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I've never owned but have been in a relatively recent S class. It's personal but the 3 is basically a pretty pure distilled car. If you hate buttons and like sy

by gfodor 9y ago

I've never owned but have been in a relatively recent S class. It's personal but the 3 is basically a pretty pure distilled car. If you hate buttons and like symmetry and simplicity they basically took the car to what feels like the logical extreme. Reminiscent of Apple it's a design that shows they agonized over every button and additional degree of freedom for the user. There is no dashboard, no key, the whole car is controlled through the center console. The only buttons are entirely flush with the surfaces they are on. They don't even have door release handles on the inside the door pops open when you grab and depress the button flush on the handlebar to exit. Rip the steering wheel out and there is no longer a clear driver's seat just two symmetric front passengers. I find the design refreshing enough and the torque of the engine responsive enough (with no transmission pullback) to say it outweighs other potential creature comforts on a feature level. My last car was a BRZ and I don't miss it too much :)

BoorishBears 9y ago
... going from a BRZ to a Model 3 would give someone a little bit of bias. All the things you described are very subjective. It's not "pure" it's barebones. It's not "distilled" it's optimized for cost savings in a way that would insult the average luxury car driver. A mid-range luxury car these days often comes with a DCT or a very advanced non-DCT transmission that's capable of mind blowingly quick shifts and creamy smooth power delivery. This is all coming from a guy who had a first month reservation for a Model 3 and went for a Volt instead after some hard thinking and a few... Tesla antics... I disagreed with, so it's not like I'm one of the people who thinks EVs "can't be enthusiast cars" like some people. I feel like people are overstating what a change in drivetrains will do to car manufacturers. It's true this drivetrain adds requirements for space for batteries and infrastructure for charging, but car making will still be car making (ironically, as Tesla has shown with it's production issues). My money is on Tesla becoming the next Porsche as far as volume and market. That's not a bad place to be, but it's not where the market has priced them at.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Yeah that's why I said it's personal. I feel the design of the car is extremely forward looking and was primarily driven by good taste not cost constraints. I hate to keep making the comparisons but it reminds me of Apple ripping out all but essential components -- easy to see through the lens of costs in the short term but in the long term provides freedom to take the design further in the next iteration. The 3 represents a foundational design that transitions elegantly to autonomous control (imho) and will provide the vantage point Tesla needs to design their first from-the-ground up autocar.
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    The problem for me is it feels like the market (and Tesla to an extent) has jumped the gun. Tesla hasn't demonstrated enough self-driving progress (and imo, no one has yet) to justify the car's design to me, nor being a company with a 54 billion dollar market cap. It's one thing if FSD was just on the horizon, but there are an incredible number of very hard problems to solve before we get there. Yet Tesla is designing a car that requires FSD for justification of it's interior and charging for FSD as a feature.

by gfodor 9y ago

BoorishBears 9y ago

... going from a BRZ to a Model 3 would give someone a little bit of bias. All the things you described are very subjective. It's not "pure" it's barebones. It's not "distilled" it's optimized for cost savings in a way that would insult the average luxury car driver. A mid-range luxury car these days often comes with a DCT or a very advanced non-DCT transmission that's capable of mind blowingly quick shifts and creamy smooth power delivery. This is all coming from a guy who had a first month reservation for a Model 3 and went for a Volt instead after some hard thinking and a few... Tesla antics... I disagreed with, so it's not like I'm one of the people who thinks EVs "can't be enthusiast cars" like some people. I feel like people are overstating what a change in drivetrains will do to car manufacturers. It's true this drivetrain adds requirements for space for batteries and infrastructure for charging, but car making will still be car making (ironically, as Tesla has shown with it's production issues). My money is on Tesla becoming the next Porsche as far as volume and market. That's not a bad place to be, but it's not where the market has priced them at.

gfodor 9y ago
Yeah that's why I said it's personal. I feel the design of the car is extremely forward looking and was primarily driven by good taste not cost constraints. I hate to keep making the comparisons but it reminds me of Apple ripping out all but essential components -- easy to see through the lens of costs in the short term but in the long term provides freedom to take the design further in the next iteration. The 3 represents a foundational design that transitions elegantly to autonomous control (imho) and will provide the vantage point Tesla needs to design their first from-the-ground up autocar.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  The problem for me is it feels like the market (and Tesla to an extent) has jumped the gun. Tesla hasn't demonstrated enough self-driving progress (and imo, no one has yet) to justify the car's design to me, nor being a company with a 54 billion dollar market cap. It's one thing if FSD was just on the horizon, but there are an incredible number of very hard problems to solve before we get there. Yet Tesla is designing a car that requires FSD for justification of it's interior and charging for FSD as a feature.