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So much this. I hope I don't stand on too many toes here. Actually I don't care. My father has a self driving enabled Tesla Model S which he paid a hell of a l

by hughrr 5y ago

So much this. I hope I don't stand on too many toes here. Actually I don't care. My father has a self driving enabled Tesla Model S which he paid a hell of a lot of money for that he doesn't have as he's in his 70s, living entirely off the remains of the house he just sold. He's convinced it'll be any day now that he gets full self driving and that it'll change the world. He tells me he loves the car and phones me daily to tell me about it. But at the end of the day there are a bunch of complaints hiding in his words. This covers everything from poor fitting, paint issues, weird bugs, massive safety and computer issues, lots of hidden costs and general battery life issues. He's hiding the true picture which is not the real experience. Between Tesla marketing and the echo chamber Tesla forums, he's traded his entire cash pile and attention for what I can only describe as a prototype that is a ball and chain which limps between bouts of charging CPR and he can't tell anyone because it might damage his conspicuous virtuous electric car identity. But Tesla will be introducing self driving any day now he tells me. All the time. For the last 3 years... I'm not really a proponent or opponent of electric cars. I don't really care about the things as they don't factor into my life past the utility of a screwdriver. I myself drive a third-hand Citroen with a tuk tuk engine in it which was cheap to buy and run and takes me to the shops and for the odd weekend out. But from my vantage point, I can't see the return of investment that such complex technology can add to a simple problem. All it does is make it more complicated, less safe and less reliable while milking people for cash for promises which may never materialise. If there's anything I've worked out over the last couple of decades in the software industry is that this model really doesn't work - it's the marketing and development model that Microsoft uses. Edit: he literally just phoned me to tell me how wonderful it is again. But it cost him 5% of the battery capacity to cool it down enough that it’s not going to burn his ass off (has sunroof) which means his next journey is going to have to end with a 10 mile detour to sit in a supercharger bay (which where he lives will be busy and he’ll have to wait) and thus probably cost a coffee at the same time.

ec109685 5y ago
Obviously you know your father best, but it at least seems from your words it makes him happy. As someone with similar car, you get to know it’s quirks and use it when it adds value.
- hughrr 5y ago
  It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. And those aren't quirks; they are big stinking problems. Never write down a problem as something that isn't one. I owned a Merc 190E once that was a bag of problems. My life got better and I got happier the day I acknowledged them and got rid of it.
  - callamdelaney 5y ago
    I own a Tesla, have the base model 3 and didn't pay for full self driving. On motorways and A roads the self drive experience is reasonably adequate. Naturally, on any reasonably long journey there are dozens of times you'll have to take over from autopilot and steer around some corner or some hazard. It really doesn't bother me whether it gets better or they add full self driving. Charging your car isn't a big stinking problem, it's an inherent feature.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Model 3 is a much better proposition on features and price though.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. This seems to be a very 21st century phenomenon; product marketing gets replaced by cult membership. You don't buy a Tesla to experience a great car, you buy Tesla to tell everyone how great the experience is.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      It’s a very human problem from like 40k years ago. We evolved to belong to tribes and feel most comfortable in them. The difference is that with how mobile we are now, both physically and as far as our ability to communicate, we can now form tribes not based on our family and geographic location (which often times doesn’t fit us all that well) but based on what products we consume: cars we buy, video games we play, music we listen to, etc. These consumer tribes are exactly like every other tribe we have formed before, just look novel because of the focus of them. This is why you’ll see people talk about how “the Harley meet up guys are just the nicest people”. It’s only partially about the product, mostly about the sense of belonging. And before anyone calls this sad (which it might or might not be), consider that the alternative is either isolation by rejecting all forms of tribalism, or tribes formed around more harmful old school ideas (religious cults, violence-based tribes, tribes based on race/gender/etc.), or tribes we were born into and have no choice to leave because we can’t just buy the services of a farmer, a plumber, or a babysitter and have to rely exclusively on our tribe for those kinds of needs.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I was working for a tier-1 supplier in Detroit when Tesla announced their first car that wasn’t the lotus body, a vp at a supplier laughed and said “they’re about to find out how hard it is to build cars”. This guy knew cars and every time I hear someone with negative feedback on Tesla’s I think about that. I’ve heard more people describe it as “a computer with wheels” than I can remember.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Yep. This. I’m even more sharp with the description. It’s a no brand android tablet with wheels. My Citroen feels better put together and it’s made of cooking foil.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    To be fair Citroen has made a lot of innovation from cooking foil!
    - hughrr 5y ago
      Oh yes indeed. It’s cheap, safe, reliable and runs on mosquito fart quantities of gas.
tails4e 5y ago
If you leave the self driving aside, the model s is an amazing car. Compared with a high end bmw/merc/audi you get more features as standard - though I do admit the finish/build quality on those cars is superior. I have a 4 year old MS, and genuinely like it and love the acceleration/nimbleness and have experienced very few issues. I'd consider tesla again for my next car, but FSD would not be a factor either way.
- hughrr 5y ago
  I don’t buy on features myself because quite frankly every damn car I’ve hired or bought which has anything other than basic features is chock full of bugs and has to be fixed every two minutes. Auto companies just can’t and shouldn’t write any high level software at all and low level embedded stuff is even pretty awful. They just can’t support it properly. Tesla are a notable exception to this as in they actually offer OTA updates to their vehicles but the general rule is a big stinking thumbs down. I mean the worst of this is the Range Rover I hired for a wedding to drive the bride in. Headlights gave out due to an electrical problem with CANbus when I was driving it back to the hire return. Just give me some fuses, switches and relays thanks. My iPhone has 100x better navigation, media and communications support than anything else I’ve used. So I just slave it to the car with BT. I don’t even use CarPlay because bugs (Ford, Land Rover, Citroen in particular). Keep the software and hardware separate and keep the hardware simple.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    I think you are simply from a different breed of drivers. I assume you also wrench on those cars? I also bet on simplicity, both because it's much cheaper, and because it gives me less trouble. Fuses, switches and relays, as you say. I simply don't trust a company who already has my money to maintain a software package on wheels, and I just don't trust software in general.
- wil421 5y ago
  The interior of any Tesla is light years behind a BMW/Merc/Audi. My wife recently got an x7 and even my Grand Cherokee seems nicer in some ways than a Tesla. For the price of a Tesla you should be getting so much more inside especially at the S/X price level. Compared to the Mercs and BMWs I looked at a Tesla was more comparable to a nice Honda.
Marciplan 5y ago
Genuinely curious: why haven’t you helped him try to get these bugs and issues resolved?
- hughrr 5y ago
  He’s a qualified engineer and ran a software company for 30 years. He knows his shit already so I don’t need to. But fundamentally the issues are flawed analysis rather than defective implementation.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  In my experience that is equivalent to trying to help a Harley Davidson owner fix his engine so it doesn't leak or vibrate excessively.
gspr 5y ago
I'm sorry for your father. It's sad to see Musk fan the cultism in his followers :-(
- hughrr 5y ago
  I rest in the knowledge that it is at least a relatively harmless cult in the scale of things.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by hughrr 5y ago

ec109685 5y ago

Obviously you know your father best, but it at least seems from your words it makes him happy. As someone with similar car, you get to know it’s quirks and use it when it adds value.

hughrr 5y ago
It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. And those aren't quirks; they are big stinking problems. Never write down a problem as something that isn't one. I owned a Merc 190E once that was a bag of problems. My life got better and I got happier the day I acknowledged them and got rid of it.
- callamdelaney 5y ago
  I own a Tesla, have the base model 3 and didn't pay for full self driving. On motorways and A roads the self drive experience is reasonably adequate. Naturally, on any reasonably long journey there are dozens of times you'll have to take over from autopilot and steer around some corner or some hazard. It really doesn't bother me whether it gets better or they add full self driving. Charging your car isn't a big stinking problem, it's an inherent feature.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Model 3 is a much better proposition on features and price though.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > It makes him tell everyone he's happy but that's where it ends. He's got too much pride to tell the truth. This seems to be a very 21st century phenomenon; product marketing gets replaced by cult membership. You don't buy a Tesla to experience a great car, you buy Tesla to tell everyone how great the experience is.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    It’s a very human problem from like 40k years ago. We evolved to belong to tribes and feel most comfortable in them. The difference is that with how mobile we are now, both physically and as far as our ability to communicate, we can now form tribes not based on our family and geographic location (which often times doesn’t fit us all that well) but based on what products we consume: cars we buy, video games we play, music we listen to, etc. These consumer tribes are exactly like every other tribe we have formed before, just look novel because of the focus of them. This is why you’ll see people talk about how “the Harley meet up guys are just the nicest people”. It’s only partially about the product, mostly about the sense of belonging. And before anyone calls this sad (which it might or might not be), consider that the alternative is either isolation by rejecting all forms of tribalism, or tribes formed around more harmful old school ideas (religious cults, violence-based tribes, tribes based on race/gender/etc.), or tribes we were born into and have no choice to leave because we can’t just buy the services of a farmer, a plumber, or a babysitter and have to rely exclusively on our tribe for those kinds of needs.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

I was working for a tier-1 supplier in Detroit when Tesla announced their first car that wasn’t the lotus body, a vp at a supplier laughed and said “they’re about to find out how hard it is to build cars”. This guy knew cars and every time I hear someone with negative feedback on Tesla’s I think about that. I’ve heard more people describe it as “a computer with wheels” than I can remember.

hughrr 5y ago
Yep. This. I’m even more sharp with the description. It’s a no brand android tablet with wheels. My Citroen feels better put together and it’s made of cooking foil.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  To be fair Citroen has made a lot of innovation from cooking foil!
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Oh yes indeed. It’s cheap, safe, reliable and runs on mosquito fart quantities of gas.

tails4e 5y ago

If you leave the self driving aside, the model s is an amazing car. Compared with a high end bmw/merc/audi you get more features as standard - though I do admit the finish/build quality on those cars is superior. I have a 4 year old MS, and genuinely like it and love the acceleration/nimbleness and have experienced very few issues. I'd consider tesla again for my next car, but FSD would not be a factor either way.

hughrr 5y ago
I don’t buy on features myself because quite frankly every damn car I’ve hired or bought which has anything other than basic features is chock full of bugs and has to be fixed every two minutes. Auto companies just can’t and shouldn’t write any high level software at all and low level embedded stuff is even pretty awful. They just can’t support it properly. Tesla are a notable exception to this as in they actually offer OTA updates to their vehicles but the general rule is a big stinking thumbs down. I mean the worst of this is the Range Rover I hired for a wedding to drive the bride in. Headlights gave out due to an electrical problem with CANbus when I was driving it back to the hire return. Just give me some fuses, switches and relays thanks. My iPhone has 100x better navigation, media and communications support than anything else I’ve used. So I just slave it to the car with BT. I don’t even use CarPlay because bugs (Ford, Land Rover, Citroen in particular). Keep the software and hardware separate and keep the hardware simple.
- nicbou 5y ago
  I think you are simply from a different breed of drivers. I assume you also wrench on those cars? I also bet on simplicity, both because it's much cheaper, and because it gives me less trouble. Fuses, switches and relays, as you say. I simply don't trust a company who already has my money to maintain a software package on wheels, and I just don't trust software in general.
wil421 5y ago
The interior of any Tesla is light years behind a BMW/Merc/Audi. My wife recently got an x7 and even my Grand Cherokee seems nicer in some ways than a Tesla. For the price of a Tesla you should be getting so much more inside especially at the S/X price level. Compared to the Mercs and BMWs I looked at a Tesla was more comparable to a nice Honda.

Marciplan 5y ago

Genuinely curious: why haven’t you helped him try to get these bugs and issues resolved?

hughrr 5y ago
He’s a qualified engineer and ran a software company for 30 years. He knows his shit already so I don’t need to. But fundamentally the issues are flawed analysis rather than defective implementation.
Dah00n 5y ago
In my experience that is equivalent to trying to help a Harley Davidson owner fix his engine so it doesn't leak or vibrate excessively.

gspr 5y ago

I'm sorry for your father. It's sad to see Musk fan the cultism in his followers :-(

hughrr 5y ago
I rest in the knowledge that it is at least a relatively harmless cult in the scale of things.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]