If it weren't for the crappy dealership model I probably would have bought the Hyundai Ioniq instead.

I basically gave up on that vehicle not because I can't wait or am not willing to play the price, but the BS process of going through one of these dealerships is too infuriating. Rivian I put my order in and at least I have an order date and understand that I'm in the queue and should be sometime MY24. If Cadillac came out with the exact same process as Rivian and it said I could get my vehicle ordered and enqueued for 12month deliver I would do it.

In Utah, where I am, it’s going to be a bit of a hill. I hear we have some laws to protect the local dealerships. Tesla dealers are just showrooms here and I don’t think they sell anything on-site. Could be wrong about all this.

The Ford CEO has mentioned earlier this year that they're less than pleased at the various markups applied by dealerships, and would want to do set price, online sales (eg. https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/02/ford-wants-to-sell-evs-onl...).

Is that "Model Year 24"? So they gave you an estimate of a year-long window, but also did not guarantee the date? How is that much different than "Youre on the list" with a traditional dealership?

It seems like there is no EV that is free of something stupid that the car manufacturer is making you put up with.

Maybe Tesla it's these general annoyances. Or collision repair or out of warranty service annoyances.

I test drove a VW ID.4. It sounds like if I bought one I might deal with annoyances (markups, delays) trying to buy the car because dealers are annoying. The flip side is if I bought one and it needs service I can walk home from the local VW dealer to my house pretty quickly. Hyper Local service is rather nice.

I went looking for a Bolt EUV recently (that price point for Super Cruise is really attractive), but they were marked up everywhere by upwards of $6K and it's impossible to reserve one from the manufacturer and actually get any guarantee that it will be purchasable at the listed price.

I have also been seeing various flavors of BMW electrics, for some time.

A chap around here, owns one of those BMW electric "supercar" looking things (i8?). I don't know him, personally.

An $18/month subscription for heated seats. This is quite frankly absurd. And I know, Tesla is the one that started it (partially), but for things such as heated seats, this is taking it completely to the next level.

Soon enough we will start seeing microtransactions to even turn the car on? Not a good look for the automotive industry as a whole and shame on BMW for this.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/business/bmw-subscription/ind...

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.

Went through the same thing with a recent starter replacement. They no longer offer OEM bosch (this was oreilly not sure about AZ) and they no longer sell Bosch OEM even remanufactures.

Again they explained to me this was due to BMW themselves.

I'm going to ride my 328i into the ground, but once its repairs outweigh the value of the car (doing the repairs myself now, had to become my own mechanic to avoid a $1700 bill and 2 week wait for a starter replacement),I am never touching one of their vehicles again.

When in the dealership in Seattle 2 years ago for an oil change and fluid top off/inspection it was a horror show.

They only added about 3 quarts of oil to my car out of the almost 7 needed after a change (light came on immediately as leaving and oil level was - null-). They never did their whatever-point inspection, never did the fluid top off, and left my oil filter cap loose! My 'account manager' was supposed to go over some stuff with me- never saw him. Was told he'd left notes on my file- did not.

While waiting I saw three different people come in with problems with their EV batteries no longer charging. The 1st two were told they'd be covered under warranty. I heard the reps talking amongst themselves about how bad it was getting and whether there would be a recall. 3d person was a lady who was pissed as she'd just had her battery replaced under warranty, it'd happened again and this time they wanted her to pay for a new one. She threatened to sue and they comped everything they could think of for her.

Now with this heated seats fiasco BMW has officially nuked the fridge.

Edit to add- if anyone is interested check out the starter replacement [1], absolutely fucking ridiculous the way cars are now engineered to stop the layman from affecting their own repairs.

Used to be starter replacement was something anyone could do and was all of two to four bolts and a wire and took ten minutes of time. You could even just replace the solenoid half the time for a few bucks.

I've now replaced brakes, rotors, control arms, shocks, struts, starter, window actuators, headlights, radiator, mass airflow sensor, ECM, spark plugs and ignition coils, cleaned the O2 sensors etc. Some of the steps are insane especially the radiator which was 600 just because California ones have a stupid sensor on them that cant be used on an off-brand radiator.

So much blood and sweat because why leave room to work on anything.

Seriously fuck BMW.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwARNcUBWE

Fwiw my car was delivered in the middle half of the original ETA, but I know that others have had lots of issues with their ETAs.

For Hyundai specifically I was looking for the Limited trim, and I've been told they're only allocating custom orders to dealerships with level 3 chargers. And even then the order bank for MY 2022 had already been closed when I started shopping around. I would have had to wait for the MY 2023 bank to open.

I remember when everyone was excited to pre-order Teslas when their actual production was several years out...

Even with that and the limited range, I bought the right car for our usage pattern and have been overall extremely happy with the car. It's been relatively trouble-free (one visit to the dealer for some combined warranty work on the battery, Takata air bag recall, and some other recall or other, all of which were taken care of for $0 and included a free loaner car while it was being done), otherwise requiring two sets of wiper blades, some washer fluid, and one tire to have a nail hole plugged.

When I say we bought the right car for our usage pattern, we paid around $21K (net of government credits) for a car that will still do 75 miles on a charge. Before COVID, my commute was 16 miles round-trip and had chargers at work. After working remotely, I drive the car much less and our two-driver family has a traditional ICE car for any longer trips. We both prefer the LEAF for around-town errands and it gets more drives than the ICE car does. I think once in 7.5 years we had a conflict where we both had more than 100 miles to drive in a day and I worked it out by charging the LEAF during my day. It's been a non-issue and getting a car that's given us >7.5 years of drama-free service for $21K has been great.

According to the US DOE, we have 4450 CHAdeMO stations and 4583 CCS stations in the US at the moment. No major charging network has started building CCS-only stations yet, though EA plans to in the future. I don't see why you're feeling that remorse, your charging network is large and continues to grow, despite your car being discontinued in the next 2-3 years.

I've owned two Nissan LEAFs (2012, 2018). The things that would give me buyers' remorse are faults of the car, not anything external. Like, not charging any faster than 40-50 kW, charging at half that speed once the battery gets hot, losing 10% of its range to battery degradation after just 3 years, and offering no upgrade path to keep the connectivity features working after AT&T shut down its 2G then 3G networks.

I drive a VW ID.4 now.

Yeah, that's a bit annoying. In the US, many(most) still do, but there aren't going to be many (if any) new CHAdeMO installations. Even more so now that Nissan itself dropped CHAdeMO in the US. The Ariya will be CCS.

That said, if you are in a city, L2 should continue to expand and hopefully you'll be able to top off during your normal activities.

The charging situation for electric cars for road trips is still a thing... It seems to have found a standard in CSS. I expected there to be adapters, but apparently making adapters is slightly non trivial as there is a lot of chatting between the car and charger.

I know a Bolt owner though, and they seem pleased.

I also know someone that has a Fusion plug-in hybrid. He loves it.

I have seen the F-150 Lightnings around, but don't know anyone that got one (yet).

My wife loves the Model Y she replaced it with. They’re vastly different vehicles, but I can say with confidence I will never again buy a GM vehicle.

But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their dealer networks, which were never a joy to interact with most of whom, Hyundai and maybe Nissan excepted, are just bringing out their first serious EVs.

Yeah, Tesla is overhyped. But their competition mostly, still, sucks. Nobody has, and nobody will for at least another year or two, make even a slight dent is demand for Tesla cars. Yes, Cybertruck is dumb. Yes, there is no roadster. But VW has apparently completely screwed their software stack. That is a much bigger failure.

The same can be said about SpaceX. SpaceX's value is highly dependent on a kind of telecom network that was a failure several times before when tried by Motorola, Microsoft, etc. Starship could fly soon, or next year, or in 5 years and it would still revolutionize access to space. Cost overruns? <cough>Boeing</cough>

It's all relative. Hype and image polishing is everywhere.

Are you assuming that this is news to the naysayers? Or maybe the naysayers are fully-informed, and they still say, "I'd rather deal with a traditional dealer than buy a Tesla"? Because that's what this naysayer is saying: better to deal with the devil I know...

So i’d posit, you actually don’t know that particular devil.

The software support in terms of updates is very good, and you still get updates to years old software.

Where they struggle is not enough service capacity and parts shortages. What you would expect from a car maker growing 50% and the service capacity has not grown as fast.

One of them has had what I would describe as a luxury car experience - fit and finish is perfect, and every detail of the car has been clearly thought about carefully and engineered to work precisely, and it was the cheaper of the two cars.

The other person got the Tesla. It's an acceptable car, but is wasn't cheap, nor is it luxurious. The quality just isn't there.

The only solid reason I've heard to buy Tesla over others is for the Supercharger network if you travel a lot or can't charge at home. Everything else comes down to preference.