331–340 of 460 posts
On an electric car I do care about battery management electronics though. That’s where I thought Tesla had the important edge over the competition.
This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…
I have an early VIN (004xxx series) model 3 from 2018. One of the earliest non employee deliveries. There are some panel gaps. Judging a Tesla by the panel gaps is reminiscent of the Blackberry execs judging early iPhones by battery life (ironically). The game has changed. Or, in other words: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…
This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…
I test drove it 3 times. Hated it the first time in 2018. Late 2019, I used auto-pilot on 880 and 101. I was sold. There isn't a car available now that can drive on Autopilot with that confidence. I don't let it drive on auto over 30mph, and under it is where it really shines, takes the edge off of bumper to bumper traffic. I bought it.
I took delivery on the last day of year, was a little pissed off at Tesla, that they left me with little choice if there were any issues with it. I got home, saw no issues and felt relieved. I now love the car. The Audio is turned on the moment I open the door. The temperature is set to my liking and I glide with one finger press. There are no keys, and my car knows I go to work in the morning, so the directions are set. I get on the freeway, usually bumper to bumper, set autopilot, chill out and listen to radio. I think I am a much happier person now.
This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…
The power of marketing is incredible. No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.
Tesla doesn’t advertise.
Guess who does? The car companies that you seem to think have a better price/value offering. Hmm, so yes, the power of marketing is incredible indeed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down. If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating…
If you really want to remove the 'big corp spying on you' aspect of Teslas, you can always pull the SIM card or ask for the non-SIM version. It's apparently an off-menu option, but you can request one without a SIM card, so effectively all the cell network stuff is disabled. Then, if you are worried about updates bricking something... just don't update it and never connect it to the WiFi? Seems like that gets you mos…
By way of example, I once found myself stranded at 3am about 45 miles from anyone I could get help from with a cracked radiator, no radiator cap, a gimp alternator, and no cell reception. I was too poor to afford a tow, had work the next day, and was in no position to get the vehicle properly fixed in a timely manner.
The answer to the problem was a soda can, an oil rag, a backup battery, a few rolls of duct-tape, and periodic stops to replenish my watered-down coolant whenever the engine began to redline.
Doubtless there was a more elegant solution to my problem. But that's what I came up with, and that's what I used in spite of my check engine light's protests.
A smarter vehicle might well have noted how much damage I was doing to it, and refused to even start for me.
The problem itself probably wouldn't turn up in an EV. But knowing with confidence that I can jury rig my car with 'incompatible' but available parts, or limp it home without triggering a safety mechanism that can only be reset by an authorized mechanic has become important to me, even if my commutes are broadly limited to city limits anymore, and I can afford a mechanic now.
Similarly, it's important to know that your car can be worked on by unlicensed mechanics in a pinch. Part of that is being confident that you won't lose that option in an OTA update, and that your car won't actively look for open WiFi hotspots in order to check for that (smart TV's are rumored to do this, I would assume a car is at least that advanced).
There are also issues of trust to be had around cameras replacing mirrors without offering a good fallback to the driver.
The market has spoken, it doesn't really care about these things, so ultimately I don't think a dumb car'll be an option going forward. But those are what I believe to be reasons to want one.
Is Tesla still controlled just from one tablet-like surface in the center? Meaning you can't adjust anything while driving?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tesla isn't sharing their chemistry Isn't it Panasonic that manufactures the batteries and sells them to Tesla? Can't they sell the same batteries to everyone else too?
And right now Tesla / Panasonic is maxed out in their battery production (still a scale that all other manufacturers fundamentally don't have the ability to do, much less profitably). If/when Tesla increases battery production beyond its storage and car/semi lines of business, they will probably acquire/merge other car companies on the cheap. The only thing that can eliminate Tesla's advantage is a catch-up solid bat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't. They had been saying for years that it would require a computer upgrade that could be done with a service visit, and that the service visit would be free for people who purchased the "FSD" option.
They absolutely did, and then changed the story when they announced they were building HW3. > All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware > Oct 19, 2016 > To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software ^ this refers to the nvidi…
I don't have time to dig it all up, but they were talking about the potential for computer upgrades as far back as 2016 as well: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/789008557341454336 (though not for pre-2016 vehicles).
I can see where people who don't follow the company closely wouldn't have been aware of this, though. And, obviously there have been plenty of false and misleading statements made in this area.