The acceleration of the model 3 has already helped me avoided a few accidents.

That acceleration isn’t useless.

that’s not the experience most of the drivers desire

I'm not arguing, but do you have a source for this? I happen to agree with GP. I'm 55, I want a quiet, comfortable car. I don't care about performance.

Nor is it the experience anyone with a Tesla experiences. Nothing else comes close to Tesla in build quality (My wife's Subi Forrester is a flaming POS in comparison) or driving experience. Every other car company makes vehicles to make money, and fail on target after warranty (or in the case of Ford during warranty costing Ford billions in warranty costs). Tesla seems to "break" capitalism, they make their cars to last and NOT break.

I'm intrigued by this. I own a 2017 forester and it is rock solid. I, my family, many friends, have all owned Subarus extensively, and build-quality/fit-and-finish have never been an issue, including on some quite old vehicles.

I would very much /like/ to own a Tesla, but I hear so many bad things about loose panels, road noise, touchscreen interface, problem getting repairs, and even that the Subaru's adaptive cruise control is better than the Tesla. It's hard to justify moving away from a brand which has been absolutely reliable though.

So I'm very interested in hearing that your experience is that the Tesla has actually been better. If you don't mind: which Tesla model/year do you have experience with? I'd be interesting in determining if they're getting better, or started out great and perhaps getting worse.

There may be regional differences. Most people I know that have teslas complain about shocking build quality issues, with the exception of the cars built in China.

I feel you, I was chatting with my dad and he said something similar. Your framing as either or though isn’t quite right. I’ve found that the Model S is quite comfortable and quiet inside.

I also think it would be a very cool experience to drive a race car on a track, and I’m glad you get that experience. But I don’t see my interest in that extending or being prioritized enough to make the time and financial investment for such a specific thing. But your framing is again problematic, probably unknowingly, because having a car that can go fast and “going Plaid speeds on public roadways” with the race car comparison conjuring images of irresponsible drivers is almost entirely orthogonal to actually owning such a car.