Live data from Hacker News

On a Tesla: Don't

medium.com

1–10 of 96 posts

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#2
"I never drive without seatbelts, but it takes at least 5 seconds to get the seatbelts on. Why not just wait till you see I’m shifting into gear before you start yelling at me?"

Very confused by this, I never had the seatbelt chime appear before the car starts moving and I have the same model as the author. It also doesn't chime when you drive very slowly in a parking situation.

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#3
A few legitimate but common complaints marred by a bunch of issues that aren’t common (my phone key works fine, Bluetooth is fine, etc) and completely unsubstantiated prediction that the runaway top seller of EVs, indeed the best selling cars several years running, will somehow “fail to compete” in the EV space

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#4
> But here’s where the CEO becomes relevant. Tesla is, in many ways, Elon Musk. Some parts are astonishing, inspiring, and good — what I’ve called above the car on down. Other parts are little more than lies and gimmicks.

From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself).

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#5
On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their mid-size electric car - the other day, and my dog was on the back seat.

She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey.

This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to...

It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#6
Yeah this article is so full of weird issues I have never had. The whole bit about full self driving makes no sense to me. You are using the keycard instead of the phone key which misses the point completely. Its not as if other cars don’t have plenty of issues at any price point.

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#7
post #4

> But here’s where the CEO becomes relevant. Tesla is, in many ways, Elon Musk. Some parts are astonishing, inspiring, and good — what I’ve called above the car on down. Other parts are little more than lies and gimmicks. From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself…

Where did you hear that? Elon was CEO long before the Model 3 existed. Before Elon was CEO, they weren’t delivering any cars at all.

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#8
The problem with a tesla is that it is like a finicky partner.

You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible.

And everything is getting better!

But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it.

- it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together

- even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.

- if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)

- some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.

- don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.

- going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#9
Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them?

If they do eventually be the first then all is forgiven (i.e. Fritz Haber is known for the Haber-Bosch process, and not for inventing mustard gas). If they don't, they'll slowly fade into irrelevancy and they'll end up as an MBA case study in 50 years.

If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives and you're a razor-sharp freshly graduated engineer, wouldn't you want to be on that train with ideas that you will actually significantly contribute to self-driving vehicles instead of...increasing Google's/Meta's Ad Revenue?

I'm not defending Tesla's approach, but interested if there's a bit more reasoning behind the inconsistency in the claims ("we're one year away, you better join us to matter!") and not just capitalism gone wild?

Re: On a Tesla: Don't

#10

On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their mid-size electric car - the other day, and my dog was on the back seat. She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping l…

Something like this happened in my Skoda a while ago. Driving along on the Autobahn when a really minor irregularity in the road caused the bag I had placed on the passenger seat to be pushed into the seat very gently, triggering the passenger-side seat belt alarm. I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up.

Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.

Post reply on HN