261–270 of 367 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Among many, many other models both in and out of production, Teslas are not the best choice for hot rodders. Got it.
You don't have to be a car mod enthusiast to have a desire to use a business you trust and have a good relationship with to repair the property you own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Among many, many other models both in and out of production, Teslas are not the best choice for hot rodders. Got it.
You don't have to be a car mod enthusiast to have a desire to use a business you trust and have a good relationship with to repair the property you own.
A lot of this is not that uncommon for other car manufacturers as well. The "Premium" warranty of a used BMW also depends on the car being serviced at an authorised repairer. Yes, it's the manufacturer trying to be more of an "integrated" service provider and keeping the resale value up, but it also ends when the car gets older. Most of those cars the go on to lead a long life with aftermarket parts and repairs.
One of the things that makes a car valuable is having a healthy aftermarket. It looks like, from this article anyway, Tesla is doing anything they can to make sure there is no aftermarket for their vehicles. To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. And, when the manufacturer places a threateni…
My fear is high-tech components in a car. We may come to a point where we can't replace most of the gears simply because of technology unavailable. But that being said, a lot of Tesla customers are wealthy and they are probably happy to either get a new one, or send back to the factory/certified repair shop.
The fact is that Tesla simply isn't prioritizing user replaceable car parts yet. That's fine, as Tesla has a grossly different business model than Detroit.
Replaceable parts is the cornerstone of long-term reliability of machines. And it takes a lot of technology, design, and engineering to make that happen. Electric cars, as a newer technology, don't really know what parts fail in the long term, or what should be or shouldn't be replaceable yet.
In any case, I can imagine a set of gears that doesn't have any supply chain, and may be hard to replace. Just because a transmission is made of mechanical parts doesn't mean its actually practically replaceable: you need suppliers who are building the parts as well as mechanics (or books / guides) that share the knowledge of replacing those parts.
Similarly, I imagine that future electric cars will figure out what should be replaceable. Tesla clearly hasn't figured it out yet however.
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But think about it from another perspective: someone purchases Tesla car, decided to service it himself without sufficient knowledge, then later he resells his car to another individual, the person who buys his car enables the autopilot mode on a car and because of the poor service quality/mistake the original owner did to a car the autopilot goes crazy and steers your car into a brick wall, everyone will blame Tesla…
I don't think other people would blame Tesla. People don't blame the manufacturer when someone services a car and doesn't put on the breaks correctly and causes an accident.
Not sure how it works with official maintenance garages though. I'm sure there's a liability waiver signed somewhere, else there'd be a lot of big lawsuits about improper repairs by official maintainers. Unless there is no such thing as improper repairs. IDK
One of the things that makes a car valuable is having a healthy aftermarket. It looks like, from this article anyway, Tesla is doing anything they can to make sure there is no aftermarket for their vehicles. To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. And, when the manufacturer places a threateni…
It has happened already. http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/58951-Let-the-... (That starts out with parts, but the guy eventually roots his own car.)
One of the things that makes a car valuable is having a healthy aftermarket. It looks like, from this article anyway, Tesla is doing anything they can to make sure there is no aftermarket for their vehicles. To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. And, when the manufacturer places a threateni…
You seem to forget how much these cars cost. Anyone who can afford $75k-100k for a car is not that likely to want to spend a lot of their time hacking their car.
By contrast, the car I now have, a lowly Mazda3 (costing between about $17k-30k; a nice model can easily be had for about $20k or so) has a touchscreen infotainment system running Linux, and a bunch of people have been busy making hacks for this system, even including getting Android Auto running on it! But when you can get a car like this for less than $20k, that means you have a bunch of young owners, probably in college, who have the skills and spare time to mess with that stuff and spend time on forums talking about it. There aren't likely to be many Tesla owners in college; they're likely to be middle-aged at the youngest, and have a McMansion and family to take care of; that's not someone who has a lot of free time to hack on car computers.
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You are so much more optimistic about the motivations of these "providers" than I that I am struggling to find any common ground where we could have a discussion. All I see are new opportunities for exploitation and control driven by rent-seeking behavior.
If the market is open and competitive then your concerns should be addressed by other vendors. There is no need, nor is it possible, for every product to be appropriate for every consumer. The 'motivation' for these providers is to achieve a return on investment, they can only do that by creating a value proposition that the market approves, which is not the same things as a value proposition that everyone approves.…
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You don't have to be a car mod enthusiast to have a desire to use a business you trust and have a good relationship with to repair the property you own.
I would wager that the vast majority of non-enthusiasts do not have a "business they trust and have a good relationship with" that isn't the dealer.
One of the things that makes a car valuable is having a healthy aftermarket. It looks like, from this article anyway, Tesla is doing anything they can to make sure there is no aftermarket for their vehicles. To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. And, when the manufacturer places a threateni…
You'd think that out of the thousands of people who have already bought one of these cars, there might be one out there with both the skills and desire to actually own what they paid for On the other hand, it could just be that those who want to really own their cars would not consider buying a Tesla anyway, and those who have the skills are too scared of the legal aspects. I think at the moment, electric cars are st…
I would disagree, there have been a lot of electric car hotrods and DIY innovation happening for years, like the White Zombie and others linked below:
http://news.discovery.com/autos/drive/worlds-fastest-electri...
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1079928_fastest-electric...
http://jalopnik.com/the-electric-converted-1963-zelectric-vw...
More: http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/#/forumsite/20977