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> For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane. For a shit car with the

> For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane. For a shit car with the interior fit and finish of a poverty-spec Skoda, and all the important controls replaced with a bloody great iPad that blinds you at night. Oh, and it's from an obscenely "techbro" company. Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
No, you're not alone, but they still have a cachet in a certain crowd (the "green" and "forward-thinking" types love them). Hopefully it goes away soon.
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  i dunno my parents fit in that category and told me they will not consider a Tesla as long as it’s associated with Musk. EVs of other companies are really quite nice these days so i don’t think they are losing anything. Right now that have a new plugin hybrid RAV4.
yourapostasy 4y ago
> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas I could excuse the drawbacks you cited and the cost if they were the Framework laptop of the automotive world. But at those price points, and a repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill”, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’ll buy a Tesla.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill” I have a couple of old Range Rovers. There are very few things you can't fix with a half-inch spanner and a hammer, and those you can fix with a 7/16th spanner and a bit of sticky tape. They run on propane, so they get cheap tax and can be registered as Low Emission Vehicles, which is pretty hilarious for a 4-litre V8. Combined they probably still have a smaller ecological footprint than making one Tesla Model S. They've also got far comfier seats.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > They run on propane How does fueling work? Perhaps I just haven't noticed (because I have to reason to), but I have never seen a fueling station advertise propane, outside of tanks for grilling and similar.
    - MandieD 4y ago
      LPG (liquified propane gas) stations are slowly on the wane but still common enough for practical use in Germany. Common enough and cheap enough that I still feel a bit prescient for buying a 2017 Ford Focus wagon with about 30k km on the clock that was factory modified for LPG, in August 2021, for about half what the original owner paid.
    - xyzzyz 4y ago
      In Poland, these are about as common as regular gas stations.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Big doughnut-shaped tank in the spare wheel well, bit of plumbing to the front (copper in old installs, plastic on newer ones - my "old" Rangie has plastic pipe because I refurbed it about seven years ago), and a thing like a diving regulator that lets the engine "suck" gas through after boiling it off using engine coolant, and feeds it into the throttle body. More sophisticated ones use solenoid injectors that work alongside the normal petrol injectors and provide a more "direct" flow of fuel and better performance. On my oldschool install there's a stepper motor that adjusts the fuelling based on what it reads from the existing lambda sensors. When you switch to gas, a pair of modules (four cylinders each so a V8 needs two) switch some resistors in series with the petrol injectors so they cannot fire but the ECU still sees continuity, cutting off the petrol, and the gas solenoids switch on allowing propane through. To fuel up you just go to a filling station with an LPG pump (getting harder to find here unfortunately) and instead of poking the nozzle down the filler neck and holding down a trigger on the filler gun, you plug in a hose with a fitting like a BNC plug the size of your wrist and hold down a button on the pump until you've put enough in. It clicks off when it's full. No difference in performance (in theory you could adjust it to get more because it's the equivalent of 115RON fuel!) and a bit more fuel consumption, but roughly 2/3 the price of petrol.
kelnos 4y ago
I'm impressed in the sense that Tesla has done amazing things with battery technology, and has made EVs "cool". It's sometimes easy to forget, but before Tesla, EVs were ugly and nobody wanted them. But yeah, whenever I'm in a Tesla, the interior looks cheap, and the giant iPad (in the Model 3 at least) looks bolted-on rather than designed-in. Not to mention the real-time display of what's around the car is laughably bad, with cars and pedestrians flickering in and out, and sometimes not even showing up at all. I'm glad people drive them, though; more EVs on the street is a good thing.
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas? I am very impressed by their batteries and I like the look of the Model S but I'm utterly unimpressed by the build quality of the interior and the cheap materials used. At that price I'd except to be entering a comfortable car using luxurious materials. FWIW I tried the Porsche Taycan and the interior is leaps and bound ahead of the Teslas (but the batteries aren't up to par yet and the software ain't either I think).
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Look at really any of the competition at the Model S price level from the Germans and the interior is spectacular. Honestly the battery range on the Germans is also better than you realize. Tesla exaggerates their range and few actually achieve the quoted EPA range, so you can deduct 10-15% for real world. The Germans, especially Porsche undersell their range and real world you can get about 10-15% longer out of the BMWs & MBs and something insane like 35% more out of the Taycans. InsideEVs has a nice real world 70mph highway range comparison, and the ranking would surprise you compared to the advertised ranges. https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ So an advertised 350mi Model S and a 225mi Taycan in fact meet somewhere in the middle, closer to 300mi +/- for both.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

No, you're not alone, but they still have a cachet in a certain crowd (the "green" and "forward-thinking" types love them). Hopefully it goes away soon.

teg4n_ 4y ago
i dunno my parents fit in that category and told me they will not consider a Tesla as long as it’s associated with Musk. EVs of other companies are really quite nice these days so i don’t think they are losing anything. Right now that have a new plugin hybrid RAV4.

yourapostasy 4y ago

> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas I could excuse the drawbacks you cited and the cost if they were the Framework laptop of the automotive world. But at those price points, and a repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill”, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’ll buy a Tesla.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill” I have a couple of old Range Rovers. There are very few things you can't fix with a half-inch spanner and a hammer, and those you can fix with a 7/16th spanner and a bit of sticky tape. They run on propane, so they get cheap tax and can be registered as Low Emission Vehicles, which is pretty hilarious for a 4-litre V8. Combined they probably still have a smaller ecological footprint than making one Tesla Model S. They've also got far comfier seats.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > They run on propane How does fueling work? Perhaps I just haven't noticed (because I have to reason to), but I have never seen a fueling station advertise propane, outside of tanks for grilling and similar.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    LPG (liquified propane gas) stations are slowly on the wane but still common enough for practical use in Germany. Common enough and cheap enough that I still feel a bit prescient for buying a 2017 Ford Focus wagon with about 30k km on the clock that was factory modified for LPG, in August 2021, for about half what the original owner paid.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    In Poland, these are about as common as regular gas stations.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Big doughnut-shaped tank in the spare wheel well, bit of plumbing to the front (copper in old installs, plastic on newer ones - my "old" Rangie has plastic pipe because I refurbed it about seven years ago), and a thing like a diving regulator that lets the engine "suck" gas through after boiling it off using engine coolant, and feeds it into the throttle body. More sophisticated ones use solenoid injectors that work alongside the normal petrol injectors and provide a more "direct" flow of fuel and better performance. On my oldschool install there's a stepper motor that adjusts the fuelling based on what it reads from the existing lambda sensors. When you switch to gas, a pair of modules (four cylinders each so a V8 needs two) switch some resistors in series with the petrol injectors so they cannot fire but the ECU still sees continuity, cutting off the petrol, and the gas solenoids switch on allowing propane through. To fuel up you just go to a filling station with an LPG pump (getting harder to find here unfortunately) and instead of poking the nozzle down the filler neck and holding down a trigger on the filler gun, you plug in a hose with a fitting like a BNC plug the size of your wrist and hold down a button on the pump until you've put enough in. It clicks off when it's full. No difference in performance (in theory you could adjust it to get more because it's the equivalent of 115RON fuel!) and a bit more fuel consumption, but roughly 2/3 the price of petrol.

kelnos 4y ago

I'm impressed in the sense that Tesla has done amazing things with battery technology, and has made EVs "cool". It's sometimes easy to forget, but before Tesla, EVs were ugly and nobody wanted them. But yeah, whenever I'm in a Tesla, the interior looks cheap, and the giant iPad (in the Model 3 at least) looks bolted-on rather than designed-in. Not to mention the real-time display of what's around the car is laughably bad, with cars and pedestrians flickering in and out, and sometimes not even showing up at all. I'm glad people drive them, though; more EVs on the street is a good thing.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas? I am very impressed by their batteries and I like the look of the Model S but I'm utterly unimpressed by the build quality of the interior and the cheap materials used. At that price I'd except to be entering a comfortable car using luxurious materials. FWIW I tried the Porsche Taycan and the interior is leaps and bound ahead of the Teslas (but the batteries aren't up to par yet and the software ain't either I think).

steveBK123 4y ago
Look at really any of the competition at the Model S price level from the Germans and the interior is spectacular. Honestly the battery range on the Germans is also better than you realize. Tesla exaggerates their range and few actually achieve the quoted EPA range, so you can deduct 10-15% for real world. The Germans, especially Porsche undersell their range and real world you can get about 10-15% longer out of the BMWs & MBs and something insane like 35% more out of the Taycans. InsideEVs has a nice real world 70mph highway range comparison, and the ranking would surprise you compared to the advertised ranges. https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/ So an advertised 350mi Model S and a 225mi Taycan in fact meet somewhere in the middle, closer to 300mi +/- for both.