Nissan has manufactured over 500,000 Leafs[1] since 2010, Ferrari has produced about 220,0000 in their entire existence [2]
>Honestly, under-warranty misaligned panels and air conditioning complaints are not signs that the company is bad
That's a sign their manufacturing process and QA are terrible. What are you objectively measuring Tesla's reputation on if it's not their ability to manufacture cars? As a life long auto enthusiast I can't roll my eyes any harder at Tesla fanboys who excuse this kind of poor quality on such expensive cars.
1. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129561_nissan-has-made...
2. https://www.ferrarilakeforest.com/manufacturer-information/h...
0: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/biden-...
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/06/us-auto-sales-down-in-2019-b...
For example, that touchscreen. Using physical buttons and knobs to adjust things in the car means that the driver do not need to move their sight away from the road, and can do it blindly (because the buttons and knobs are physical that you can feel with your finger). With a huge touch screen and almost no physical buttons, you need to look at the screen almost every time you need to touch something to make sure that you are touching the right thing. This, and the whole "auto drive" shitshow, among a lot of other examples, shows how Tesla don't care about the safety of anyone outside of their cars. And for a car, safety should be treated with the foremost importance.
Like - what do you even need, while driving? Music controls ("next", volume) and wipers, and blinkers? Done, and easily, and (nearly) clearly. The minimalism is (IMHO) beautiful and very effective.
Otherwise, occasionally move the map around. Very rarely change destination address after I've started driving. One a season or something for other stuff (signing into Spotify), but that's pretty much always before I start any drive.
What do you even do in you car, while driving, that needs tactile buttons that aren't already covered?
Front and rear defrost, mist light, wipers, rear passenger airco are things I miss physical buttons for. Mist light is the most annoying since you can't even use voice control and it's fairly deep in the menu. Same thing for passenger airco.
I've never even heard of a situation where someone needed to turn on defrosters while driving; I've certainly only ever turned it on before driving (and then it stays fine).
I can see the rear passenger airco, but only if you only have rear passengers, since reaching up there isn't going to work.
They are not the same and are not activated through the pull action. The only way I've found to turn them on is `car`, quick controls, rear mist lights. Maybe your car doesn't have them but they are mandatory in Europe.
> I've never even heard of a situation where someone needed to turn on defrosters while driving
Ideally not, but have you never started driving and only then realize how bad your vision in the back is? Or maybe you would want to turn it off when the frost is gone.
> I can see the rear passenger airco, but only if you only have rear passengers, since reaching up there isn't going to work.
When you have kids that's something that will happen frequently.
Having to open a menu for wipers is the opposite of that.
My major annoyance is the glove box. I probably only opened the glove box 3-4 times a year, but the inconvenience of navigating the touch screen for that far outweighs my cumulative annoyance about wipers, which is pretty nonexistent.
I'm far more annoyed at massive view of the car and it's bad estimations of nearby cars. I'd much rather have that prime real estate be occupied by geographical map than a useless and inaccurate map of nearby cars.
Not from my experience. Having a dirty windshield or worn out wiper blades causes them to act erratically because the sensors aren't being properly cleaned. I've never heard of another manufacturer with rain sensing wipers removing the physical controls from them too. It's a horrible design choice.
From my experience, most Tesla apologists do not have a good frame of reference for what other manufacturers offer in the same price point. It's usually their first car that was not an economy car/base model. Of course a Model S is going to feel like the greatest car on the planet if you've only been driving Camry's or whatever. There are so many nuances of experiencing a car that they just don't understand and have no interest in, because when it comes down to it they like the tech experience Tesla provides, not the experience of driving a car.
I'd take the Model Y any day. It's the easiest and most intuitive vehicle I've ever driven. I used to think the same way about physical buttons. But in reality, as others have said, you rarely use the touchscreen while driving--and basically everything can be controlled by voice with a tap of a button on the steering wheel. Unlike other carmakers, the voice recognition actually works. I'm guessing they use Google for voice processing?
All the primary controls that you might need are located along the bottom of the screen. That includes front/read defrost, heated seats, etc. The volume controls are conveniently found on right, which is ideal for passengers (since the driver would just use the scroll wheel).
While driving, I use voice commands for turning on heated seats and/or steering wheel. For setting the temperature, it's literally a single tap on steering wheel, "temperature 67", or "I'm cold", and it'll lower it by 3 degrees. Probably the only time I really use the touch screen is to pull up The Bike Shed podcast and select an episode (which can also be done by voice). Other times include starting the karaoke, which is great fun when you're with family.
My mom's Lexus SUV, by comparison, is an unusable abomination of complexity. I think I counted nearly 100 buttons, including a useless "tactile" trackpad. Much of the criticism aimed at the touch interface are from people who have one thing in common: they don't drive one, and therefore make assumptions based on existing experience and intuition.
For what it matters, I'm a millennial. But regardless of age, every person who's driven my car remarks on how intuitive and easy to use it is. To be fair, there's stuff that isn't initially intuitive. When I first got the vehicle, I couldn't figure out how to put it in reverse :-). And the interaction of Autopilot and its fallback to TACC (cruise control) during disengagement, the use of the accelerator or right stalk to confirm going through traffic lights--all of which take some getting used to. But the same would apply if those systems existed in other vehicles.
The touch screen isn't that intuitive either. I've yet to figure out how to take an address suggestion and then also add a street number.
If you can afford Porsche the Taycan is leagues beyond anything that Tesla offers from a quality and driving dynamics standpoint. The Taycan uses the 992 911's (latest generation) steering rack and it really shows. It provides lots of feedback and feels very precise and responsive. It feels like Porsche, it's not numb and toned down just because it's an EV. They're also working on an electric Cayenne.
Unlike other auto-wipers I've used in the past, the wipers on my Telsa Model Y are fantastic. By that mean, in nearly a year of driving, I've never once manually adjusted the wiper speed (or even thought about it). That includes extremely heavy downpours. The only time I interact with the wipers on the touch screen is to disable them before going through a car wash.
I believe they use the optical cameras for rain detection, unlike traditional sensor-based approaches (which were genuinely terrible).
I disagree. Dirty windshields and worn out blades often make them act erratically. Anyone who lives in a snowy climate knows how salty roads instantly cover your windshield and turn it into an opaque screen without constantly spraying it. I've seen them turn on just because the windshield was dirty, there wasn't even water on the windshield.
Here's a pretty ridiculous video of some guys showing how the wipers will turn on for just about any kind of obstruction of the camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSYFMtdJ5k
Tesla is not the only EV maker anymore, so they can't hide behind "but it's an EV, so… that's where the money goes"
This is the Great Man theory of history applied to industry. Without Tesla, someone else would have done it because the confluence of available technologies came together.
Huh -- what was "American" about DeLorean, besides the founder/owner being from the US? The company was based in the UK (Northern Ireland) AFAIK, or possibly Ireland.
I think people kind of overemphasize the things the rich people do, and don't get how much a nonissue they are otherwise for everyone else. Like everyone talks about remote work constantly, but really only a minority of people can even hope to do it; many people got laid straight off during the pandemic instead.
It's also worth noting that Tesla is the first American car manufacturer to bring a vehicle to mass production in almost a century. The only other American company to come close would be DeLorean, who failed after two or three model years and less than 10,000 chassis I think. The previous one was Chrysler.
Honestly, under-warranty misaligned panels and air conditioning complaints are not signs that the company is bad. They are signs that those with an interest in keeping us burning their oil are stooping to any low to kick up dirt on the company responsible for bringing electric cars to mass market appeal. My children smile and point in delight at every Tesla the see, like I used to do in the 1980 at Porches.