Teslas really are not great cars

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not sure if this should be a Pit thread or not. I welcome counter-points, and I’m not going to say anything about Musk or his politics, but if mods feel it should be in the Pit and move it, I’m fine with it. My instinct is to put it here, though, because I hope what I’m going to post isn’t a rant.

My car is in for a little work, because I hit something in the road on a still-dark morning. Needs a tire, wheel, brake parts, some suspension parts, and a front panel. I had to sign off on them using a junkyard wheel & panel, and painting the panel, at saving of over $1000 (my deductible).

My rental car is a Tesla. I’m paying for it, then submitting receipts for reimbursement in order to go with a company that has electric vehicles. I reserved a Chevy Bolt for $200 for a week.

They gave me a Tesla Model 3, 2023.

It is the most difficult car I have ever driven, and I am accustomed to driving a Leaf, which was stupid easy to drive right off the lot. Except for a couple of things directly related to how the car uses electricity-- whether it conserved, uses regenerative breaking, allows one-pedal control, and so forth, driving it is like driving any other car.

The Tesla runs off a computer screen, which you constantly have to take your eyes off the road to use. EVERYthing is on the screen, so there is no touch control where you can memorize the location and feel of controls. Things change place and position on this screen as well.

The car does not handle well, and that is not merely a factor of its being a rental car. It is the worst handling of any rental I’ve ever had, except one Chevy Chevette. It does not have pedal-assist breaking; if it has there are fleas where I work, and I blame them, because it is the fleet of Teslas bringing them in, I’m sure.

And, for no particular reason, it has a muscle-bound accelerator.

I remember a professor of my acquaintance gloating a few years ago that she cough could afford a TESLA!

Big freaking deal.

My Nissan Leaf cost about 1/3 what her Tesla cost, and has the same carbon footprint. Just maybe in flip-flops and not in tailor-made Italian leather.

I am more convinced than ever that Teslas are all hype.

2

Get ready.

3

My Tesla is the best car I’ve ever had and it’s not even close. About 70% of this is its EV-ness; the rest is its Tesla-ness.

I’m not sure what to say about your difficulty driving it other than that most people adjust very quickly in my experience, including my parents.

I’m not sure what you mean by “pedal-assisted braking”. Or “muscle-bound accelerator”. They are zippy on average. You can set them to “chill mode” if that is your preference. The brakes work basically the same as on any other car. I find them to be a little more linear than most cars, in that they aren’t too grabby in the first inch or so.

It’s true that your carbon footprint is about the same in the Leaf than my Tesla. But I can drive to my parent’s place without charging (round trip if I’m gentle), which I couldn’t do in a Leaf. And a Leaf is, well… a Leaf. Not a suitable replacement for a BMW 3-series, which I upgraded from. The carbon footprint is one of the reasons why I bought it, but not even the biggest one.

The screen takes some getting used to, but it’s better designed and more responsive than basically all other cars. Mostly you don’t need to look at it at all. I adjusted the climate control once when I bought it and haven’t touched it since.

4

There are two Leafs-- a lower priced one with a battery that is supposed to have a 150mi capacity, and another with a 300mi capacity.

I have the cheap one-- $24,000, because it was a 2023 that I bought just before the 2024s rolled out, and all the 2023 cars we on sale.

The battery is over-engineered, so that when the warranty expires it will still be getting 150 mi, which means that right now, when it is charged on a warm night, 100% will be 175 mi. And if I am not using climate control, I will get close to 200 mi.

ETA/ Glad the Tesla works for you. I’d rather see Teslas on the road than ICE cars. I just am not liking driving one, and am glad I have other choices.

5

Upgraded is a wide concept and some posts you really see coming. I’ll wait until this ends in the Pit, if it ever does. It’s almost funny.

6

I’m sure I’m ingenuous, but not following you.

7

That’s decent. When I bought my car in 2018, I think 150 mi was the best you could get in a Leaf. Not enough for my purposes. Tesla batteries also show minimal degradation over time.

Yesterday, I had a drive in traffic that took 4 hours when it would normally take 2. I didn’t touch the wheel at all for over a 3 hr period, through multiple freeways, dozens of lane changes and merges, police cars, and lots of traffic. All handled perfectly with no intervention. The hardest part was knowing what to do with my idle hands.

People have different preferences and that’s fine. But to pretend they’re somehow objectively bad cars is absurd. They get very good reviews and are among the most popular cars in the world of any kind.

8

You don’t care how fast you’re driving? The absence of basic instrumentation directly in front of the driver and having everything on that stupid iPad glued to the center of the console would absolutely drive me nuts. At least the Model S does have a display directly in front of the driver in addition to the central one. I think the older ones had conventional “steam gauge” dials, the newer ones have an electronic display, which I think is a step down in reliability but at least it’s there.

9

I guess I was trying less to say that “Teslas suck”-- I wouldn’t say that-- more, “The emperor has no clothes.” I don’t think I’m alone there, though. I think a lot of people are coming to the conclusion that Teslas are not magic.

When they were new, there was a mystique about them, and it’s going away, which it should.

They are ordinary cars that are not to my taste.

I feel the same way about European cars (which are difficult to work on, and back in the day, when I did my own basic maintenance, they were on my crap list).

10

The speed is there in a large font right in the corner of my vision. There’s no need to shift my gaze at all. And never blocked by the wheel. It’s simply not a problem at all.

11

EVs in general are a genuinely superior experience. For a while, Tesla was simply the only option for long range. Others have caught up in many respects–enough that more subjective metrics start to play a greater influence. That’s hardly an “emperor has no clothes” situation. The other cars wouldn’t exist if Tesla hadn’t led the way. But it’s inevitable that others would close some of the gap.

12

Another thing–I think there are some misconceptions about the price. Maybe you got a good deal on yours, but the latest long range Leaf is $36k for 212 miles. The latest Model 3 is $42k for 363 miles. Even in absolute terms, that’s not a dramatic difference. And the extra range you get for that $6k is substantial.

13

I was with you up until this point. Geez, generalize much? :grin: “Euripean cars” is such a super-broad category as to be meaningless. There are many superb European cars. There are also high-end European cars that are demanding and expensive in terms of maintenance, but otherwise excellent if you’re willing to put up with those downsides. And of course a few cars that are crap. It’s all over the map. Generalizations are meaningless.

My immediate objection here is if the speed is displayed as a number rather than in an analog form, studies have shown this to be bad UI design because it’s much harder to immediately visually discern that you’re over a certain threshold. I would hope there’d be an option for some type of analog display.

That aside, I found even in my old-fashioned car that has LED displays for relatively unimportant things (compass, outside temperature, clock, radio station) that bright sunlight from the wrong direction can wash them out and make them invisible. Fortunately all the important indicators are old-fashioned needle dials that are always clearly visible.

14

Never had a problem with bright sunlight, no matter the time of day. It’s a bright screen with antireflective coating and a light sensor. At night it goes into dark mode automatically.

People get these weird ideas worked up in their head about all this works based on vague analogies with other products they’ve been dissatisfied with, but this stuff really isn’t a problem.

15

Maybe it’s just around here, but Teslas and therefore Musk were on goddam pedestals so high they interfered with air traffic.

About the only good thing coming out of the Trump/Musk fiasco is that Magats are running out and buying Teslas (which, as far looking on the “good side” is a little like the kids at school who thought it was cool the diabetic kid got snacks in class). It’s still not nothing. Be nicer if they were all buying Bolts, though-- I mean, they haven’t suddenly become concerned about the environment, but the effect is the same. I’m not sure where I am on that.

I divested of my Tesla stock months ago (it wasn’t a lot). Made a tiny profit. Donated it to charity.

16

I simply don’t understand this line of thinking at all. So they’re buying EVs… but for the wrong reason as far as you’re concerned? What does that matter in the slightest?

There’s this weird strain of environmentalism where somehow things don’t count unless there’s sacrifice involved or something, and I simply don’t get it. As I said, I think EVs are the superior experience, and carbon emissions are among the least of those. Charging at home, the quiet, the smoothness, the lack of smell, and just the overall feel are all better than an ICE. So I think it’s great that conservatives are getting more interested. And likewise, think the anti-Tesla protests from the left are profoundly dumb. Let’s get people into EVs for any reason and enjoy the benefits regardless of the reason they bought them.

17

The car knows how fast to go; it’s driving. I’m mostly watching the scenery and other traffic.

I don’t have a Tesla, but increasingly I use the semi-self driving features of my BMW. It deals with speed and the immediately nearby cars. I deal with the bigger picture. In my limited experience driving them, Teslas are far more capable than that.

Besides, when did you ever meet a BMW driver who cared in detail what speed they were going as long as it was too fast? :wink:

18

That’s a non-answer. A speedometer is a legal requirement, for good reason, with the implicit assumption that it’s readily visible, regardless of any semi-self-driving feature that may or may not work in any given circumstance.

Normally I would have answered “apparently never in Florida”. But just last week I nearly got run over in the parking lot of my local supermarket by a Mercedes driver who apparently thought he was competing in the Daytona 500. Though it’s possible the Mercedes bore Florida plates – I couldn’t see them because of the combination of vapour trail and red-shift as it quickly vanished to a point in the distance.

19

I’ve never even been in a hybrid much less and EV, but just screen controls would drive me nuts too.

I’ve a 4runner. It has the big three knobs to control HVAC. Works great, I never have to look at them. Changing radio stations on the preset touch screen sucks though. I always bump the wrong one.

20

Emphasis added.

For those of us living in apartment complexes there is no way to charge at home. That alone takes EV’s out of my consideration for my next vehicle. It’s probably the ONLY reason I’d say no to one, but at present, for me, it’s insurmountable. There seems to be zero impetus for anyone to solve this problem, nevermind that so many people in cities (who would definitely benefit from lowered emissions just from the standpoint of breathing) live in apartments, and even out in the 'burbs there are a couple million nationwide in that circumstance.

You won’t get rid of ICE’s until that problem is solved

(Actually, I suspect there will always be a niche role for ICE’s on the fringes of the grid and off it, but for the majority of us that’s not a consideration)