Tesla exposed

I don't get the "build quality" argument against Tesla either to be honest, yes it's not perfect but what is? I've had issues with almost every Audi, BMW, VW and Merc and seen some shockers much worse on the missus cars. The thing is, the missus cars have about 0.1% of the tech, style, fun and comfort, and are absolutely horrendous to drive, so can't really compare those, it's not like for like.

Most of the Audi, BMW and Mercs are all in the price/ class vicinity of Telsa EV's, albeit their EV's cost more than Telsas for similar levels of class/ performance. The build may not be as good for Tesla, but they don't cost as much and have better tech. The build quality of cheaper Audi's and BMW's isn't as good as their pricier models also.

"Build quality" is a box to tick, but it's not in the top 5 things I look for to be honest, which are normally tech, style, looks, performance, practicality and all of that compared to the 3-5 year cost forecast. Build quality is yay or nay, if something breaks, it's under warranty. If the panel gap is 3mm bigger, I don't care, not when the other factors outweigh it. I think the Tesla's received a 5-star safety rating too, not really important to me, but will be for lots.

I am convinced that Tesla's long term play isnt in cars at all. its in batteries and energy (hydrogen, solar etc) and that cars are the disruptor they want/need to drive the widespread adoption of battery technology in the consumer world.

At some point they will produce batteries or cells or pouches for other manufacturers with much higher volumes, then they will focus on that for growth and dominance as the car manufacturers start to cotton on to how much it costs to develop their own batteries and fuel cells. We have seen a similar thing in recent years with competing car brands sharing engine platforms or even chassis's.
 
The electric will also hold value better, have less wear, battery lasts longer than an engine, better performance, better tech, nicer drive etc.

Then that's before you get to the extra fuel, tax, parking, congestion charges for ICE etc.

The initial outlay is more for EV's, but the total cost over time is less, and will become cheaper and cheaper, which can't be said for ICE.
its interesting point about sustainability if you are saying electric cars will have a far greater life span than convention vehicles then that's great for sustainability.The whole car industry is built around people trading old cars for new, if as you say electric cars performance and reliability are going to be so good then why would you change or upgrade your car every few years or so, if there's no discernible decline in the EV you own. Surely that's the last thing the car industry wants is people keeping their cars for longer.
 
absolutely not true in any way shape or form.

Petrol or diesel engines often last at least 20 years. (cars sometimes a little shorter being designed to a fixed life, but bus and truck engines are used 20 years plus in lots of cases) example, how many 15+ year old busses do you see around town? loads. (yes I am a bit of a bus spotter)

I am sure battery technology will improve significantly, but 20 years is not on the horizon any time soon. Its more likely that batteries will become a replaceable service item every 7-10 year depending on use and tech etc. Hence why I think the model will shift to a leasing one rather than a car ownership one.

Batteries and fuel cell vehicles will be more and more visible on the roads, but petrol and diesel internal combustion engines will be around in some form or another for at least another 20 to 30 years. They too will get more efficient and greener, look at the emissions levels of the upcoming Euro 7 legislation for trucks and busses, its a near zero approach.
It is true, as I was talking about car engines (or engines designed for the same market/ purpose/ load), obviously, not busses or trucks. A bus or truck engine would be designed for a longer life/ time, specific to that role.

The new Tesla batteries are expected to do 300-500k miles, and the motor a million miles, how many other cars on the road last long enough to do that? In 10 years will there be more 200k miles teslas or 200k mile BMW's surviving (as a percentage per sale each)?
Even if they do both manage it to that, the Tesla has saved enough to buy a new battery and motor (or even a new car).

20 years? How many people own a 20 year old car, or will have their current Kia for 20 years? The wear parts in that time would be largely wrecked, never mind the rest of the car. There are lots of parts connected to the engine/ or forming part of the ICE system that would not last 20 years, or need major maintenance. We have three wagons at work, and they get looked at every month, and every few months need something sorting out.

I can't see wagons going fully EV, not for 10 years at least, but we will need to see how the cybertruck goes. No doubt this is being massively looked into, by them and others.

As soon as driverless cars are in, buses will be gone, or at least downsized to minbus size and all will be EV.
Driverless could be the end of the goods wagon too, no need for such large loads when it can be split into smaller loads with less emissions and less/ no labour cost.
 
I am convinced that Tesla's long term play isnt in cars at all. its in batteries and energy (hydrogen, solar etc) and that cars are the disruptor they want/need to drive the widespread adoption of battery technology in the consumer world.

At some point they will produce batteries or cells or pouches for other manufacturers with much higher volumes, then they will focus on that for growth and dominance as the car manufacturers start to cotton on to how much it costs to develop their own batteries and fuel cells. We have seen a similar thing in recent years with competing car brands sharing engine platforms or even chassis's.
Driverless taxis (using tesla tech/ leased software) is my bet, as soon as that's adopted the car market flips upside down and most don't need their own car.
Less cars, but each one doing more miles per day, more people working from home, no labour charge for taxi drivers, safer, less maintenance.
 
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its interesting point about sustainability if you are saying electric cars will have a far greater life span than convention vehicles then that's great for sustainability.The whole car industry is built around people trading old cars for new, if as you say electric cars performance and reliability are going to be so good then why would you change or upgrade your car every few years or so, if there's no discernible decline in the EV you own. Surely that's the last thing the car industry wants is people keeping their cars for longer.
You wouldn't "need" to, but you would to get the new tech, features, performance etc. I don't upgrade my car because it's got worse, it's because the newer ones are better. You could drive around in a 20-year-old 500k mile BMW now if you wanted, but most wouldn't as it would look dated, and wrecked inside and out, and not even have Bluetooth etc. Eventually, the cost of upkeep falls behind how old the car is.

What you might find in 5-10 years is 2-3 year old "public" driverless cars or taxis with 500k on the clock, effectively cram the miles into a shorter timeframe, then get scrapped and upgraded more often, but you just need less cars on the road or peoples drives (sat there doing nothing). Smaller batteries, faster charging, less lithium (or whatever).
Carmakers could end up recycling a smaller number of cars, but more often, rather than a larger number of cars less often, but this way the newer tech is never far away, and they stay "newer".

The car industry has no choice, they should have moved with the times, but they had to get moved along by the times, for years they were all quite happy just using ICE and it took an outsider to really come and flip it on its head, it's made the other car companies have to adapt and now they have to fight each other to be more efficient/ longer range/ to keep market share.

Then what will happen is they catch up to Tesla in Battery tech, but are still 7 years behind in driverless tech, so Tesla gave them a kicking now, and they're going to get another one in 3-5 years. All that time Tesla bridge the gap on build quality, and experience.
 
I'll swap you some of my build quality for some of your tech. :ROFLMAO: It might not be built as well, but it's probably more likely to keep you alive if things went t*ts up. Also, you probably have better performance per £.

I'm not mad on the Teslas looks mind, it's the one thing that put me off, they really need to do a different body shape for the European market, they would sell miles more cars.
Agree on the looks. And don't be impressed by the tech. The headlights, for example, are the weakest LED headlights I've ever seen. The also aren't dot matrix with auto mainbeam like pretty much every other car in this price point. The sat nav is hopelessly outdated and doesn't support waypoints and the fabled "software updates" have done nothing in the last year except make the screen less useable.

I'm moaning, don't get me wrong I actually like my car but the build quality is sub par and the tech is very "apple". Superficially impressive and promoted by a group of people obsessed with the company and unable to speak objectively about it. When you actually dig deep a lot of it is poor. For example auto main beam and auto wipers: instead of using infra red sensors like every other manufacturer (that have been proven to work) they have developed a "neural net" to sense rain and oncoming vehicles. Neither of these things work. The auto main beam (none matrix) is so hideously bad it's an actual genuine hazzard and should be disabled immediately.

That being said once you get used to the phantom braking on the motorways and fear of traffic cones, the navigate on autopilot is good. Makes a journey more relaxing.
 
He's still an idiot. Teslas have one of the best safety records.

Yes the autopilot system is not 100%, but then people are not 100% either.

The accident he refers to, one guy was in the rear seat, the other in the passenger seat, which is strictly against the usage terms. Autopilot is driver assist, not driverless but these Darwin Award Nominees thought it would be cool to go down the motorway with no one in the driver seat. It wasn't Tesla's fault, it was the guy owned the car.

Of course there are issues with an electrical fire, sure, but there are issues with petrol fires too.

This guy just has a serious issue with the concept of electric cars and his high pitched ill informed screeching is sounding more and more conspiracy theory
 
Screechy shout idiot.

Autopilot is perfectly safe. It's not perfect sometimes it doesn't work but it always fail safes. I.e. if it struggles it makes you take over.

Some people just love to try and cause controversy and he's probably just some sort of anti EV loon hence the ranty shoutty videos
 
Autopilot is perfectly safe. It's not perfect sometimes it doesn't work but it always fail safes. I.e. if it struggles it makes you take over.
I'd suspect that is what happens with these two american clowns. Set it on autopilot and jumped in the back, waved to people as they zoomed past on the motorway, then something caused autopilot to disengage at high speed and they were unable to take over and take control quickly enough
 
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I'd suspect that is what happens with these two american clowns. Set it on autopilot and jumped in the back, waved to people as they zoomed past on the motorway, then something caused autopilot to disengage at high speed and they were unable to take over and take control quickly enough
Yeah that's likely. The autopilot nag comes on pretty quickly. By the time you get in the back it'll already be shutting down. Every single crash which has involved autopilot has been proven to be driver error
 
Agree on the looks. And don't be impressed by the tech. The headlights, for example, are the weakest LED headlights I've ever seen. The also aren't dot matrix with auto mainbeam like pretty much every other car in this price point. The sat nav is hopelessly outdated and doesn't support waypoints and the fabled "software updates" have done nothing in the last year except make the screen less useable.

I'm moaning, don't get me wrong I actually like my car but the build quality is sub par and the tech is very "apple". Superficially impressive and promoted by a group of people obsessed with the company and unable to speak objectively about it. When you actually dig deep a lot of it is poor. For example auto main beam and auto wipers: instead of using infra red sensors like every other manufacturer (that have been proven to work) they have developed a "neural net" to sense rain and oncoming vehicles. Neither of these things work. The auto main beam (none matrix) is so hideously bad it's an actual genuine hazzard and should be disabled immediately.

That being said once you get used to the phantom braking on the motorways and fear of traffic cones, the navigate on autopilot is good. Makes a journey more relaxing.
Ah, when I mean tech, I mean more like the screen/ software/ auto functions etc, although I'm only going off what others are saying about this to be honest.

The sat nav is a funny one, I don't expect it to be good in a Tesla, as I've never used a good "in car" sat nav, ever, they're all terrible at integrating traffic, map updates, user requirements. I much prefer google maps or waze, even through car play, but the annoying thing is on most cars "car play" is wired, or when in use it disables a load of other systems or interferes, like with the HUD, Audio, Calls etc. Things that should just "work" or integrate easily, don't work anywhere near well enough for where we should be. It's the classic trickle out tech slowly, and keep them coming back, rather than just give them what is available straight away and improve the user experience.

I didn't even realise my Merc had auto rain sensors, as they're that $hit. My mate had a clio 15 years ago that I used to commute in, and that worked better and cost a 20th of the price.

Don't get me wrong though, a lot of the problems are not the individual companies, its the industry, and company nature in general, they all try to go it alone as in the car makers all working on 30 competing sat navs, and each one of them trying to integrate with the net, apple, android and 50 other services. I can only assume they're not working together on common standards and functionality, so we will always have 30 crap systems made by 30 companies, rather than 1-2 great ones made by 30 companies.
 
I can only assume the autopilot will be much safer as a whole than any driver can be, purely as computers and sensors are better/ faster at reacting than any human. The sensors and computers will get better, but humans are effectively at the limit.

I've not had an accident in 15 years and consider myself an "above average" driver, but I had it twice where my old cars active cruise/ auto braking saved me from going into the back of someone and had my current car flash an alert to get me to react so something quicker than I otherwise would have. Yes I probably should have been concentrating better, but the point is, humans can't, not 100% of the time anyway.

There will always be flaws with computers and sensors, but they will always be ironed out, flaws in humans won't change anytime soon.

For every time a tesla wrongly ran someone over it might save a thousand others, the problem is the thousand it saves might get one story/ youtube vid, but the one it kills might get a thousand stories/ vids, it's not representational.
 
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I've never had a problem with conventional auto wipers save having to give them a "wake up" wipe if I get in the car and there is already water on the screen. Yeah there are some good points about Tesla tech but I'm just being open and honest. Day to day usage there are a lot of irritations. Where you want things that in other cars just work Tesla tend to go there own way and produce things that don't. It certainly has the wow factor but day to do, if you're in the daily commute you probably don't care that your car can recognise traffic cones.
And I agree with you on sat navs. Though rubbish my Tesla one is a lot better than my Merc one. But. The merc had android auto so I could use waze. Which is superior. Because of the way the model 3 is designed you probably won't be able to ever have apple carplay or android auto. Not when your infotainment screen is also your dashboard. So it would behove Tesla to integrate a sat nav that's as good as what people can get on their phones.

In a dream world it would have abetterrouteplaners (ev based route planning app) route mapping and Waze alerts and heavy traffic routing.
 
I can only assume the autopilot will be much safer as a whole than any driver can be, purely as computers and sensors are better/ faster at reacting than any human. The sensors and computers will get better, but humans are effectively at the limit.

I've not had an accident in 15 years and consider myself an "above average" driver, but I had it twice where my old cars active cruise/ auto breaking saved me from going into the back of someone and had my current car flash an alert to get me to react so something quicker than I otherwise would have. Yes I probably should have been concentrating better, but the point is, humans can't not 100% of the time.

There will always be flaws with computers and sensors, but they will always be ironed out, flaws in humans won't change anytime soon.

For every time a tesla wrongly ran someone over it might save a thousand others, the problem is the thousand it saves might get one story/ youtube vid, but the one it kills might get a thousand stories/ vids, it's not representational.
Exactly this. As Elon himself says the computer in your Tesla can think quicker than you. And it doesn't get tired or distracted. Ever
 
I can only assume the autopilot will be much safer as a whole than any driver can be, purely as computers and sensors are better/ faster at reacting than any human. The sensors and computers will get better, but humans are effectively at the limit.

I've not had an accident in 15 years and consider myself an "above average" driver, but I had it twice where my old cars active cruise/ auto breaking saved me from going into the back of someone and had my current car flash an alert to get me to react so something quicker than I otherwise would have. Yes I probably should have been concentrating better, but the point is, humans can't not 100% of the time.

There will always be flaws with computers and sensors, but they will always be ironed out, flaws in humans won't change anytime soon.

For every time a tesla wrongly ran someone over it might save a thousand others, the problem is the thousand it saves might get one story/ youtube vid, but the one it kills might get a thousand stories/ vids, it's not representational.
I would prefer a car with auto braking rather than auto breaking, much safer.
 
In a dream world it would have abetterrouteplaners (ev based route planning app) route mapping and Waze alerts and heavy traffic routing.
I would have thought Tesla's route planning would have been good enough, not to need an app?

I use Zap map to basically identify the fastest chargers on route, and I basically hammer those, regardless of what the Sat Nav says, KFC/ Macdonalds at Barlbrough or Duckmanton seems like my current go to if heading down the M1.
The merc EV nav has a habit of overestimating the charger speed, the accessibility of it or just prioritises a 25kW charger instead of a 100kW, purely because of the time along the route, which makes no sense in most circumstances. Anytime passing 100kW charger along a long route should be prioritised really, especially as this is the max the car can take. This is all minor stuff mind, but it should be sorted already.

I suppose you don't have that problem in the Model 3, especially not on the V3 superchargers? I bet those take a hammering.

Telsla need to put out more V3's though, and they need to be open to other CCS EV's too, and Chademo needs to just give up.
 
I would have thought Tesla's route planning would have been good enough, not to need an app?

I use Zap map to basically identify the fastest chargers on route, and I basically hammer those, regardless of what the Sat Nav says, KFC/ Macdonalds at Barlbrough or Duckmanton seems like my current go to if heading down the M1.
The merc EV nav has a habit of overestimating the charger speed, the accessibility of it or just prioritises a 25kW charger instead of a 100kW, purely because of the time along the route, which makes no sense in most circumstances. Anytime passing 100kW charger along a long route should be prioritised really, especially as this is the max the car can take. This is all minor stuff mind, but it should be sorted already.

I suppose you don't have that problem in the Model 3, especially not on the V3 superchargers? I bet those take a hammering.

Telsla need to put out more V3's though, and they need to be open to other CCS EV's too, and Chademo needs to just give up.
Sadly the Tesla nav is just outdated. New speed limits and road changes from the past 3 years Aren't reflected. Also the sim card is Dutch so when I search for nearby third party chargers the nearest one is in Nijmegen.

You're right though the car is very good at calculating charging time, down to the minute. If you're using a supercharger. Especially as it pre heats the battery so it can take more juice. I got 238KWh from a v³ on Sunday. I didn't have time to go for a coffee and comfort break before I had enough juice to continue!
 
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