When the driver opens their door, the driver's seat starts moving backward.
If you are sitting behind the driver, and have longer-than-average legs, this means your legs are now getting actively crushed by a motor.
If it's your first time in a Tesla, you are probably now panicking trying to figure out how to open the damn door, which inexplicably operates differently than every other car door in existence.
Not a pleasant experience. I've now learned to quickly and loudly remind the driver not to exit until I do when in this situation.
The seats in my 6 year old winter beater BMW will stop moving if they encounter resistance.
It's a two-door car so the seats move often too to accommodate my dog traveling in the back seats, I'd consider it a basic safety feature.
Edit: Just tested it again, the moment it encounters resistance it reverses direction for a second then stops
The amount of force it took is fairly low too, yet I've never had this failsafe accidentally trigger.
You'd think this stuff is table stakes for a mechanically advantaged system that can move hundreds of pounds effortlessly.
In the case of automatic car windows everything from ambient temps to battery voltage is used to detect if there's an obstacle present.
And I think what makes it kind of unacceptable is you can get off the shelf modules that integrate anti-pinch features:
https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/...
It wreaks of NIH syndrome or just trying to shave off some cost.
A quick search shows Teslas even have rear seat occupancy sensors, so that alone should disable the movement if there's a person detected in the back.
Most cars it's just a toggle. In Teslas you have to setup a new profile and manually set the steering wheel and seat to the exit position. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94l43ILKRsA
A few months later I had learned how to reboot the drivers side door latch because of a software failure, somewhere… and I thought “oh yeah, right. It’s like they hooked a computer to a car.”
I am curious how much Tesla fans are impressed by Tesla-specific qualities of their vehicles vs, say, the exhilaration of driving an electric car. For many, Tesla was the first EV they have ever driven. I can understand thinking that your car is superior after associating it with the EV experience. For what it's worth, I don't own a Tesla, but I do drive an EV and it is the best vehicle I've ever driven.
This is exactly why I don't like to buy devices that are coupled to unnecessary electronic components or batteries. For instance, a high-end speaker or headphone can last decades. Make it connected and battery powered, it'll be in a landfill within a couple of years. Environmental disasters in the making.
https://www.audiusa.com/us/web/en/inside-audi/innovation/aud...
It could maybe be done by replacing the antenna with some kind of direct output that emulated a 3G tower perhaps, big job though.
I guess that's what happens when you have an entirely "software defined" car --- software bugs, because they're more common than hardware ones, can cause far more problems. Do Teslas have the two-stage latch that I thought was a mandatory safety feature?
Spoiler alert: the normal door handles don't open the doors.
Plot twist: the back doors have a completely different (and concealed) opening mechanism than the front doors.
Surprise ending: you have to teach the backseat people how to unlatch their doors, after you just trial-and-errored your way out the front door(s).
Can you elaborate on this? To me, this is 90% of importance of owning an electric car. If the range is significantly worse than expected, then the customer is being taken advantage of, since that's where most of the manufacturing cost lies.
Range anxiety is, in my opinion, the #1 issue with EVs right now. It will be helped by bigger batteries and more convenient charging.
> people were idling with full batteries, blocking my use
How? If you’re at full and the Supercharger is at high capacity they start paying idle fees. I mean I guess someone can sit there for no reason but that’s a surprising story to me.
...also known as fixes for stuff that should've been caught before you were sold it. The whole "update culture" that has permeated into everything is a horrible abomination. It justifies leaving flaws unfixed before release, under the premise that "we can always fix it later", and indeed that's what appears to have happened --- except, in a lot of cases, it never gets fixed.
Because the idle fee is less than some parking garages cost? Or less than the convenience cost of moving the car?
It's only 50c/minute if the supercharger is not fully occupied when you park.
If you're in some of the bigger cities, you can easily be approaching $30/hr for prime parking. And the idle fee is only for the period in excess of the active charging.
Tesla also just massively increased charging prices: https://carbuzz.com/news/tesla-supercharging-costs-have-quad...
In that time I've dealt with:
Several "opportunities" to go "full self driving". This specific vehicle is running up on a decade, there is no way it'll materialize for this car.
Weird sensor bugs - doors refusing to open, or more scary, opening while driving.
Center console and driver gauges crashing - screens locking up and going blank and service tells me, 'try deleting some of your navigation history?'
Updates sometimes failing, leaving the car sending notices that it's trying to update and can't, over and over.
Windows that don't seal, or seal too high (making it difficult to open the door).
Being told the built in 3G modem will have to be scrapped and replaced at my expense, requiring a whole new entertainment unit (including a new screen).
Worse battery life than expected, despite being a cautious driver who babies that battery pack.
Odd software bugs - it regularly double sends garage door commands, thinks the wrong key is in the vehicle (resetting the drivers seat to the wrong profile), fails to make and maintain Bluetooth, makes bad navigation assumptions (no, I'm not trying to drive to Prague from Seattle), back up camera locking up/freezing/delayed.
Tons of fit and finish issues.
When I first had the car, I was treated like royalty by their service team. These days they often brush aside concerns ("there's a recall for my vehicle", "oh? Yes. We'll contact you when we can service it." Months pass. "I never heard from you, is my vehicle still recalled?" "Yes, but you didn't schedule service. You should have scheduled.")
Supercharger network is great... When you can use it. I've had several instances where the hardware didn't work, the speeds weren't correct, or people were idling with full batteries, blocking my use.
So, all in all, I love this car and I hate this car, and it's just obnoxious and frustrating enough to warrant looking elsewhere. The things that make Tesla unique are fading as other manufacturers catch up, and frankly, I trust those other manufacturers to assemble a better car.