Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

driving.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 231 posts

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#111

Post by TheRealSteel »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #52
spodek wrote: post #39

> the Elon Musk-founded firm Musk didn't found Tesla. From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc . > Tesla was incorporated on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. and that they, with a third employee, > connected with Elon Musk, who contributed US$6.5 million of the initial (Series A) US$7.5 million round of investment in February 2004

Technically speaking his investment came with a retroactive co-founder status according to the company. But yeah no he wasn't there in the beginning.

Thus making it absolute garbage. I can spend as much money as I want convincing an organization to falsely call me a founder - that does not make it correct for anyone else to call me so.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#112

Post by wlesieutre »

sandworm101 wrote: post #100
wlesieutre wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though when you stuff everything except the engine and brakes into the infotainment system, it does put you in a worse spot when your infotainment system locks up. How many other cars do you need to learn a button combination on the steering wheel to reboot the infotainment screen when it crashes while driving, and then while it reboots your turn signals stop making sounds and you don't have a speedometer?

Last time I drove a rental car I left the airport driving with only one figure on a burning hot steering wheel. There was no switch. It took me pulling over at a rest stop to break out the PAPER manual to learn how to disable to fire, which was a good thing because by that point my backside was also starting to cook. I'd call that a significant design flaw.

Tesla or something else? Every car I've seen with heated seats (admittedly small sample size) had a hardware button with amber indicator LEDs showing you what setting it's on, so I'd certainly agree with not having an obvious switch being problematic. Made even worse by apparently turning it on by default?

Moving everything into hidden modal screens of the infotainment system is not a trend I'm excited about.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#113

Post by rootusrootus »

hrolfgar wrote: post #5

It seems odd that Dodge has the top score here, with Toyota and Honda significantly below the industry average. This runs counter to my personal experience and general perceptions. I wonder if historically unreliable brands like Dodge are becoming more reliable than Japanese brands, or if this is related to how this survey is conducted?

Dodge has been making essentially the same models, unchanged, for a decade. They don't use fancy technology, which means less things to break. So despite a lackluster history of long-term reliability, they've had plenty of opportunity to get the initial build quality dialed in pretty well.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#114

Post by weego »

bitexploder wrote: post #105
rsync wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tesla has the most complex infotainment system in the industry." ... which is a major design flaw.

Does complex imply harder to use? I find Tesla’s system easier to use than most infotainment systems. I would argue more features != harder to use.

I'm stuggling to come up with another meaning of complex that doesn't infer that something would be harder to use.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#115

Post by dredds »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #45

This is one of the more damning articles for me. It includes nuggets I used to say as joke about what would happen if MS made a car including: “I have tried a reset but the glove compartment will not open after pressing the button…any ideas?” One response asked if the car was in Valet mode. When told it wasn’t, they followed with: “ok. That’s the ‘normal’ cause of random glove locking. Try putting it on and turning i…

Some might consider it a feature if the glove box needs some known-only-to-the-owner quirk to open as basic security, at least prior to having voice/phone activation as an option. As i understood it, the valet mode is an early preparation for autopilot ride-hailing activity while the owner is working, otherwise known as robo-taxi mode, in order to keep the compartment locked in non-privileged cases. Can any owners confirm this?

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#116

Post by tidwall »

I traded in my Tesla Model S last December due to its degrading reliability. I ran into numerous issues towards the end such as:

- The touchscreen bubbling and tearing away due to "delamination". - Door handles "not presenting". - The radiator breaking and dumping all its fluid on the garage floor. - The fast wall charger overheating. It got so hot I often needed to use my shirt as a buffer between my hand and charger handle. I was told it was normal behavior for summer time.

Then there were driving issues such as autopilot glitching out and steering out of the lane. It got frequent enough that I had just stopped using that feature altogether. Then there was the time when I was on the I-10 going 75 mph in the HOV lane and the car beeped a warning and quickly slowed down to 15 mph. I had to put on my hazards and weave through rush hour traffic to get off the freeway and park the car. I got out of the car and back in, rebooted the computer and it started worked normally. Rebooting seemed to fix various things.

This isn't to say that my entire Tesla experience was entirely bad. I use to be a big fanboy, and in fact this was my second Tesla Model S, my first being a 2013 P85+. But sadly that era has passed I don't see myself ever buying a Tesla again.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#117

Post by rootusrootus »

asperous wrote: post #16

Here's another source (consumer reports) that backs up the idea that Teslas are on the less reliable end: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-makes-big-leap-consume... My thoughts are that Tesla is a newer company, they are trying things that others aren't, and third, reliability never seemed to be a top goal for them.

I've always figured the really crappy Model 3 builds were the tent builds. Mine, apparently, was built inside the building and not in the tend, because it's been pretty great.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#118

Post by davedx »

wlesieutre wrote: post #83
FireBeyond wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for several other manufacturers, the infotainment system is also the single largest source of problems, not "faulty brakes" or similar, so it's not like Tesla is being singled out here. > design issue in which everything works as intended but the learning curve might be too steep. It could be entirely argued that a design with a too steep learning curve, _especially when intended to be used in a moving vehicle_ i…

Though when you stuff everything except the engine and brakes into the infotainment system, it does put you in a worse spot when your infotainment system locks up. How many other cars do you need to learn a button combination on the steering wheel to reboot the infotainment screen when it crashes while driving, and then while it reboots your turn signals stop making sounds and you don't have a speedometer?

Yep. As a new Model 3 owner, this is definitely an issue and a huge drawback of them not having a smaller dashboard screen for critical functionality like the speedo. The "black screen" issue is very real and affects lots of people. I've already experienced it twice within the first month of driving, if it happens a few more times it's off to the service centre with it.

All in all I'm extremely happy with the car, it's an amazing drive, but the centre screen is definitely an issue.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#119

Post by rootusrootus »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #57
bitxbit wrote: post #38

Manufacturing quality is hard. Tesla, as a SV company, isn’t really interested in manufacturing it seems. Think they could really benefit from merging with Toyota especially at this valuation.

>Think they could really benefit from merging with Toyota especially at this valuation. Merging them would create a mass of online fanboys so dense that it creates an automotive black hole. It will be impossible for discussion of any other brand to build up enough speed to exit the fanboy-well. Joking aside, brands that start with T and end with A seem to have a disproportionate number of very loud online fanboys. I…

> Merging them would create a mass of online fanboys so dense that it creates an automotive black hole

Ha! It might not be as bad as you think, there are a lot of Model 3 owners who used to own a Prius, so there's already a lot of commonality there.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#120

Post by rootusrootus »

ForrestN wrote: post #6

Warning: anecdote. My boomer parents have a Tesla and complain constantly about its reliability. However, often this is a consequence of their own disinclination to the more "techy" interfaces that Tesla favors. There are several cases where what they see as the car's failures might be seen, by Tesla say, as user error. There's a good lesson about design and demographics there. If you're selling expensive cars in the…

> the only generation that has much disposable income in the U.S

I thought the target market for the Model 3 was primarily software engineers...

Post reply on HN