My family waited for 2 years on a Lada in the 1980s.

The prices for vehicles from the other makes are absolutely insane for anything comparable.

I really, really like the design of the F-150 Lightning. If I could get it with 300 miles of range, rapidly recharge it on a trip and get it used for somewhere in the $40-60k range I'd probably get one.

As it stands, it's closer to 200 miles of range for $80-90k without the ability to rapid recharge (that I have seen).

Potential is there, but efficiency of production is not. Especially when they're publicly saying they still lose thousands on each one sold.

Most are still years behind Tesla on the range or software quality part. Ask any Volkswagen owner, their software has gone to shit.

On top of that they're rare in numbers. Tesla makes more cars in a quarter than BMW in a year, and it's obvious that the focus of the "classic" ICE car industry still lies on huge, gas guzzling, high-margin SUVs.

FTA: "In July, the news agency revealed how Tesla had created a secret team to suppress thousands of customer complaints about poor driving range. The report, which found that Tesla rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars’ in-dash range estimates, sparked a federal investigation."

You think this information will be used to make things better for you the consumer? This is war, and you're the enemy.

Regarding range, pretty much any EV with a comparable battery pack (kWh-wise) is a peer. And there’s plenty of those now.

Maybe you could say 'you don't want UI software from your car manufacturer' but that's obviously wrong for the market as well- what about users who don't have an apple, or who prefer not to use their phone at all? Cars are moving towards more tech integration, not less, so the entire idea of auto manufacturers not needing to focus on software makes no sense. Zooming back out to the larger point, Tesla is clearly leading the software battle, and that's a battle that matters for consumers.

I don't think the original comment was made in a way that this nitpicking adds anything to the discussion. Cars have software for 30-40+ years if we interpret the way you are interpreting so it makes sense to ignore that meaning and actually reply to what was meant by the comment...

It's just very tiresome to have these semantics bickering when it's pretty obvious what was meant.

My point might be overly deterministic, but it's not semantics. I'm saying software has already eaten the world, and if we're going to be making outrageous wishes, we should be wishing for the car companies to implement better UI software, not wash their hands of it. At least the former is achievable. Arguably, the latter isn't even desirable.

[1] https://www.hotcars.com/why-tesla-doesnt-include-apple-carpl....

Tesla's lack of CarPlay means it's far behind in the software battle for a whole lot of consumers.

[1] these are hypothetical examples meant to illustrated a mechanism.

Well you said it yourself, it's the margins. I guess we can blame people then for paying those margins, buying those huge, gas-guzzling SUVs.

Meanwhile Tesla releases a huge (albeit not gas-guzzling in the traditional sense of course) pickup truck. (Whether it's high margin I have no idea.)

BMW Group produced 2,399,632 vehicles in 2022 (a decrease of 4,5% from 2021) with 2,100,689 being BMW's themselves.

Tesla produced 1,369,611 vehicles in 2022.

Not even sure where you heard that Tesla produced more cars than BMW.

From BMW themselves. Barely 65k cars a quarter [1], that's about 260k a year. Tesla meanwhile makes over 400k cars a quarter [2].

[1] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T041287...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/715421/tesla-quarterly-v...

No, you did not get it from BMW themselves. What you did get from them is that they produce 65k EVs, not cars in general. They produce twice as many cars as Tesla.

bmw sold >2million cars in 2022, compared to tesla's 4.2million since 2008.

That said, it’s not perfect as a car.

Also, what a ridiculous answer to criticism about quality from Elon. Just nuts.

Tesla makes good cars but to hide problems like a six year old in the hopes that no one notices is just so dumb.

It’s not whether you make mistakes but how you handle them when you discover them.

Not disagreeing with the rest. I have not had notable build quality issues but I recognize that it is an issue generally.

The self driving part is a shameful disaster which I’ve stayed as far as possible. Didn’t pay for it and even the parts that come as standard are sometimes scary. Tho not as scary as some other implementations that don’t recognize cars stopped at red light in front of you and are happy to plough into them at full speed (looking at you Volvo).

If you assume consumers are rational, then yes.

But I think that's an incredibly naive stance to take. "Desires" will do a lot of heavily lifting to determine "best" since they will include a LOT of subjective measures such as susceptibility to marketing campaigns.

Besides, we all know the Miata is the best car. https://youtu.be/kp1kuo6xkbE?t=239

How are _you_ defining best?

I do not own one, because I do not agree. They may have one of the best selling cars (in a given category), which is admirable. But that doesn’t mean they are the best overall.

After driving one (Model 3) as a rental, I briefly considered getting one. But after thinking about it, I realized that was because I liked their (to me) gimmicks. Overall, the vehicle was not the best to me.

Unrelated to reliability, I'm also not a fan of everything being controlled from a touchscreen. My wife wants one after driving a rental, but I think she too has fallen for the gimmicks.

Every single rental from Avis had a non-OEM replacement front or side window. One of them was replaced so wrongly, you could feel the air leaking through even when it was closed.

Almost every single rental also had two or more budget tires on them which tend to be louder and less energy-saving.

One Tesla had its rear camera pointed downward way too much. Unfortunately, because this car was Vision-only and lacked ultrasonics, and Vision-only Park Assist is slightly better than absolutely fucking useless, backing it in was a 2002-esque shit show every time.

This isn't unusual for rental car companies. They do the barest minimum repairs on their cars while charging you 10x the price if the damage is your fault. Scam life.

The Teslas I rented on Turo, however, were in great shape, including the Tesla that made me want to buy my own Model 3 (which is still going great 90k miles later).

That said, when I financed our Model 3 in 2020, there really weren't any other EVs and the non-Tesla charging network was practically non-existent. It's a completely different world now. I've rented many non-Tesla EVs. All of them are much better driving experiences. I'm particularly fond of the Chevy Bolt for a simple, cheap, no-bullshit commuter EV and the Genesis GV90 or Volvo XC40 Recharge Twin for something plushier.

The Model 3 I rented, from Hertz, didn’t have any visible modifications. But it was missing the outer lower plastic on one of the mirrors. The person at the desk said that they see that a lot (from a car wash?). It didn’t cause any real issues but did cause a whistling noise. When I initially got it, the Autopilot was not working (which I didn’t notice until after leaving the rental place). I looked up the error displayed, but it was pretty vague and the manual said to clean the cameras, which had no effect. Luckily I found online in Reddit or another forum that the next thing to re-calibrate, which fixed it.

Overall, I will rent one again, because they certainly are fun, but they are not what I want for a main vehicle, at least yet.

sounds like standard fit issues from a tesla....

If it’s best overall then best selling seems to be a fair way of removing bias as it is the best for most people.

Getting into it was a downer. I disliked the interior or rather the lack of it so much. Driving it exceeded all my expectations though. At that point it was the best EV, and one of the best cars on the street. Revolutionary indeed.

So, I can see how it could be seen as the best car for many people. Me? I’ll take an E-Tron, or a Taycan over a Tesla any day. I myself drive a KIA, and I much prefer it over the comparable Model 3.

And that’s before taking reliability into consideration.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kia-canada-car-sales-1.706321...

They seem pretty available here in Sweden, a friend just got his EV6 GT delivered less than a month after purchase.

Tesla is behing VW in total sales, but the M3 and MY are the best selling EVs in Europe.

https://www.electromaps.com/en/blog/europes-best-selling-ele...

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/24/these-are-the-top-5...

Tesla is about 15% of the European market, joint-second. In the (smaller) US market it is nearly 50%. I think it’s reasonable to describe it as very dominant in the US, but not in Europe. It would be reasonable to expect this to change as US manufacturers go electric and as foreign manufacturers go electric for their US-targeted models.

However, these figures are subject to two caveats:

- TÜV inspections only cover aspects relating to road safety.

- If a vehicle had a defect before the inspection that was discovered and repaired, this would not appear in the figures. Owners of older vehicles in particular often have them checked by a repair shop before the TÜV inspection because they do not want to risk having to repeat the (chargeable) TÜV inspection.

[1] Source: https://www.tuvsud.com/de-de/publikationen/tuev-report/maeng... (in German)

Thats not fully correct, a second check is much cheaper then the first one, and it's not super unusual to get it checked by tüv to see what you really need to repair.

For which magazine, tesla was such a drag on defects that it brought down the entire EV category

Musk has become so publicly toxic that he now needs to add this disclaimer when trying to pitch his company's product. Dude is becoming a detriment to investors in all the same ways he was a benefit 10 years ago.

He's always had too much of an ego, but since Covid he genuinely keeps getting visibly more dangerous as time progresses.