Rental Teslas can feel rough because they get driven hard and the cabin is built around that single screen. If you are used to a Leaf, the change feels even sharper because the Leaf has simple controls and a softer ride. The Model 3 reacts fast, brakes differently and hides every button in menus, so it takes effort to settle into it. Some people enjoy that style, but it is fair to prefer a car that lets you drive without thinking about the interface.
You are correct. I forgot about that. It’s $99/year or $10/month for the Premium Connectivity which includes a lot of features but that is one of them. The other option is to play it through your phone via Bluetooth which is a pain in the ass.
I can tell you that you get used to it pretty quickly as an owner but not so much in the first week which is why it’s was a terrible idea as a rental car for someone not familiar with the interface. The smart thing would have been a simple UI for the rentals that could be unlocked for the experienced people or not betting the entire farm on Tesla. Apple Play is much more intuitive that Tesla because it looks kind of like an iPhone and we are used to that already.
Honestly, just renting an EV with a fairly ordinary interface was rough, in ways that i knew wouldn’t be a problem if i owned it. But i spent an awful lot of time figuring out where i could charge it, waiting for it to charge because i didn’t choose well…
That’s the kind of thing you spend some time on once when you own a car, and then mostly know what to do.
On the other hand, though, I’m also glad there are EV rentals. Enterprise gave me a Kia Nero EV for $20/day because they were overbooked, and that was my first full-week experience with an EV.
I was dubious at first; I definitely got the impression that the rental person was trying to pawn it off on me and never bothered to explain how any of it worked. Charging was indeed hard at first until I found PlugShare. But with it, I discovered the various fast and free chargers around town. We ended up liking it so much we bought an EV for ourselves, which we wouldn’t have done if not for the rental experience.
But that’s us, a relatively young and open-minded couple willing to put up with newfangled stuff like that. I shudder to think how someone older or less comfortable with tech would deal with a situation like that… soooo many things could go wrong with EV charging, and so many of the apps are hard to use. The learning curve is steep.
I like a minimalist look as much as anyone, but sometimes it’s also a safety thing. With buttons and dials, making a change takes a half-second’s glance. Without them, it’s several seconds of pecking through the touchscreen’s nested menus.
I don’t understand how Tesla drivers can afford to look away from the road for long enough to find the glove box button, or turn up the AC, or whatever. Is FSD on that often such that “keep your eyes on the road” isn’t really a thing anymore…?
I rode in a friend’s Tesla once and found the interface atrociously difficult even for the simplest tasks. Even opening the door was a pain… apparently the thing that most resembles a handle is an emergency latch, and the “correct” button is a hidden one? Or something like that.
An issue really for every brand that choses the “tablet” interface for all controls, Tesla just is “firstest with the mostest” when it comes to that.
I suppose the idea is you set everything from your playlist to your AC to your route before you start moving and then use voice command for adjustments.
You just learn the interface for the things that you use most and you get used to the new thing. It fairly quickly becomes second nature and, of course, some people will never like it.
They can, of course. The story is that when the Model S was first being designed, Elmo was shown sketches of the design with the door handles just roughed in for illustration purposes. They looked like they were flush with the body and Elmo insisted that the actual car be made that way, despite all the problems with those motorized recessed handles including freezing up in cold weather and other malfunctions. Imagine trying to get into a Tesla after a period of freezing rain!
The Tesla system is pretty well laid out, with the big caveat, that yes just like any car, you have to learn where things are before you can smoothly use them while driving.
Opening the glove box while driving is not something that happens very often. Anything I might need to access while driving is in the center console, which is opened with a traditional latch. If the glove box does need to be opened, it is two taps. Once on the “car” icon, which brings up a page of useful stuff, and then on the glove box button.
Adjusting the temperature is also pretty easy. The controls to do that are at the bottom of the screen, so it is easy to steady your hand on the screen, and tap < or > symbols to move the temperature up or down.
I have the defogger button set to live on the bar at the bottom of the screen, and it has a nice feature. A single tap starts blowing on the front window, a double tap turns it to max blowing, raises the heat to max, and turns on the rear defroster. This is an excellent shortcut when the snow starts to stick. On my non-screen car, achieving the same requires several (admittedly easy) adjustments of dials and buttons.
There is a volume knob! The left hand dial on the steering wheel can be used to adjust the volume, skip forwards or backwards, and pause media.
In most of my drives I never interact with anything on the screen once I’m moving. Some of that is the automatic climate control, automatic headlights, and automatic wipers mean that I don’t need to. And yes, some of it is that I’ve learned that I don’t need to interact with the things buried deep in menus.
Because this is a thread to bash Teslas, the main one that I still find annoying and stupid after many years is having to use the screen to adjust how the air blows out of the vents. I’m sure that will be even more annoying when I have to pay a few thousand removing the dashboard to get the electric baffles replaced.
I, also, rented a Kia Nero EV, but it was for one long drive, and some very short ones. I spent a fairly long fraction of my total car time dealing with charging. Maybe i used the wrong app. Also, when the speed limit is 70, the range shown is significantly more than the actual range. I was really worried I’d run out of juice before arriving at my destination. (Also, when i realized i was in trouble, i put it into cruise control at 55 in a 70 speed limit, and had to stay out of the way of regular traffic. And i arrived with only 20 miles in the tank.)
I mean, it was clear to me that it wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d owned the car. Probably not even if I’d known a few days in advance that’s what they’d give me. But it was really a pita.
Other than that, i liked the car.
The difference is that it seems to be far more complicated, exacerbated by the fact that pretty much everything is on that stupid touchscreen. I know that other carmakers are doing similar things to some extent because it’s cheaper, but no one concentrates ALL the controls on an oversized iPad glued to an otherwise bare dash the way Tesla does.
This is just terrible design from a human interface standpoint. Proper design would utilize labeled knobs or levers of different shapes and sizes for important functions, and use the cursed touchscreen only for relatively minor things like tuning the radio. Physical controls may not look as sexy as a touchscreen interface, but they’re far more functional and intuitive.
Substantially the only control I interact with while my car is in motion is … tuning the radio. Well, entertainment actually.
Everything else is either on the steering wheel or fully automated so there’s no need to fiddle with any controls for that feature.
Yeah, that is too cute for its own good.
Just because I know that someone is going to get this wrong for the millionth time, the windshield wiper control is on the touch screen but it’s also a mechanical button on the turn signal stalk like most other newer cars. There is a auto-detect setting but it doesn’t work well in my experience.
Yikes, that would be terrifying. I thought they were supposed to adjust the range every few minutes based on recent conditions, but maybe the Niro doesn’t do that? It would really suck to get stranded.
Speaking of getting stranded, at least Tesla has been opening up some of their chargers to other brands recently. There’s apparently different kinds of chargers, though, and not all of them work with other brands. Confusing…
And everything’s supposedly moving to NACS now, but all the non-Tesla chargers I’ve seen are still J1772/CCS.
It really is a mess, isn’t it?
This is false. Most of the frequently-adjusted controls are duplicated on the steering wheel. Some things, like opening the glovebox, can also be done with voice commands.
I find conventional cars fussy. When I walk up to my car, it unlocks the doors for me. If my wife drove it last, it changes the seats, mirrors, max horsepower, throttle response, steering feel, thermostat, vent controls and several other settings from her preferences to mine. I tap the brake and it engages forward or reverse depending on what’s in front or behind the car. No need to move a shift lever.
Once moving, most driving is done with one pedal. If it’s raining the wipers come on, change speed, and shut off with little or no driver input. On 2024 and newer models, the high beams adjust automatically. They’ll dim only in the arcs occupied by other cars. This feature was delivered as a free over-the-air upgrade. It took me a week to trust it, but I haven’t used my hi/low beam button (yes, it’s a real button) in months. There’s no need to cancel a turn signal, as the car reads the lane lines and detects when a turn or lane change is complete. Upon reaching my destination, I just unbuckle and walk away. The car puts itself in park and locks itself—unless I’m at home, where it ‘knows’ I don’t want it to lock.
On a regular car, these controls need messing with, so yeah, better to have knobs and switches. I don’t miss them one bit.
The controls i interact with when driving are, in decreasing order of “need to touch” (not counting gas and brakes):
- The turn signals
- The lights (when I’m alone on a road at night, i like to use the high beams, but turn them down when i see anyone else. And then turn them up again)
- The windshield wipers
- The HVAC (i turn the fan up and down, fiddle with defrosters, etc.)
- The radio
- Google maps
I once had automatic windshield wipers that were perfect, so i can believe not needing to interact with those. But I’m thinking that i want to interact with all the others even in a fancy computerized car. And in one of those, i also want to interact with self-parking.
All of those are time sensitive. Even self-parking, i needed to trigger it at the right time. It’s a problem if the window starts to fog up, or i can’t dip the high beams quickly. But if i fumble and get static instead of my favorite radio program…eh, it can wait until i can glance away from the road again.
Maybe something I’ve forgotten.
My Ford was a lemon, but i still miss its perfect automatic windshield wipers.
Do they also dim for bicycles, pedestrians and their dogs? If so, that’s awesome.
As said, not even Tesla concentrates ALL controls on the touch screen. The car still has physical buttons and levers. Well, they did go a bit to far and moved the turn signals to be buttons on the steering wheel, but are pulling back offering a lever as an option.
Mine is too old to have the zoned dimming. The high beams are either on or off, and the auto mode seems to work well enough that I don’t over ride it anymore. It dims for lots of reasons, perhaps dimming too often. Reflections, lights, and other things that aren’t cars.
That really has nothing to do with the touch screen, though, because in my car the high beams are controlled by the turn signal lever, just like most other modern cars. I miss the foot button.
This time of year I’m often walking the dog in the dark, and I’d much rather be blinded by someone’s high beams than have them not see me.
Fair enough, and I should have acknowledged that Teslas do indeed have a bunch of controls on the steering wheel.
As for your second paragraph, you do you. But to me – and this may be, rightly or wrongly, a reflection of my long experience with technology in my capacity as an Old Fart – I just see this as a list of all the things that can and will eventually break. Even as a Young’Un, I’ve always placed a very high premium on reliability. That often just means some appropriate combination of quality and simplicity. Those aren’t particularly marketable features and isn’t generally how modern fancy-tech products are built and advertised.
Oh, bloody hell! How about the this concept: extending your hand, and pulling on a latch? 