I'm not a car person so I mostly can't tell the difference in power, nor do I need it, from other cars. I didn't care about reliability since it was a lease. But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus.

The car companies brought this on themselves by designing such bad software for their in-dash systems.

Bet you could if you tried. ;)

I really like my car. It's comfortable, I like driving it.

I really really really really hate the fucking sync software. It's just awful. Full of the stupidest bugs. I don't even have the full nav version, I have the smaller radio system. If I could find a decent replacement console that let me keep my climate controls (physical HVAC controls are a must. no touchscreen BS) I'd upgrade to carplay.

I drove a Tesla and it was like a dream.

If you lived close, I'd take you for a ride in our 4000lb. VW camper van that cranks out a massive 68 horsepower. You'll notice the difference on the first hill we encounter. :-) (I take your point, though; I've a similar attitude: if I want to go fast, I'll get on the motorcycle and do it right, otherwise I don't care much.)

But I did care that I had to use yet another shitty car-company interface, so having CarPlay support was a huge plus.

Between rental cars and our Nissan Leaf with it's fucking abysmal in-dash UI, I've decided that any car we buy from here on out will have CarPlay or no deal. I'm just not going to put up with crappy car UIs anymore. Plopping a CarPlay-compatible dash unit in our old Scion xB was a revelation. Nothing earth-shattering in CarPlay, but it's familiar and non-annoying. I was driving my Mom's new '16 Corvette, and having not memorized central Florida roads, I found the UI to be annoying as usual. In fact, I can't remember if I ever found the navigation function. What I do remember is tripping across the CarPlay icon on the dash and thinking, "thank $DEITY!"

I drove a Tesla and it was like a dream.

If they just offered one model that has everything and you pick the color, pay a monthly fee and they'd take care of the maintenance, insurance and whatnot.

The reason a lot of people have bad experiences is that they're trying to buy something that they can't really afford, they need financing, and have a trade-in they want to be worth more than it is and the whole transaction becomes this complicated shell game.

You just described less than 1% of car transactions.

Sure you can and do have no haggle dealers who could offer take it or leave it finance options and trade ins. But I wonder how many mainstream car buying customers would consider that an improvement when told "that's what the car costs. Sorry if it doesn't fit your budget."

ADDED: I'm sure the experience of buying a Tesla is nice. But it's nice in the context of people who are not going in with no dollars to put down who want to find a way to get themselves into a Tesla.

Of course I should probably just lease a car but that is not very common where I live and thus prohibitively expensive. But I'd like to see it become more common as right now the risks and costs are quite hard to calculate.

I've never bought from them. Last few cars I've bought from private sellers and I will never go back to a dealer of any kind again.

Their prices are generally a bit higher than an equivalent car somewhere else; that's the price you're paying for not having to concern yourself with haggling.