Live data from Hacker News

2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

cnet.com

41–50 of 183 posts

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#41

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

Had a lot of friends buy Teslas in the past few years. Exact same story: Faults everywhere, long waits, poor service (albeit super friendly and with a smile). One friend has received his Model 3 back twice now with the problem not fixed at all. He's resigned to just living with the problem until the service backlogs are lower. It has been interesting to see how tolerance for these quality issues has waned as the shin…

The early adopters were True Believers. Elon was changing the world, and to admit any fault was to interfere with The Plan. So they tended exceedingly defensive of Tesla, well past what the outside world considered absurd when they actually admitted the problems.

Tesla has expanded outside that market, and to a person who is looking for a more or less reasonable car, that matches other cars in the price bracket, you're likely to hear nothing but good things about Tesla from the usual sources.

And then you get one, and realize that they're failing basic quality control things that literally every other auto maker worked out 20 years or more ago, and their software has all the stability of beta smartphone software.

None of this is new. It's just that anyone who said anything of the sort, or pointed out that you can't have 10x the sales on 1x the service centers, or such, got shouted down as a Tesla-shorting big oil shill for an awfully long time. Now, people who don't really care about Elon or The Plan are discovering that a Tesla is a bit of a crapshoot. Some are fine. Some are lemons. And God help you if you get a lemon, because the service experience (remember, according to the True Believers, dealerships are the spawn of Satan) is horrid.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#42

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

I've had a Model3 for three and a half years now (very early VIN). It's been our primary and for much of the time, only car. It's been fantastic, and I've recommended it to everyone, and three people I know have purchased 3s/Ys as well and have also been super satisfied. Is it flawless? No - upon delivery the read badge was missing and the glove box had a gap. Went to get it fixed. Year after that the front arms need…

My car doesn't randomly apply the brakes for no reason.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#43

While it's pretty obvious that many manufacturers are coming out with their own EVs, there seems to be something of a bubble that isn't paying attention or totally ignores this. It will be interesting to see how the EV space evolves once there are mass amounts of competitor vehicles available/on the road. Specifically interesting to see how it affects valuations for these companies. I suspect Tesla's growth rate will…

>E.g. F-150 vs Cybertruck. I'm in Texas, and there are stereotype supporting large number of truck owners around. Of the ones I've spoken to about Cybertruck, not one of them are interested in the body. People like how their Fords/Dodge/Chevy trucks look, so taking the design so far away from the norm just seems like an odd decision. Worse than the original Prius design.

That’s what everyone says now. I think it’ll be a different story once there are cyber trucks on the road for everyone to see.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#44
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>E.g. F-150 vs Cybertruck. I'm in Texas, and there are stereotype supporting large number of truck owners around. Of the ones I've spoken to about Cybertruck, not one of them are interested in the body. People like how their Fords/Dodge/Chevy trucks look, so taking the design so far away from the norm just seems like an odd decision. Worse than the original Prius design.

The original Prius design was very conventional: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1st-Toyota-Prius.jpg The second generation is the well-known streamlined shape: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2008_Toyota_Prius_(N... (I think the shape was probably not a mistake on Toyota's part. A lot of people were buying them partly because they wanted other people to know they had them, and the shape indicated thi…

Maybe I have the wrong car model. What was the one with the odd shape with the rear wheels covered, etc?

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#46

While it's pretty obvious that many manufacturers are coming out with their own EVs, there seems to be something of a bubble that isn't paying attention or totally ignores this. It will be interesting to see how the EV space evolves once there are mass amounts of competitor vehicles available/on the road. Specifically interesting to see how it affects valuations for these companies. I suspect Tesla's growth rate will…

>E.g. F-150 vs Cybertruck. I'm in Texas, and there are stereotype supporting large number of truck owners around. Of the ones I've spoken to about Cybertruck, not one of them are interested in the body. People like how their Fords/Dodge/Chevy trucks look, so taking the design so far away from the norm just seems like an odd decision. Worse than the original Prius design.

I can't understand the deal with the electric F150 or almost any other modern pickup. They all have full sized 4 door interiors now, so as the truck has gotten bigger, the truck bed (the actually useful part that distinguishes a truck from a car) has gotten smaller. They are usually under 5.5 feet now, so there's many types of furniture you can't really move in them, which you could move in older, smaller pickups. Any idea? It kills the electric F150's attraction as far as I'm concerned. A 2-door model with those little vestigial jump seats behind the main seats and a longer bed would be a lot more useful.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#47

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

My first X (2016) went to the shop 17 times in the first year, all for different issues. It’s now finally more or less working reliably.

I got a new X in 2019 and so far it’s had no issues at all.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess a bit of both. In theory cameras should work fine, given that humans are pretty good at driving by just using our eyes. Of course vision will never be theoretically better than radar/laser. But should be good enough in the long run, and cheaper/more flexible. My question is, what level of resolution and processing power is necessary to interpret inputs accurately though? Just anecdotally, seems like aut…

The cameras in a Tesla are not 576mp (which is the closest approximation or estimate of our eyes), and nor do they have 21 stops of dynamic range (same). And they also don't have 16+ years, minimum, of 24/7 "non-machine learning" to augment their judgment.

Our eyes are only really high resolution in a tiny patch, and after some initial learning most of vision is a solved problem by the age of 3. That's not to say that Tesla is any closer to using cameras and machine learning to replicate human vision, just pointing out the comparison doesn't really make sense. There's no reason to think that 576mp cameras and 16 years of training are necessary or sufficient. We'll just have to wait and find out.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#49
post #2

I actively avoid being near Tesla cars when I'm driving

I had a near miss recently because the light was red at the intersection and I was pulling out of the u-turn lane. The Tesla driver in the lane closest to the interstate decided to floor it as soon as the light was green and came within 5 feet of hitting me.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess a bit of both. In theory cameras should work fine, given that humans are pretty good at driving by just using our eyes. Of course vision will never be theoretically better than radar/laser. But should be good enough in the long run, and cheaper/more flexible. My question is, what level of resolution and processing power is necessary to interpret inputs accurately though? Just anecdotally, seems like aut…

The cameras in a Tesla are not 576mp (which is the closest approximation or estimate of our eyes), and nor do they have 21 stops of dynamic range (same). And they also don't have 16+ years, minimum, of 24/7 "non-machine learning" to augment their judgment.

I disagree with your second paragraph. Not all of your first 16 years are spent in driving situations (especially not 24h a day) but Tesla’s have driven many years in total and almost all of them can be applied to improve the AI running in all the cars.
Post reply on HN