking up, it's just fully awake drawing it's normal base load, which for HW4 [1] appears to be ~300W.
A good way to verify this if you've got a Tesla is how long it takes for the car to acknowledge commands sent via the mobile app. If they're near-instant (ignoring TCP latency ofc), the car is "Awake" and drawing it's full load. If they take 5-15 seconds, the car is Asleep and only polling it's LTE antennas for push notifications every 10s or so. If they timeout entirely, the car is in Deep Sleep and drawing almost no wattage (at least based on my observations with my wife's M3).
When in Sentry mode, responses are ALWAYS instant, so the car is fully Awake and drawing full wattage.
Thanks for point that out, but I then believe it's a combination of the two.
I don't believe that an embedded PC that allegedly has the same power as a PS5 consumes 200/300W idling. Even if it doesn't sleep it should consume in the order of 10s of W, not 100s. For reference, my PC here has a 3070, a ryzen 7 7xxx (I don't remember the exact model) and consumes like 40W at the outlet when idling.
So I am willing to assume that yes, the onboard PC doesn't idle when sentry mode is active, but the 200+ W draw is due to it running terrible software, and not just not entering CPU states that are energy efficient.
Also climate control which I think is default on. Some of the things missing can be handled with the app. The only thing in common I've noticed WRT my model 3 is the inconsistent wiper behaviour. FWIW you can hotspot so the car gets its updates over wifi.
I've noticed that the tesla app is not super reliable in that regard. Sometimes it re-activates sentry mode, not sure if it is after updates or triggered by second key on different smartphone.
But luckily that car will be gone soon and I'm not gonna do any further free QA for this company.
So assuming battery capacity of 60kWh, sentry mode is burning an average of 200W all the time? For functionality you could do with like 10W power budget on raspberry pi / coral tpu? Wild.
The article mentions also that the computers are short-circuiting. I guess that you can lose a lot of energy when there is a short circuit. Maybe with an infrared camera, one can get an idea where all the energy is wasted.
Apparently the author did check that sentry was not enabled.
you think Tesla customer support wouldn't be able to solve it, and instead let the driver state "For my own safety, and that of other drivers, I have stopped driving the vehicle." ?
Yes, 0% or 1% loss per day without sentry mode. When I first noticed I was dumbfounded. And they have this setting "sentry mode only at home", so when you forget about that and do your 50% battery charge travel and park the car for the weekend, then you come back on sunday to a ~30% charge you cry inside
I once left my Tesla unplugged for 5 days and it lost 1%.
So effectively, it should be pretty close to 0%. Even if we assume maximum rounding error (ie, maybe it actually lost 1.9%?), maybe round that up to 2%, 5 days to lose 2% means it takes 50 days to lose 20%. 100 days to lose 40%.
If the car is working properly, then vampire drain is a complete non-issue except for an exceptionally rare scenario where you don't drive and can't plug it in, not even into a standard household outlet, for more than 3 months.
He doesn't have sentry mode on. What would be the point with no camera? Plus, multiple times he says sentry isn't on, he even breaks down how much power sentry mode uses... Which I guess math and Tesla says would be MORE than 8 percent per 24hrs
I've been contemplating buying a new car. BYD are a popular brand for electric cars in Australia. A single titbit in a review turned me off[1].
> To start with, the Dolphin falls victim to a speed limit warning system with no tolerance and a chiding beep that will quickly drive you insane.
The car has cameras to read speed signs and if it detects you are speeding beep at you. Sounds like a great feature! What's the problem if you aren't speeding?
> To make matters worse, the Dolphin is equipped with equally flawed traffic sign recognition technology that takes all speed limit signs at face value, ignoring the time stipulations common in school zones and busy shopping hubs.
Oh ... we have some speed signs that have time qualifiers, eg lower speeds around schools near start and end of school, or busy shops etc.
> It’s one thing to have a car bother you for breaking the speed limit, but another altogether for a car to unnecessarily distract you during safe, lawful driving. Rant over… for now.
> You can switch the system off, just not permanently. Settings revert to their default state every time you switch the car off, so setting up ADAS becomes a time-consuming daily ritual.
Absence of a feature is often far superior to a broken one.
> The car has cameras to read speed signs and if it detects you are speeding beep at you. Sounds like a great feature! What's the problem if you aren't speeding?
If it's anything like the speed limit warning system in my Volvo, it's utterly useless. It gets the speed limit right about 80% of the time I would say. The other 20% it sees a sign "max 5 ton allowed" and thinks it means "max 5 kph", or it sees a sign in a side street and thinks it applies on the main street. Or a speed limit ends at a crossroad, which the system doesn't understand. The system often thinks the speed limit is 30 kph where it's actually 50 kph which is annoying; sometimes it thinks the limit is 90 or even 120 where it's only 50 or 70 which is outright dangerous.
The system is not to be trusted at all. There suggestions to make laws that would require cars to enforce these limits, instead of just showing the limits and warnings. I'm not against that in principle, but those systems need to get a lot better than the one in my Volvo first.
8% per day is like a continuous 250W draw. I think you can use a thermal camera to see where it happens :) like that's a lot.
Owned a Model 3 since August 2023, didn't have any issues with it yet apart from those in place from the very beginning (left rear view mirror sometimes won't unfold or will but only partially, it takes a few cycles to get it to unfold fully, plus another small one that probably depended on use pattern and when mine adapted i can't reproduce it anymore).
If you blame people who've been taken advantage of, remember that others will blame you when you've been taken advantage of, too. This is not wise, especially in consumer rights.
Almost every popular company is infamous for bad customer service and quality issues, it's just a matter of luck. You're probably reading this comment on either a smartphone of a brand already known for quality issues and bad customer support, or on a PC built with parts from brands known for quality issues and bad customer support.
And anyways, "you have only yourself to blame" is not true. You have the seller to blame usually. And by law, not just in some vague moral sense.
Early on (Model S being new) they used to do a lot of "hypercare" as some corps call it, short of white glove service, to keep customers happy and essentially advertising their brand.
I suspect a lot of reputation from then helped them paper over naysayers when they abandoned it with expansion
Whoa if still true, that's insanity. All of the ways this company is ran make DOGE a scary proposal... Considering we are essentially both the Tesla customer and the car, if DOGE is Tesla...
I mean, all that proves is that there exist _instances of the car_ which are not defective. Like, it would be extremely odd if every single unit was notably defective.
> when you live in a European country where there is no Tesla you have to import your car from Holland (See NOTE).
> I estimate that the total import costs were slightly over 2000 EUR.
I live in Slovakia and bought a Model 3 in Slovenia. I rented transport plates in Slovakia, took a train to Ljubljana, stayed overnight, took delivery of the car in the morning and drove back to Slovakia.
It cost me maybe 150€ and I got a pleasant trip out of it. The car price in Slovenia was ~5k lower than Slovakia back then.
If Elon wasn't so busy talking crap on Twitter all day long, he could maybe pick up on stories like these if it went viral, and get something done. This is unacceptable. Teslas, in principle, are great cars.
What principle? Aside from mouth gaping nerdy admiration early on ("oh EV! oh, sportcars! Oh, it can ~kill y~ drive itself! Oh, shiny panels"), they'd been nothing but trouble for a decade now. And let's not get started on the Cybertruck either.
The Tesla Model 3 is now the second most reliable new electric vehicle you can buy. Only the new-for-2022 Kia EV6 is more trouble-free, but we don’t know whether it will match the proven record of the Model 3 as it ages. Data from over a thousand Tesla Model 3 owners tell us that every model year going back to 2018 has either average or better reliability.
Have you driven one? The Model 3, particularly the 2024 update+, is super fun to drive. Zips around town really nicely. There's very little to maintain.
Most of them don't go wrong, so the dominant experience is the above.
+The new model is usefully more quiet and has better suspension. Previous were a bit rattly and very noisy.
What I mean is - I've driven a small selection of EV's, and the Tesla's usually have been setting the bar pretty high. This is changing nowadays however, with increasing competition.
I've never seen the Cybertruck in person but I've driven a Model 3 and a Model S recently, and I think the quality is still pretty high. The performance is excellent and the UX is great.
As for the customer service, I can't say much as I've never owned a Tesla.
I agree with the sentiment that they are really terrible cars in general, but they seem to have cracked the EV efficiency riddle, almost no one else can come close to their miles/kWh numbers in real life usage. I don't know how they do it, but it's just consistently at the top of the league among EVs.
It's aerodynamics, pure and simple. The Model 3 coefficient of drag is very low. It's one of the reasons the Model 3 looks a little weird.
It's pretty easy to replicate by other manufacturers, but aerodynamics is just one factor in a large number of tradeoffs made by a manufacturer when designing a car.
So that’s how you create efficiency I guess: invest big in the seducing speech showing all the shiny gadgets and disregard all these stupid cost-centers such as customer care.
If you find yourself in a situation like this in the EU, where consumer protection is strong, you should talk to the consumer rights office in the country where you bought the item, or where you were when signing the sale contract.
First, they will tell you how to complain to the company - what specific terms to use, and how long they have to respond and to resolve your matter.
Second, if you don't get a proper resolution, they will advise you how to sue the seller. You will usually have law on your side by that point, so there is almost no way the seller can weasel out.
Third, the consumer rights office you talk to might have contacts for expert investigators who can act as a third party in your court case. They will provide a written statement to the effect of "this is what happened, this is the law, the buyer can demand this remedy".
Finally, the seller will likely settle out of court, because you're not the first customer they abused and they already know how these things go. In the EU, you will often get either a replacement of the item, or a full refund, or sometimes you might get to choose. That is the bare minimum, you can also demand that they pay your court costs in most EU countries, and some compensation for loss of income, cancelled holidays, and other such things. Depending on how strong your negotiating position is, you will get some of these things.
If you have a website about how bad the product is and you are willing to take it down or write about reaching a satisfactory conclusion after negotiations with the seller, your negotiating position is very strong.
The consumer rights office will tell you all this process and it will vary a little bit. But it's important to do this relatively without delay, there is no point in dealing with unresponsive customer service. You need to tell them the right things by law and they will be forced to respond or to face the lawsuit. An abusive company will not respond out of good will, without compelling them to, you are just wasting time.
In Holland, the consumer rights office is the ACM.
The EU Consumer Sales and Guarantees Directive is designed to protect consumers when they purchase goods, including new cars. Here are some key points about the directive as it relates to new car purchases:
Legal Guarantee: Consumers are entitled to a minimum two-year legal guarantee for new cars. This means that if the car has a defect or does not conform to the contract, the consumer has the right to have it repaired or replaced at no cost.
Presumption of Defects: If a defect is discovered within the first six months after purchase, it is presumed to have existed at the time of delivery. This shifts the burden of proof to the seller, who must demonstrate that the defect was not present when the car was sold.
Repair or Replacement: Consumers can choose between having the car repaired or replaced. If neither option is feasible or if the seller fails to act within a reasonable time, the consumer may be entitled to a price reduction or a full refund.
Additional Rights: The directive does not limit consumers' rights to additional warranties or guarantees offered by manufacturers or dealers. Consumers can still benefit from any extended warranties that may be provided.
Cross-Border Purchases: The directive also applies to cross-border purchases within the EU, ensuring that consumers have the same level of protection regardless of where they buy their car.
Enforcement: Member states are responsible for enforcing the directive, and consumers can seek redress through national consumer protection authorities if their rights are violated.
i've been lucky with my model Y purchase in that there have been no issues with the car itself so far. i would certainly never buy a tesla again, however.
I've actually had to take my Model 3 to the service center more than once. The experience was so bad that based on just the service I would never buy another Tesla. Every car I've ever owned needed service, but the Tesla service center is by far the worst I've ever experienced. And I speak as someone who actually worked as a service tech in a Ford service center a few decades ago.
That said, Tesla opened a second service center in my country and it is far, far better than the first. It's a longer drive to get there, but it at least restored my faith in the company. My Model 3 is the quietest, best at passing, cheapest per-kilometer, lowest maintenance, most enjoyable vehicle I've ever owned. I would be a shame to me to not buy another Tesla, based on the service center experience.
Tesla is super annoying as well since there aren't many body shops that they have approved to work on the car. Prepare to wait months. That's in Sydney AU, not sure about the US.
In my area any car that doesn't need any reparation or work being done on it is sold at a minimum of 900€ and speaking of Clio of that era they are more like between 1700 and 2000€ if you want one in working order.
That is the funny thing with the second hand market. 20y old cars sold 20k€ or 80k€ new are sold more or less at the same price 20 years later. Because of higher maintenance cost and parts price + higher number of stuff that can fail, the more luxury items are also the ones that are less wanted and people looking for inexpensive cars will favor the most sold small cars of that era they or an independent garage can fix easily and cheaply.
Probably the fact that he's not Dutch, doesn't live in the Netherlands, and while yes you are 100% correct that the law is on his side and should be able to just return it for a full refund, it might be a task so daunting for someone who is from a different country that he just doesn't want to attempt it.\
EDIT: oh wait, he did do that actually:
>> On January 5, 2025 I called Tesla Netherlands Sales Department to request the return of the vehicle and a refund of my money.
Sounds like he should contact a dutch lawyer to send them an official letter informing that he's returning the goods as unfit to use.
I bought a model Y in ‘22. I had some initial problems like a creaky back seat and the floor popping like a jam lid, but after a few service visits those were resolved and since it has been very reliable and even gained nice new features like matrix headlights which avoid oncoming vehicles. It’s a great car to drive.
However, when it received the holiday update with Apple Watch support, and I paired my watch, it started losing several % charge every day. I contacted service who told me to reset my password, which effectively disconnects all connected devices from your account. That solved it. Then I paired my watch again, same problem.
In the next update, Tesla fixed it. And in the next update, it automatically paired your watch without asking. Brave/risky of them, given the previous issues.
My biggest concern for this car now, other than getting abuse for owning a Tesla or the brakes rusting up [1], is Tesla releasing a software update that breaks something, possibly dangerously. With Musk’s recent behaviour I wouldn’t be surprised if talented engineers are leaving or considering it, perhaps excluding Musk’s favoured h1b employees…
The issue with these reliability tests is that they operate on old(er) models. At the end of 2023, the Model 3 was upgraded during a refresh. It roughly received 40% new parts, and is a substantially better value-for-money.
Clearly there are still some things to iron out, and I personally know folks with a few problems in the new model, but as a 2024 M3 owner with zero problems I hate the one-sided online communication surrounding this.
I'm not condoning Elon's behavior at all, but this vehicle is such an insane value for money especially with EV rebates and such. Purely saying Tesla is bad quality is such an easy trope, especially if you have never driven in one
There are some assumptions that tilt this calculations into the EVs favor though:
1. Charging is never 100% efficient, more likely around 90%.
2. That number is based on E5 fuel, E10 takes some of that off as well.
3. 12.5 kWh/100km is what is given by Tesla, independent tests e.g. by ADAC (German Car "Club") cites 17.2 kWh or 18.6 kWh.
So overall the numbers shift a lot towards the hybrid:
[1] Common price for electricity in German households, better if you have solar, much worse if you have to buy for 0.6-0.8 €/kW at public chargers.
[2] Based on CO2 emmisions in Germany, averaged over a year https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo/monthly ... better in summer (solar), worse in winter (coal).
[3] High price for E10 in Germany, more likely 1.6-1.7€/l
Putting aside the ethics of buying a Tesla in 2024, who buys a car brand legendary for unreliability and ridiculously long service times in a country that doesn't even have a dealership? Some people like to live dangerously.
They say they bought it on the foot of blog advice, which seems to have convinced them it was reliable. Tesla has a host of weird superfan online defenders; if they went down the wrong rabbithole it’s possible they simply didn’t know.
If the purchase goes well, the vehicle is reliable, spare parts are easily available, and nobody has to resort to legal action? No problem.
On the other hand, if I buy a car in Holland, get it serviced in Austria, and register and drive it in Slovakia - which legal system governs the transaction? Which country's consumer rights protections do I get?
It would be jolly inconvenient if the manufacturer ripped me off, and my only option for redress was a court 1000km away, with the laws written and courts operated in a language I didn't speak.
Or does the EU have some mechanism that avoids this problem?
Consumer protection follows the place of purchase and they are quite strong and very similar in the EU.
I mean if I was super worried (as a Slovak) I could buy the car in Czech Republic which has pretty much identical consumer protection laws (and all Slovaks understand Czech well and vice versa).
I bought mine in Slovenia. I understand Slovenian somewhat as well, but that didn't influence the decision.
Fortunately I had zero issues in over 3 years and the car works great, but of course I could have been less lucky – I know that.
Do the remote service teams travel across the border? That would probably be more impactful than the physical distance if e.g. there was some minor recall that travelling repair men could take care of while the car is parked at home or work.
No, but do other brands even have remote service teams? I have never heard of anyone using such a service on any car in Slovakia. (Other than the assistance you can get from an insurance provider.)
That's the part I didn't understand either. If the car isn't even sold in the market you are asking for trouble. This isn't some super exotic oldtimer sports car whatever, which you can just tinker with and don't mind to lose a lot of money on.
This is your average run of the mill vehicle that needs servicing. Madness to have to drive all the way to Budapest for that.
Yeah honestly that's a completely insane part. I'm from a country that also didn't have an official Tesla presence until very recently and only extremely rich people bought Teslas, basically with the assumption that anything goes wrong you put it on a trailer and take it back to Germany where there is official Tesla support network, you have 5 other cars to drive to it's not a big deal.
For someone who is "not a car guy" and for whom this is their only car....that's insane.
I think it is unnecessary to say "Putting aside the ethics". This is a very personal thing, for you it would (presumably) take putting aside your ethics, and maybe it would for me. But that is not the case for everyone.
I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience. Actually it is degrading my whole internet browsing experience nowadays. There is too much "btw, you should feel bad when you do X". It's divisive, the US could use less divisiveness or anti-divisiveness.
And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
Correction: You think that is useful. There are also people supporting Musk, should they add their statement to all of their posts? Is it really relevant? Don't you think people can't think for themselves?
I follow the news, I'm pretty capable of deciding if I want a Tesla or not, people adding to all their posts that I should not doesn't change anything other then make me annoyed. Perhaps some like it, probably when it echoes their strong believes? So it's that? You signal you are one of those people? Well great for you! Now let's get back to discussing the article.
I think there are lots of sort of tuned out but generally nice people who might shy away from buying a tesla if the perfidity of Musk is mentioned whenever tesla is discussed.
It always helps indeed, to change people's minds when you tell them "You are probably beyond help" or "You should feel bad if you do X". It's been great for my relationships!
In fact, I'm gonna write a blog post now: "Things I wish someone would have told me before I went online and started sharing my opinions"! It's gonna be a guaranteed front-pager!
"Probably beyond help" means they're not going to change their opinions no matter what, so trying to find phrasing that helps change their opinions is a waste of time.
Being a musk supporter in this day and age isn't a simple difference in opinion, unless you're a good person who's been living under a rock, in which case a mention of musk being pretty awful could actually help you.
Please re-read my comments. I don't state anything for or against Musk, I make it a point not to. I try to stress that things are not as one-sided as this comment-thread tries to make it out to be. I believe that that is a good thing.
Is it not amazing to you, that you have just labelled someone that tries to argue against divisiveness as a Nazi supporter? My country, my grand parents suffered greatly under the Nazi's. I know what divisiveness does, I know what labeling another group of people as less-human, and stopping all attempts at conversation with them, can do.
Fixing your country's politics is not done by working hard to increase the divide. Sure, be against Trump/Musk, but at the very least try to understand their supporters. You'll find that most of them are kind.
You aren't arguing against divisiveness, you're arguing against bringing up politics, the politics of a man who is actively utilising his vast amounts of wealth to divide multiple countries. A man who is seeking to deny human rights to marginalised peoples. A man who stood in front an audience of millions and threw out a Nazi salute clear as day.
My biggest issue with Tesla is not Musk, my biggest issue is owning a car that can be remotely tampered by Tesla and or the US government.
On paper I am supposed to live in an allied country but Trump unilateraly decided that USA is at wars with everyone except Israel so I can't expect to be treated with respect by an US company. For this reason I have to remove all commercial ties with US companies and not buy anything from them unless it is an object/appliance I can certify doesn't connect to anything without my consent.
I think the downvotes is for essentially doing what you are criticizing when you point out a certain thing someone said that hurt you.
They were making an effort to stay on topic (reliability issues with Tesla's cars). You're making it about divisiveness.
The ethical considerations around Tesla are pretty bizarre. It gets political, since the owner of the company is so deeply associated with both the cars and politics.
I don't think your comment comes from a bad place, I understand the fatigue and the desparation. However, when someone in power does something "divisive" (quotes, because its the understatement of the decade - you can probably come up with examples) and people who mention it, even by not mentioning it, are told to be quiet because they are being divisive - it can come off as trying to silence people and ensure no criticizism can be raised.
Again, I don't think that was your intention but it has that effect either way.
I would read that as "I'm specifically excluding talking points and discussion on ethics in this subject and focusing solely on the talking point at hand"
That doesn't generally mean they have an ethical take, just that they recognise such things might exist and they specifically don't want to get in to it.
Is that not what you want ?
> And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
I'd assume it was because you were claiming divisiveness when the cause of such divisiveness was specifically excluded.
Actually I'm curious if there is some kind of representative poll among Tesla owners about whether their personal ethics still align with the company's (or rather, its owner's) ethics. I mean, this is the guy who as recently as 2017 quit as an advisor for the first Trump administration because of Trump exiting the Paris climate agreement (https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/01/news/elon-musk-resigns-trum...). Now I'm not sure which of the two alternatives is worse: that he has had a complete 180° turnaround of his moral compass, or that he was just pretending to care for the environment as long as it suited him?
So they’d want more Musk fans to buy Teslas and support him, right? If they really felt so strongly about doing something, then they should junk the cars.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them. Musk’s fans are not going to go away, Better to let them keep the Teslas in the family.
> I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience.
Ironically, buying a Tesla is nowadays a very visible political statement.
Again an opinion, Musk said it was not a Nazi salute, he didn't repeat it, he has many Jewish supporters also saying it wasn't. Just stop, please, I'm really about to give up on the comment sections here.
I’m out of the loop here. Has Musk done anything related to nazi symbols (besides that weird gesture that some people say is a nazi salute), or funded Nazi organizations?
AFD is indeed a far-right party and the optics of Musk supporting it are to put it mildly bizarre, but it is also one of the largest political parties in Germany, not a "Nazi organization". They advocate halting immigration, not genocide.
The AfD goes beyond just opposing immigration and they struggle to shake their Nazi links. Talks of deporting immigrants, getting into minimising SS culpability for Nazi crimes, use of Nazi slogans, links to convicted Nazis and banned Nazi parties.
As a Jew there’s no difference to me between those who knowingly repeat Nazi slogans (i.e AfD) and “real” Nazis. It’s very easy to not be a Nazi, it’s unnecessary to make excuses for those who know what they are doing.
Germans (i.e. ethnic German citizens), should be held to a higher standard, because they are educated on this, there’s no excuse.
Israel supporter and antisemite aren't mutually exclusive[0]. In the past it was to get the Jews out of Europe (be it to Madagascar or Palestine), now it's because they hate Muslims more than Jews and see Israeli society as a template for a similar far-right Christian society.
Obviously most AfD supporters are not everyday antisemites, but they are casting their votes for antisemites. I don't care to split hairs. Germans know better and do not get to plead ignorance.
Musk could perhaps have been given the benefit of the doubt, he doesn't seem to understand European politics so it's possible he could have confused AfD as being the German equivalent of Reform UK or RN (neither of which want to be associated with AfD) ...that is until he made that salute.
[0] nor are anti-Zionist and Jew mutually exclusive for that matter. Before WWII the creation of Israel was the subject of debate within the Jewish community. The Holocaust and happenings in the Soviet Union obviously shifted that debate firmly in one direction. In some sense the Palestinians are victims of the European far-right and far-left by proxy, though I am not shifting blame.
After doing the "weird gesture", rather than apologising for doing something that many people interpreted as a nazi gesture, he made a load of crappy puns about it involving the names of various high-ranking nazi leaders
You don't need to apologise for every accusation you get. You should probably address a widespread belief that you are making very offensive gestures, clarify what you meant and apologise for the confusion.
Also could you define "wokeism" for me? Everyone seems to be using a different definition so its hard to know what people actually mean when they say it
Question is why media decided to continue spinning the same narrative despite looking like idiots? Is it clicks, political agenda or journalistic integrity? It's not hard to see...
I think the downvotes might be from your repeating the "weird gesture" phrase that is currently being used to sane-wash what actually happened. Anyone who doesn't think what Musk did was a Nazi salute, I encourage you to go into work, do it in front of your manager, and see what happens.
Sure, I agree with you, it just depends on what you want HN to be. I am an outsider to the US, I see your country as deeply divided. Families torn apart because of how they vote. Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over there up until 10 years ago. In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.
It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people, is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost. Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
Remember that the division you see is amplified by polarizing voices that are naturally amplified by the medium that is the Internet. If you actually traveled to the US, did a long road trip across the country and sat down and talked to actual Americans, I expect you will find that the vast majority don't have strong opinions about who runs the country. They just want to afford rent and groceries.
Also if you think nerdy people who hang out on HN are immune to being "belligerent, closed-minded and judgy", you haven't worked with many nerdy people. We technical/intellectual types tend to be very logical and rational, until we're not.
Is it more frightening or less than being legally banned from existence? You don’t have to know much about history to see why people start cutting abusive relationships.
Welcome to the downfall of civilization. It happens precisely because one side (or one player on one side) decides to stop playing infinite games, and start playing finite games instead. They weaponize your civility against you. The incentives for both sides shift, and we enter a downward spiral.
I'm not sure I've said anything that would indicate that i am , but I'm not from the US.
> Families torn apart because of how they vote
That's reductive in my opinion, I'd consider it a misrepresentation of the situation, at best.
Given your other comments i'd lean towards it being intentional misrepresentation, but i could be wrong, either way i doubt we'll come to an understanding on this point so i'll just leave it there.
> Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over their up until 10 years ago.
I doubt this is true, but if you genuinely think it's just a box ticking exercise and not a representation of ideology and perspective then it's possible we just have a fundamental disagreement of what's actually happening, so of course we'd disagree on interpretations.
> In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.
This i can see though.
> It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people,
"Intelligent" people aren't inherently apolitical in my experience, they are also significantly less likely to not call you on something they see as bullshit.
If you are looking for a place where you can define a perspective or opinion and not be challenged on it, this is absolutely not the place for you.
> is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost.
I'm genuinely not sure how to address this level of cognitive dissonance.
Either it's intentional, in which case no amount of discussion will be productive or it's unintentional and i don't know how to begin to address it.
> Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
You literally rocked up and replied to a thread with judgement based on a non-standard interpretation of a statement and then proceeded to say, multiple times, how disappointed you were that people expressed opinions different to your own, so much so that you expressed that you might leave if they didn't stop.
As i said elsewhere, you don't have to (and IMO shouldn't) stay in a place you don't like, but if you're going to be upset by responses with differing opinions to your own i doubt this is a place you are going to enjoy.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The entire world knows it is a nazi salute, and people defending it do too. They would never put themselves on camera doing this because they know it is indefensible.
> Again an opinion, Musk said it was not a Nazi salute [...]
Has he actually said it wasn't a Nazi salute? My last update was that he responded to questions about this by making Nazi jokes, I haven't seen any actual denial. Could you share when he did so, so I don't spread inaccurate information? Thank you.
I’m not sure that you can reasonably expect people to ignore this particular elephant in the room just for the sake of your psychological comfort, honestly.
We need the EV revolution to save the climate but we were also promised that EVs would have less defects and be more maintainable than traditional ICE cars.
But it turns out Teslas and Chinese EVs are among the worst performing in the mandatory periodic inspections in many European countries. This is not because of some anti-US/China bias in European car inspections because Ford (US) and Volvo (China) are doing well.
What happened to EV reliability and maintainability?
>We need the EV revolution to save the climate but we were also promised that EVs would have less defects and be more maintainable than traditional ICE cars.
That was absolutely a lie. And the "we need the EV revolution" was pretty bogus too.
Volvo Cars are owned by Geely, a Chinese company. The Volvo Group (which shares branding and names with Volvo Cars) is public, but Geely also has a fairly substantial percentage. Volvo Group makes HGVs, buses, military vehicles amongst others.
The situation is not dissimilar to Rolls-Royce plc (publicly-owned, mostly British; makes jet engines and other high-performance turbines) versus Rolls-Royce Motor Cars (owned entirely by BMW; makes cars only, and use BMW engines).
And most cars for their European market are actually made in Sweden. I mean, obviously you're correct, but I don't see the distinction as very helpful - no one is penalizing Land Rover cars for "being Indian" since they are owned by Tata either.
That's because there's no trade war with India yet, and Land Rovers are quite niche. If the US/European car makers felt threatened, they'd do that too...
I am so glad I rented a Tesla as a stunt for a friend’s wedding. After the sun set and the temperature dropped into the mid 40s (F) with high humidity, the touch screen practically stopped working. We were lucky we didn’t get stranded.
Zipping to 60 mph on the highway in 3 seconds was fun a couple times, but I would never own one. Especially if one guy could just delete my car if he decides he doesn’t like me.
Oh, wow. My parents had one of those (or very similar) when I was a kid (the first gen one). Kind of disappointing (though honestly sensible) that they went for normal door handles instead of the weird pushbutton thing from the original, for the electric one.
Tesla sales are plummeting all over the world currently, also in the US. But with Musk in the US government, I wonder how long it will take before there will be tariffs on foreign cars big enough to pretty much force US citizens to buy his Tesla's.
Is it not the case that any tariff would apply to US made tesla's where the majority of the global stock is made in China, so wouldnt necessarily be affected?
Lots of "foreign" cars are already built in the US. If they're going to inflate imports... the ones that have gone through it in the 80s benefit the most. Toyota produces about as many cars as they sell in US across North America.
"New registrations represent the number of vehicles that have been officially registered for the first time with the relevant government ministry or insurance agency, including domestically produced and imported vehicles"
We've got Musk in charge of reviewing his own federal funding right now. Until that is stopped, why expect any sanity in what happens with internal markets?
This point being… the short, particular period between when people awaits for the Model Y refresh and when people can buy that new model. That didn't last long (check China's number https://x.com/piloly/status/1884095767780155666/photo/1).
They are many political things to say, but misreading numbers doesn't do any good in the long run ("never underestimate your enemy").
The tariffs are used partly to force foreign manufacturers to build factories in the US. So their IP and production lines are in the North American Technate.
Japan recently got the usual Trump pressure/blackmail of investing $1 trillion in the US.
Subsidies for Tesla would look pretty silly given that the Republicans have been criticizing the Democrats for that for the last 10 years. But YouTube influencers could rationalize even that.
I don't even understand how having a business magnate and CEO of multiple USA companies can get a job in their government without being obligated to resign from their CEO mandates and without it just being plainly illegal.
At least when they were corrupting people they at least pretended they were in the clear.
Yet again, with two Trump presidencies, I don't understand a lot about anything anymore.
For every rule you need someone who would enforce it. So if you first remove all the enforcers, then you can break all the rules and nothing* happens. And they have prepared for this moment for decades. At this moment it would be more surprising if they were somehow stopped.
* There might be a bit of a public outcry, but not too much because they have prepared for that too.
Were government officials ever obligated? Or did they do so due to personal ethics? I mean, Trump and Melania have 2 meme coins. The POTUS is directly benefitting from his position and fleecing Americans.
Sure, if you look back long enough you will eventually manage to find an increase in sales.
But most people look at month-over-month or year-over-year figures, and those are terrible.
See e.g. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/tesla-sales-plummeting-early...
He didn't kill the funding, he's just violating the US Constitution by deliberately failing at his job to enforce the laws. We should avoid phrasing that makes it sound normal. (Congress can "kill" a law, he can't.)
That said, it's hard to say what motive might be going on. Did someone just convince him that it was a safe thing to target? Does he think his actions will frustrate or hurt Democratic states? Or maybe he just needs something in jeopardy that he can hold above Elon as a form of extortion.
I think it impacts others more. Tesla has already built the experience and scale to beat other US manufacturers at EV’s. It’s harder to follow without subsidies.
That company is known for having patchy quality and difficult service. As usual the "best car" depends on what aspects of a car you value and how it fits your journeys. If you're thinking about "best" as a general thing rather than about how it fits you personally then you're buying based on status. Right now that status is probably very negative - radioactive even.
As for volume of cars sold in Europe I'd bet the ID series is by far the most common with the underlying platform being the same in many models. That means if you're in trouble about some issue you're not going to be lonely.
In October 2024 you already knew who Musk was and you still contributed with money to the cause. His power derives mainly from Tesla sales and he was already using it to support the president of Project 2025, but much much worse, he is now supporting the German AfD. Their eventual victory would have a deeply negative impact in the EU. When people don’t consider the preservation of democracy in their purchasing decisions it means they don’t cherish it enough.
More and more I'm convinced that buying my Honda Accord 11 years ago was one of my better life decisions so as not to have to deal with the BS that is the modern automobile. I do wish it had CarPlay, but the phone mount is a good trade-off if it means I get a reliable car with physical controls.
All of that is happening in the EU. Don't you just have the warranty were they either fix it (which they don't) or exchange with a new car that doesn't have the issue or you return the car and get the money back. After all the defect was known an existed by the time you were buying it. Doesn't make sense to waste time.
If I were you I'd insist on getting the car updated before anything.
When you say the update gets stuck its actually not stuck but unpacking the huge firmware archive.
You need to give it some time and preferablly keep it connected to a wifi so that after it unpacks part 1 it continues with downloading the rest of the parts.
We arrived in the nightmare when before using washing machine or a car you have to download software updates, restart it couple times.
I am mostly tech enthusiast but as a proper adult I want to scream "fu* off I just want to use that damn thing I want to play with my child and not watch another progress bar".
Also I am fully convinced that if you don't look at the progress bar something will ALWAYS break during the update so you never can just leave it to update on its own, when I look at progress bar it always works. But that's just me :)
In the meantime, the self declared founder (who is not), genius (who is not), self-made man (who is not) is busy playing video games, sharing random crap on Xitter, and trying to break a goverment he was not elected to run in a country where he is a foreign alien.
Wow, this is a truly terrible experience and a disgraceful display of customer service. Not picking up phones and not responding to customers is unacceptable and will undoubtedly deter many potential buyers from ever purchasing a Tesla.
I’d wonder if they’ve talked to the Dutch consumer protection people (who I think would have jurisdiction in this sort of in-EU cross border selling). Leaving someone with a broken car for 3 months seems obviously absurd.
First, luxury cars are known to have more maintenance issues than working class cars. The idea is you should have the means to own a secondary car, or just pay for fixes. To have so many problems within a few weeks is absurd, but this is pretty on brand for Tesla.
I was joking with a Kia salesman the other day, British cars will say mate I haven't gotten my oil change recently, I think I'll take a nap on the side of the road.
Asian cars will endure endless abuse and still run.
You literally get the opposite of what you pay for with cars.
I don't really want to buy a car right now, but I'm going with an Asian econobox if I do. My first car was 15k , which was very fitting for my new 6 figure salary.
I'd say the writer wanted a status symbol, and found it doesn't exactly work as a vehicle.
Driver didn't take delivery from Tesla by themselves and used a third party. In situations like these chances of parts replacement by older/faulty parts is high
"Tesla acknowledges all faults in the vehicle (except for battery losses, a fact on which it has not yet formally commented). The company refuses to accept a return of the vehicle without penalty, even though the problems were reported immediately. The only solution they offer is to make me wait 3 months for a miraculous replacement part. Ignored and without any type of compensation, I live attached to a car that needs a full recharge every 12 days to not die. For my own safety, and that of other drivers, I have stopped driving the vehicle.
"
this is how the lobotomized/neutered people react... wake up people and get back your rights
Try not to call them Hollanders, except possibly during national football matches. Tilburg is in an area of the Netherlands that has quite a strong regional identity (and that region is not Holland). You can call them Brabanders if you want to use the regional demonym.
Also that regional identity is going to be quite strong until carnaval has passed, should you visit any time soon.
There are quite a few countries where the name of The Netherlands is a transliterated or translated "Holland". Even if the respective national governments where the name was misused started using the name The Kingdom of the Lower Countries, as it happened in most European countries, the popular name "Holland" still stuck, and everyone knows you're referring to the country, not the region.
Considering these are (bad) corner case situations other modern cars seem to be having as much as Tesla, just by glancing at the comments, the first thing in the article highlighted being "Elon Musk's company!" just makes this look like a hit piece no different from that oil&gas connected "car reviewer" who forced the Tesla to run empty by driving back n forth in a parking lot.
The crazies are always there. But they don't belong on HN.
Apologies for my ignorance, but which other modern cars fail to run the wipers when the cameras don't work? And which other car manufacturers instruct their customers to drive without the car's safety features such as ABS working? That's also something I've not heard of but I'd like to.
Dude decided to go out of his way to import a car not sold in his country, and then act surprised when quality of service for said car is shit in his country.
I got a ton of hate last time I said it, primarily from comrade musk's simps but I'll say it again: a former boss of mine(also musk worshiper) bought the top of the range tesla model s. We were going out of the Hague(where the company was headquartered) and I was in his car. It was brand new, like it barely had 6000km on the clock. My first impression was "how the hell is my 10 year old mid-range BMW offering a wildly better ride and build quality than something that just got off the production line". Plastic squeaking, you could feel every pebble on the road in your spine. And this is the Netherlands we are talking here, and those are by far the best roads in Europe by a considerable margin - when you see a tiny crack in the asphalt anywhere, it sticks out like a sore thumb from the horizon. We had to stop and charge it, the charger got stuck, fob was working 60% of the time, it refused to start on several occasions - all in the span of a single 10km trip. "It will get fixed with a future update, musk knows what he's doing" was what my boss kept telling everyone. Mmyeah, no thanks, I'm fine with my BMW.
Not sure how much this adds to the conversation, but I have a 1990 VW Golf which is possibly the easiest piece of technology I've ever worked on. Has satisfying buttons that button. Has an actual windshield wiper handle. Diagnosing and replacing parts is incredibly easy due to the wealth of knowledge out there, and readily available parts that can be ordered. The most complicated thing is tracing electrical gremlins, which, given the 30+ years of collective knowledge out there on forums, is really not so bad anymore. I'm not always nostalgic for old stuff, just saying that if you have an engineering mindset, tinkering with an older car is very satisfying.
my favorite part of buying a tesla is that they will NOT unlock the door and let you inspect it in any way without formally ACCEPTING the car in a legally binding way
it makes you feel sick and disgusted before you even get in.
It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!