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Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

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141–150 of 278 posts

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#141
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't buy SUV's, they buy "crossovers" which pack the capacity of an SUV but get way way better gas mileage. As for Trucks, they have improved considerably in gas mileage as well. But the SUV is mostly false, SUVs have bitten the dust, crossovers like Rav4, Outback, etc have taken over. Even in luxury brands, I see tons of BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar crossovers. They look nice.

I'm pretty sure the Rav4 is considered a SUV. I don't think the Outback is a crossover. Subaru's main crossover seems to be the XV.

He might be classifying anything monocoque as a crossover, but I don't think that's the common definition.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. $60K is well into Mercedes E class, BMW 5 class, Audi S class territory. "Not that much" for the average US carbuyer, not so much.

You've just listed a group of $100,000+ AUD cars there. Just as a point of interest.

Right, exactly - but yet to listen to the grandparent comment, "that's hardly much money to spend on a car these days".

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the Camry Hybrid. You might be surprised.

My Prius is getting long in the tooth. Good replacement?

My wife and I spent a lot of time deliberating between getting a Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) and a Model 3. We have an 09 Camry Hybrid. FWIW, our Camry Hybrid is nice, but the battery halves trunk space, and the accel is sloooow compared to a normal Camry (which we owned before that).

Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on.

The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model.

There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it.

I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#144
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it is not just Tesla that is moving controls over to touch screen. The latest Honda vehicles have moved the majority of knobs to a touch interface.

This needs to be regulated against, in my opinion.

Moving to voice would be a wiser option than fiddling with screen controls.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#145
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case for electric cars taking over by 2020 is looking pretty darn wrong at this point, isn’t it?

Sounds pretty good to me. It's not spot on, but maybe up to 5 years off? For being predicted 20 years ago, it's basically correct. The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. The economics of this happening are incredibly compelling, essentially inevitable. I would put this occurring before 2025, but it's hard to say. If the Chinese keep up the heavy push toward electrification, it will…

> The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon.

No? Not even remotely close to true. The Model 3 broke into the best selling sedan list. That's great, but it's not even in the same ballpark as an EV taking the top vehicle sales spot much less EVs being the majority of new vehicles.

Just to return to reality here there are more F150s sold in 6 months than Tesla has sold in its lifetime (450k; https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America... vs. 300k; https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehi...)

In the first half of 2018 there were 8.5 million vehicles sold in the US alone. The Model 3's accomplishment of 40k vehicles is a rounding error.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#146
post #99
post #90

I personally wouldn't purchase a Model 3. I rented the long range version for a round-trip trip from San Francisco to Sacramento (about 90 miles/2 hours each way). The main things that stood out: - Changing volume and airflow through the central touchscreen were much more challenging than the physical knobs and buttons most cars have. I'd even argue they were distracting and dangerous to use while driving. I don't be…

Unfortunately, it is not just Tesla that is moving controls over to touch screen. The latest Honda vehicles have moved the majority of knobs to a touch interface.

I'm pretty confidant that all 2018\2019 Hondas have buttons and knobs for the volume and climate control functions, which was the complaint from the above poster.

Example...

http://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/Accord-Sed...

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#147
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurdly out of touch comment. The vast majority of cars sold in the US aren't even close to $60k. The average new car is only $37k and only about 30% of car purchases are new cars.

Apologies, I'm not from the United States.

You probably have class warfare in your country, too. You didn't say anything about the average consumer, but they're criticizing you as if you had.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying as a thought experiment that having fewer parts does not mean it will break down less often.

That's not what a "thought experiment" is -- you confidently said something that has no basis in reality and no argument behind it. You didn't say "maybe" or "might". A "thought experiment" is when you set the stage to explain something using fundamental physics. There are hundreds of thousands of one-gear cars on the road. There is data.

There's no basis in saying that single gear ice vehicles would break-down more frequently under conventional driving conditions?

A thought experiment needs to explain something using fundamental physics? What about a math or logic related thought experiment?

Why would I have to include maybe or might in a thought experiment?

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#149
post #90

I personally wouldn't purchase a Model 3. I rented the long range version for a round-trip trip from San Francisco to Sacramento (about 90 miles/2 hours each way). The main things that stood out: - Changing volume and airflow through the central touchscreen were much more challenging than the physical knobs and buttons most cars have. I'd even argue they were distracting and dangerous to use while driving. I don't be…

I think you have some good points here. Just wanted to point out that the audio can be controlled by the steering wheel, and they could easily add an update so that the air could be controlled by the same mechanism if they wanted to. I haven’t found that to be an issue personally, but if you drive one try it out.

Re: Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans

#150
post #13

> Tesla’s competitors are feeling it. Sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the best-selling luxury sedan in the U.S., plunged 24 percent last month and are down 28 percent for the year through September. > And it’s doing so at a higher price than other mass-market cars. The most expensive versions of the Model 3 are currently the most popular, with an average selling price approaching $60,000. It would be very interes…

I've been driving the C class cars through CarToGo, their rideshare-as-marketing operation. They are horrid. Clunky, with seats that could never pass as leather, gaudy plastic bits everywhere, and needlessly complex interfaces. Not to mention their touch screens, which... ugh. They are like a poor person's idea of what a rich person's car might look like. Flash and trim and affectation with no underlying reason whatsoever.

I mention this because I'm skeptical to attribute that drop to Tesla alone. I don't know about the high end (S class, etc), but the new C class is capable of tanking its own sales unassisted.

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