5 ms·
why buy a sedan when you can buy a status symbol for a bit more?
by devoply 8y ago
why buy a sedan when you can buy a status symbol for a bit more?
- r00fus 8y agoIt's not just a status. Any electric vehicle of that size/speed/image would cost that much or more. I know, I've looked. The Model3, even LR, is a pretty good deal compared to other EVs.
- rohit2412 8y agoI guess what the comment echoed was that Tesla sell much better because of the status. And the other EVs don't enjoy such futuristic image. I'll add my own point that Tesla's image is very undeserved, it is only kept by the cult of Elon musk and incessant lies about self driving technology.
- kidsnow 8y agoWrong. Even without self-driving technology, people would buy these cars. Several friends specifically deleted the self driving hardware on their Model 3's.
- twblalock 8y agoThey are objectively nice cars. They look nice, they drive nice, they are high performance, and they are usable in daily life. That is plenty of reasons for people to buy them. The only viable electric vehicles at the same price point are the Chevy Bolt and the Nissan Leaf, and if you ever see one of those parked next to a Model 3 you'll notice that the Model 3 is far more attractive.
- dkhenry 8y agoI will add my own anecdote that if anything Tesla is underrated. Not only is the drivetrain in the car worlds ahead of anything else on the road, but the fringe parts of the company like the supercharger network and service organization so far ahead of the legacy automakers that I don't see how they will ever catch up without an organizational split to separate the ICE business from the EV business.
- Latteland 8y agoI have found them to really be fantastic and great to drive. So quiet, advanced electronics like mapping streaming voice recognition, quiet, low center of gravity.
- askafriend 8y agoCompletely wrong. Rent a Model 3 for a single day and you'll see exactly why. The product really does speak for itself, similar to how the first iPhone spoke for itself despite some shortcomings. If you've tried a Model 3 for a day and you still hold the same opinion you presented here, I concede my point - but I really think you have to experience it to know why there is a lot of hype around the car. The hype is justified, surprisingly so.
- lozaning 8y agoAnecdotely, I canceled my day 1 preorder after going to their AWD performance model test drive event at Telsa HQ. The .2 seconds faster to 60 that it goes than my existing car is not worth the tradeoff off of the horrendous steering and lack of road feedback.
- FireBeyond 8y agoI'd be curious to try the 3. I drove an S in Austin and was underwhelmed compared to my S5 on many different levels (yes, the S5 is a higher end car, but so too is the S).
- hamandcheese 8y agoNot to mention it’s actually aesthetically pleasing.
- stephengillie 8y agoThe big fat nose is funny looking, and the interior is barren. It looks like a child's toy.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoIt is very subjective, I think it looks like a car from 10 years in the future.
- stephengillie 8y agoOr a car from the distant past. Trends repeat. It's like how push-button transmissions are coming back into style, or how hybrid cars were invented in the 1920s and again in the 1960s.
- kidsnow 8y agoThat's right, you can't go back to a Toyota Camry any more.
- stephengillie 8y agoTry the Camry Hybrid. You might be surprised.
- rjplatte 8y agoMy Prius is getting long in the tooth. Good replacement?
- stephengillie 8y ago356 ft-lb of torque. And the same MPG (50+) in the 2018+ models. You might not beat a Porsche Cayenne, but you'll give it a hard time.
- rjplatte 8y agoDamn. I enjoy smoking Dodge Neons and older Mustangs light-to-light as it is, but that just sounds fun.
- wharryman 8y agoMy wife and I spent a lot of time deliberating between getting a Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) and a Model 3. We have an 09 Camry Hybrid. FWIW, our Camry Hybrid is nice, but the battery halves trunk space, and the accel is sloooow compared to a normal Camry (which we owned before that). Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on. The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model. There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it. I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3.
- Xcelerate 8y agoNot everyone is interested in buying status symbols.
- Latteland 8y agoTry driving one. All gas cars just seem archaic, even my wife's new camera, which has some connected car features doesn't compare. That car has crappy ui, terrible app on phone. The human factors design by Toyota is just kludgey. It drives fine, the engine seems efficient with electric battery driving. But it's not fun to drive.
- Xcelerate 8y agoI’m not disputing it’s a better car. I love Teslas. I’m just saying that if I bought one it wouldn’t be because it had anything to do with “status”.
- Fins 8y agoNot aq big fan of Toyota's design, but is their UX seriously worse than "oh, let's control AC system from a touchscreen" nonsense from Tesla?
- Latteland 8y agoYes, I think Toyota is bad. The S is maybe a little bit better than the 3, but they'll improve the 3. On the S the AC controls are always at the bottom of the screen, touch it at any time and they show up. The tesla isn't perfect, but it's so much more advanced than the competitors. Tesla needs competition so they can get better. Today's model S is the same as the first one I bought in 2012, except for a bit better battery and now AWD is available.
- Fins 8y agoGood thing I don't plan to get a Toyota, then. And at one point they were known for good ergonomics. On the other hand, in my 2011 car (and it wasn't exactly anything new at the time either), adjusting AC does not require looking down at the screen, let alone hunting for a flat and featureless part of a touchscreen, that can move with the next software update. Tesla is a great idea. But IMHO the execution is nowhere near what the price would suggest, and it is advanced in a very SV way, the way Juicero was advanced -- by adding extra tech and complexity to things that have been solved for longer than anyone at Tesla has been alive, and only add to the price with no improvement in UX (or, as with these, with an actual degradation in UX).
- spectrum1234 8y agoWhat does this mean? Trucks or SUV s have status? Never occurred to me. Note: I live in cities.