I get you a perfect Sample around age, income, sex, nationality, times of day and others. Prove to you 98% of people in this Town love Romantic Comedies.
The only thing I am not telling you, is that I am running the Inquiry at the exit atrium door of a Romantic Comedy movie...
Teslas are on average substantially newer than the average US passenger car fleet and thus have significantly more safety features and driver assistance tech, are better maintained, etc.
If Tesla compared only to vehicles of similar age and class (Audi/BMW/Mercedes etc) their stats would be much less favorable.
Recent statistics released by TüV^1 show that among relatively new cars Tesla competes with Dacia for the highest failure rate among all cars that go through Germanies mandatory road worthiness tests.
^1 https://www.pcwelt.de/news/TUeV-warnt-vor-typischer-Schwachs...
In short: big car brands' cars go through a preliminary check at manufacturers' licensed dealerships, and only after that get sent to the government's checks. It enables manufacturers to fix cars before independent verification so their safety numbers look great. Tesla doesn't have this kind of extensive network for "pre-checks".
Not publishing open stats on test failures? Why is that something the customer would want to pay for?
It also lets Tesla play with the numbers of shipped cars, because cars returned by dealers don't count as shipped.
But look at the recent HN story about the Tesla without a brake pad.
Ok, so this is a check done after the car has been used for 3 years.
So, it's not QC before the car leaves the factory, it's fixing things before the government checks them and puts them into the public stats for test "failures".
If it's just the results of regular dealer maintenance, it's fuzzier.
Some dealers are qualified to perform the checks and also offer to perform a pre check for free. However cars checked by a dealer would not end up on a statistic of cars checked by TüV.
Please don't compare it to high end german cars.
This is what matters. If/when it becomes less often, the case will be made (i.e. driverless doesn't have to be perfect to be better).
- Age of driver
- Specific highways used (congestion, road conditions)
- What is classified as a highway
As in one I can hopefully sleep at the wheel on a late night trip between midwestern US cities.
John Henryism can navigate the suburbs, stroads, and drivethrus. If they achieve a backup safety system that monitors the humans, well, ok great.
But right now, I want long distance automation, and I can handle the messy last mile. Highways are much easier to get uniform infrastructure convergence: some sensors, PSA warnings, better signs + markings + construction notices, etc.
I think Uber making as big a splash at it did sidetracked this low hanging fruit. IMO that was where the bootstrap bucks were, because you would have gotten freight/shipping to pay the cost of the next gen software, and would have provided the impetus for the convergent infrastructure.
Alas, they are obsessed with robotaxis.
(I live in Europe which has relatively good railway network, still I prefer my Tesla as transport method.)
Would you rather do this for a business trip to a 400-500 mile away city:
- fixed time to depart (and fixed for leaving your destination!)
- have to book ticket weeks in advance for a reasonable flight
- no flexiblity if plans change
- pack a small bag
- transit to an airport (parking or cab or whatever)
- arrive a sufficient amount of time in advance
- check in
- go through security
- get on plane, stuck in seat, no/crappy food
- get off plane, go to car rental place
- rent car (not yours, sucks)
- cost: 100-200$, and if you want to bring anyone it's a multiple of that.
- no cell phone, restricted to plane wifi if they have it
- door-to-door is what, 4 hours? Man I hope there isn't a delay....
Or, with self-driving:
- pack your car or minivan to the brim with stuff you need
- leave when you want
- sleep / stop to eat / stop to bathroom when you need it
- full cell coverage / hotspot
- take additional people
- EV cost is like... 20-40$ for the trip if you include wear and tear?
- door to door is... 5-6 hours
If the car is driving for you, it is far less stressful, flexible, much cheaper, especially if you want to take your family.
Trains are a ... bit ... better than airplanes, but still inflexible, surprisingly expensive, won't have your car at the other end, have to haul around your luggage rather than chuck it into YOUR CAR.
When good highway self-driving comes, I will probably never fly anything less than 1000 miles. If I get a self-driving RV that's EV self-recharging at charge stations? Hell I might get rid of my apartment.
Meanwhile, I don't see many people going somewhere 400-500 miles away regularly. Most places seem either much closer or much further.
If money is a concern, you can always take the bus.
You are saying this in a thread about a company that regularly sells features as a subscription and revokes them upon resell, as well as voids warranty if you get it repaired anywhere that's not a Tesla shop. Tesla have entrenched themselves as rent seekers from the beginning.
But until they get built freeway autopilot is nice.
Me too, and my Tesla handles daytime good-weather non-construction highway driving pretty well with just the standard autosteer. I finish a long road trip much less fatigued in a Tesla than I have in any other car. (Part of that is the seats. Tesla really sweats the details of making seats comfortable.)
But FSD is kind of a sad joke. Off-highway navigation only works in particular major cities, the car stops at green lights, tries to turn right from the left lane, etc. And Elon thinks that's worth an extra $15k. Nope. It really isn't, at least for me.
- Freeways account for 93% of distance travelled with Autopilot
- Freeways account for 28% of the distance travelled by regular drivers.
- "vehicles on non-freeways crashed 2.01 times more often per mile"
a quick back of the envelop calculation suggests merely driving on the freeway lowers accidents per mile by ~40%, which accounts for most of the difference between Autopilot and regular drivers.