> multiple companies have higher quality electric vehicles
When I bought my Tesla in mid-2018 the alternatives were the Bolt and the Leaf. Both had significantly worse range--I was looking at a 180-mile roundtrip commute for the next year, so range was important. Both were uncomfortably small for me. Neither matched Tesla's driver assist features for my almost entirely highway commute. Neither had fast-charging options along my commute route; Tesla had two superchargers.
The situation has changed a bit in the last 1.5 years, but still nobody else matches Tesla's range or charging network.
I'm not sure what metric you're using for quality, but Tesla won me over on features, not name.
> Tesla's are pretty ugly
Subjective. The X is a bit strange, but the falcon doors are actually super convenient (as long as they don't break). The S and 3 exteriors are both very nice looking in my opinion, though I'm not such a fan of the spartan interior on the 3.
> Oof. The last thing I'd want to add to an already horrible commute is a supercharger stop, or more.
The Tesla had enough range that if I was able to charge regularly I didn't need the supercharger, but it was a nice backup if something prevented me from charging.
Also stopping halfway through the drive and grabbing a snack while at the supercharger wasn't really a bad thing.
>Kinda a pain in the ass in a garage
I have a standard 7ft garage door and they can fully open with about 2 inches of clearance at the top. Not really a pain at all.
Having tried all reasonably priced EVs, its not a question of style.
My original plan was to get a Leaf but I ended up buying a Tesla. It just drives better than the other cars and you get a much better car with a larger second row, more practical cargo space with a Tesla than the other EV options. That is without mentioning that you have to wait months to get a Leaf plus or a Kona electric. The latest VW may be interesting but it didn't exist at the time. I don't see where the higher quality electric vehicles are coming from.
It is a very polarizing car, some strangers will go up to you and tell you how Tesla will go bankrupt, you'll have no one to service the car, it will lose all its value and other things like that. "The name" is nearly a liability to me. It is just a car, it is useful.
Yes, same here. I also initially wanted a Leaf, in part because I don't really want my car to be so conspicuous--before the Tesla I drove a tan Corolla, about as inconspicuous as you can get. But the Leaf (and Bolt, which was the other EV option at the time) simply didn't make sense.
The early build quality was poor and they had a lot of problems with ordinary things breaking that had nothing to do with being electric and everything to do with being inexperienced at making cars. They could be doing better now but it's a little early to say because the more recent cars aren't that old yet. Either way it seems more like teething issues than something they won't get right eventually.
Meanwhile it's fairly unambiguously true that electric drivetrains are a lot simpler and should require less maintenance in general.
I felt slighted by their interview process and experience a little schadenfreude. From what I gather a lot of other people have the same salt.
It’s the biggest reason I tell people to be magnanimous in interviews. You may need to interview them again in three years, or their friends. You don’t want them to tell you to fuck off, or worse, talking about you behind your back to their peers.
There’s a company in Seattle who had a long history of having trouble hiring. They even hosted a bunch of meetups but still got hardly any bites. Because they had a reputation as an awful place to work and people would talk about it after the meetups or even quietly during the meetups. I have my suspicions this actually hurt their lead rate instead of helped. Getting people together to air your dirty laundry is rarely good.
It’s also why I strongly discourage 1 on 1 interviews. If I’m in a room with a coworker I know how they treated the candidate and they know how I did. There’s feedback to be given, adjustments to be made. Without that you can’t tell if one interviewer has low success rates due to beig really picky or being a dick.
The second guy I talked to at Google was such an asshole that I doubted my read on the other three people. It shakes you, and me in particular. I have a problem with saying no to all offers on the table, which shows up as self-sabotage in interviews. I don’t want to work with you, so I’m not going to try to convince you to want to work with me. It would be better for me to stick with it and get comfortable just saying no to all bad offers even if that’s all the offers I have. Least objectionable has won out a time or two and I’ve always paid for it in the end.
