Umm, no, it’s a IMHO thread.
So, I suppose that touchscreen is gone and it costs the same as a leaf, huh? I find both of those very hard to believe.
You’re absolutely right. I’m not sure how I missed that
I don’t know what you mean about the touchscreen and the Leaf is cheaper but in the same ballpark and I was talking about EVs in general when I was talking about price
(edit mine, obviously)
It’s literally the first complaint in the OP:
It stuck in my head because that’s the first thing that made myself say NOPE about buying a Tesla.
If should keep you from buying a model Y or 3. The S and X have normal gauges.
I’m not talking about gauges. I can deal with a digital display. Climate controls, etc, are still in the touchscreen.
From the manual:
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2012_2020_models/en_us/GUID-518C51C1-E9AC-4A68-AE12-07F4FF8C881E.html
If the OP had said that they don’t like the screen, it would be reasonable. They claimed that everything is only on the screen and then went on to list a bunch of things that weren’t only on the screen.
I rented a car last month for a long drive from Ohio to West Virginia. It was an ICE SUV. I think a Chevy, but I honestly don’t recall for sure. I couldn’t figure out the audio or the climate for the first 4 hours. Touchscreens can be intuitive or non. On the Model X, I find it very intuitive. There are things I don’t like about the audio interface, but everything else is just fine (or better).
I dunno, the stuff that I’d want manual controls for don’t have manual controls. That’s enough of “everything” for me.
@Procrustus : There is no touchscreen that can be operated well without looking at it. They’re a shitty interface for most things, but that makes it completely unsuitable for anything you’d want to operate while driving a car.
Yep. Perfectly valid. And I bet if you listed a few of them, it would be things that are actually only on the screen because you would have looked it up.
Climate controls are cited from the manual above. Show me where you can adjust them without the touchscreen, please.
Adjust? With either voice commands or the scroll wheel on the steering wheel. If you have the climate on by default you can adjust it that way or by voice commands. To turn it on in the first place you can use voice commands.
This doesn’t really apply to a rental by a neophyte but the buttons and scroll wheels on the steering wheel are programmable.
Ugh, voice commands? I take back what I said about touchscreens. Voice commands are worse.
The scroll wheel isn’t a dedicated control for the climate control, so it does not really count in my mind. Plus, can you turn it off with the wheel?
I hate voice commands as well. I’ve never used them but luckily the screen works well for me.
If you want it off with the scroll wheel, I suppose that you could change it to a set point that won’t be reached. You may be able to turn it off. I’m not sure.
I can talk to my car. I really hate talking to my car. I like mechanical knobs and buttons for most controls.
I like my car to be familiar. I hate learning to use a new car. I don’t want the interface to change.
I considered a Tesla several years ago. At the time i worked in the claims department of a major insurance company. The claims adjusters told me to stay far away from Teslas.
My friend the Tesla fan-boy had his Tesla drive me around Chicagoland. The car did a lot of things out shouldn’t have, and he was really slow to override it. I found the experience nerve-wracking. I am eagerly awaiting a self-driving car, but the current Tesla isn’t it. (I also hired a waymo to drive me around Phoenix, twice. That was a lot closer to what I’m looking for. But to be fair to the Tesla, the waymos didn’t content with much traffic.)
I do like the acceleration you can get with a Tesla. I enjoy driving a responsive car.
I’m on board with “Teslas are really not great cars”. Especially now that there are many other electric cars with decent range.
What you don’t like is subjective and you managed to do it without resorting to making false claims about the car and the people who drive them. You also experienced the Tesla with an open mind.
The Bolt owners board I peruse refers to it as the GOM – Guess-O-Meter. It is my understanding it was in use by EV owners before that.
It actually shows three estimates, a big one in the middle which takes into account your recent rates of expenditure, a smaller max range at the top which assumes 45mph and no climate control, and an also smaller pessimistic range at the bottom. I’m not sure what the assumptions are for that one. Behind the three is the SOC gauge, like the gas gauge on an ICE.
My two-and-a-quarter-ton car (cross-over, I guess you would call it) states a payload capacity of 800 lbs. That is not much more than 3 passengers plus driver (though, it is the most damn comfortable car in its price range – those passengers will enjoy the trip). Perhaps when (if) we get to the point of lightweight axial-flux wheel motors and “solid-state” batteries, the carrying capacity of EVs will start to rival ICEs, at efficiencies that will blow them out of the water.
My car has some haptic thingies on the center dash that allow some basic climate functions (fan, defrost, temp), but things like airflow direction (floor/mid/upper) and seat heaters are on the touch screen (and one thing that pisses me off is that the seat heater level control is a single screen-button that you tap to cycle through three levels –WTAF, it is a big screen, they could have easily put 3 separate buttons on there).
Apart from climate settings, there is little on the center screen I need to access. I do not use nav, rarely have the map display up and almost never have the radio (which has a physical power and volume control on the dash) on, so the center screen is off most of the time. All the basic physical controls are where I expect them to be and work the way I expect them to. For a big computer with wheels, it is actually pretty well designed.
Lots of cars are moving to touch-screen displays, it’s not a Tesla thing (although they have the biggest screen) and it’s not an EV thing (although maybe their computing power makes it more attractive to manufacturers). Mostly, touch screens are a lot cheaper than physical controls. And it is nice to have a large-ish screen to display the navigation info. Although I’m sure there’s a sweet spot. I hate playing bridge with the theoretically “easy to read” cards with giant numbers on them, because 13 of those suckers take up so much room that they aren’t all in my field of view at once. So i bet there’s a size where the screen is too large, too.
There’s a lot of chatter about what kinds of controls drivers like, any it’s not just old farts vs. the young. It’s not just on cars, either. You are some of the same stuff play out with appliance controls. Because screens are cheap.
The Leaf is extremely responsive-- sometimes I’m surprised how much.
When I was buying the Leaf, I looked at a lot of electric cars, but not Teslas, because everything I’d heard made me think I was just plain outclassed by them. Like it would be as much of a waste of time as test-driving Rolls-Royces.
Imagine my surprise to find that it was really kind of a cartoony car, not as nice as my Leaf, and I wouldn’t buy it at half the price.
That’s really all I was saying.