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Tesla gives UK owners grabbing stick after forcing them to get left-hand-drive
- iguana_lawyer 3y agoTeslas shouldn’t be allowed on the road
- sschueller 3y agoIMO cars that have no physical buttons for important task should not be approved for public road use as long as any interaction by a driver is required.
- floodle 3y agoI really hope this touchscreen trend in cars dies, and soon.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoTouchscreens must avoid subsuming required, frequently used, or emergency controls. If/when car designers violate this rule, the interior UX is fundamentally unsafe and/or unusable.
- matsemann 3y agoI'm more wary about the huge SUVs and trucks people are buying. No consideration for pedestrian or children safety at all. Being unable to see a row of 5+ children in front of your car is a recipe for disaster when that car is used to drive your own kids to school..
- sschueller 3y agoSome of those will never be approved for road use in Europe at least. For example the EV Hummer so so heavy you can't drive it with a regular license nor can you drive it in many places. The cyber truck will probably also not be approved in Europe.
- ars 3y agoWhat's with the word "force"? The tweet makes very clear there is no force, there are simply options and the customer can accept them or not.
- _joel 3y agoPossibly paid deposits and on a wait list, expecting to get RH drive.
- oniony 3y agoIf you want a Tesla S or X you are forced to buy a left-hand drive one. You are obviously not forced to make a purchase if you don't want one or decide the compromise is too much (which I imagine nearly everyone would).
- sacnoradhq 3y agoThe word "force" is being abused with disingenuous ambiguity. Unless they deliver an LHD instead of an RHD without asking, it's "RHD is discontinued and there is only an LHD."
- kozak 3y agoSounds like The Onion.
- NovaDudely 3y agoI was wondering if they had pulled off a wonderful April fools joke... As an aside, The Onions video social media nowadays is on fire - they play the serious delivery of stupid stories far too well.
- Lich 3y agoI had to do a double check to see if I was actually reading an Onion article.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoWhen you become a trillionaire asshole, you live in a parallel universe indistinguishable from satire because there are many fewer rules and limitations for you and you listen to less real feedback.
- Yizahi 3y agoIndeed. Even disregarding all the legal and moral issues, just the mental image of trying to use this crap to simply park the car is hilarious. Imagine trying to swipe your credit card holding it with a flimsy stick perpendicular to the contact pad. Or trying to insert a paper parking ticket upon exiting parking in the tiny slot two meters far. Or getting a paper package from a drive-thru with easily a kilogram of food and drinks. Clown show. :)
- nickhodge 3y agoDo People pay actual money for these crap products?
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoI didn’t realize it was legal to drive left hand drive cars in the UK. Isn’t that generally less safe? I’m really surprised a company this large would end support for the right hand drive configuration.
- sz4kerto 3y agoIt's also legal to drive right-hand drive cars across Europe. It's less safe, but not against the law.
- rob74 3y agoThere's an urban legend around a medicine student who put a skeleton in the passenger seat of his RHD car and drove it around Germany...
- inglor_cz 3y agoIn Czechia, where we drive on the right, I occassionally meet British-side cars. Rarely, but yes. (Corrected.) I suspect that already the fact that you drove on the other side for your whole life must mess with you. I certainly wouldn't dream of trying to drive in the UK, but I am the elusive below-average driver anyway.
- d1sxeyes 3y agoIt’s less disturbing than you might think, especially if it’s an automatic. The worst bit is when you’re trying to overtake, or when you’re trying to parallel park (coming as someone who learned in left-hand drive cars in the UK, but has since moved to the EU where right-hand drive is the standard).
- inglor_cz 3y agoCZ is, for some reason, a stick-drive country. Automats were very untypical here. Lately, I know of two people driving them, which is two more than during my youth. I am not even sure why, probably can be filed under the nebulous "cultural pecularities" category, or there are some historic reasons.
- sph 3y agoHow is it worth to lose the UK, AU and Japanese market with this move? I'm seeing a lot of Teslas in London, I don't see how eliminating the right-hand configuration is justifiable economically. Yeah it might be a ball ache to design a car that supports both driving styles, but all brands with global reach have to deal with it. The grabbing stick is equivalent to being told "fuck you for living in one of those countries, deal with it." Terrible idea.
- shortcake27 3y agoIt’s just the S and X. 3 and Y are still offered in these markets in right hand drive. I assume they are not selling enough to justify the tooling. Agree the grabbing stick is a joke though.
- alignItems 3y agoElon’s ego getting into Tesla decision making.
- someweirdperson 3y agoYou want a Tesla? Simply change your local rules of the road from left to right.
- teekert 3y agoIs he wrong though? Sometimes you need to make a statement, like Apple not willing to do chatcontrol. Sometimes it's just time. It's time to drop empirical units, to much damage has been caused. My own language has so many exceptions to the "rules" that every generation spends a lot of time learning them (i.e. we say all 2 digit numbers backwards, it gets every generation, every time), again and again. It's like technical debt for a country. I thailand I almost died getting on the road with my scooter, because of the other side of the road rule. Just bite the bullet, switch, feel the pain, but then, feel that sweet sweet relieve.
- piloto_ciego 3y ago[flagged]
- everyone 3y agoThe top of that website flips out if I scroll down a little.
- savvo 3y agoIt's very confusing the way Fred uses one term to refer to two things. If they are going to continue writing about cars they really need to clear up the difference between left/right hand drive and driving on the left/right of the road.
- kleiba 3y agoGood luck paying and receiving change at your local drive-through.
- someweirdperson 3y agoIs cash still used a lot in GB? Or more specific, do Tesla drivers use cash?
- BasedAnon 3y agoLondon is mostly cashless now, but cash is still widely used outside London.
- relex 3y agoWow, resale values of young, lowe mileage right hand drive model S and X must be going through the roof now :P
- matsemann 3y agoWhen Tesla cancels a long standing order, do they reimburse you or pay some fee? At least if you reserve it and cancel as a consumer, you lose your deposit. Weird if they can do it with no financial consequences but not you.
- veltas 3y agoCar orders: you can definitely get all your money back if they're cancelled, or need to change from what you ordered. The specific contract you signed might include a clause to say they will pay a fee for cancelling your order, but I don't believe this is a consumer right. I don't know what Tesla do, but there is no situation where they can change the driving side of the car (or any significant details of the order whatsoever) without offering a full refund at the very least. This would be covered by most countries' consumer rights laws. The title is dishonest, Tesla hasn't forced anyone into a wrong-sided car.
- veltas 3y agoToo many people with more money than sense. You don't know what to do with your money if you actually buy a car that's the wrong way round because they can't be bothered to support your driving side anymore... I couldn't imagine accepting a compromise like this for a trivial item, yet alone a car.
- ojbyrne 3y agoMy impression is there’s basically only one person here who has (a lot) more money than sense.
- electroagenda 3y agoThis is an attempt to transform your weaknesses in strengths... But they definitely did not get it!
- lethologica 3y agoThe level of disrespect Tesla is showing with this move is just insane to me. “Fuck you for spending tens of thousands on our product. Here’s a stick.”
- nly 3y agoGood. Fewer of these ugly, oversized cars (the model X) on British roads. The damn things have fat arses and I hate driving behind them - they fall in to some kind of uncanny valley size wise. https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1605256/tesla-model-x-model-s.jpg?w=736&f=58425bff7f3a73e2a0b5eb51e517b7c5 https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1605256/tesla-model-x-model-...
- youngtaff 3y agoStill get those damn ugly oversized BMW’s and Mercs though
- ablation 3y agoSadly nearly every manufacturer has an equivalently-sized (or bigger) model. For example: Audi Q7s, Volvo XC90s, Mercedes GLSes, new Landrover Defender etc. All monstrously oversized for British roads. All nearly impossible to see past in a "normal" sized vehicle.
- bb123 3y agoYes, one of the upsides of driving on the left is that it has spared the UK/Australia/Japan from those awful American gas guzzler tanks.
- flir 3y agoThere's one or two around. You look an utter tool driving one though.
- rob74 3y agoEr... https://www.carscoops.com/2023/04/strong-australian-demand-could-lead-to-factory-right-hand-drive-ram-trucks/ https://www.carscoops.com/2023/04/strong-australian-demand-c... I guess the limiting factor is more the size of typical parking spaces, garages and so on. But still, there is an undeniable trend of cars getting "fatter" in Europe too. SUVs are currently the best-selling category. Ok, these are more "compact" SUVs rather than the "tank-type" ones, but still bigger (especially higher, which is bad for collisions with pedestrians, most of all children) than other categories.
- drumhead 3y agoIt was the UK's top selling car. But I suspect that Tesla doesn't have the resources to maintain the necessary production infrastructure for the volume of cars produced.
- bb123 3y agoThat's the model 3 and now the model Y. This just affects the S and X which were never mainstream anyway.
- switch007 3y agoI have zero doubt he did this just for the PR and ego boost for him, seeing people so desperate and dumb to keep a LHD car and use that silly stick.
- rob74 3y agoI have to say I am really disappointed - from Tesla I would have expected more, like a robotic arm that can not only grab parking tickets, but also grab heavy take-out food bags, hand out cash, pay by card (incl. entering your PIN if needed), insert a key into a lock and turn it (in case your garage door isn't remote controlled) etc. etc. ... but I guess that would have negated the slim savings from throwing out the right hand drive option. ... and I fully expect there will be TikTok/Youtube videos appearing over the next weeks of people trying to do all of the above (and more) with this grabbing stick.
- shultays 3y agoIsnit legal to use right-hand cars on those countries? I assume it would be legal temporarily, like if you are a tourist or something, but not for citizens
- pmx 3y agoAs much as I think this is a dick move from Tesla, I find the term "force" here to be misused. Customers were given the option to cancel their order or accept the left hand drive version. If I had been given this choice i would, of course, have cancelled my order and vowed never to buy another musk product again. I can't understand why someone would go through with the purchase after having such a anti-customer trick played on them by Tesla.
- bb123 3y agoIt is far less safe to drive a car with a steering wheel on the wrong side - it shouldn’t be legal for Tesla to sell them in this way.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoThe arrogance of Tesla. The UK homologation regulator(s) ought to ban LHD for safety reasons.
- xen0 3y agoThings like this mean I just can't regard Tesla as a serious car company. They're a company that mostly makes cars, sure, but they (and investors) clearly view themselves as something else.
- benbojangles 3y agoFor Drive-thrus?
- ppetty 3y agoNobody gets what they want with that guy. Right hand drive: nope. Tweets about Tesla’s with no right hand drive: nope. This is somewhat ironic that some people’s inclination will be to complain about a Tesla issue on Twitter, how long before the conspiracy theorists put this all together?