4 ms·

It's the quality issue for me; someone described their Tesla as "Imagine if your printer was your car."

by michaelbuckbee 4y ago

Method-X 4y ago
Have had a Model 3 since 2018. Zero issues. Same for friends.
- survirtual 4y ago
  Have had mine since 2019. About to hit 200k miles. Same. Best car I’ve owned and it isn’t even close. Not sure who all these people are but they clearly haven’t owned a Tesla, or if they have, they haven’t used it anywhere near its limits.
  - lawn 4y ago
    Classical "works on my machine!".
csa 4y ago
> someone described their Tesla as "Imagine if your printer was your car." I hope you don’t defer judgment on other things to this “someone”. There are many Tesla owners (e.g., myself and several of my friends) who are just quietly enjoying our cars.
- culi 4y ago
  Tesla cars have consistently been rated as one of the worst brands for initial quality (e.g. by JD Power who ranked them last) and for reliability (e.g. by Consumer Reports who ranked them 2nd to last) A new car is a new car though and I'm sure it's gonna be great regardless of the brand. But it's pretty well established that the build quality is extremely lackluster compared to other brands
  - csa 4y ago
    I think many people base their entire impression of teslas based on these reports, which are at best incomplete truths/summaries. Things that I can attest to (for HN folks who may be considering a Tesla): 1. Model Xs always have problems. The gull wing doors often have issues. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is bringing the rating of the entire brand down. 2. The first 6 months or so of production of any new model (not refreshed, just new) has been super sketchy. Tesla does not do this well. That said, they seem to clean it up relatively quickly, but imho it never should have happened in the first place. 3. Once they get past the initial production hiccups of a model, they seem to be very consistent. I had heard stories of Model Ys having build issues, so I accepted mine at the showroom rather than having it delivered. I had an 80-point or so build quality checklist that I told them I wanted to review. They said that they hadn’t seen build quality issues in “a long time” (this was in 2021, over a year after model y release), but they were fine with it. I found no issues. I think that this is fairly standard. Do they have Mercedes level of build quality? No. Do these flaws happen often enough that one should expect it in their new Tesla? Also no. I think that this is really overblown except for newly released models. 4. Regarding any sort of media/publication (perhaps not Consumer Reports, but I’m not sure), they know that they can get clicks/sales by bashing on Tesla, so I think that they often create sub-optimal testing conditions in order to guarantee a negative aspect of the review. As a simple example, I lost a lot of respect for top gear when they went on and on about how teslas aren’t good for race track driving due to the time a full charge lasts on a race track versus the time it takes to charge it to full. It was labored and disingenuous. Stock Teslas aren’t optimized for racing. Additionally, they could have charged up to 50-60% in a few minutes very easily. It really just took away from what could have been a much more interesting review if they had been more flexible (e.g., charging to a lower state of charge more often, like most owners do). All that said, there are some legitimate complaints to make, like some of the ones I mentioned above, but most of the click-bait pieces don’t really seem to hit the mark. My suggestion to people is to take a test drive (at a minimum) before judging teslas. A lot of the negativity is overblown and/or misplaced, imho. The only way to know for sure is to see it for yourself.

It's the quality issue for me; someone described their Tesla as "Imagine if your printer was your car."

Method-X 4y ago

Have had a Model 3 since 2018. Zero issues. Same for friends.

survirtual 4y ago
Have had mine since 2019. About to hit 200k miles. Same. Best car I’ve owned and it isn’t even close. Not sure who all these people are but they clearly haven’t owned a Tesla, or if they have, they haven’t used it anywhere near its limits.
- lawn 4y ago
  Classical "works on my machine!".

csa 4y ago

> someone described their Tesla as "Imagine if your printer was your car." I hope you don’t defer judgment on other things to this “someone”. There are many Tesla owners (e.g., myself and several of my friends) who are just quietly enjoying our cars.

culi 4y ago
Tesla cars have consistently been rated as one of the worst brands for initial quality (e.g. by JD Power who ranked them last) and for reliability (e.g. by Consumer Reports who ranked them 2nd to last) A new car is a new car though and I'm sure it's gonna be great regardless of the brand. But it's pretty well established that the build quality is extremely lackluster compared to other brands
- csa 4y ago
  I think many people base their entire impression of teslas based on these reports, which are at best incomplete truths/summaries. Things that I can attest to (for HN folks who may be considering a Tesla): 1. Model Xs always have problems. The gull wing doors often have issues. It wouldn’t surprise me if this is bringing the rating of the entire brand down. 2. The first 6 months or so of production of any new model (not refreshed, just new) has been super sketchy. Tesla does not do this well. That said, they seem to clean it up relatively quickly, but imho it never should have happened in the first place. 3. Once they get past the initial production hiccups of a model, they seem to be very consistent. I had heard stories of Model Ys having build issues, so I accepted mine at the showroom rather than having it delivered. I had an 80-point or so build quality checklist that I told them I wanted to review. They said that they hadn’t seen build quality issues in “a long time” (this was in 2021, over a year after model y release), but they were fine with it. I found no issues. I think that this is fairly standard. Do they have Mercedes level of build quality? No. Do these flaws happen often enough that one should expect it in their new Tesla? Also no. I think that this is really overblown except for newly released models. 4. Regarding any sort of media/publication (perhaps not Consumer Reports, but I’m not sure), they know that they can get clicks/sales by bashing on Tesla, so I think that they often create sub-optimal testing conditions in order to guarantee a negative aspect of the review. As a simple example, I lost a lot of respect for top gear when they went on and on about how teslas aren’t good for race track driving due to the time a full charge lasts on a race track versus the time it takes to charge it to full. It was labored and disingenuous. Stock Teslas aren’t optimized for racing. Additionally, they could have charged up to 50-60% in a few minutes very easily. It really just took away from what could have been a much more interesting review if they had been more flexible (e.g., charging to a lower state of charge more often, like most owners do). All that said, there are some legitimate complaints to make, like some of the ones I mentioned above, but most of the click-bait pieces don’t really seem to hit the mark. My suggestion to people is to take a test drive (at a minimum) before judging teslas. A lot of the negativity is overblown and/or misplaced, imho. The only way to know for sure is to see it for yourself.