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Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

driving.co.uk

181–190 of 231 posts

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which may be problematic, but it's not like (as some here imply) that Tesla is being treated any differently to any other manufacturer.

If the headline said "Tesla vehicles have most complaints" it would be more accurate, reliability is a strange choice of words. The study is called "Initial Quality Study" and the axis label on the graph is "Problems per 100 vehicles."

To be clear, there, though - the word reliability is used by The Sunday Times, not by the survey.

Though you could argue that "I can rely on my vehicle to have a consistently high initial quality, coming from Manufacturer X" is consistent.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mazda's screen is a touch-screen at least up to 2019; you can use the knob as well (and I exclusively use the knob because finger-prints make the screen unreadable when the sun is behind you).

Looks like they started dropping touchscreens in 2019: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...

That's interesting. My car (2019MY) must be a transition model because I have the 7-way controller in the center console, but the screen can still be touched.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#183
post #150
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get night driving + rural. In the city, there is a lot of light. It's not really ever truly dark. In rural areas, on a dark night, especially with no moon, your eyes can adjust to the darkness... I tend to turn all light off inside my car when driving rural at night. That won't work though, if you have a massive, huge LCD with backlight constantly throwing white light at your eyes. Worse is if it 'shuts…

I've done rural night driving in my Tesla Model 3. Yes, the display can be dimmed down well below the headlight reflection luminosity. The display also switches into night-mode automatically at sunset, where the colors become grey-on-black instead of black-on-white. You're right about the red theme, it would be welcome.

I still don't like any internal light, and a white blacklight seems... silly. Even if dimmed down, it's still there.

(I have owned cars with LCDs before, and it's annoying if I can't completely shut them off).

OLED would at least have no backlight.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#184
post #140
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still don't get night driving + rural. In the city, there is a lot of light. It's not really ever truly dark. In rural areas, on a dark night, especially with no moon, your eyes can adjust to the darkness... I tend to turn all light off inside my car when driving rural at night. That won't work though, if you have a massive, huge LCD with backlight constantly throwing white light at your eyes. Worse is if it 'shuts…

On my Volt, the dash lights and screen automatically dim when ambient lighting is dim (aka dusk, night, tunnel). You can further dim them by twisting a small knob on the side of the dash. This should be stander operation.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tesla S was introduced eight years ago.

That is a long time, but the Charger (and the Challenger is essentially a two door Charger) was introduced 14 years ago. More to the point, the Tesla S was revolutionary in 2012, the Charger was old fashioned in 2012.

Stop moving the goal posts.

As I said in another thread, Tesla's quality problems aren't actually related to anything "revolutionary". They're problems are literally screwing pieces of metal together straight.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#186
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same metric, isn’t Tesla just like a regular car but with a bigger battery, no engine and a really big starter motor? I mean cars before that had all the adaptive cruise control stuff anyway which is the same but just a bit better right?

No, the interior and it's controls are completely different. The touch screen interface is a huge difference.

Like the touch screen a Prius has, but without the buttons?

I’m just saying if you can trivialise the huge R&D effort that went into the Prius, you can trivialise the Tesla in the same way. I think anyone who appreciates the nuance in engineering knows that it wasn’t just putting in a slightly bigger starter motor, they invented a whole category.

But the iPad is just a big iPhone, and the iPhone was just an N80 but it had a touch screen and you couldn’t install apps.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#187

This survey is garbage. Survey design is an art. And unfortunately, this survey does not differentiate between a big problem like "brakes are shot" and a small one like "My spotify playlist doesn't show up like I want". Dig a bit deeper, for Tesla, > Infotainment is the source of more than a quarter of all problems Another thing to point out is that J.D. Power’s IQS does not differentiate between a problem that is th…

> Infotainment is the source of more than a quarter of all problems

To be honest, all car infotainment systems suck, and have sucked since cars were invented.

The stock systems had good ergonomics, but shitty features.

The aftermarket systems had good features, but suffered from "presales" whizzy RGB design, with crappy button-itis after you got it home.

Now there are basically no aftermarket systems available because of car all-in-one designs.

The problem with Tesla is that their car looks like it has a big iPad in it and people judge it by the same standards. And Telsa probably has 1/10000 the staffing devoted to ios.

That said, Tesla has definitely NOT listened to it's customers when it comes to the USB music system:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bu...

There are over 103 pages of comments on it sucking.

why USB? It's the way to get lossless music playback for the $2.5k high fidelity sound some cars have.

It's also always available and fast. I have not only music, but tons of downloaded podcasts.

Personally, I think they should just put someone good on it and fix it.

While they're at it, add skip-back and skip-forward buttons for spoken audio programs. Losing your place is a nightmare.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#188
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that Mazda is stupidly easy to get into, start, put it in gear and drive though, and I bet it will behave predictably on the road like a normal car would. Everything else is secondary. Teslas definitely have a learning curve if you have never driven one.

No, tesla behaves just like a normal car. Changing gear is the same as Mercedes, default settings makes tesla same as any other car. If you will change it's settings to something different than it is have to learn something. Chill Mode + No recuperation + no "one pedal driving" and you will get typical Mazda behavior. The biggest issue with tesla is that it is freaking powerful if you are moving from other car.

This doesn't sound like a normal car to me. I've never driven a car where doing the wrong thing on the infotainment screen would prevent the car from moving.

Typically cars do it the other way around- if you're doing something you're not supposed to while driving, they just freeze or back you out of the infotainment screen but allow the car to move

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#189
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems to me that almost all technology tends to become both more complex and easier to use over time. What's easier to use, a pdp 11 or an iphone? Or a plane from the 1960s vs a modern one that can fly itself? Making things easier to use in these scenarios necessitates additional complexity.

Re: Tesla worst for reliability in American driver survey

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And notice that all the "worst performers" are luxury brands. Is this not simply a matter of those who spend a lot also expect a lot?

Could also be attributed to more cutting edge and complicated features expanding the surface area for more issues.

I'm a big fan of the old NPR show Car Talk, and one of the major lessons I've gleaned from it is don't buy something like a Maserati unless you have a burning desire to put your mechanic's children through college.
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