To buy a Tesla Model 3, only to end up in hell(myteslaexperience.com) |
To buy a Tesla Model 3, only to end up in hell(myteslaexperience.com) |
First, luxury cars are known to have more maintenance issues than working class cars. The idea is you should have the means to own a secondary car, or just pay for fixes. To have so many problems within a few weeks is absurd, but this is pretty on brand for Tesla.
I was joking with a Kia salesman the other day, British cars will say mate I haven't gotten my oil change recently, I think I'll take a nap on the side of the road.
Asian cars will endure endless abuse and still run.
You literally get the opposite of what you pay for with cars.
I don't really want to buy a car right now, but I'm going with an Asian econobox if I do. My first car was 15k , which was very fitting for my new 6 figure salary.
I'd say the writer wanted a status symbol, and found it doesn't exactly work as a vehicle.
"
this is how the lobotomized/neutered people react... wake up people and get back your rights
12 days seems pretty reasonable for standby?
Try not to call them Hollanders, except possibly during national football matches. Tilburg is in an area of the Netherlands that has quite a strong regional identity (and that region is not Holland). You can call them Brabanders if you want to use the regional demonym.
Also that regional identity is going to be quite strong until carnaval has passed, should you visit any time soon.
The crazies are always there. But they don't belong on HN.
What is he expecting?
It’s bullshit
it makes you feel sick and disgusted before you even get in.
> I didn’t have a car, I had a tamagotchi with wheels
Was too funny it made me chuckle loudly.
Anyway f Tesla
Anyone have any idea what this means? What's power divided by distance?
People seem to get easily confused by the W/Wh and A/Ah thing. A rental car I've took recently showed power usage in 'kWh per hour'. Bleh.
Legal Guarantee: Consumers are entitled to a minimum two-year legal guarantee for new cars. This means that if the car has a defect or does not conform to the contract, the consumer has the right to have it repaired or replaced at no cost.
Presumption of Defects: If a defect is discovered within the first six months after purchase, it is presumed to have existed at the time of delivery. This shifts the burden of proof to the seller, who must demonstrate that the defect was not present when the car was sold.
Repair or Replacement: Consumers can choose between having the car repaired or replaced. If neither option is feasible or if the seller fails to act within a reasonable time, the consumer may be entitled to a price reduction or a full refund.
Additional Rights: The directive does not limit consumers' rights to additional warranties or guarantees offered by manufacturers or dealers. Consumers can still benefit from any extended warranties that may be provided.
Cross-Border Purchases: The directive also applies to cross-border purchases within the EU, ensuring that consumers have the same level of protection regardless of where they buy their car.
Enforcement: Member states are responsible for enforcing the directive, and consumers can seek redress through national consumer protection authorities if their rights are violated.That said, Tesla opened a second service center in my country and it is far, far better than the first. It's a longer drive to get there, but it at least restored my faith in the company. My Model 3 is the quietest, best at passing, cheapest per-kilometer, lowest maintenance, most enjoyable vehicle I've ever owned. I would be a shame to me to not buy another Tesla, based on the service center experience.
And if you take the car into an unapproved body shop, maybe it’ll get remotely disabled.
I'm not sure why he's got problems returning, I'd expect Dutch consumer protection laws to make this an open and shut case.
That is the funny thing with the second hand market. 20y old cars sold 20k€ or 80k€ new are sold more or less at the same price 20 years later. Because of higher maintenance cost and parts price + higher number of stuff that can fail, the more luxury items are also the ones that are less wanted and people looking for inexpensive cars will favor the most sold small cars of that era they or an independent garage can fix easily and cheaply.
EDIT: oh wait, he did do that actually:
>> On January 5, 2025 I called Tesla Netherlands Sales Department to request the return of the vehicle and a refund of my money.
Sounds like he should contact a dutch lawyer to send them an official letter informing that he's returning the goods as unfit to use.
However, when it received the holiday update with Apple Watch support, and I paired my watch, it started losing several % charge every day. I contacted service who told me to reset my password, which effectively disconnects all connected devices from your account. That solved it. Then I paired my watch again, same problem.
In the next update, Tesla fixed it. And in the next update, it automatically paired your watch without asking. Brave/risky of them, given the previous issues.
My biggest concern for this car now, other than getting abuse for owning a Tesla or the brakes rusting up [1], is Tesla releasing a software update that breaks something, possibly dangerously. With Musk’s recent behaviour I wouldn’t be surprised if talented engineers are leaving or considering it, perhaps excluding Musk’s favoured h1b employees…
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2024/11/tesla-model-3-comes-bottom...
Clearly there are still some things to iron out, and I personally know folks with a few problems in the new model, but as a 2024 M3 owner with zero problems I hate the one-sided online communication surrounding this.
I'm not condoning Elon's behavior at all, but this vehicle is such an insane value for money especially with EV rebates and such. Purely saying Tesla is bad quality is such an easy trope, especially if you have never driven in one
That is actually one of my pet peeves ... some basic math gives you:
12.5 kWh/100km * 0.4-0.8 €/kW = 5-10 €/100km [1] 12.5 kWh/100km * 393g CO2eq/kWh = 4.913 kg/100km [2]
Now compare that to the Toyota Corolla (Hybrid) that he originally looked at:
4.5 l/100km * 1.6-1.8 €/l = 7-8 €/100km [3] 4.5 l/100km * 2.237 kg/l = 10.7 kg/100km
There are some assumptions that tilt this calculations into the EVs favor though:
1. Charging is never 100% efficient, more likely around 90%. 2. That number is based on E5 fuel, E10 takes some of that off as well. 3. 12.5 kWh/100km is what is given by Tesla, independent tests e.g. by ADAC (German Car "Club") cites 17.2 kWh or 18.6 kWh.
So overall the numbers shift a lot towards the hybrid:
(18.6/0.9) kWh/100km * 0.4-0.8 €/kWh = 8-17 €/100km
(assuming 90% charging efficiency)
---
[1] Common price for electricity in German households, better if you have solar, much worse if you have to buy for 0.6-0.8 €/kW at public chargers. [2] Based on CO2 emmisions in Germany, averaged over a year https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo/monthly ... better in summer (solar), worse in winter (coal). [3] High price for E10 in Germany, more likely 1.6-1.7€/l
But it turns out Teslas and Chinese EVs are among the worst performing in the mandatory periodic inspections in many European countries. This is not because of some anti-US/China bias in European car inspections because Ford (US) and Volvo (China) are doing well.
What happened to EV reliability and maintainability?
With nearly every other new car brand you have to go do a service once every year or so to keep the warranty.
With tesla & some Chinese brands that's not a thing
That was absolutely a lie. And the "we need the EV revolution" was pretty bogus too.
Isn't Volvo Swedish?
The situation is not dissimilar to Rolls-Royce plc (publicly-owned, mostly British; makes jet engines and other high-performance turbines) versus Rolls-Royce Motor Cars (owned entirely by BMW; makes cars only, and use BMW engines).
Zipping to 60 mph on the highway in 3 seconds was fun a couple times, but I would never own one. Especially if one guy could just delete my car if he decides he doesn’t like me.
Just tells you about the brilliance of Tesla cars.
Lack of mechanical fallbacks for many of the screen functions is a (distant) concern, but doesn't keep me up at night.
Re: @tobyhinloopen's complaints about nags: could not agree more. Tesla doesn't have any, but my friend's ICE vehicle is crazy full of them.
She should then know that "Tesla" stands for "technicky slabé" (technically weak).
As for volume of cars sold in Europe I'd bet the ID series is by far the most common with the underlying platform being the same in many models. That means if you're in trouble about some issue you're not going to be lonely.
I am mostly tech enthusiast but as a proper adult I want to scream "fu* off I just want to use that damn thing I want to play with my child and not watch another progress bar".
Also I am fully convinced that if you don't look at the progress bar something will ALWAYS break during the update so you never can just leave it to update on its own, when I look at progress bar it always works. But that's just me :)
Shareholders must be thrilled!
Funny thing, he faked that too. For a guy with so much money he is weirdly insecure about some absurd stuff
I too have bought a TM3 in Slovakia. The closest Tesla service center to Bratislava is 50 kilometers away, in Vienna.
What's the problem with not having a branch here as well?
On the other hand, if I buy a car in Holland, get it serviced in Austria, and register and drive it in Slovakia - which legal system governs the transaction? Which country's consumer rights protections do I get?
It would be jolly inconvenient if the manufacturer ripped me off, and my only option for redress was a court 1000km away, with the laws written and courts operated in a language I didn't speak.
Or does the EU have some mechanism that avoids this problem?
For someone who is "not a car guy" and for whom this is their only car....that's insane.
I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience. Actually it is degrading my whole internet browsing experience nowadays. There is too much "btw, you should feel bad when you do X". It's divisive, the US could use less divisiveness or anti-divisiveness.
And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
They were making an effort to stay on topic (reliability issues with Tesla's cars). You're making it about divisiveness.
The ethical considerations around Tesla are pretty bizarre. It gets political, since the owner of the company is so deeply associated with both the cars and politics.
I don't think your comment comes from a bad place, I understand the fatigue and the desparation. However, when someone in power does something "divisive" (quotes, because its the understatement of the decade - you can probably come up with examples) and people who mention it, even by not mentioning it, are told to be quiet because they are being divisive - it can come off as trying to silence people and ensure no criticizism can be raised.
Again, I don't think that was your intention but it has that effect either way.
That doesn't generally mean they have an ethical take, just that they recognise such things might exist and they specifically don't want to get in to it.
Is that not what you want ?
> And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
I'd assume it was because you were claiming divisiveness when the cause of such divisiveness was specifically excluded.
Ironically, buying a Tesla is nowadays a very visible political statement.
No. Sales plummeted right before they released the long-awaited refresh of the Model Y. By far their best selling model.
We have access to weekly sales numbers in China, and guess what, sales are going through the roof again.
This refresh was introduced globally (all factories converted simultaneously), which is a first for Tesla.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...
I doubt Tesla can survive with US sales only.
Japan recently got the usual Trump pressure/blackmail of investing $1 trillion in the US.
Subsidies for Tesla would look pretty silly given that the Republicans have been criticizing the Democrats for that for the last 10 years. But YouTube influencers could rationalize even that.
Yet again, with two Trump presidencies, I don't understand a lot about anything anymore.
* There might be a bit of a public outcry, but not too much because they have prepared for that too.
Uhhh...he's selling 5x as many cars than than when Covid hit and nearly the peak of sales...ever?
https://cnevpost.com/2025/01/02/tesla-global-deliveries-q4-2...
That said, it's hard to say what motive might be going on. Did someone just convince him that it was a safe thing to target? Does he think his actions will frustrate or hurt Democratic states? Or maybe he just needs something in jeopardy that he can hold above Elon as a form of extortion.
I mean if I was super worried (as a Slovak) I could buy the car in Czech Republic which has pretty much identical consumer protection laws (and all Slovaks understand Czech well and vice versa).
I bought mine in Slovenia. I understand Slovenian somewhat as well, but that didn't influence the decision.
Fortunately I had zero issues in over 3 years and the car works great, but of course I could have been less lucky – I know that.
You can start with Norway for example: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=NO&q=%...
The UK: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%...
California: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US-CA&...
You get this.
And your article is about a few European countries, not global sales.
And looking at a single month, year over year for a handful of countries doesn’t tell you much.
Tesla seems to be doing fantastic by any measure.
[0]: https://nltimes.nl/2025/01/19/tesla-owners-react-elon-musks-... [1]: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/panels/opiniepanel/alle-uitsl...
So they’d want more Musk fans to buy Teslas and support him, right? If they really felt so strongly about doing something, then they should junk the cars.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them. Musk’s fans are not going to go away, Better to let them keep the Teslas in the family.
They are many political things to say, but misreading numbers doesn't do any good in the long run ("never underestimate your enemy").
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/trends-in...
Defend him all you want, he speaks for himself. We can see his actions and who he funds.
I’m out of the loop here. Has Musk done anything related to nazi symbols (besides that weird gesture that some people say is a nazi salute), or funded Nazi organizations?
EDIT: Why the downvotes?
That's 100% allowed, i'd personally encourage it, if you find yourself in a place you don't enjoy, stop going to that place.
That's a mature response to a self-imposed stressful environment.
It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people, is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost. Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
It's frightening.
Don't like Elon’s politics? Thats reasonable.
Don’t like his approach to business? That’s reasonable.
Oddly twist everything to paint an evil supervillain?
Oddly extend that “evil” to others who fail to condemn him the same way?
Oddly spend hours and hours online arguing with people about Elon with others?
That’s not normal nor indicative of a healthy psychology.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The entire world knows it is a nazi salute, and people defending it do too. They would never put themselves on camera doing this because they know it is indefensible.
Has he actually said it wasn't a Nazi salute? My last update was that he responded to questions about this by making Nazi jokes, I haven't seen any actual denial. Could you share when he did so, so I don't spread inaccurate information? Thank you.
I follow the news, I'm pretty capable of deciding if I want a Tesla or not, people adding to all their posts that I should not doesn't change anything other then make me annoyed. Perhaps some like it, probably when it echoes their strong believes? So it's that? You signal you are one of those people? Well great for you! Now let's get back to discussing the article.
The people who like Musk are probably beyond help
In fact, I'm gonna write a blog post now: "Things I wish someone would have told me before I went online and started sharing my opinions"! It's gonna be a guaranteed front-pager!
On paper I am supposed to live in an allied country but Trump unilateraly decided that USA is at wars with everyone except Israel so I can't expect to be treated with respect by an US company. For this reason I have to remove all commercial ties with US companies and not buy anything from them unless it is an object/appliance I can certify doesn't connect to anything without my consent.
Good luck with that!
Only enough to comment on HN which is a very low bar in terms of caring.
Same level of caring as highlighting an interesting source of data, or commenting on some current news.
Being a musk supporter in this day and age isn't a simple difference in opinion, unless you're a good person who's been living under a rock, in which case a mention of musk being pretty awful could actually help you.
Also if you think nerdy people who hang out on HN are immune to being "belligerent, closed-minded and judgy", you haven't worked with many nerdy people. We technical/intellectual types tend to be very logical and rational, until we're not.
I'm not sure I've said anything that would indicate that i am , but I'm not from the US.
> Families torn apart because of how they vote
That's reductive in my opinion, I'd consider it a misrepresentation of the situation, at best.
Given your other comments i'd lean towards it being intentional misrepresentation, but i could be wrong, either way i doubt we'll come to an understanding on this point so i'll just leave it there.
> Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over their up until 10 years ago.
I doubt this is true, but if you genuinely think it's just a box ticking exercise and not a representation of ideology and perspective then it's possible we just have a fundamental disagreement of what's actually happening, so of course we'd disagree on interpretations.
> In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.
This i can see though.
> It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people,
"Intelligent" people aren't inherently apolitical in my experience, they are also significantly less likely to not call you on something they see as bullshit.
If you are looking for a place where you can define a perspective or opinion and not be challenged on it, this is absolutely not the place for you.
> is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost.
I'm genuinely not sure how to address this level of cognitive dissonance.
Either it's intentional, in which case no amount of discussion will be productive or it's unintentional and i don't know how to begin to address it.
> Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
You literally rocked up and replied to a thread with judgement based on a non-standard interpretation of a statement and then proceeded to say, multiple times, how disappointed you were that people expressed opinions different to your own, so much so that you expressed that you might leave if they didn't stop.
As i said elsewhere, you don't have to (and IMO shouldn't) stay in a place you don't like, but if you're going to be upset by responses with differing opinions to your own i doubt this is a place you are going to enjoy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx88nwy934go
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dangerous-liais...
https://www.politico.eu/article/hidden-nazi-heritage-germany...
Maybe the accusers should apologize?
Maybe they will come crawling on their knees in few months time to do so?
I don't know, but what I do like is that wokeism is slowly curing so he may have been onto something.
Question is why media decided to continue spinning the same narrative despite looking like idiots? Is it clicks, political agenda or journalistic integrity? It's not hard to see...
Maybe I should call it neo-woke when left is turning to violence and being more fascist than actual nazis? https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-r...
Germans (i.e. ethnic German citizens), should be held to a higher standard, because they are educated on this, there’s no excuse.
AfD are huge Israel supporters (they anti-muslim tho) - https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-r...
Obviously most AfD supporters are not everyday antisemites, but they are casting their votes for antisemites. I don't care to split hairs. Germans know better and do not get to plead ignorance.
Musk could perhaps have been given the benefit of the doubt, he doesn't seem to understand European politics so it's possible he could have confused AfD as being the German equivalent of Reform UK or RN (neither of which want to be associated with AfD) ...that is until he made that salute.
[0] nor are anti-Zionist and Jew mutually exclusive for that matter. Before WWII the creation of Israel was the subject of debate within the Jewish community. The Holocaust and happenings in the Soviet Union obviously shifted that debate firmly in one direction. In some sense the Palestinians are victims of the European far-right and far-left by proxy, though I am not shifting blame.
It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
In the EU, it's illegal to sell cars that don't have back camera, not beeping if seatbelt not fastened, and not beeping if speed limit is exceeded.
Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.
Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?
Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.
Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.
Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.
'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.
It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.
If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.
Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.
Agree. OP should have just bought a 10yo Corolla.
After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.
Great car.
Well, the volume knob for the car audio, while physical, is actually digital so it's uncomfortably laggy.
I only use the touch screen to interact with the navigation (it integrates with Android via USB).
Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.
Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.
But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.
Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.
Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.
No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!
Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.
What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?
The best of both worlds...
[1]: https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-ser...
EDIT: top is after, bottom is before.
Getting the software right is hard (and thus expensive), which is what traditional physical product companies have a hard time figuring out.
It told you the blind spot indicator isn't working anymore which is relevant safety information.
The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.
It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.
This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.
These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.
/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away. It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.
Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.
Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button. /end rant
For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!
Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.
- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.
- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.
- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.
On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.
At least it doesn't steal your personal data like Smart TVs do.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-10-09/car-brands-ar...
Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.
But yeah, bad software is bad no matter the tech used.
Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.
Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.
>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.
EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.
As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
After my Nissan car started to have transmission problems that would cost thousands of dollars to fix (among various other small issues), I sold it as quickly as possibly and swore I'll touch the make again.
Why did you buy a second one??
First: has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it. Because comparing it to a Clio just because the Clio worked, well, seems a bit off. a Clio is a car, a fully functional Tesla is a gian iPad with wheels. There's a huge difference.
Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
Third: No doubt that a car with all these defects _must_ be changed, or fixed immediately at no cost of transportation, or offered a compensation to get it back. I think the owner should _also_ contact a lawyer and try to get a refund. I'd not accept this kind of treatment.
Contact ECC-NET and ask for advice on next steps: https://commission.europa.eu/live-work-travel-eu/consumer-ri...
There are zero screens, touch or not (not counting the instrument displays). Everything is operated with the old buttons and dials, though the windows are electrically operated. It has a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port (which supports USB audio). I haven't measured exactly but its fuel efficiency is fantastic, probably 70 mpg or more.
It has very common parts and can be serviced basically anywhere in the country. I see tons of the same car on the road everywhere.
Downsides of course are the engine is fairly weak, and it's not as safe in an accident compared to bigger cars. But if you're driving in a country where everyone else is driving small cars, that's less of a concern.
I don't know what the point of writing all that was, but I'm just glad to not be in the same car situation as the OP. It doesn't have to be that way!
- All my communications with the Budapest Service Center: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-04/all-my-communic...
- How to spit in a customer's face: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-07/how-to-spit-in-...
The customer went to the length of buying the domain of the type _company_ is terrible, started to collect reviews from other allegedly wronged customers, and SEO it to the first position in Google search results when you searched for any of the food items or the company name, above the company itself.
As a result the company had to advertise a lot on Google to make sure it's own order links are sponsored above the complaint website. That costed A LOT of money, but if they stopped advertising, the online order business would die.
We offered to buy the website or pay the owner to take it down, at basically name your price, and the owner refused any deal, out of principle.
It's amazing what an unreasonably determined individual can do
* they sold him a broken car in December, that keeps losing battery 8% per day even when standing out doing nothing
* they told him they could repair it, at the end of February, because of high demand for the part
* he cannot now go to holiday peacefully and has to charge it nonstop
* he doesn't consider the car safe to drive it all the way to the service center, because it basically doesn't work
* the customer support is ignoring him
Sounds like a nightmare alright. If I was him I would start getting lawyers/customer rights groups involved.
start writing paper letters instead of e-mails. Usually companies take those more seriously. Paper letters means "ok he is really talking business now".
You can write up a letter for them and they send it.
In many companies anything going through legal is immediately prioritised.
And what’s the point of a “summary” when TFA opened with a very good two paragraph summary of the situation? Can’t even tell if it’s gaslighting to make light of the problems, or some stupid AI summary service running amok.
Hyundai and Polestar are way better electric options that are actually enjoyable and comfortable to drive
But OP has clearly received a lemon, and Tesla service has a well-deserved reputation for being extremely slow when they need to fix any non-trivial issue. And in the OP's case buying the car in a country with no official Tesla presence is making things even worse.
I have no idea how it drives, and I am pretty sure the answer is not "horrible", but the sale numbers of a car that is ordered mostly online without test drives doesn't mean anything.
cite?
Some of the Hyundais look neat. That company has come a long way.
I was behind a brand-new Tesla Model S, a few months ago. Looked like about a $90K trim package.
The trunk was slightly out of line. Probably not enough to affect the seals, but plainly visible.
It would likely have taken two minutes with an Allen wrench to fix, and the fact that a car costing that much, was allowed to leave the factory in that condition, does not speak well for their QC.
Volvo’s owner is a front man for the Chinese government, who are supposedly not averse to ethnic cleansing, as far as I have read.
This is a common problem. I also have a severe dislike of the Tesla updating process. I have the feeling that it's made for people who have a garage with 24/7 wifi. Without that, you're out of luck. In Okt and Dec of last year I have spent 4 hours per month on updating. This is with a 2020 Model 3.
The solution by the way for this problem is probably to go into the service mode and reinstall the software [1]. It will give some nasty warnings but it should work. I tested it myself once and for me it worked.
Another note:
> But this is Tesla, and it seems like no one is behind the wheel.
Yes that's true. It's very hard to get support and I also have some gripes about how some serious problems are not fixed. Tesla does have amazing online manuals though so that does alleviate the situation a bit. Also, if I need service I learned it's best to just walk into the service centre and ask there. They are very reasonable then. Just don't try any digital way. There is no point.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/x00cbj/comment...
There being an "updating process" is already a huge red flag for a car.
I don't like the modern 'car OS as a service' system where every month or so defects need to be fixed for some reason, but OTA is a hell of a lot better than the system before software updates became available to consumers.
That is not true at all. You have EXACTLY the same protections no matter where you purchase from in the EU, and there is a lot of assistance set up specifically to help handling cross-border issues.
I do agree that the distance is definitely an issue for service though - its exactly why I haven't purchased a tesla
Overall, this seems like a car brand with many pitfalls and "special" service culture. Together with the CEO radicalizing himself, I don't see any particular reason to buy them.
If every wronged customer can sue the seller due to a clear breach of the law, then the seller/manufacturer quickly falls in line and stops being a nuisance to society.
Maybe pack those pseudocourts by registering a huge roster of consumer-oriented arbitrators?
But, since there aren't any dealerships / service points anywhere close, he has to drive 12 hours to the closest one. He got some error, I think it was the tire pressure sensors/tire pressure monitoring system, and had to drive 12 hours, sleep in hotel, and drive 12 hours back, to get that error fixed.
Two days after he comes back home, a new error with the AC pops up. Back on the road.
Local 3rd party techs can't do anything with it anyway. And since it was still under warranty, that's what he had to do. With that said, from what I've heard, they've increased their traveling / touring techs that will visit rural towns.
Hell, even repairing my 14 year old Audi is 50% mechanical work, and 50% knowing how to use the diagnosis / VCDS tool. I'm not even joking when I say that my electrical engineering and programming background has helped me more with fixing my car, than the mechanical skills I picked up in the garage. ¨
With very modern cars, there's just little one can do.
> To start with, the Dolphin falls victim to a speed limit warning system with no tolerance and a chiding beep that will quickly drive you insane.
The car has cameras to read speed signs and if it detects you are speeding beep at you. Sounds like a great feature! What's the problem if you aren't speeding?
> To make matters worse, the Dolphin is equipped with equally flawed traffic sign recognition technology that takes all speed limit signs at face value, ignoring the time stipulations common in school zones and busy shopping hubs.
Oh ... we have some speed signs that have time qualifiers, eg lower speeds around schools near start and end of school, or busy shops etc.
> It’s one thing to have a car bother you for breaking the speed limit, but another altogether for a car to unnecessarily distract you during safe, lawful driving. Rant over… for now.
> You can switch the system off, just not permanently. Settings revert to their default state every time you switch the car off, so setting up ADAS becomes a time-consuming daily ritual.
Absence of a feature is often far superior to a broken one.
[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2025-byd-dolphin-re...
If it's anything like the speed limit warning system in my Volvo, it's utterly useless. It gets the speed limit right about 80% of the time I would say. The other 20% it sees a sign "max 5 ton allowed" and thinks it means "max 5 kph", or it sees a sign in a side street and thinks it applies on the main street. Or a speed limit ends at a crossroad, which the system doesn't understand. The system often thinks the speed limit is 30 kph where it's actually 50 kph which is annoying; sometimes it thinks the limit is 90 or even 120 where it's only 50 or 70 which is outright dangerous.
The system is not to be trusted at all. There suggestions to make laws that would require cars to enforce these limits, instead of just showing the limits and warnings. I'm not against that in principle, but those systems need to get a lot better than the one in my Volvo first.
Could this mean you could get problems as this car does not conform to the standard?
It also does not conform to the reference cars which were used to acquire the type approval.
Owned a Model 3 since August 2023, didn't have any issues with it yet apart from those in place from the very beginning (left rear view mirror sometimes won't unfold or will but only partially, it takes a few cycles to get it to unfold fully, plus another small one that probably depended on use pattern and when mine adapted i can't reproduce it anymore).
tesla is (in)famous for customer service and quality issues.
Almost every popular company is infamous for bad customer service and quality issues, it's just a matter of luck. You're probably reading this comment on either a smartphone of a brand already known for quality issues and bad customer support, or on a PC built with parts from brands known for quality issues and bad customer support.
And anyways, "you have only yourself to blame" is not true. You have the seller to blame usually. And by law, not just in some vague moral sense.
I suspect a lot of reputation from then helped them paper over naysayers when they abandoned it with expansion
> I estimate that the total import costs were slightly over 2000 EUR.
I live in Slovakia and bought a Model 3 in Slovenia. I rented transport plates in Slovakia, took a train to Ljubljana, stayed overnight, took delivery of the car in the morning and drove back to Slovakia.
It cost me maybe 150€ and I got a pleasant trip out of it. The car price in Slovenia was ~5k lower than Slovakia back then.
What principle? Aside from mouth gaping nerdy admiration early on ("oh EV! oh, sportcars! Oh, it can ~kill y~ drive itself! Oh, shiny panels"), they'd been nothing but trouble for a decade now. And let's not get started on the Cybertruck either.
The Tesla Model 3 is now the second most reliable new electric vehicle you can buy. Only the new-for-2022 Kia EV6 is more trouble-free, but we don’t know whether it will match the proven record of the Model 3 as it ages. Data from over a thousand Tesla Model 3 owners tell us that every model year going back to 2018 has either average or better reliability.
Most of them don't go wrong, so the dominant experience is the above.
+The new model is usefully more quiet and has better suspension. Previous were a bit rattly and very noisy.
I've never seen the Cybertruck in person but I've driven a Model 3 and a Model S recently, and I think the quality is still pretty high. The performance is excellent and the UX is great.
As for the customer service, I can't say much as I've never owned a Tesla.
Save you sanity - call a lawyer and have them discuss the situation with Tesla.
That's what I did with Mazda and around a month later things were solved.
Stop sending emails and calling people at the company- they don't care - call a lawyer and save your sanity.
First, they will tell you how to complain to the company - what specific terms to use, and how long they have to respond and to resolve your matter.
Second, if you don't get a proper resolution, they will advise you how to sue the seller. You will usually have law on your side by that point, so there is almost no way the seller can weasel out.
Third, the consumer rights office you talk to might have contacts for expert investigators who can act as a third party in your court case. They will provide a written statement to the effect of "this is what happened, this is the law, the buyer can demand this remedy".
Finally, the seller will likely settle out of court, because you're not the first customer they abused and they already know how these things go. In the EU, you will often get either a replacement of the item, or a full refund, or sometimes you might get to choose. That is the bare minimum, you can also demand that they pay your court costs in most EU countries, and some compensation for loss of income, cancelled holidays, and other such things. Depending on how strong your negotiating position is, you will get some of these things.
If you have a website about how bad the product is and you are willing to take it down or write about reaching a satisfactory conclusion after negotiations with the seller, your negotiating position is very strong.
The consumer rights office will tell you all this process and it will vary a little bit. But it's important to do this relatively without delay, there is no point in dealing with unresponsive customer service. You need to tell them the right things by law and they will be forced to respond or to face the lawsuit. An abusive company will not respond out of good will, without compelling them to, you are just wasting time.
In Holland, the consumer rights office is the ACM.
I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.
I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.
I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
At the first general inspection after purchase 2-3 years out, 14.2% of all checked Tesla Model 3s had issues. Comparing that to other models that are on record in sufficient numbers, its a high rate of failure. VW ID.3, for example, had 5%.
https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-leads-with-unmatched-...
Have yet not had a single problem for two years.
Surely the problem lies in a high variance in the production of later models.
Like when you visit a stellar restaurant and come back years later to realize the magic sauce was a chef who left.
Also, yes, it sounds risky to buy a car without being able to drive it back when it immediately breaks. I can also see myself as a victim of that because of experiences like yours and mine: Teslas are the most purchased EVs, they're everywhere, surely you'd know if their reputation is tarnished for other reasons than the mascot being unpopular.
If you buy the special red colour Y, it'll be German made. The other colours can come from China or US.
but- a car company that doesn't see the need to have emergency rear door releases has systemic issues. someone, anyone involved in approving that design could have said "no. i will not sign off on this", but they didn't.
it makes me wonder what other corners they cut, and whether those cut corners could kill a driver or passenger- because they're not going to cut corners on anything that would be immediately apparent in daily use: it would be detrimental to sales.
OP doesn't make any implication about Musk at all, his name is only mentioned in passing.
>I own a Tesla and I have the opposite experience.
This is not a useful contribution.
Obviously there are many satisfied Tesla customers. No one doubts this.
The point of an article like this is to bring to light just how bad a Tesla experience can be. Not a tiny bit bad, but really miserable and expensive.
You think it's useful to have a blog post to reveal the shocking truth that mass manufactured products aren't 100% reliable? A lemon could be produced by any auto manufacturer and the customer could have the same experience
To paraphrase Chris Rock: should we give Tesla a cookie? "Everything worked out of the box" is what's supposed to happen.
From middle of Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary is as far as Houston to Austin drive. No border or customs controls. Vehicle insurance issued in one, is valid in both. You only have to spend few euros to buy a vignette (road toll). I don't see your point.
I still wouldn't want to own a car where the nearest service center is a Houston-Austin distance.
> I have the opposite experience. Everything worked out of the box.
You did not have the opposite experience. You had no experience because nothing on your vehicle went seriously wrong.
I suspect the customer service might vary significantly across countries, but I can't speak to that myself.
So in one view, he is indeed the guru of legend, and is responsible for the successes of Tesla and SpaceX, so a good candidate to refactor the federal government.
However, if he's responsible for their success, he's responsible for their failure. And this is a massive failure in manufacturing, in quality control, in after-sales service, and in just plain ol customer service.
But, if he's just a canny investor and his best companies succeed by insulating the company from him, then why the fuck is he touching the federal govt systems?
As for "buying a car in a country with no service" - the parts shortage looks to be global, so local market wouldn't help that.
I live within 15 miles of two Tesla centres, and so far I've only had to use them once for a minor sensor issue, which was serviced at my property at no cost to me. If I didn't have any Tesla centres within a couple hours' drive I probably wouldn't have bought the car.
And as someone who drove multiple cars, from multiple East Asian and European marks, I suggest you try drive newer cars, because your opinions don’t match 2024-2025 MY cars from those brands (except for maybe MG, and Toyota, but both aren’t designed or sold for the driving experience. Toyota leaves it for their Lexus brand, and Chinese marks don’t even try to compete on that yet).
The Kia's we tried were mostly great (The EV6 felt like a cockpit though) - the EV9 was awesome but we couldn't convince ourselves to get such a large vehicle.
Not an EV, but I have a 2022 Kia Sorento with a fair number of weird software bugs-e.g. the sound from the navigation system randomly stops working and I have to restart the car to make it work again; the car tries to read speed limit signs using machine vision but its capabilities are too basic so it reads them incorrectly (in particular, conditional speed limits which only apply under a certain condition, such as at certain times of day, for heavy vehicles only, it will treat as absolutes)
Is their EV software better? Outside of cars, my experience with South Korean software hasn’t impressed me
I find the OS perfectly boring, and I like it that way. Most of the car functions has physical, clicky buttons. The one that doesn't are justified IMO (navigation, pairing bluetooth, etc.).
Edit: had this situation in 2024. BMW sold a faulty car with international warranty. When the buyer found broken rear differential BMW offered to cover 3% repair cost. So the question was to sue BMW or pay 4000€ for by warranty covered repair out of own pocket.
Exactly the same reason my dad did a total change in his profession (20 years as a car mechanic). He was fed up with all the electronics making his life as a mechanic more difficult then it needed to be, and that was like 20 years ago. He had those think diagram books and needed to constantly dig into them to figure out what sensor was on what for the onboard computer and other issues. What was a easy fix job, became a nightmary because the sensors / computer kept triggering when issues got fixed (or where never the actual issue but faulty sensors that randomly triggered).
Maybe today things are easier with VCDS tools, but in his days, it was manual work.
He became a IT helpdesk operator after reschooling. hahaha...
I had one of those cars, great car (toyota) but there was a sensor that just at random loved to trigger on exhaust mixture, and then power throttle the car. Even had a tool with me in the car, to reset it with my smartphone, whenever it trigger. It was not a sensor issue but too tight tolerances set from factory. It was cheaper to just reset it myself, then risk getting updated software to fix it (and potentially create new issues as i read some horror stories of people getting software updates for that issue).
I am still driving a 15 year old Opel, that has barely any electronics (compared to "modern" cars). I really do not see the benefits of newer cars. It drives me from A to B, with all the basic conforts, so why change?
Buying a car in London I check there is a dealer within a 12 minute drive!
Edit: Sorry maybe this sounded a bit too rough, but unplug your car and check it yourself. It's like someone is siphoning gasoline from your vehicle every single day.
That's a lot of power, and a lot of money.
Additionally, once you to the math things look bad: 8% of a battery pack of 60kWh is around 5kWH. 5000 Wh / 24h = 208 W.
200W to keep few cameras on and a small CPU/GPU to run the logic seems a lot. Especially considering that you don't need to analyze every frame of every camera. In fact, you could easily run one frame every 5 seconds making it ~ 1FPS analyzed (6 cameras) since the car is parked.
Additionally, you don't need to run heavy models on all the images. You can run some sort of diff to see if pixels changed within a tolerance threshold between the new and the old image and only if that's true then you run the ML models.
Anyway, pretty shitty experience.
Make of that what you will.
But luckily that car will be gone soon and I'm not gonna do any further free QA for this company.
So effectively, it should be pretty close to 0%. Even if we assume maximum rounding error (ie, maybe it actually lost 1.9%?), maybe round that up to 2%, 5 days to lose 2% means it takes 50 days to lose 20%. 100 days to lose 40%.
If the car is working properly, then vampire drain is a complete non-issue except for an exceptionally rare scenario where you don't drive and can't plug it in, not even into a standard household outlet, for more than 3 months.
It was a known issue between 125 and 150k miles. Subaru's solution was to extend the warranty to 100k, as if that did anything at all.
We got rid of the broken one, and the one that I drove as well. I'll never go back. I loved those cars, but that's so shady.
Unfortunately, the engine blew up at 80k, the brakes failed on the highway at 100k, and the transmission is known to have problems.
Is there a way to have it all?
Well then they go on a superbowl ad and brag about "millions of people using Gemini"
Ladies and Gentlemen: You ever fake metrics for a commercial? I haven't.
I do have to say that after test-driving a number of different vehicles before buying my Taos last summer, that I appreciate that VW continues to use real buttons for most inputs - although I do understand a number of their other vehicles use capacitive touch buttons.
> In 2024, Volvo renamed the battery electric XC40 to the Volvo EX40, aligning it with newer battery electric models such as the EX30 and the EX90.
Which makes me think Volvo sold their cars with the old name but other engine options, electric being one of them. They split "XC40" into "XC40 (ICE)" and "EX40 (BEV)".
Before you had all these backend-focused people who despised building HTML pages in charge of user experience. You know the kind of people who think the user is the database not the actual users.
I do not know how much would such a thing cost though. But if it's just sending a letter with a lawyer stamp?
No, because consumer laws can outlaw forced arbitration. They usually trump any contract law, so even consumers that agree to arbitration may not be required to go through with it.
For example, in Germany, any arbitration agreements must be separate from the sale/service contract with consumers[0]: "Yet, arbitration agreements with consumers require that stricter formalities be observed: such arbitration agreements must be signed by both parties separately from the main contract to which they relate (section 1031(5) ZPO)". You cannot bake one into the contract to which it relates. The seller may insist the customer signs an arbitration contract, but the sale contract cannot be conditional on agreeing to arbitration, so the arbitration becomes optional rather than forced.
Of course, I understand many countries do not have such strong consumer protection around forced arbitration. This is why more consumer protection is needed.
https://globalarbitrationreview.com/insight/know-how/commerc...
More like Consumer Reports is the most reliable praise you can buy :)
It's pretty easy to replicate by other manufacturers, but aerodynamics is just one factor in a large number of tradeoffs made by a manufacturer when designing a car.
One point Renault did right was use beefy enough hardware. They went[1] with an automotive Qualcomm Snapdragon, while it seems Volvo and others went with an Intel Atom.
All I know is it's smooth like a good tablet.
While voice recognition is not perfect in Norwegian, it was also by far the better one. A lot of room for improvement though, like if I say "call Merete" it won't find my contact named "Merethe", which is pronounced exactly the same here.
[1]: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault...
English is not my native language so I'm yet to find a car where this works. But it's not a problem with the car, it's Google's voice assistant being useless for anything other than English sounding names. I can say "Google call Janusz Zawadiadzki" and there's exactly 0% chance it will work. It just can't do it. Don't get me started on it trying to read texts that aren't written in English when the system language is set to English, it's hilarious.
>> picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
It freezing and losing sound and generally being in all kinds of non-operational state isn't due to the hardware being slow, it just doesn't pass muster for automotive-grade software which should never exhibit any of these behaviours no matter what.
Regarding the freezing and all the other issues, I've not experienced any of that at all. It's been rock solid for me. We didn't buy it at release though which is maybe why we have such drastically different experiences. We have also bought a used one for about 50% of the original cost which is why is another reason I'm probably more forgiving than you, if you had purchased it brand new.
The top pic I saw in the showroom and I really didn't like it.
>>Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay
I don't know, that just never really bothered me? I use the built-in satnav anyway since it's necessary for the hybrid system optimization to work.
I meant to say: I think the quality varies both per factory and over time.
There's a lot of complexity in industrial production. From the outside it looks like there's only the classic and the revamped design., but I've heard that the internal components are often far from the same.
The scary thing about radar is how terrible the raw data is, and how utterly compromised the filtered data is. Stationary objects have to get substantially filtered out when driving at high speeds, otherwise false positives would be unacceptably common. This affects all brands of car with radar.
This shouldn't be surprising. Subaru managed to jank together Eyesight using a couple of cameras and an in-house team, and they were able to make it outperform radar in most respects. Unfortunately they didn't think to make it self-calibrating, so it requires a trip to the dealership any time you replace the windscreen.
One thing I don't understand is why the author doesn't just use the legal provisions of statutory warranty. Any cost of delivering the faulty items to the seller are on the seller, not the buyer, in Europe in general.
To your defence it is kinda hard to know what problems are simple problems.
Because they only have features of 90s car, not 2020s car. It's just shockingly bare. A lot of times coupled with dull drivers so must be some confirmation bias too.
Manufacturers: "Did someone say heated seats-as-a-service?"
That said we shouldn't stop car evolution because one shitty manufacturer fucked up. If you wan't one - you can always buy a Lada, they were perfect since 70s...
The battery capacity on that car is incredible, you could put a 4090 in there and run it and it would maybe drain 8% a day, right? So something extremely irresponsible is going on.
A good way to verify this if you've got a Tesla is how long it takes for the car to acknowledge commands sent via the mobile app. If they're near-instant (ignoring TCP latency ofc), the car is "Awake" and drawing it's full load. If they take 5-15 seconds, the car is Asleep and only polling it's LTE antennas for push notifications every 10s or so. If they timeout entirely, the car is in Deep Sleep and drawing almost no wattage (at least based on my observations with my wife's M3).
When in Sentry mode, responses are ALWAYS instant, so the car is fully Awake and drawing full wattage.
[1] https://teslatap.com/articles/autopilot-processors-and-hardw...
I don't believe that an embedded PC that allegedly has the same power as a PS5 consumes 200/300W idling. Even if it doesn't sleep it should consume in the order of 10s of W, not 100s. For reference, my PC here has a 3070, a ryzen 7 7xxx (I don't remember the exact model) and consumes like 40W at the outlet when idling.
So I am willing to assume that yes, the onboard PC doesn't idle when sentry mode is active, but the 200+ W draw is due to it running terrible software, and not just not entering CPU states that are energy efficient.
We keep taking things that worked fine without a computer, adding a computer, and ending up with all the problems of a computer but with little extra benefit to the user.
It was probably using stepper motors, with the pulse train being generated by a microcontroller.
When I worked in the industry, we had four different CPUs of different architectures on one small (fit in your hand) circuit board, each running its own software and communicating with each other via buses on the board. This was for controlling one single function in the car.
Strictly speaking, I would say that single circuit board was 4 separate computers. It quickly adds up.
I know from working at a phone company that hardware absolutely has bugs and it's only reliable as long as you're changing very little. If you start having a system where you're trying to optimise everything e.g. to save power when not in use and allow lots of customer choices in how things work then you're going to choose new microcontroller hardware and software and it will have bugs that have not been ironed out over the years.
The stories I read about ID3 updates going wrong were about certain controllers not successfully acknowledging their firmware updates. So I can see a strong temptation to make it all vertical - to have control over everything so you can ensure it works before you order 200k of them. Instead of having 60 suppliers all providing their interpretation of your bus protocol, each with unique bugs you take the whole thing into a single design.
I can also see it being far more conducive to have a smaller number of bigger and more homogeneous microcontrollers each of which might not be perfect for every job but since they're all the same you only have to provide 1 software update solution and you can test the shit out of it.
It's much easier to run a communication wire and a 12V wire, and have a microcontroller control the sensor/motor
Tesla is the #3 after BMW and Rivian, among brands "ranked on the average percentage of owners who said in CR member surveys that they would buy the same vehicle again."
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
And second most reliable https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
A while ago we saw here on HN a report from Danish mandatory technical inspection that showed that Model 3 were failing inspection much more than other EVs.
Reliability is a bit vague, it also depends on your mode of purchase (new, second hand) and how long you plan to keep your vehicle. People who only lease cars and swap them every 4 years need a reliable car out of the factory but don't care if everything start to fall appart after 5 to 6 years. People who keep cars for 10 to 20 years or who buy second hand have different requirements. The later will likely buy cars that would have already been fixed in a recall but need a car whose parts are cheap, easily serviceable by an independent mechanic and whose general reliability is good in the long term.
I thought these are inherent in electric cars (because of the heavy batteries) until I've driven a Polestar which is super nicely balanced - almost the best handling consumer car I've driven since the Baby Benz (yeah I'm that old), so it can be done.
Tesla is aware of the problem and they tried to fix it with torque vectoring in some variants.
Sure, they will go well on a long stretch of straight highway, which is what americans care about, but it's a different story in curvy european roads.
Conversely, I pair my phone once when I get the car and I never need to worry about messing with it again; it's just connected when the car starts. I don't even need to take my device out of my pocket or bag.
On top of that I get hands-free calling if someone calls while I'm driving, I get steering wheel media controls, I get voice controlled media selection (play playlist foo, play artist bar, etc.)
Additionally, modern Bluetooth devices have very little friction in my experience.
However if more than one person will use the car (incl. as passanger) the annoyance of Bluetooth is even worse.
We have a dongle in the car that is protected by a sworn oath to never be removed from the cabinet along with some charger cables.
There is just so much stuff that can make the abstraction of automation leak and you have to spend more time fixing it this one time than saved in the total lifetime of the car with a simple cable.
A USB to jack left fixed in the car is not much of an imposition. Even less so if it can be combined with a 12V adapter for charging.
The vehicle HAS A front facing camera, it takes up a huge portion of the front windscreen. There's no way to see an image from the front camera.
Is it there to....To tell me if i'm...about to crash? it has no automatic cruise or anything. Absolutely puzzling.
Another gripe about this car; "car play" works about half the time. Maybe. 20 percent of the other half, whole display freezes until I restart the car. Mazda can't figure it out and what am I gonna do, lemon it?
mye 15 year old other mazda hatchback connects to bluetooth instantly as soon as i turn the car on and begins to play music.
I wouldn't make the camera a free for all though, it makes sense for pretty good direct visibility to be a design priority (so the camera would be required on cars that had okay but not great forward visibility and it wouldn't be allowed to build anything else).
That is also not true at all. Under EU consumer law, the consumer can bring a case against the seller in the consumers country. Please stop spreading misinformation.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2012/1215/oj/eng (section 4)
Edit: there is this classical problem description at the very end of the article: “He promised me that on Monday, January 6, 2025, someone from the Sales Department would contact me.” And that’s the end. Nobody will listen to an individual. Lawyers know the back door and suddenly things start happening.
They will inform you of your rights and tell you what to do next.
Generally you need to register a grievance with the company and wait 28 days for resolution. If it is not resolved, then it depends on the form and value of grievance as to how it would proceed. In your example of BMW, for example, as it is below 5000 it would likely be a small claim (which would probably cost around 200 to file - the fee is charged by your jurisdiction so will vary - and you would claim the money back as part of the judgement if you win).
But I would recommend just contacting ECC-NET and doing what they say.
But 20 years ago was 2005. What's changed on a modern car since 2005? There's obviously a lot more safety features (and these have increasingly been part of the crashworthiness rating cars are given). But if you crash into a wall at 40mph, how much stronger are they?
A lot. Probably the biggest single change was the introduction of the small overlap crash test by the IIHS. It turns out that the standard frontal crash tests are quite unrealistic; in most frontal accidents, the driver swerves to avoid something but clips the corner, rather than just slamming into something head-on. Cars designed to perform well in the standard frontal crash test often performed miserably in the small overlap test.
Compare the same model before and after the small overlap test:
I wonder if there's even any citations that can directly show that a 2024 car is "much" safer than a 2004 car. Without relying on NHTSA's safety rating system, which is an indirect proxy at most (and probably has changed multiple times for "reasons"). And without being confounded by changes in regulatory measures.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...
Pre-2000 satedy improvements were heavily about WHEN you get into an accident...
Post 2000 it is heavily is heavily DON'T get into an accident, and it's heavily electronic. Anti-lock breaks, lane change vehicle detectors, unintentional lane change warnings, auto-breaking before collisions.
I certainly agree with the general vibe that cars do too much now, but I'd rather have a dumbified 2010+ish car
With the absolute slightest bit of fog, excessive humidity, rain or snow by Mazda tells me one of its radar systems isn't operable and to please drive safely.
The others are a lottery. You might get a perfect one or you might get one where the doors barely close
The lack of adaptive cruise is baffling. We test drove a ‘15 CX-something-or-other in 2014 and it had the ability to brake automatically (dealer was very interested in demoing this feature). I assume it also had adaptive cruise, so it’s wild that a 6 years newer sports car wouldn’t have that feature.
When it comes to mazda it's hard to understand why they do the things they do. We can only be happy they haven't turned miata into a crossover yet.
Great car!
Autos are designed around and for the roads they will serve, not vice versa. This is the bane of auto manufacturers who want to make one tail light housing for all their cars in all their markets.
it's a bit more easy to read data comparing for example safety in Euro market vs American market (there are fundamental differences in safety thoery; lighting, ride heighgt, weight, engine size etc. As opposed to looking at changing trends in one market over 20 years, which are largely stylistic.)
Unfortunately, you can't generate enough friction to do this without the car moving, which is why it has to be done manually.
This is about what cars made it through the German TÜV. Not about reliability.
That article is often quoted in sensationalist media to smear Tesla. Look for actual mileage data and they are one of the, if not THE most reliable vehicle.
In the case of making a small claim (where it is a monetary claim under 5000), it may have more weight than a lawyers letter (as you are effectively suing them at that point), and they will then be on the hook for settling the filing fee as well, whereas you would otherwise be paying for a letter from a lawyer (although sometimes that cost could also be recovered through the small claims track). You just need to make sure you follow process (28 days notice, etc - again just contact ECC-NET to be aware of the correct process).
Of course, there are occasions where a lawyer may be needed (just as there are for domestic disputes), but being aware of your rights in advance will let you know if you have grounds without the need to pay a lawyer for consultation.
Also worth pointing out again that your EU consumer rights are identical for domestic and cross-border disputes - but for domestic disputes, you can contact your local consumer protection agency instead of ECC-NET as you may have MORE rights domestically (higher small-claims limits, for example) - although i expect ECC-NET would simply refer you in such a case
The next car I am going to buy is probably going to be older than my current one.
I've also come to this bizarre conclusion. Cars are rapidly regressing. I currently drive an '09, and yearly maintenance costs have begun to approach the value of the car. I'm not sure how long I can economically keep it on the road, but what would I replace it with? A '24 Driving-IoT-Nighmare?
Depending on your locale, you're going to need to replace all suspension, steering, exhaust, frame peices etc. on that 09' car you bought used for 6. Will quickly approach 20k in time and money, and at that point, most people bite the bullet and deal with new car bullshit/payments.
Even OEM headunits usually just consume a standard composite video input and switch to it when it has a signal.
This information is valid up until at least 2020, but it might be changing as cars get more advanced cameras and stupid-er head units. I bet Tesla just uses their existing cameras.
>not beeping if seatbelt not fastened
Also trivial to do with analogue electronics, which we have done for decades.
speed limit warnings are a dead end though. Impossible to do without some sort of technology to know what the "current" speed limit is.
I especially love the collision detection that goes "BIBIBIBIBIBI" and the screen goes red saying "BREAK NOW!". All of this happens regularly when I'm dodging parked cars in small streets at very low speed. The message appears about half a second too late anyway (assuming I have instant reaction time, which I doubt). I'm glad it doesn't break automatically at least.
Also it reads speeds signs but it has no idea when they no longer apply, or doesn't read the new one, or reads a speed sign from an adjacent road, or sometimes just imagines it.
Another annoying thing was that in order to use the navigation from the car, you first had to agree to obey the traffic rules or something. I already do that by participating in traffic.
I don't think this incessant beeping for every little thing, nor requiring clicking though extra screens, is useful and I doubt it adds anything to safety. It's distracting and annoying and I start thinking about why the car is beeping this time, instead of focusing on the traffic.
That's the really big problem with this design: the car should not draw attention to itself; my attention should be on the road. Also, when it does beep, it should at the very least make clear why, and you should be able to turn it off.
The car reads signs, and beeps everytime it detects a change in speed limit. If you go over the speed limit, even if its 1 km/h the car starts beeping as well.
I never drive really fast, when the car says I'm driving 1 KM over the limit my GPS speed usually is 5 below. This makes the signals extra annoying.
They should have used beeps when you're 10 or more over the speed limit or something like that so you don't get spammed with notifications all the time. The system being as it is, I'm 100% sure I will get it removed by a tuning shop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CarsAustralia/comments/10d4g0b/spee...
Of all the signals of "I'm getting elderly," who knew I'd first start feeling like this from trying to use a car?
IMO the chime, if anything, decreases safety (it interrupts the driver's attention)
Your assumption is that regen and braking have the same behavior and are interchangeable, but I don't think that's the case beyond both of them being used to stop.
Audi costs easily 2x for abysmal specs and reliability. Kia/Hyundai is better deal, but they are such bare cars it's almost like driving 90s Toyota. Spec them out to base Tesla (i.e. power seats, power liftgate, heated steering wheel, etc) and price is 1.5x higher.
and I am the least Tesla “fan” on the planet and think Elon is the saddest person that ever lived on this planet
Rest of industry missing everything else that Tesla's had a for a decade.
But for a car to start beeping (or worse, interfering), they'd better use that margin of error in the other direction.
How we allow massive touch screens in Tesla's and other modern cars is beyond me.
Now at 15 years and 200k km still running strong, with less than 300€ service costs yearly.
I live in salt belt in US, have a 14 year old hatchback. This year alone I have had to replace 2 of the 6 control arms, rear rotors, all pads, parking brake cable (ugh), strut/shock assembly up front , clutch and brake masters, rear wheel hubs, trailing arms. That alone is like 4k in my time, nevermind the parts or if I brought them to a shop.
last year I did clutch job, vent/purge valves, intake cleaning, timing job....easily 5k
I am very jealous you have somehow avoided these things with the Clio. Idk how mazda managed to make my hatch out of seemingly rust.
Largest parts I had to replace so far were exhaust (60€ for part) last year and exhaust hatch (I don't know if that's the correct english term for that, 80€ for part) this year. Brake pads I had to change twice so far, but it was also pretty cheap.
With my mother I have a joke that rebuilding my clio from scratch would probably cost me less than tire change on her merc.
The only annoyance I have with it is that it's eating through light bulbs at annoying pace, since electricity in the older clios tends to be a bit funky. But okay, that's a 5min change usually.
Failing TÜV means your safety critical systems have problems. This means brakes, suspensions, lighting (front and rear), screen wipers, etc.
So they check for pretty basic, but crucial stuff, and they're tested in a pretty detailed way (brake fade, stopping power, etc.). If your car is failing in just two years in these areas, you're not reliable, and your car will not age well, period.
My 25 year old car aces the test all the time, and the biggest complaint I got on my report is "Your wipers leave streaks, LOL!".
You wouldn't do a regular service right before the TÜV appointment, would you?
Also, this doesn't sound environmentally friendly to me.
> Also, this doesn't sound environmentally friendly to me.
I'm planning to buy a new hybrid. On the other hand, it has a cat, is our family car since the beginning, so it's in a very good shape emissions-wise (it's tested regularly). Newer cars are better, of course, but it's not an oil burning, smoking, smelling smoke-stack. Its exhaust isn't covered in carbon even.
The 14.2% was for cars receiving their first Hauptuntersuchung (main inspection) done every 24 months (so 2-3 years old cars). If a car model has that many problems while competitors in a similar price range and use model don't, that could point to an issue with part quality.
Also there's things like these which are way too common for my taste: https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/adac-skandal-gelber-enge...
I think the German car industry and the press around it as a whole have a serious corruption issue.
I am sure HN has made up their mind already and this discussion wouldn't have an effect on your opinion anyway, so please feel free to continue downvoting.
Correct, but you just happen to leave out the mentioned issues with the brakes and axles as clearly stated in the article.
> In addition to defects in the brakes and axles, the Tesla also has a particularly high number of lighting defects.
If you want to point out issues, which is absolutely fair, please don't cherry-pick.
> but I'd suspect it's about the calibration of the headlights in most cases
So its a guess on your part. Lightning defects can mean any number of things.
>Defects in the lighting such as defective bulbs, broken or blind lenses or incorrect adjustment are significant defects.
Incorrect adjustments are part of it, yes, but if that's the case I would argue something with the construction of Tesla's lamps is not done correctly. Other manufacturers seem to have fewer problems. That or Tesla owners don't service their cars often enough. Regardless, it guessing on our part unless we have access to detailed data.
-----
You linked to an article that is over 10 years old. Besides that, ADAC, which that particular piece is about, is not the company responsible for doing the TÜV inspection, nor is it the one to actually publish the report.
> I think the German car industry and the press around it as a whole have a serious corruption issue.
The car industry I can agree on. The emissions scandal is a particularly shady example. As for the press, I'd take a more neutral stance. There are absolutely a large amount of low quality news papers and magazines pumping out hot garbage. Others do offer much higher quality writing and research.
I'm all for the extra safety, but if they make safety too annoying, people will start looking for workarounds.
Next time you go to the grocery store look at how many carts don't get put away. The exact same people who do that will freak out and start a war if their car gets scratched by a loose cart.
Don't believe my takes? Go to a local city or school board meeting and see the utter insanity that comes from people that you will be shocked to learn are a middle manager at some company or own their own small and successful business.
Some people genuinely don't get that the world isn't about them, and I think we have drastically underestimated the percentage.
That’s one very stupid way to die.
My car can't tell the difference between a person and my backpack on the passenger seat, but it dings regardless.
Wear your seatbelt.
I can understand not wanting the government to decide how they live their life, who they can and can't marry, how they should identify, which bathroom to use, etc. But I'd think no-cost life-saving stuff is not a hard decision. Same with vaccines.
Other than lights, the problem with control arms and brakes are known. Brake service is recommended and ignored because unlike VW, et all - there's not stealership model to charge you $500 a year for worthless maintenance.
Ignoring brake checks is endangering life. Even though you have regenerative braking, brakes are used way more often in automatic and gearbox-free cars due to driving dynamics.
Just because there's no so-called stealership, ignoring brakes is not justifiable. So, I can mark Tesla as an irresponsible car company, with a bright and bold marker.
Thanks for narrowing my future car choices and pushing Tesla more out of my mind.
If you are worried about the brakes, brake hard occasionally to avoid rust.
Alternatively, you can charge the car up to near 100% if you go on a roadtrip. Regen will be limited initially so you will be able to use your brakes without braking hard.
If you are still worried about the brakes, go to an independent car mechanic regularly and have them checked.
It's as easy as that.
Nobody is preventing you from doing service even though it's not deemed necessary by the vendor.
Your comment doesn't seem to be about the actual issue but about some form of generalized Tesla brand hatred.
It's really quite clear what's going on here.
The TÜV does not assess the reliability of a car. The reasons for a car failing an inspection after 3 years can be manifold. It doesn't mean that the car "won't age well" or anything along those lines.
If you dislike Tesla, then say it - it's fine. No need to support vague smear campaigns.
In fact, right now Tesla has the best electric car technology available on the market. Along with the best charging network available on the market. And the best software (light years ahead of the competition) on the market. Also they don't require you to service the car for a long time. That makes German people especially afraid that they lose their car manufacturing, selling and servicing business. And rightly so. No smear campaign and no comparing apples to oranges will save them from reforming and restoring their competitiveness in a very long painful process.
> In fact, right now Tesla has the best electric car technology available on the market.
By what measure exactly? The best isn't a measure and as of right now a subjective statement.
> Along with the best charging network available on the market.
Again, subjective. What do you mean by best? The amount of chargers? The cost/kWh? Location? And what market exactly?
> And the best software (light years ahead of the competition) on the market.
Again, subjective. You complain about an article having no detail, then make statements praising Tesla as the best electric car but provide 0 evidence or numbers.
Just because you like something, doesn't mean I have to as well. I'm not a mechanical/electrical engineer so I cannot speak to their car technology or reliability. I do know their software, because I drove one for work reasons for 3 months. You might like it and get along fine with it, I don't.
I didn't buy a Tesla because their choice to start placing all functionality into the touch screen is counterintuitive to the whole point of the car: getting me safely from point A to B. Other manufacturers, including VW are horrendous at this as well. I didn't buy a car from them either.
> Also they don't require you to service the car for a long time.
Given the percentage of their cars failing the inspection, perhaps they should.
> Yes, TÜV does not assess reliability of a car, but road-worthiness
So, great - that's all I tried to say to start with.
Now enjoy your smear campaign!
I don't live in a flat city, of course I'm worried and aware of my brakes all times, and know how to condition and refresh my brakes.
My problem is Tesla's service policies, like ignoring "recommended" checks on a car. Oh sorry, I can go to an independent mechanic to further spend my non-existing time, you're right.
What's more interesting is Tesla not having brake pad thickness warnings, which our old 1999 Fiat Tipo had.
Being apologetic about problems doesn't make your arguments any more sound, either.
No. You are obviously not doing that. You take note of what the media emphasizes in an obvious press campaign that oversimplifies the actual information to a degree where it becomes borderline useless in order to reach political goals. This is not the same.
No, I'm not doing that. To be frank, my exposure to cars, engines and related technology goes back 30+ years,. I'm not naive enough to read a single article and change my mind about Tesla, "because Elon bad, so Tesla bad".
I'm not someone who sees his car as a black box. I can diagnose, disassemble and service my car to a certain degree (and recently did that by logging weeks of data from ECU because my mechanic was not able to pinpoint the problem, and I diagnosed the problem myself). I'm also not afraid or refrain from getting my hands dirty.
If something, this article I have read is a literal drop in a bucket of things I have read only about Tesla. My information consumption about cars is increased again recently, because I'm planning to buy something new, but I'm already familiar what I might be getting under the bonnet with every choice I make.
So, you're projecting your assumptions onto me, and not only your assumptions are wrong, what you're doing is also wrong.
If you'd have those, you could have posted them earlier here in the thread.
First, I don't keep bookmarks of everything I read, second I can't record conversations I've had with people owning cars I'm interested in and store them in publicly accessible places.
I understand that we will not be able to meet somewhere in the middle. Also, I'm not someone who'd leave personal opinions and experiences to appease and please someone.
So, have a nice day. Hope your cars never break down and give you infinite joy.
Moreover, I failed to find some of the links I wanted to add, which were more positive ones about Tesla, nonetheless (e.g.: the famous consultancy which gutted a Model S and found very good engineering alongside some rookie mistakes).
Now, this is your turn to provide me information about how I'm mislead, and what Tesla does instead. Waiting a similar links trove from you, since you claim that you're very knowledgeable about the subject matter.
https://notes.bayindirh.io/notes/Lists/Cars+and+Related+Tech...
P.S.: I knowingly left out most egregiously negative and biased ones from the list above. There were more links than I added to this trove.
