Consumer Reports No Longer Recommends the Tesla Model 3 (cnn.com) 215
Consumer Reports is pulling its recommendation of the Tesla Model 3, citing reliability issues with the car. "Tesla buyers are more likely to be satisfied with their car than customers of any other brand, according to Consumer Reports," reports CNN. "Yet the publication says many customers reported problems with the Model 3, including loose body trim and glass defects." From the report: "Consumers expect their cars to last -- and not be in the repair shop. That's why reliability is so important," said Jake Fisher, senior director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports.
Tesla pointed to its overall customer satisfaction rating from Consumer Reports and said it has corrected many of the problems found in the survey.
"We take feedback from our customers very seriously and quickly implement improvements any time we hear about issues," said the company statement. It said the survey was conducted from July through September, "so the vast majority of these issues have already been corrected through design and manufacturing improvements, and we are already seeing a significant improvement in our field data." Last May, the product testing website failed to give the Model 3 a recommendation due to issues with braking, but ultimately reversed its decision after Tesla released a firmware update improving the car's breaking distance by nearly 20 feet.
1.0 Problems (Score:4, Informative)
Any number of problems tend to crop up, I'm going on memory but I'm fairly certain this happened with other Tesla Models when they were first introduced as well. Those problems were sorted out over time, but buyer beware for being an "early adopter".
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We own a BMW 3 series. It has about 101K miles on it and the starter is going out (intermittently doesn't even try to crank the car). It took BMW 2 weeks to properly diagnose the issue. Then, they wanted $1246 to replace the starter!
Turns out, that is actually sickeningly reasonable on this vehicle that seems to be expressly designed to be a maintenance nightmare. Replacing the starter requires removing an obscene number of components INCLUDING the freakin' intake manifold!!!! Even then, the primary bolt fa
Intake manifold (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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You think that's bad? On my 2004 Subaru Outback with the H6 engine, spark plug replacement requires disconnecting the engine from its mounts and jacking the engine up.
I saw a video of replacement of a headlamp bulb on a Ford: it required removal of the front bumper -- and this is a part that will likely need replacement several times during the life of the car.
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On my Chevy Avalanche, to get to the rear most spark plug, you have to loosen the engine from it's mounts and then drop it a few inches. To change a spark plug. You. Have. To. Lower. The. Engine.
Folks on YouTube have gotten around it by using a bunch of swivel connections but then you also run the risk of something falling into the depths of the engine bay, never to be seen again - unless you're doing 100 down the highway, the steel extension bar drops out and t
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I had to take off the intake manifold to replace the knock sensor on my 2000 Honda. PITA job for a crappy little plastic sensor that screws into the block under the manifold.
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I had to take off the intake manifold to replace the knock sensor on my 2000 Honda. PITA job for a crappy little plastic sensor that screws into the block under the manifold.
Same on the Audi V8 engine, except there's one in the valley and one on the left side which is also a PITA to reach :)
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Actually you could be surprised how many relatively trivial repair jobs could require removing the intake manifold
Had to pull it to do crankcase breather hoses on my A8... and that engine is longitudinally mounted.
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I'm not sure where CR ranks the 3-Series, but the 5-Series was one of six models (including the Model 3) that CR pulled their "Recommended" ranking from in this latest update. But of course, if there's something negative to say about Tesla, it drowns out all other news.
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Probably because when Tesla got the rating there was a Slashdot article about it.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Wanting all that positive publicity for your favourite iCar means you get all the negative too.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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No... assembly problems happen when you try to build your cars in a make-shift tent because your production capacity isn't up to task.
Re: 1.0 Problems (Score:2)
Re: 1.0 Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, it's a permanent beta problem. Elon is very proud how they "improve" their cars every 2 weeks. They are using agile software development model but applied to the hardware+software product, i.e. ship minimum viable product asap, fix and add new features as you go. They've been making the Model S 7 years now, still has problems whenever they decide to upgrade hardware, and with over the air updates you always have to check what broke this time, though some things get fixed or added. They've had the only viable EV on the market, plus I consider myself an early adopter, so I am a customer, but mature product Teslas are not. I got my wife into one 2 years ago, she is not an early adopter, so for example she didn't read the release notes one morning which stated somewhere in there that in their wisdom Tesla decided to auto-unfold mirrors as soon as the car starts moving. So when my wife folded the mirrors manually, as she did many times in the past, and started backing up, crack, the mirror unfolded and broke off on a wall. Yes, they fixed it on next release, but too late for my wife's mirror - there goes $600, just another cost of driving a beta car Then there are features which Tesla sells but delivers to future cars only. One good example was the highly touted P85D which was supposed to produce 691hp. It didn't at first, but Tesla assured owners a software update is coming. Eventually they delivered a car which can produce that power, but it took 3 redesigns of the battery so only available for new cars. The original owners got an excuse "your motors can produce that power, and the car can handle it, but with your battery the most you will see is 463hp, which is about 50hp more than the non performance car you could have bought for $25K less". They offered a retrofit to 500hp for an additional $5K, but to get the advertised power it would require an upgrade to a brand new P100D, which would cost roughly $80K. They sold cars in 2014/2015 with "blind spot warning" which was supposed to come via software upgrade, turns out Elon was smoking something when he decided it can be done using nothing but parking sensors (who knew when going down the highway parking sensors don't work, eh?), so they quietly removed the feature from the website. Current cars, 4 years later have better blind spot monitoring, but that requires 8 cameras and a powerful computer (simple, reliable radar based solution is too boring for Elon), so again, they delivered but only to new cars. Anyone heard of Full Self Driving sold in 2016 through 2018? It does absolutely nothing today, and chances are it never will for those who bought the cars back then. Oh, but the car can play fart noises through the speakers on demand - a breakthrough feature on one of the recent over the air updates. Welcome to agile development for cars.
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"Welcome to agile development for cars."
All automakers tend to make frequent changes to their vehicle, because of the well-known phenomenon that buyers value newness. Yes, it matters whether something is better than the competition, but it also matters whether it is perceived as new. Most of these changes are trivial fiddling of appearance, but sometimes they make actual changes in the middle of model cycles, or even model years. Ford has historically been one of the worst offenders in this category, freque
Re: 1.0 Problems (Score:2)
No other manufacturer changes things every 2 weeks. No other manufacturer ships unfinished product planning to OTA the features when ready, or even things like shipping a car without ever driving it outside of sunny California. Oops, bumpers fall off or Model 3 in heavy rain, let's fix it for new cars. Oops, turns out Model 3 freezes up in the winter - dang, we don't get that white stuff here in the valley, let's see what we can do. All the other guys do way more testing before shipping, yes they will miss
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No other manufacturer changes things every 2 weeks.
Sure, instead they fail at design and then the customer has to live with it for the life of the vehicle.
No other manufacturer ships unfinished product planning to OTA the features when ready,
No, they ship poorly designed product, planning to solve the problem in a later model year.
Oops, bumpers fall off or Model 3 in heavy rain, let's fix it for new cars.
Yeah, that was dumb. But they're hardly the first car company to have bumpers fall off, either. Lots of dumb out there.
Oops, turns out Model 3 freezes up in the winter - dang, we don't get that white stuff here in the valley, let's see what we can do.
Lots of automakers' vehicles have problems with doors freezing shut and the like. It happened to my lady's 2000 Astro (which is the second generation of that vehicle, mind) out here in sunny California.
All the other guys do way more testing before shipping, yes they will miss some things, but not to that degree.
Yes, absolutely to that degree, even after years and years of development, and for that matter, decades of experience.
Once Tesla moves on to new hardware, old hardware us orphaned too. For example, they started shipping new main computer in March 2018. One of my cars has the old MCU. It's been getting slower and some features like the browser haven't worked in months!
If your car is out of warranty, no automaker gives a shit about you, except maybe Porsche, and Mercedes but only just a little bit. If it's still in warranty, send it back for service over and over and over again until they care.
Not to mention that they reworked the UI to suit the Model 3 and unified the software, so the Model S has to run UI for Model 3 which doesn't account for a second screen (instrument cluster) because Model 3 doesn't have an instrument cluster.
So the instrument cluster is just an instrument cluster now, or what?
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Tesla's go-to "diagnosis" whenever you take it in for most issues is "it will be fixed in the next firmware". When it doesn't come few weeks down the road, the excuse is "oh, the fix must have not made it, it will be coming next update". It's not that the service people are trying to make excuses, they are awesome, but they get that BS from Tesla corporate. Elon thinks he can fix everything in software. One of the cars I bought had a problem unfolding one of the mirrors, and even when unfolded it would go l
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:4, Informative)
Many other cars suffer from this problem.
False. There is a button at the end of the left stalk.
I will agree that the auto-wiper function needs work. IMHO, good and bad performance seems to be related to crosswind.
Never happened on my Model 3. I think there are some Model 3s with hardware issues that cause the crashes. Most people don't see any crashes, but a very small number of people see lots of crashes (my impression from the forums).
Again, not on my Model 3. I think the fit and finish issues were mostly on early Model 3s and now people are more critical. Take a look at the creases on other cars as you drive: you will see many cars where the creases don't line up properly.
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:5, Informative)
Many other cars have a channel around the inside of the boot lid that catches the water that runs off the lid when you open it, draining it out under the car or over the rear bumper so you don't flood inside the boot.
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:5, Informative)
Many other cars have a channel around the inside of the boot lid that catches the water that runs off the lid when you open it,
So does the Model 3. But it's hip to ceramic coat their entire model 3 aka put on a full body hydrophobic coating. What happens is the water runs off so fast that it shoots several inches across the gap into the trunk (boot) and across the channel.
A stock Model 3 doesn't have this issue because the water doesn't evil kenivel the gap at highspeed.
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:4, Funny)
You have to be careful using names (words really) like Evel Knievel on /. The younger generation won't know who you're talking about. They'll just stare at you with Bambi eyes and blink nervously. Come to think of it, they probably don't even know what Bambi is...and no, Bambi was not a stripper.
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And you know this how? From your extensive collection of precisely zero Model 3s?
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It's a design flaw. Every one made has it.
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:4, Informative)
Many other cars have a channel around the inside of the boot lid that catches the water that runs off the lid when you open it,
My 1998 Audi A8 has the same problem, and that was a flagship vehicle built by an experienced automaker. The gutter is small and easily catches crap which affects its operation, so if you're not garaging the vehicle, you can easily get a bunch of water in the trunk. My 1982 MBZ 300SD is much better. Tesla is in good company here.
Re: 1.0 Problems (Score:2, Insightful)
touchscreens should not be used when a car is in motion - with this knowledge, anyone who gets hit by a Model 3 can now sue the driver and the manufacturer - tactile controls were invented for a reason - if you hire only millennials, you'll end up reinventing things that were standard for a reason and end up with stupid things like wiper controls on a screen
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
To people who didn't know better, they'd think that you actually have a Model 3. You don't - you're a consistent Tesla foe on this forum. You're just repeating FUD that you heard.
Going down the list:
1) There were two cases (out of hundreds of thousands of cars) of the bumper coming off. It wasn't due to being "in the rain", but rather driving quickly through standing water [expressandstar.com] (the bumper was acting like a parachute, and Model 3 has crazy amounts of torque). These cases were half a year ago. No new cases have been reported since.
2) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey [google.com], conducted last August (when autowipers were brand new; they've gotten better since then), the ratings for autowipers were:
57,0%: They do their job just fine
25,5%: Very rarely don't wipe, or wipe too often - but it's not a problem
9,7%: Minor issues that probably should be fixed.
7,8%: Moderate to major issues
These are similar numbers to what you'd find for a review of any autowiper system - and this was the very first release.
3) You can make the water go into the trunk by applying RainX to your rear windshield, which makes the water slide off faster and over the rear gutter. But there is a rear gutter (it was enlarged last year [youtube.com] regardless).
4) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey (again, last August, involving a lot of early vehicles) 76,5% were "very satisfied" with their exterior fit and finish, and 16,9% "mostly satisfied" (93,4% total). For interior fit and finish, the numbers were 80,2% and 17,0%, respectively (97,2%). Infotainment system satisfaction ("the screen") were 58,2% and 31,3%, respectively (89,5%). These are exceedingly high numbers.
And these exceedingly high numbers show. Since we're talking about Consumer Reports, wouldn't it be great if they had polled what people thought of their cars? Why, they did! And of all of the different models from all of the different manufacturers, Model 3 owners loved their cars the most [evobsession.com]. 92% satisfaction. Specifically, the question they were asked about was whether, after having owned the car, they would make the same purchase decision again. So IMHO it's rather odd for Consumer Reports to recommend against a car that their own survey found brought their owners the most joy, and ALSO got the lowest VSS (combined probability of injury score) in NHTSA history.
I do have two issues with CR's methodology, which I'll mention here.,
1) They're giving the impression that we're talking about recent Model 3s here. This is not true. This data was collected on Model 3s from early last year to the middle of last year. These are early-run vehicles that they're talking about. For example, they mentioned the "phantom click" issue. That only existed on some vehicles delivered from February to April 2018 in the 4000-15000 VIN range, due to a bad batch of displays from a supplier. The problem has not existed at all in any form for nearly a year. Yet it's something that CR cites. Note how low those VINs are; Tesla's VINs are now nearly 300k.
2) Specifically because of all of the anti-Tesla FUD, most Model 3 buyers went over their vehicles with a fine-toothed comb, in a way that buyers of other vehicles do not. There were even long "checklists" circulating around that many people used to make sure that their vehicles were flawless at delivery. Who does that for any other vehicle? Now, there's nothing wrong at all with doing this - diligence is great when buying a car. But it messes with self-reporting surveys like CR's. The more a person searches for any little issue
Re:1.0 Problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, for serious EV news that apparently has flown entirely under the radar for most people today...
Der Zellkonflikt mit den Zulieferern [manager-magazin.de]
Short summary: VW wants to emulate Tesla and build Gigafactories (in conjunction with SK Innovation, which would be playing the role that Panasonic does with Tesla). However, they're being held hostage by their current supplier (LG), who is threatening to cut off all battery shipments to them (immediately) unless they drop their Gigafactory plans. VW is trying to find a way out of this mess, as they see the Gigafactory approach as being essential to ensuring a sufficient supply of cells at a low enough price to meet their target price points and be competitive.
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I see your Hatorade, but not any response to what Rei actually wrote.
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There was no Tesla fanboyism in that post. Tesla wasn't even the point. This is why you don't chug the Hatorade, it makes you fly off the handle and say shit that's just embarrassing.
Re: 1.0 Problems (Score:2)
You would have to be an absolute fucking idiot to read Rei's post and conclude that she was happy about VWs problems.
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If I buy a reasonably equipped 3500 series truck, I'm easily into $60K+ but you'd be hard pressed to argue the $60k truck is as environmentally friendly as a Tesla.
The value / cost of the car doesn't really factor into 'saving the environment', if on a per km basis, you aren't negatively impacting the environment as other cars in the same cost bracket, you can safely and accurately say you're 'saving the envir
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Rei, are these troll mods anything to do with you? Hope you are not using sock puppet accounts and it's just some misguided fan.
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What car does snow not fall into? I've never in my life owned a car that's managed to completely prevent snow ingress.
You're not supposed to charge on 110V, you're supposed to install a proper charger. I mean, it's great that Model 3 is efficient enough that you can usually actually get away with it, but the US's NEMA 10-15 sockets are a joke when it comes to power output - they can barely run a hair dryer, let alone a whole car. A proper wall charger has 8 times the power output.
That said, if your frien
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You can:
A) Charge on 110V
B) Charge at -40C
C) Preheat the vehicle
Pick any two.
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Why do EV owners always hide these unpleasant truths?
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What you're ignoring is that most EV drivers find ways to accommodate those scenarios and it's not like they have to make fundamental changes to their lives in order to do so. If it's -40 outside, maybe they leave their coat zipped up. Maybe they leave their gloves on. It's not like ICE drivers suddenly take their coats o
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Guess how I know you're not from around where I live.
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Seriously, how does a guy with a blog and an Excel spreadsheet "debunk" a months long investigation by an organization dedicated to improving safety?
By diligently understanding the data they looked at and spotting the errors they made while misinterpreting it.
Hopefully they'll learn from the experience.
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The only place ICEV is still holding on is in price below 40K, refueling speed. The BEV prices are falling inexorably. In three years, it will be at 30K. Refueling speed will become a non-issue. People will adapt to 30 minute breaks every 250 miles.
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The boot (trunk in US English) lets water in when you open it after its been raining too.
Only if you do what Tesla tells you explicitly not to do: ceramic coat\rainX the rear window.
If the water runs off at a regular pace with regular adhesion the water pours into the guides. If you put a hydrophobic coating on your rear window it runs off so fast that it overshoots the water guides and into the trunk.
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Manufacturing Is Hard (Score:5, Interesting)
I design and have engineers and programmers develop for me and mass manufacturing reliable systems is really hard. The 80:20 rule means there will always be an issue you don't pick up in pilot runs. The other car manufacturers have had decades refining designs and production systems. I'm actually surprised Tesla have had few problems as they have had.
but.. providing they survive, they will learn just like all the other car companies have, and fix their quality issues... it's a balancing act between capital expenditure (in tooling, engineering, prototyping, testing) and profitability.
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Or they won'r survive and get bought out. Once the other guys catch up with EV drivetrains, Tesla will have a hard time competing. Selling untested cars (what the heck, we never drove this thing in snow, let's just sell a hundred thousands and see what customers complain about the first winter, then we fix it for new cars) is not going to play well with most customers. I personally bought 4 Model S cars, but am totally ready for competition, with features delivered on day one as opposed some "some day in th
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Ya nobody else likes profits
Oh, everybody likes profits. The question is whether this takes precedence over every other concern.
It is Consumer Reports after all (Score:3, Informative)
Jeeps come to mind. I'm on my third one now (still have two) and happy with them. They do what I want my vehicles to do, and I've put a lot of trouble free miles on them.
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CR has had a hardon for Jeeps for many years.
Jeeps function pretty well though Wagoneer automatic transmissions and some V8s were pieces of shit that put many nice donors into salvage yards before their time.
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CR has had a hardon for Jeeps for many years.
And how! I've Had a few of their unrecommended Jeeps, I have to say that there has to be some major disconnect somewhere.
Jeeps function pretty well though Wagoneer automatic transmissions and some V8s were pieces of shit that put many nice donors into salvage yards before their time.
I was lucky enough to get a Grand Cherokee with the inline six. Over 200K on it, and it was still going strong when I sold it. Not easy miles either.
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I fully trust Consumer Reports ... to change their mind in 5 minutes and put it back on the recommend list. Seriously though I have given up on them too.
CR? (Score:2, Troll)
But I do vividly remember them knocking points off a VW car in the 1970's because it didn't have separate left and right turn signal indicators. The only thing that told me was that CR drivers found it difficult to remember which direction they intended to turn.
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So Consumer Reports knocked points off a car because consumers had issues operating it?
Weird. Oh wait, that's their job.
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Whoosh. You're talking about turn signals, on the outside of the car. I'm talking about the light which indicates that those are active - if you drive, you know, the indicators on the instrument panel which the driver sees.
For a long time, VW only had one in the center, which blinked with the exterior turn signals. It didn't matter if it was the left or right, it was just an indicator that y
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I fear poor support long term (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just buy something else
Mazda has decided to not put any touch screens in their new cars, due to driver distraction.
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To be totally honest? I'm not sure a Tesla is a car anyone is going to keep trying to hang onto for the "long term"? By that, I mean we already know the average vehicle owner doesn't keep a car or truck more than about 6 years. The Tesla S had an unlimited mileage, 8 year warranty covering battery pack or drive motor failures, so even the very oldest 2012 models still have warranty on those items through next year.
But looking forward at things? I think you're going to see serious depreciation happen as soo
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Actuall statistics show that battery packs on Teslas hold up very well (when not abused). Long term prognosis is much better than an ICE vehicle. Do you think traditional gasoline engines are successfully tested by their manufacturer over an equivalent 1 million miles, like the Model 3 motor?
https://cleantechnica.com/2018.. [cleantechnica.com]
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re: Tesla battery packs (Score:2)
It doesn't matter that the statistics show their batteries "hold up well". The reason you'll see serious depreciation is the realization that IF the battery fails on you, you're going to be out about $18,000 to buy a replacement, out of warranty.
Don't get me wrong... I'm a Tesla owner myself, right now. (Used 2014 Model S here.) I like the cars a lot. But the idea they'll run far longer than a comparable ICE vehicle without any major repair costs? That's just not realistic. I can get even a big block V8 e
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I think that Tesla will replace the screens at a not too outrageous cost. I see a posting that shows a cost of ~ $1k (although the screen cannot be replaced by itself on older cars).
As for batteries: there is a Model S that has done 400,000 miles. It's had two battery replacements, both paid for by Tesla. The first battery lasted 194,000 miles and failed because of abuse (consistently charging to 95 - 100%).
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How many people are going to keep a 10-15 year old computer running?
10 years ago, computers didn't last for 10 years. Then they did. My current main home machine is now 9 years old. I haven't gone to any special effort to keep it struggling on; it just works.
It's a mildly special case in that it was a very high end luggable (thinkpad W510, 16G RAM), not a shitbox but in terms of the specs that count it's actually very solidly in the respectable category. It has 16G RAM which is still considered a high end
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By that, I mean we already know the average vehicle owner doesn't keep a car or truck more than about 6 years.
Your wrong about how long people keep cars. [energy.gov]
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By that, I mean we already know the average vehicle owner doesn't keep a car or truck more than about 6 years.
Your wrong about how long people keep cars.
You're wrong about what statistic that page provides, and also about how to use apostrophes. That page discusses the average age of the fleet, not how long the first owner kept the vehicle. Fleet age increases as vehicle quality increases, and also as average purchase price increases — since wages don't keep up with inflation, people tend to have to keep cars longer whether they want to or not. Both of those things are happening, so it would be surprising if vehicle age weren't increasing.
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The final refuge of the scoundrel.
;)
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Mazda is ditching touch screens and going back to physical controls, and that's not going to save them money unless they reuse the same controls across many models, or reuse controls from some other automaker. They are including a HUD, though. Probably that can be reprogrammed, but since it's Mazda, they never will.
Physical controls are superior in lots of ways, though. At minimum, you should have them for the lights/signals, wipers, HVAC, and the audio volume. Well, that and the steering, brakes, and throt
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Joysticks are even worse than touch screens, because you have to keep track of what you are pointing at. But yes, modal displays are bad for the same reason. A minimally modal touch display with only a couple of modes accessible while moving is at least a compromise.
Premium handbuilt item are premium (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the beginning of Tesla experienced transportation people have observed that it has always been possible to carefully build premium automobiles (and buggies, and chariots, and oxcarts) and sell them at low volume for a premium price at a decent profit to the founders. The difficulty comes when the seller fills its premium market and tries to expand to volume. Daimler-Benz and Cadillac managed to do that successfully; 10,000 competitors from 1895 forward did not. And Tesla? Still to be seen.
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If anyone can do it like Benz and Cadillac, it's this guy. Musk gets it. He's a vocal proponent of off planet settlements to mitigate the likelihood of human extinction, and he understands how to get things done politically.
I for one, welcome our musky overlords.
Re: Premium handbuilt item are premium (Score:2)
Actually he's still white.
Do people follow the CR recommendations? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do people actually follow the Consumer Reports recommendations? Just curious.
Personally, the one thing I liked about CR was the "Consumerist" blog their subsidiary ran, but after they unceremoniously closed it down nothing else about CR seems of value. Hence the curiosity, does the public take them into account in buying something like a car?
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Hence the curiosity, does the public take them into account in buying something like a car?
When considering an auto purchase, I definitely take into account the results of their ownership reliability surveys. Did this a couple months ago, actually - ended up buying a 2015 Toyota Camry to *sniff* *sniff* replace my long-serving, faithful old 1993 Ford Escort.
On a side note - I was unreasonably sad about giving up that old beater, but I'm loving the Camry so far.
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Consumer Report Gods (Score:5, Informative)
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So what you're saying is you're satisfied with your car, by CR's standards that means you won't recommend it to others.
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Out of interest, do you have an indoor carpark for the car? I spent a couple years in the midwest and (having come from Australia) was surprised by how much a big deal parking indoors was for things like avoiding having to scrape ice off your windscreen in the morning.
We had several friends that had (lightly) heated garages - I can't quite remember why, maybe to stop things like wiper fluid freezing? - but I imagine that would help with the cold starts at least at one end of the commute?
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Charging port frozen (fixed in 2 hours, not really an issue anymore apparently)
Doesn't accelerate as quickly when it's cold, but still plenty quick enough so no issue..?
So you're marking it as a 5/10, over 18,000 miles, based on a frozen charging port than was fixed in 2 hours and hasn't been a problem since? Surely the $400 monthly savings is nothing to sneeze at?
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TentTech (Score:3, Informative)
When your automated assembly line fails and you rely on out-of-process-import-workers-from-another-line-and-final-assembly-in-tents technology, you are going to run into quality problems.
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Not easy to start a car company from scratch (Score:2)
People seem to think that starting any business should be as easy as opening a lemon aide stand. However starting something like a new car company isn't remotely easy even if you have tons of cash and an army of engineers and technicians who know exactly what they are doing. It takes decades to learn the little tricks and trade secrets needed to ensure your product is as good as the competition. This is why we can't build another Saturn V rocket despite the fact that we still have one we can take apart and
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Watch the Road (Score:2)
Who cares about upgrades ... I can adjust all of the controls in my Honda by touch, without taking my eyes off the damn road.
I know, I know, one more year and you won't need to drive them anymore.
The popout screen on the Model 3 is just garish to me, but when they have a HUD instead I might well reconsider. The screen-based UI for cars will seem just "so 2010's" once a real car UI is developed.
Every owner I know (4 currently) loves their Tesla (Score:3)
For all the flak news outlets throw Tesla's way every now and then, the evidence from actual owners on my own small part of the world has never expressed any level of unhappiness with the Model 3 or Model S.
Consumer Reports credibility (Score:2)
I look at CR for information, but don't put much faith in their "recommendations."
They like to rate things they don't understand. I recall a review of bicycles (no clue what made one better than another), and lawn mowers (rated by intuition, apparently never tried them to see what worked better.) Cars should be an exception, given CR's focus, which makes their ongoing treatment of Tesla even more... concerning.
I've seen nothing to suggest Tesla is worse than any other high end car. They're expensive but the
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People who can afford European cars and keep them after the first 2 years/lease tend to spend what it takes to keep them running. They don't run that long without constant and horrendously expensive maintenance, unlike many Toyotas that routinely last that long with little or no work.
I have a BMW X5 commuter that is on the edge of that age range, and it's so unreliable that I won't drive it far from home, despite spending enough on it the last 2 years to buy a used Corolla (and doing most of the work myself
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Last May, the product testing website failed to give the Model 3 a recommendation due to issues with braking, but ultimately reversed its decision after Tesla released a firmware update improving the car's breaking distance by nearly 20 feet.
Ugh, you weren't even joking.
ENGLISH!
EDIT!
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