It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing. If this is feliberate it looks like he is trying to reduce costs to make Tesla's stock price go up again.
As someone with no horse in the race, the negativity of reports of damaged/nonfunctional/poorly assembled cars straight from manufacturing didn't seem to be a very big drain, so I don't see why moving to shody work later would be a red flag.
Exactly. Shoddy assembly, inadequate paint coverage, bumpers that fall off while driving, "whompy wheels" that were due to badly put together suspension, chassis damage from the factory and so on haven't really dented Tesla's reputation - although that's in an atmosphere where most buyers feel the need to write multi-paragraph attestations to how much they love Tesla before discussing those things.
The majority of people (probably at least 7 nines) who buy a Tesla will never experience anything like this and will reap the rewards of a car with low average maintenance costs (the majority of that being lower-than-average tire lifetimes).
Tons of cars from other manufacturers often have similar issues from the factory, eg The Stellantis (Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram) family supposedly has one lemon every 100k cars produced[0] and that's only if the issue isn't fixed within 3 visits to the dealership's auto repair shop.
Wtf are you on? At most 1 in ten million people who buy Tesla will experience this? So, considering that Tesla has sold significantly less that that, do you think all those reports have secretly just been from one person?
Sure, if customer satisfaction is what you want to optimize for. But in this case:
> the main concern is reducing the metric of “next available appointment,”
Later on the article talks about how short sellers have been using that metric to gauge service levels, which Tesla wants to undermine. So it looks like the company is explicitly targeting a vanity metric as a knee jerk response to short sellers. Not the best long term strategy...
You would think so but cars with lots of defects on delivery to the customer have been an issue for years yet Tesla is still able to sell as many cars as it can make.
At some point it may catch up to them & they'll have to do something about it, but by then it may be too late to avoid major damage to the company. The fact that it hasn't hurt them yet might make it even worse: it may mean leadership stays in denial over the problem even longer past the point of keeping it manageable.
For years I thought of him as "Steve Jobs without the charisma" but increasingly the wild Monorail style promises about Mars and Hyperloop are also leading me to think Trump.
I will always have a spot for him in my respect list for SpaceX. No we don’t have a Mars settlement but what they have accomplished is truly huge. If Starship actually works it will be a new space age.
I do suspect we will have a base on the Moon and maybe a little space tourism long before we do anything more than a small not-to-stay trip to Mars. The rocket is only a small part of the tech tree to settle a planet 6mos journey away. The moon is only about three days and there is a daily launch window.
That being said I’m also well aware that Gwynne Shotwell and numerous others are at least as responsible. He gets some but by no means all credit.
I also give Tesla immense credit for helping tip EVs, though I am less bullish on them by far than SpaceX. They seem to be very different companies.
Why do people keep talking about Hyperloop? He LITERALLY never promised that. The opposite infact, he said I think this is a great concept and worked on it, but all Im gone do is release a Blue Paper.
And then 5 years later people are angry he didnt deliver.
I really dont understand why people keep brining this up.
And as for Mars, nobody can deny that what Musk is doing with SpaceX is getting us closer to that then we have ever been. I dont think any fan of space flight would disagree.
More like, Musk believes the Republican candidate will win the next Presidency. This isn't exactly a stretch given Biden's approval rating and reluctance to hold Republicans accountable for their actions in the last administration.
Whoever ends up in the White House, he has a lot of reasons for wanting to appear as if he's on the same side, whether he is or not.
He also hasn't exactly had reason to feel respected by the Biden administration, or Democrats in general.
Whether this is true or not, nobody has created a new auto manufacturer from scratch that works at scale in a very long time, and doubly so for an EV manufacturer. Literally nobody alive is experienced at this job.
That's just completely false. There have been dozens of new car companies in China operating a far greater scale than Tesla, and there are new ones every one-two years
Beyond that, there is also XPeng and NIO, which aren't as large in scale ad Tesla, but are scaling significantly faster than Tesla did and are much much younger and definitely qualify as "at scale".
So, clearly, scaling a new car company isn't something Tesla was the only one to do in its era.
And BYD is universally agree on a amazingly successful company.
Tesla revenue: 53,823
BYD revenue: 32’173
And XPeng and NIO started way later when much of the groundwork for EV was already laid and the government in China had a gigantic push to establish EV in the country.
So yeah, the only company that is comparable, BYD is one of the most amazing companies of China and Tesla has done better on global scale.
So to start, we can agree then that Tesla isn't the first car company to scale in a "long time", right?
I disagree that Tesla has done better on a global scale. Tesla requires 10x more subsidies per vehicle, doesn't own their battery supply chain, took longer to be profitable, made significant amounts of money from reservations they are yet to fulfill, etc...
For all the talk of gigantic governmental pushes, the US still supports Tesla far more than China supports BYD simply by offering 5-7x more in subsidies per vehicle.
I think, on the global scale, that BYD has done better and is doing better, as far as scale - they make almost as many cars as Tesla but also make far more than cars, such as buses, trucks, industrial equipment, various electronics - markets that Tesla has been unsuccessful in. The fact that they do so on lower revenue is a sign to me that they can simply produce more efficiently, ie, better at scaling.
> For all the talk of gigantic governmental pushes, the US still supports Tesla far more than China supports BYD
That is just false. China has throwing gigantic support behind the whole push to EV. Not to mention that BYD profited massively from the protection of the government from IP theft. China literally threw lots of money at the whole supply-chain that BYD is building on.
And China had a large number of inventive programs for EVs as well, but Tesla profited from those 2.
> doesn't own their battery supply chain
BYD makes batteries but they certainty don't own their whole supply-chain. Tesla has started to make batteries and they are going deep into the supply-chain making their own materials and so on.
> made significant amounts of money from reservations they are yet to fulfill
Its not as much as you seem to think and it wouldn't change the overall picture.
> I think, on the global scale, that BYD has done better and is doing better, as far as scale
So how much does BYD sell in Europe and the US, its far less then Telsa does. BYD cars are mostly sold in China. They do sell buses and such outside of China. But in terms of Cars they massively profiting from targeting their local market first.
> such as buses, trucks, industrial equipment, various electronics - markets that Tesla has been unsuccessful in. The fact that they do so on lower revenue is a sign to me that they can simply produce more efficiently, ie, better at scaling.
Tesla makes revenue and more profit ...
The fact remains:
> here have been dozens of new car companies in China operating a far greater scale than Tesla
Its easy to think of this stunt as some sort of playboyy thing, but I felt it was a brilliant PR move.
They needed a known weight to test the rocket and orbital flight mechanics. Instead of putting any random thing, he put his car and the world went gaga over the stunt. It brought Tesla and SpaceX tremendous amount of press.
But seriously, that stunt has nothing to do with production Teslas. Tesla is still a very new player we are now seeing more and more growing pains, especially on the customer side, which is too bad but honestly should have been expected.
We are the first adopters to discover what kind of shelf life a Tesla car has, what it works like after 5, 10 and 15 years. Personally, I'm not optimistic about it. It seems to break down quite easily for a lot of people - add a decade of wear and tear on top of that, and it's not a great picture.
The idea that we are only now seeing growing pains is wrong. Service has always been a major issue. As far back as Model S it has been a consistent topic.
The base electronic, motors and batteries seem to be pretty reliable for most people. They had very few major issues with those things compared to most companies much smaller EV efforts.
> It seems very much to me as if Musk doesn't know what he is doing.
Teslas are ever more in demand, with wait times extending to a year. They are the highest selling EVs in the world by a large margin and they make the highest margin on EVs they sell, while others are losing money and stopping production (latest of which is Ford Mache E).
Given the year over year growth from Tesla for 13+ years in a row it seems a bit silly to suggest he doesnt know what he is doing.
He took direct control of a company when it was going straight to shit and now its by far the largest EV company on the planned and they are still growing like a startup.
The public perception that everything Musk does it to optimize short term stock price seems to me totally and completly wrong.
I think far more accurate assesment would be that he focus on long term planning off the core limitation his companies are facing. And that will be positive for long term.
And so far this has proven out very successful. I can give many exapmles.
And in that he pays sometimes for not doing as well on the sideshows. Aguable that is the only way you can even consider running multible comapanies like that.
What can go wrong with untrained office workers setting up steel forges in their back yards or performing car services.
Also why does a Tesla even need service other than a quick safety check. It’s not like the brake pads should be worn fast with regen and there’s no oil to change.
Not that they shouldn't address quality issues that persist over many cars, but the demand curve and customer satisfaction ratings suggest Tesla doesn't need to focus heavily on class-leading quality (yet).
Public sentiment can change pretty quickly. Combine halfass build quality with halfass repair service, and "bought once, it was a massive headache to repair, still didn't work, won't buy again" is a common customer story. It'll be hard to come back from that.
Similarly, people getting hyped up on finally getting a new car, a Tesla. Only to have to take it in after 1 day and being told it would be 2-3 weeks to service it.
Then having to take it back in for service again less than a month old, only to be told there's no parts, it will be another 2-3 weeks...
People can go from mega hype-person to mega detractor quite fast.
Yep. I was an early adopter, but now when people ask if I’d recommend buying a Model 3 my answer has changed to that I probably wouldn’t in 2022, mostly due to shoddy build quality and subpar service experiences.
It affects vehicles especially. There are whole generations of people who will never buy a Harley or a British-branded car or a Fiat because of how absolutely shithouse they were in the 70s through mid-nineties (well not the British cars, because they went bankrupt).
Those sentiments trail any actual improvements for a long time.
Googling around a bit, you'll see replacing underbody protective panels, replacing cabin air filters, power steering issues, random electrical components, tires, brake jobs, a/c problems, and so on. They do have lower maintenance costs than other luxury cars, but shit still breaks, wears out, etc.
A Tesla has everything a normal car has. At least for me, the vast majority of service has been things other than the engine. Modern ICEs largely just need oil changes and are very reliable. It’s the electronic doodads, lights, suspension, brakes, tires, cooling systems (yes, EVs have those too), weather seals, moonroof, and other things that go wrong and need repaired.
The ICE parts of my last 2 cars (a Toyota and a Ford, respectively) were the most reliable parts. It was the electronic parts that kept failing... (Note that the Toyota lasted for 15 years before we got rid of it; the Ford is 11 years old and still going.)
I humbly submit that electronic parts might actually be less reliable than mechanical parts.
I think it has to do more with the compromise between sound engineering practices and the legitimate demands of marketing rather than any inherent nature of electronic parts. I don't mean to suggest that the electronic parts that fail are poorly engineered, but their inclusion in the vehicle is (often) because it'll help sales rather than because they belong in a vehicle.
For a long time I thought that Tesla's headstart would diminish, that eventually legacy automakers would catch up and overtake with their greater economics.
This misconception was dispelled when I then bought a car new from the world's largest car manufacturer. It's difficult to overestimate how much they can screw it up.
Precisely. Because it's about Tesla, this gets reported and generates clicks. But anyone who pays attention to cars knows horror stories about service, from any manufacturer you name.
Dealerships aren't just awful for the buying experience. They're also awful for the service experience. If anything, Tesla's model of providing at-home service for small or routine work is an exception from the norm that, in my experience, raises it above other premium brands.
What’s wrong with your Toyota? I bought a 2-year old used RAV4 almost a year ago. Its been a pleasure to drive, and all I’ve done is change the oil once.
This is where the rubber hits the road for Musk’s dealer free model.
Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly. Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them. This is going to be 100% Tesla’s problem and is going to eat into margins in significant ways.
They swap out parts so much when one supplier can't deliver I wonder if they could even have a reasonable amount of replacement parts at all their service centers. It's part of the reason why you see big auto makers reuse parts between models and for several years. It can make recalls costly if the part in question is garbage, but at least you know everything is the same.
Do they? I've heard of them removing features (ie. radar, lumbar support) from new revisions, but rarely have I heard of alternatives to existing parts.
One that I know is rumored is a 1st party Radar sensor that is supposed to be coming soon, which would be them replacing the Continental radars that exist on older models. There's also battery changes, with the biggest being the LFP batteries on the new SR 3. I wouldn't necessarily categorize that under "swapping out" but testing out a new chemistry that will likely go fleet-wide at some point.
One of the big things they wanted to do was create a lower cost model (3/Y) by trying to reuse as many parts and moulds as possible between the two, so I'd actually be surprised to hear of a lot of part substitution since it goes directly against that logic.
Tesla reuses parts same as any manufacture. When there were computer chip supply problems they swap out for alternatives. So only refering to some chips
Can you be more specific? What components were unavailable due to the supply chain issues and what did they swap them with? I know they removed radar and lumbar support due to the supply issues (which I already mentioned), but they did not do any major swaps in the last few years AFAIK.
In terms of their MCU, they are at V3, with each being a generational improvement over the last (Tegra to Intel Atom to Ryzen) and not related to the chip shortages. In terms of their AP computers, same thing, they had AP1 which was Mobileye rebranded, AP2, 2.5 and 3 which were each major changes to add computing power.
Don't have an link offhand sorry. Musk said in an interview they were quickly adapting to new chip designs because of shortages. It wouldn't be the AP hardware as that's made in in-house
> As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them. This is going to be 100% Tesla’s problem and is going to eat into margins in significant ways.
This is mainly how the major established car manufacturers make money. Soon same should be true for Tesla as well, as their fleet ages.
Hardly. Toyota and Honda's OEMs sell parts to anybody. I had my old Accord serviced at a hole in the wall style repair shop that always had original OEM parts: I never went to the dealer in 10byears of owning it. The shop I went to was run by old-school mechanics who owned their business and didn't waste my time with ridiculous upsells.
You mean that's how the dealers make money? I'm pretty sure you pay the dealer to work on your car, not the manufacturer. Warranty work is paid to the dealer by the manufacturer. But I don't believe any car company is making much money from repairing cars. Many car companies don't even make parts for cars that are over 10 years old.
But I mean, if the dealership is the manufacturer, then you definitely have a bigger conflict of interest as far as repairs go.
Sadly, it seems to just shift the conflict of interest around with the traditional dealer model. Service advisors are often paid on commission, and warranty work tends to have a lower bill rate. I think this is one of the reasons that they tried to pressure me into a very expensive repair work for my last major warranty repair.
They hadn't even read the code right and wouldn't have even been replacing a part relevant to it.
I'm not saying Tesla service is great, just to be clear, just that the bar is often really low.
> Dealers are [...] generally excellent at fixing cars quickly.
Oh, come on. They certainly are not. Pick any rapidly growing car model of the last six or seven decades (the Prius in 2005-08 comes to mind, Outbacks in the 90's, etc...) and you'll discover a flood of service problems reported.
Tesla is having trouble scaling service because it turns out service might be harder to scale than factories.
And one way you address that is by hiring more people to do service, which is exactly what is being reported here. The idea that these are "untrained" (!!!) employees is pure spin. These are, fundamentally, new employees, brought on[1] to service cars. And, duh, they're going to have to be trained before they can be useful. There isn't the remotest hint of an allegation anywhere in that article that Tesla was skipping training for service employees. It's all spin.
Anti-Tesla headlines are an eyeball magnet. There was one going around a few days ago about something like 300 autopilot accidents had been identified by the NTSB (or NHTSA?), failing to note that if that holds up it represents an accident rate something like 6% of the average passenger car.
It's amazing that someone can take Tesla taking a sales/marketing employee and having them instead temporarily servicing cars and characterize that as anything but an untrained employee servicing cars.
Note that for pretty much all other automakers, "training" means something more than a few minutes watching a video. It means actual reading, instruction, and supervised hands-on exercises.
A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training, and most automakers will further certify technicians so that customers know that the person working on their car actually knows what they're doing.
A "new" Tesla technician might have almost an hour. It's great that they're "starting somewhere" but it sucks for the customers whose service will be fucked up by someone who has no business handling paid, unsupervised service calls.
That's not a compelling reason to buy or continue to own a Tesla.
The fantasy that BEVs are 'much simpler' than ICE vehicles has confused a lot of people. The reality is that the complex electronics, battery management systems etc can only be worked on by Tesla techs with access to DRM protected diagnostics and restricted access online workshop manuals. All modern vehicles, whether ICE, hybrid or BEV are incredibly complex so fewer and fewer people can or want to work on them.
This is a huge problem going forward for everyone. We need to get back to the VW Beetle/Golf etc era where it was possible for even a knowledgable owner could perform major repairs on the vehicle they own, and which were bread and butter for local mechanic shops
Maybe MkIVs ruined me, that's where most of my experience is.
Please never say "back to the VW" and "Beetle" in the same sentence. They're shoehorned together in the worst of ways.
If we're going to go back to the Beetle era where it was easy to work on, I think you have to go back pretty far. That's probably too old for most people.
Completely different than a Golf or Jetta the same years, which usually allows you to get to whatever you'd like. If not, at least the service position let's you yank the engine quick.
There has to be something going on with Amazon's pricing model when the paperback of the book you linked is $500.
I'm thinking back really hard, but I don't know if I've ever looked around a 50's/60's Beetle more than a quick glance. If they built a new electric car as cheap and easy as those supposedly were to work on, I'd be very interested.
The original air cooled Beetle was super simple to work on. Once you had done it a few times, you could pull the engine, rebuild it, and reinstall it in an afternoon (assuming you had parts already on hand).
> That's not a compelling reason to buy or continue to own a Tesla.
Well sure. It’s just the state of the world. I’d expect a Tesla owner to be someone who can handle repairs having to be re-done. They are luxury cars, after all.
For reference, I’ve owned several Teslas and none of them have been at the level of fit and finish appropriate for their price. All of them have needed some finicky part or another fixed under warranty.
The cars, though… they’re just so much fun to drive that all of that doesn’t really matter to me.
I don’t agree that is a huge problem going forward for everyone. I think it’s something that will work itself out given the incentives that Tesla has to get their act together. And it’s not really a problem for the vast majority of owners, who have other options for transport while their car is repaired.
Teslas are not Corollas. Teslas are not “EVs for the Everyman” no matter what Elon says.
I’m not interested in picking up a wrench and working on my own car. I don’t mind that Tesla is sending out newbies to work on cars because I’ll just keep taking it back until I’m satisfied. But, you also couldn’t pay me to go to a traditional dealership.
> It's amazing that someone can take Tesla taking a sales/marketing employee and having them instead temporarily servicing cars
Why is it any more amazing than taking a random person off the street[1] and have them service cars?
What you're doing is exactly what the author of the linked article wants you to do: you're taking the frame from the headline (that the new servicefolk won't be trained before working on cars) as a prior and assuming it to be true, despite that fact that this isn't alleged anywhere in the article.
> A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training
It's not hundreds of hours. These people get trained, but you can start on stuff like tire replacements or diagnostic reading after a day or two. Not every service is replacing a cylinder or rebuilding a transmission!
Lots of dealers use salesmen as the front line people in their service departments. If you know a little bit about cars, you'll be amazed at the strange comments sometimes.
> Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly.
Really? In the experience of myself and my friends, dealer repair is at best hit-and-miss and at worst feels downright dishonest... most of the people I know who felt "in the know" always used third-party repair people that they trusted.
> As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them.
This just means you need to hire people, not that those people need to be hired at arm's-length by third-party related businesses. Tesla has buildings where people work in them all over the world, just like Toyota. Their location near where I live looks just like a normal car dealer because it used to be a Buick dealership. They have a service center full of technicians, they are simply hired by Tesla.
Taking a step back this is like insisting that companies like Panda Express, Starbucks, or Chipotle can't ever compete with franchises because obviously they are going to have to hire a billion people to cook and serve the food... well, you just hire them! To me the only thing that franchises are inherently good at doing is helping to fleece unsuspecting franchise purchasers with bad models.
> Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
And this is the real problem: Tesla as a company doesn't even have the parts available to make NEW cars right now (Musk has even been talking about pausing new orders as they have cars sitting all over the place just a few parts shy of being ready for pick up ;P) much less repair OLD cars, and their demand scaling up both processes at once is of course going to be hard.
And like, to be clear: maybe their current lack of service people is inexcusable and incompetent... but this has nothing to do with being "dealer-free".
> Really? In the experience of myself and my friends, dealer repair is at best hit-and-miss and at worst feels downright dishonest... most of the people I know who felt "in the know" always used third-party repair people that they trusted.
Agree. I use dealers since they are the ones who provide authorized recall repairs. Otherwise, I go to the local, independent for much faster & cheaper service.
Dealerships have a really bad reputation so they are sometimes called stealerships.
Dealerships can vary in quality - but I was disappointed with the local one here as they wouldn’t try to find the problem “because the ECM was reset so there was no code to read” so I had to figure it out myself.
Which is part of the puzzle people are seemingly missing.
Get rid of dealerships - and you're stuck with the manufacturer's service - for better or worse.
Don't like that one particular dealership? Go to a different one... Unless you live in the middle of no where, you likely have at least two or more dealerships for your car's make within a reasonable distance. Find one that treats you right - for both service and sales.
My car is not a Tesla, so I can go to a variety of places to get service. Sorry if you misread and thought I was referencing independent Tesla service shops.
Anecdote warning, but what you describe is not my experience at all. My Toyota dealership has been like 6 out of 5 stars, and I normally hate praising corporations or businesses. They seem to care about my vehicle more than me. If it goes for any service I get a link to a video with a mechanic, snapchat style recorded from a phone explaining any problem they found and recording it on video to me, I simply love the transparency. But I completely appreciate this is probably a local thing and my dealership just happens to have really enthusiastic staff, with corporations of such huge size, there is probably great variance in the quality of customer service.
The same probably applies for Tesla. I cannot afford one myself, but I imagine that a certain % of people get excellent service or no problems at all, and another percent like comment OP get many problems and then whoever they're dealing with probably shrugs and says, well, most of our customers never had any issue, we'll just drag this guy along. It sucks and these businesses that earn such huge margins on EVs should strive to dig into their pockets and deliver better customer service. For me personally, it's the treatment of that last percent of customers who are outliers and have rare issues that's very influential of how much I trust a company.
Anecdote warning as well... Same with my somewhat local (UK) Porsche dealership. They've been stellar over 4 years of looking after me with a 10+yr old car. They typically give me a cost and say it might be a bit more in labour if the job gets difficult/complicated (rusted bolts shearing, etc.), but give me an upper limit. I totally understand that from an engineering point of view. Sometimes, old rusty shit just breaks. They've still come in under the initial quotes pretty much every single time. I've actually spent less on maintenance of the car than I did on a previous Ford in a similar time period. I now just trust them as they've always been honest with me from day 1.
They've always got the work done within a day and if they think it's going to run over, they give me a loaner no questions asked and tell me to come back at my convenience in a few days time. Conversations typically run along the lines of "I talked to the mechanic who saw your car last time and he's confident on his time estimate. He's suggested doing x while he does y, as it's really only going to be a parts cost as he's stripping x off in the process of doing y, and it'll need doing in x months anyway, but it's up to you".
Anything they want to raise to my attention, they send me a simple clear video with a mechanic clearly describing/visually highlighting the problem(s), how long they think it's safe to leave to be fixed and have an open discussion with me about what I want to do and when I want to do it. I literally can't fault them. It's certainly dealer specific - I researched where to go on a UK car forum, and found out the nearest dealership seems like an absolute shit show of basically scamming customers, so I travel a bit further out and haven't been disappointed (yet).
I'm looking to buy Ford truck, and amount of stories about trucks, and cars at dealerships for months [1] is actually quite high. I don't think that ford is very special in that regard.
Bronco has a brand new drivetrain with a critical flaw. That doesn't say anything about the reliability of their established products. If you get any early production run vehicle you're going to be a beta tester.
> Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly.
I've had a dealer claim that my car wasn't covered by a manufacturer engine warranty extension when it plainly was. That was after struggling for a long time to get them to acknowledge the fix that was needed.
Dealers are often not good at all at fixing problems. Ironically, one of the big problems with Tesla service is that they've copied the "that's in spec" mantra of a lot of dealers.
Going to have to contradict you here. I’ve worked with multiple OEMs, including on dealer ops. Dealers are generally good at basic maintenance and repair items, and warranty work. They are generally not great for anything else and are expensive as hell (and exploitative) for any customer pay work. They will also absolutely keep cars for long periods of time and require multiple trips to fix uncommon issues.
3rd party repair shops are generally going to be the better way to go and from an outside perspective, the two flaws in Tesla’s service model are 1) not producing & distributing enough parts, and 2) not partnering with more repair centers to train and certify technicians to work on Teslas.
>Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly.
I'm going to have to stop you there.
A little about me, I was a college dropout and worked as a mechanic for a few years, then went back and completed my undergrad, got a Master's and I've been white collar for a couple of decades, but I've always done as much work on my car myself as possible.
20 years ago we used to call the dealership service department the "stealership." I'm afraid nothing has changed.
I normally won't let the Toyota dealer lay even a finger on my car but I recently had some recall work done (fuel pump). I also asked them to look at another issue since the car was there and they presumably had the specialized equipment and knowledge to diagnose a tricky automatic transmission problem.
Well they couldn't even replicate the problem, even though I left detailed instructions on how to reproduce (yay bug reporting experience!). I watched the test drive on my dashcam and he didn't do what I said.
Worse, they messed up the recall repair and left equipment in my car. I told them it was probably the sending unit. They diagnosed the car for over 6 hours, checking everything BUT the sending unit, before finally giving in and realizing it was indeed the sending unit (it's the fancy name for a float in the gas tank). It took them another 4 hours to finally fix it.
I was left without my car for two full days for a repair that they told me was a 3-hour job.
Never, EVER take your car to the dealership EVER once your car is out of warranty. I have friends that used to have car dealerships in the family. They don't make much money on the sale of cars, the service department is under intense pressure to generate most of the profits for the dealership. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get your money. I cannot stress this enough. STAY AWAY FROM AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SERVICE DEPARTMENTS.
The average HN reader, with a little internet searching and some common sense, is better equipped to diagnose cars than a dealership.
Why would you ever change a single brake pad? I’ve never done less than an axle’s worth of pads at a time (overwhelmingly four pads). I’m even a little surprised a dealer would agree to do that.
This is true, my last car (Lexus RX), every time I took it to the dealer for oil changed or inspections it mysteriously always needed $1,000+ in repairs. Then I started taking it to an auto shop my friend recommended and suddenly I never had any more repairs to do.
Then I got a model 3 and for the last 3 years I’ve only had to do 2 things: replace tires and have a sensor in the driver’s seat replaced which was done quickly and for free. I am never going back to ICE.
Not only that but with Tesla's model, coupled with the car shortage, it seems you either have to accept delivery or risk waiting several more months before getting another one if there's a problem with the vehicle (which there so often is with a Tesla)
Dealerships for the most part take care of this. They aren't selling people broken cars because if they do, it becomes their problem.
That it will eat into their margin is totally wrong.
In fact, service and part supply are a huge reason mature car companies are profitable at all.
Telsa controlling the both in house rather then sharing profits with dealers is a gigantic advantage.
The only problem is that while you are growing most of the cars are under warrenty most of the time. Therefore service is hugly negative. Tesla is only now getting to the point where service doesnt lose a huge amount of money.
So its literally the exact opposite of what you suggested.
The main reason Tesla has such problem is because of their growth. Any other startup car company even with dealer model would also face many of those challanges. But those companies wouldn't in the end get all the profits.
In my last 3 visits to dealers 1 resulted in a fix, two were absolute disasters and the dealer broke the car more ... Dealers seem to be losing any edge they once had ...
Service is the reason I'm selling my Tesla. (Well, it was the first reason. What Elon says in public is the other. Embarrassing.)
It took a a year to get my Model X into an "acceptable" state, and it still has seven outstanding issues, six of which they simply refuse to fix.
If I wanted to get another service appointment now I would have to wait at least a month, and if they decide they're actually going to try to fix something (they often refuse), they keep it for at least a week and no, you don't get a loaner car in return.
It is an absolute disaster and I would recommend no-one ever buy a Tesla simply for this reason.
Of those I only use iCloud, but the sharing function doesn't just show other people the image, it just gives you a button to add it to your own iCloud Drive. Not what I want.
Not to derail from your main point, but how does Musk's public conduct play into your reason for selling your Tesla? I'm not a fan of the man but that shouldn't really be a factor in whether or not I use a product he's involved in.
> Unfortunately, when people see you own a Tesla, they assume you are a fan of Musk.
I see. Musk being an asshole attracts assholes who act like assholes towards you for your choice of car. I have to admit that would also be a factor in me wanting to sell a Tesla if I owned one.
That's might be very difficult. Musk may not own a majority but the corporate bylaws require a supermajority of shareholders to support any major changes, though I'm not sure if firing the CEO is covered by that. If it does, it would require roughly 75-80% of non-Musk shares to vote him out.
Strange that this did not happen when a) Steve Jobs first left Apple; and b) after Tim Cook succeeded him.
CEOs loose their mojo. When Elon fails to follow-through with taking Tesla private, and (seemingly) acquiring Twitter -- its a sign that he isn't thoroughly thinking through the weightiest of decisions.
When Jobs was ousted Apple was floundering an his departure was more drama than impactful. When he stepped down at the end he had a well running machine that could generally point in the right direction.
The first he pays lip-service to (we haven't seen an evidence for or against outside of his desire to bully people into silence), but doesn't his plan to make the human race multi-planetary involve bringing back indentured servitude?
Which is hilarious, because this has been part of basically every fictional dystopian sci fi universe ever. What other warnings has Musk confused with good ideas?
The two of you don't understand what indentured servitude is. Having your choice of jobs is not indentured servitude. It's literally just a loan. Indentured servitude is when you're essentially property of the person who gave you the loan.
by ya'lls definition of Indent. Serv. any loan at all is equivalent to Ind.Servitude because you have to pay it back.
Nueralink is 100% dystopian fodder - think Severance (2022) or any body-snatching story ever told, and a few new ones ("Our app is Uber, but for privately borrowing bodies").
Is transmitting qualia too far fetched? Maybe, but how about lightly buzzing the brains pleasure centers when employee is at work to improve esprit de corps?
Even dial it back a notch from that. "We can't help but notice you're having negative thoughts about the company. You're being put on a Though Improvement Initiative."
Trying what exactly? We're literally killing our planet and instead of doing what we should do to save it, we praise some rich asshole for building a rocket? Why?
>he is doing a pretty good job at revealing himself as one.
this looks like it's referring to recent actions. in my opinion, musks actions in the past year (including the past week or so) have been far, far more acceptable than those in the past decade
of course they don't apply this logic to other businesses, because the vast majority of large company CEOs are probably assholes or do tasteless rich people things - it's sort of a requirement for the job. people have the equivalent of trump derangement syndrome but for elon.
Because he may be the face most associated with Tesla but he doesn't provide strategy for the company, and doesn't really have a ton of input on operations, and 110,000 other people work there.
> Because he may be the face most associated with Tesla but he doesn't provide strategy for the company, and doesn't really have a ton of input on operations, and 110,000 other people work there.
> Because he may be the face most associated with Tesla but he doesn't provide strategy for the company, and doesn't really have a ton of input on operations, and 110,000 other people work there.
I think people having problems with Twitter comments instead of questionable corporate dealings are mostly extremely ignorant. People have a different opinion on who the asshole is in the end. I don't really believe people care much about antics or if they do they just want shallow massage to their own ego.
I believe there have been problems at Tesla and Musk was known to sometimes lose himself against his employees. Didn't seem to interest anyone and they still bought the cars.
For a company that can become a problem too when customers are seen as assholes.
> Not to derail from your main point, but how does Musk's public conduct play into your reason for selling your Tesla?
Luxury items function significantly and social signals. Associate the brands with things potential buyers don't want to be associated with, and those buyers won't want to buy (or display) them. Tesla has benefitted from Musk’s image when it was less partisanly political and more “To Mars!”; his recent shift may shift where the brand has appeal.
Does the consumer that passes on Tesla because of Musk look much further than their twitter feed when evaluating the alternatives? How does the impact of one person's social media behavior weigh against the conduct and impact of mega corporations making decisions about large scale industrial production and energy consumption?
According to Tesla (and SpaceX) fans, Musk is the company. He not only makes strategic decisions, but is also involved in day to day engineering development. The valuation of the company is driven by Musk's social media behavior; certainly, there's no rational economic reason.
I mean businesses are an undeniable source of political power in a democratic capitalist system. There is lobbying, influence over the media (see Bezos) etc. The choice of where you buy has an effect that is not totally unlike voting.
He has made a number of false claims about the capabilities of his cars. In my case, these claims influenced my decision, not only to purchase the car, but to pay for expensive options. Although it’s a great car, I feel like Tesla (Elon) over promised and under delivered. The idea that I was scammed out of $6000 for FSD pisses me off every time I get into the car to the point where I’ve considered selling it. That’s not a great reason to sell a car, but at least I won’t have a daily reminder of the time I was stupid sitting out in my garage.
In addition, Tesla has dropped a feature from autopilot, without making any mention of it in the sales process or manuals. This happened before with the voice recognition operation falling out of sync with the manuals.
However, the AP, formerly, in less advanced cars, allowed the car to change lanes with a simple operation of the turn signal -- all the while, maintaining position in the new lane, and adjusting for traffic aware cruise control. Now, the '22 model S, at least, you are forced to deactivate autopilot with a lane change. I'm now starting to think that there is no specification for autopilot, and every model year it will operate differently (worse) than prior model years.
I haven't made a final decision. I'm considering the Mercedes EQS, although it is very expensive. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6 are very appealing for their extremely high charge rates, although they are a little smaller than I would prefer.
I test drove one and hated the UI. Plus I've had bad experiences with Ford dealers in the past. 150kW charging is OK, but "only OK" these days. Even my 2-year-old Tesla can charge at 250kW when the battery is low.
I had a Honda Clarity for a couple years - it was a great city car and I'll admit fun to drive with the instant torque of the electric motor. But then I moved to a rural area so I sold it and bought an F-150 :)
Mercedes that cheated on emissions in a huge scandal that cost them billions in fines? Whose CEO was indicted for man slaughter?
Hyundai, who lied about MPG and had to pay hundred of millions in fines? Whose chairman was arrested and convicted for bribery and embezzlement and had to spend several years in prison and fined over a billion dollars?
Kia, who had severe issues with engine fires that they failed to recall, and only became public after a whistleblower told them? That had to pay over $100 million in fines? That caused over 5000 fires and 158 injuries and several deaths?
Where are your standards for the leadership for these other companies?
Wasn’t it Volkswagen that cheated on the emissions?
People love to talk about their morals and not giving money to support things they see as evil but when push comes to shove and it’s time to make a purchase, 99% just throw that out the window. I mean people are still dancing to Michael Jackson’s music at their weddings.
I was only thinking there was some substance to your grandstanding about corporate responsibility or choosing to make purchasing decisions based the ethics of where your money is going, which it is clear now that there wasn't.
I would say you’re selling it not really because of “service” but rather because they simply sold you a crappy car in the first place. No brand new car should have issues that need fixing.
That's true, but if they had fixed all the problems in the first couple of weeks, I wouldn't have minded too much. Unfortunately they didn't, and worse, they lie about problems being "normal".
> No brand new car should have issues that need fixing.
As much as I'd love this to be true (and it should be), I have yet to buy a newly manufactured vehicle that didn't have to go back to the dealership for something at least once... often more than once.
I don't think it's entirely fair to lay that aspect at Tesla's feet. It is fair, however, to expect better and more timely service in getting those repairs made.
But a single something, even if it takes two trips to resolve, is a whole lot less than this list of ~18 problems with ~23 service visits that span from mildly annoying (wrong model listed in software) to serious (steering system grinding, which they had the audacity to pass off as normal).
This has to be close to qualifying for lemon law status?
It wasn't 23 service visits, as I attempted to have multiple problems fixed per visit. So far it has been in service for 14 days spread across 7 services.
California lemon laws require a car to be in service for at least 30 days in the first 18 months.
I think they would. Toyota already had very good hybrid cars for years, so plenty of experiences with batteries.
Tesla made electric cars sexy, but I was always just a matter of time before electric would go mainstream.
I think the existing investment in tooling, plant and equipment that these companies have accumulated makes it hard to economically justify starting from scratch with new tooling, plant and equipment on a product line that has no competition. Tesla provided that competition, and justified such investment.
I for one. Disruption of complacent industries has defined our age, and been the motivator for countless entrepreneurs. Created more jobs than we can realistically measure, through the emergence of entirely new industries.
The established auto manufacturers have a long standing pattern of paying lip service to electric vehicles. General motors went so far as to reclaim, disable, crush, and/or shred virtually every model of the EV1, the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era. [1]. The manner in which GM created barriers to entry for electric vehicles with the EV1 program is the stuff of legend. [2]
TSLA has been the most shorted stock in history, with close to $57 billion being lost by short sellers between 2010 and 2021. [3]. That entrenched economic forces want Tesla ended is no secret.
The mass adoption of electric vehicles was Elon's stated goal with Tesla, and it looks like that is well on its way to being accomplished.
I really don't think just b/c tesla "did it first" we should give a crap. We should only give a crap that companies are bringing cheap EVs to consumers. tesla is not doing that.
> That entrenched economic forces want Tesla ended is no secret.
A conspiracy theory to have your stock undermined with unsurpassed short selling? Or for the president to hold an "EV Summit" and not even invite the company with the most US electric-car sales (74% over the past three years) who were recently dubbed the "most American-made"? [1]
My family has had 4 cars in the last 15 years (I won't mention models, but they were fairly reasonable, middle-of-the-pack vehicles). Three of them had no defects at all. The most recent one, a hybrid with a bunch of fancy electronics, had just a couple of problems, covered under warranty and fixed in less than a day. (And if our dealers flake out, there are independent service and repair shops that can do the same job, or better).
When several of my Tesla-owning cow-orkers reported waiting six months for things like body panels, I resolved not to buy one.
My car made by Toyota never had to go to the shop for anything serious for several years. Sure, I needed to get tires replaced multiple times, but internals took 7-8 years, and I finally sold it off at the 12 year mark, after having replaced the batteries, the alternator, and the brakes.
My BMW took at least a couple of years before I ran into problems.
A new vehicle shouldn't have any problems for at least a couple of years, period.
> No brand new car should have issues that need fixing
“Price, quality, manufacturing at scale. Pick two.”
Ok, that’s a little flippant. But the underlying truth is that quality for software and manufactured goods is one of many variables that can be dialled up or down at the expense of other variables.
Toyota kind of implies otherwise. Besides my impression is that Tesla doesn't really have manufacturing at scale yet. Aren't they still having trouble fulfilling orders?
Toyota is the king of doing all 3, it's a shame US automakers underestimated the Japanese. In terms of lemons, Toyota only has one every ~11.6 Million cars, while the lowest performer is Fiat with one lemon every 76k (Jeep, which is the same company as Fiat, at 131k). This publication didn't track Tesla, as the Model 3 started mass production 2 years after this article.
Note the number of listings (401 nationwide listings for the Taycan at the moment) shown in the 'Filter Results' area. Scroll down to 'Vehicle History' and note the availability of the option to 'Hide vehicles with Lemon History Reported.' Next to that is a number reflecting how many used cars of a given make/model have a lemon title out of the set of cars currently for sale. With a 25:401 ratio, it can be inferred that almost 6% of used Taycans on the market were bought back by Porsche at some point.
I feel that may be biased, as presumably every lemon buyback from Porsche gets resold on the second hand market, but clearly not all cars from a 2020 model will have resold yet.
I'd even go as far to say that the majority of a 1-2 year old car model will still be with the original purchaser.
It's biased, but it's also proof that the numbers are far from the six-nines values the GP was referring to. They sell about 10K Taycans a year in North America, so there are likely around 20K on the road.
I guess all that can be said with any certainty is that the proportion of lemons could be as bad as 6% or as good as 0.1% (if the ones for sale on Carguru at the moment happen to include all of the lemons ever produced.)
That graphic gives zero information on how that is calculated or where the data came from. I have to assume that it includes historical data over long periods. Kia and Hyundai are totally different companies than they were decades ago and are different than even 5-10 years ago.
There's no way a modern Kia or Hyundai would appear anywhere near the same level as on that list (and definitely not below any American car company or Fiat or Volkswagon).
> Service is the reason I'm selling my Tesla. (Well, it was the first reason. What Elon says in public is the other. Embarrassing.)
Considering the founders of a few other car companies have said or done truly horrible things[0][1], I'm curious what Elon has said that is so beyond the pale.
No, the obvious point was asking you what Musk said that you find so unsavory? The other implied point was if you’re going to sell your Tesla because you find Musk appalling, what other car manufacturer are you going to support, since other founders have also said or done unappealing things?
Because he’s a right-wing oligarch who pretends to care about the environment but really want to leave us on earth with his ewaste. And if someone can’t see that and works for Tesla, how could they competently build a car? They can’t, it seems.
> I was going to upload a screenshot of my issue tracker spreadsheet but I couldn't figure out the best place to do it. What's the pastebin of images? Imgur seems too public.
I've often used imgbb[1], which is free, requires a direct link to view images, and has the option to expire URL's at your choosing.
You can upload it to Imgur but not post it to the public gallery. That gives you a "private link" (ie. obfuscated URL) that is theoretically only visible to people you share it with.
Of course if you're going to post it to HackerNews that's very public so be sure to redact anything you don't want the world to see.
Probably the plan is to get Optimus ready to do the service, as obviously AI+cameras +actuators is vastly better than wet brains + eyes + flesh.
If only you had waited until September one of the robots would probably do the service for you, or by the end of this year at the latest.
(Edit: Mandatory /s)
I 100% expect Musk to say that Tesla needs help training the Optimus neural net, and that the best way to do this is to open a volunteer program where unpaid Tesla enthusiasts perform Optimus-like tasks at the service centres and factories while wearing an Optimus costume.
I expect tens of thousands of Tesla fans will eat this up, quit their jobs, and go work for free at Tesla to help "train the neural net". TSLA stock will improve drastically as Musk will be able to fire the entire factory floor, replace them with volunteers, and labour costs will be greatly reduced.
We had one of the first 85D and have sold for a lot of the similar reasons.
The real nail in the coffin was that they dropped mobile service in our area. I had a to replace the 12v battery, tried to do it myself, could not get parts.
The nearest service center is a 6-8hr roundtrip for me, more than happy to pay for mobile service but they didn't offer it any more.
Either way the shift to EVs has happened, with the F150 lightning and other offerings Tesla has largely achieved one of the main reasons we were an earlier adopter.
You seem like you are probably in the top 1% of picky customers. The one problem I had in my 3 year old model 3, which was fairly urgent, was fixed in 2 days.
Issues from your list like “tesla mobile app incorrectly identifies car as 100D” and “Autopilot down chime is distorted” are rightfully lower priority than things like brakes not working properly. Most people (including me) would not even notice most of these things on your list. I am not surprised you had to wait a while for those things to get fixed, I have a feeling you’re going to also be disappointed with your next vehicle.
Indeed. A camera fogging up in rain... Sure, probably a constructional error but if a car shop can fix that in a week I would be surprised. I am sure they would find some chemicals to don't let water condense here and maybe Tesla would train mechanics to do it. But this probably didn't get the highest priority.
I mean these are things that might need improvement, but to me a car transports me from A to B. Given, I also don't pay much for them.
The camera fogging up disables autopilot and prevents it from working so it's not quite as trivial as it seems. It's not normal for it to fog up, none of the other cameras do.
>>To be fair, they are focusing on easier tasks, like changing tires, ...
Even changing tires requires at least some training, including proper threading of the lug nuts and especially proper torquing. Too much or too little torque will both lead to problems, and just braaapp-ing them on with the air wrench is definitely not cool (and no, the "torque bars" between the drive lug and socket do not work properly either, I've had to redo more nuts some yahoo put on with those than I can count).
Not to defend Tesla's use of untrained personnel to perform service, but the examples you've given are great examples of what can be performed by untrained personnel. You've perfectly explained pretty much everything that can go wrong when rotating tires and it can be explained to a monkey in about 3 sentences.
Sure, that will work great — IFF — we're explaining it to an experienced person who's already developed has a feel for the physical properties of materials, selection and use of tools, and shop safety.
To people like you and I with that kind of experience and sensibility already trained in, a few sentences and we're more than good to go, because we'll intuit the rest from our pre-existing knowledge.
And, even to a person with general feel for tools and materials but new to automotive, even eplaining torquing takes more than a few sentences. You can't just say "pull the towque wrench until it clicks" - you need to explain that you cannot push it faster, and you cannot keep clicking it mutiple times, as both of those will result in overtorquing. Ensuring that both stud and lug nut threads are clean & properly lubricated, or the spec'd torque won't actually create the required thread tension to hold... it's not just 3 sentences, it's more like a 15min lecture.
For everyone else, it is like explaining it to a monkey — they might hear it, but will get some of the explicit instructions wrong and make bad or random judgements about everything else. Even if some of the major things are gotten right, there's a 100 other things that can go wrong - they don't mount the socket quite right on the nut, push too hard and slip with the wrench, scratching the adjacent body panel, and sure, they redo it and ultimately get the torque right, but now there's a scratch on the customer's car... or something is off and they don't have the shop sense to know it, then some accident happens... I've had even good mechanics who properly torque things spin the nuts on then forget to torque one wheel (maybe distracted by a call, didn't get back to it).
We've all been around the cringefest of people with zero (or negative) mechanical or tool sense in a shop — constantly hoping that they'll leave soon or learn fast. At least the people who want to learn probably will with good experience and guidance. But I sure as heck wouldn't want some poor salesguy who doesn't even want to be there working next to me or working on my car.
I do get the personnel shortage, and Tesla definitely needs to address their constantly reported nearly Google-horrible service. I also think it would be OK if they asked for volunteers from other staff who has experience. but somehow, it looks more like it's just another mad scramble. Some will get it right and learn something, but it'll mostly be more fckups, done faster.
It's widely believed that most automotive mechanics have turned into parts-swappers anyway, and I suspect a Tesla is "smart" enough to tell them what to replace, which makes me wonder what sort of training the actually-trained ones have gotten. How to access the notoriously-locked-down service manuals?
When I was young, learning to work on cars was just a normal part of adolescence.
Yet another hit piece from the same outlet. This must be like the 10th article I've seen from them obsessing over musk and his companies this month. Piss off the woke and they will make sure you understand it. Just look at this comment section.
Electrek, from my perspective, went downhill when Fred started to use his platform to complain about issues with a car he bought (presumably from the money he made by writing about Tesla). When he didn’t get special treatment, he tried himself as “investigative”, which is to say, the tone of his articles changed. Musk then stopped replying to Fred on Twitter. And so it went. Musk actually did compliment Fred one more time on something funny the had written. But he eventually blocked him on Twitter, and since then, Electrek is basically all sour grapes posing as investigative journalism.
Edit: My personal interpretation is this: It is very difficult for a man to sit on the sidelines and watch another man do things. And yet that is what every journalist has to go through. While others are doing things and changing things, he is merely sitting there and commenting. While the other is the artist, he is the mere critic. While the other seems to have power of a nature, all the critic seems to have is power over people’s opinions. Now, if such a person focused on the greater whole, he would still be able to find purpose in what he is doing. After all, we need good journalism. But if he is focused on his own ego, the act of comparing himself to the person he is writing about will make him bitter and resentful. He will feel as though he is standing in the shadows of this other person. As if, if he could only make this other person smaller, he himself would become bigger. That the very act of comparing himself to another person and trying to derive his sense of self-worth from such a comparison is itself what makes him feel small doesn’t even occur to him.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 243 ms ] threadTons of cars from other manufacturers often have similar issues from the factory, eg The Stellantis (Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram) family supposedly has one lemon every 100k cars produced[0] and that's only if the issue isn't fixed within 3 visits to the dealership's auto repair shop.
0: https://lemonlawexperts.com/list-of-lemon-cars/
Wtf are you on? At most 1 in ten million people who buy Tesla will experience this? So, considering that Tesla has sold significantly less that that, do you think all those reports have secretly just been from one person?
> the main concern is reducing the metric of “next available appointment,”
Later on the article talks about how short sellers have been using that metric to gauge service levels, which Tesla wants to undermine. So it looks like the company is explicitly targeting a vanity metric as a knee jerk response to short sellers. Not the best long term strategy...
At some point it may catch up to them & they'll have to do something about it, but by then it may be too late to avoid major damage to the company. The fact that it hasn't hurt them yet might make it even worse: it may mean leadership stays in denial over the problem even longer past the point of keeping it manageable.
I do suspect we will have a base on the Moon and maybe a little space tourism long before we do anything more than a small not-to-stay trip to Mars. The rocket is only a small part of the tech tree to settle a planet 6mos journey away. The moon is only about three days and there is a daily launch window.
That being said I’m also well aware that Gwynne Shotwell and numerous others are at least as responsible. He gets some but by no means all credit.
I also give Tesla immense credit for helping tip EVs, though I am less bullish on them by far than SpaceX. They seem to be very different companies.
But he evidently can't.
Getting back would be much harder challanges.
But his goal is for many people to go there.
And then 5 years later people are angry he didnt deliver.
I really dont understand why people keep brining this up.
And as for Mars, nobody can deny that what Musk is doing with SpaceX is getting us closer to that then we have ever been. I dont think any fan of space flight would disagree.
Whoever ends up in the White House, he has a lot of reasons for wanting to appear as if he's on the same side, whether he is or not.
He also hasn't exactly had reason to feel respected by the Biden administration, or Democrats in general.
Just like Republicans had the term "RINO"s, we've got the same thing going on. A lot of classic liberals would be labeled today a DINO.
The current extremism is real.
I dont know of any. Are you calling Geely or BYD new? And and they are not that much larger kn scale.
So please, show me the sources.
Beyond that, there is also XPeng and NIO, which aren't as large in scale ad Tesla, but are scaling significantly faster than Tesla did and are much much younger and definitely qualify as "at scale".
So, clearly, scaling a new car company isn't something Tesla was the only one to do in its era.
Tesla revenue: 53,823
BYD revenue: 32’173
And XPeng and NIO started way later when much of the groundwork for EV was already laid and the government in China had a gigantic push to establish EV in the country.
So yeah, the only company that is comparable, BYD is one of the most amazing companies of China and Tesla has done better on global scale.
I disagree that Tesla has done better on a global scale. Tesla requires 10x more subsidies per vehicle, doesn't own their battery supply chain, took longer to be profitable, made significant amounts of money from reservations they are yet to fulfill, etc...
For all the talk of gigantic governmental pushes, the US still supports Tesla far more than China supports BYD simply by offering 5-7x more in subsidies per vehicle.
I think, on the global scale, that BYD has done better and is doing better, as far as scale - they make almost as many cars as Tesla but also make far more than cars, such as buses, trucks, industrial equipment, various electronics - markets that Tesla has been unsuccessful in. The fact that they do so on lower revenue is a sign to me that they can simply produce more efficiently, ie, better at scaling.
Simply not true.
> For all the talk of gigantic governmental pushes, the US still supports Tesla far more than China supports BYD
That is just false. China has throwing gigantic support behind the whole push to EV. Not to mention that BYD profited massively from the protection of the government from IP theft. China literally threw lots of money at the whole supply-chain that BYD is building on.
And China had a large number of inventive programs for EVs as well, but Tesla profited from those 2.
> doesn't own their battery supply chain
BYD makes batteries but they certainty don't own their whole supply-chain. Tesla has started to make batteries and they are going deep into the supply-chain making their own materials and so on.
> made significant amounts of money from reservations they are yet to fulfill
Its not as much as you seem to think and it wouldn't change the overall picture.
> I think, on the global scale, that BYD has done better and is doing better, as far as scale
So how much does BYD sell in Europe and the US, its far less then Telsa does. BYD cars are mostly sold in China. They do sell buses and such outside of China. But in terms of Cars they massively profiting from targeting their local market first.
> such as buses, trucks, industrial equipment, various electronics - markets that Tesla has been unsuccessful in. The fact that they do so on lower revenue is a sign to me that they can simply produce more efficiently, ie, better at scaling.
Tesla makes revenue and more profit ...
The fact remains:
> here have been dozens of new car companies in China operating a far greater scale than Tesla
This is false, and I corrected it.
I hope EV startups succeed! I am just pointing out how hard it is to do it from scratch and that anyone who even gets close should be recognized.
(This is a play on Tesla never defining "delivered").
Didn't he put like, a whole car, into orbit around the Sun?
They needed a known weight to test the rocket and orbital flight mechanics. Instead of putting any random thing, he put his car and the world went gaga over the stunt. It brought Tesla and SpaceX tremendous amount of press.
As a founder, he made full use of an opportunity.
But seriously, that stunt has nothing to do with production Teslas. Tesla is still a very new player we are now seeing more and more growing pains, especially on the customer side, which is too bad but honestly should have been expected.
We are the first adopters to discover what kind of shelf life a Tesla car has, what it works like after 5, 10 and 15 years. Personally, I'm not optimistic about it. It seems to break down quite easily for a lot of people - add a decade of wear and tear on top of that, and it's not a great picture.
The base electronic, motors and batteries seem to be pretty reliable for most people. They had very few major issues with those things compared to most companies much smaller EV efforts.
Teslas are ever more in demand, with wait times extending to a year. They are the highest selling EVs in the world by a large margin and they make the highest margin on EVs they sell, while others are losing money and stopping production (latest of which is Ford Mache E).
He knows what he's doing.
He took direct control of a company when it was going straight to shit and now its by far the largest EV company on the planned and they are still growing like a startup.
The public perception that everything Musk does it to optimize short term stock price seems to me totally and completly wrong.
I think far more accurate assesment would be that he focus on long term planning off the core limitation his companies are facing. And that will be positive for long term.
And so far this has proven out very successful. I can give many exapmles.
And in that he pays sometimes for not doing as well on the sideshows. Aguable that is the only way you can even consider running multible comapanies like that.
Also why does a Tesla even need service other than a quick safety check. It’s not like the brake pads should be worn fast with regen and there’s no oil to change.
People can go from mega hype-person to mega detractor quite fast.
Those sentiments trail any actual improvements for a long time.
The cars from their newer factories have generally better quality.
And even so, when looking at QC report Telsa might not be great, but its not really an order magnitude off to anybody else either.
So to suggest they should stop growing to fix QC is just delusional and literally nobody, not even you as CEO would do so.
What electric cars do not have are timing belts, sparkplugs, fuel pumps --otherwise ICE propulsion are pretty reliable.
Why does any massively complicated machine need service? Because things break.
Because the initial build quality of the cars is still so poor they come broken, or quickly break.
I humbly submit that electronic parts might actually be less reliable than mechanical parts.
"36% of Model 3 buyers in Q1 2022 didn't have any service visits during the first 30 days of ownership while 54% had one and 10% had two visits."
Only a minority of Model 3 buyers get a car that isn't broken in the first month.
This misconception was dispelled when I then bought a car new from the world's largest car manufacturer. It's difficult to overestimate how much they can screw it up.
Dealerships aren't just awful for the buying experience. They're also awful for the service experience. If anything, Tesla's model of providing at-home service for small or routine work is an exception from the norm that, in my experience, raises it above other premium brands.
So you're saying Electrek, a website which focuses almost exclusively on electric vehicle news, wrote an article about an electric vehicle company?
No way.
Could you expand ?
Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly. Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them. This is going to be 100% Tesla’s problem and is going to eat into margins in significant ways.
One that I know is rumored is a 1st party Radar sensor that is supposed to be coming soon, which would be them replacing the Continental radars that exist on older models. There's also battery changes, with the biggest being the LFP batteries on the new SR 3. I wouldn't necessarily categorize that under "swapping out" but testing out a new chemistry that will likely go fleet-wide at some point.
One of the big things they wanted to do was create a lower cost model (3/Y) by trying to reuse as many parts and moulds as possible between the two, so I'd actually be surprised to hear of a lot of part substitution since it goes directly against that logic.
In terms of their MCU, they are at V3, with each being a generational improvement over the last (Tegra to Intel Atom to Ryzen) and not related to the chip shortages. In terms of their AP computers, same thing, they had AP1 which was Mobileye rebranded, AP2, 2.5 and 3 which were each major changes to add computing power.
This is mainly how the major established car manufacturers make money. Soon same should be true for Tesla as well, as their fleet ages.
But I mean, if the dealership is the manufacturer, then you definitely have a bigger conflict of interest as far as repairs go.
They hadn't even read the code right and wouldn't have even been replacing a part relevant to it.
I'm not saying Tesla service is great, just to be clear, just that the bar is often really low.
Oh, come on. They certainly are not. Pick any rapidly growing car model of the last six or seven decades (the Prius in 2005-08 comes to mind, Outbacks in the 90's, etc...) and you'll discover a flood of service problems reported.
Tesla is having trouble scaling service because it turns out service might be harder to scale than factories.
And one way you address that is by hiring more people to do service, which is exactly what is being reported here. The idea that these are "untrained" (!!!) employees is pure spin. These are, fundamentally, new employees, brought on[1] to service cars. And, duh, they're going to have to be trained before they can be useful. There isn't the remotest hint of an allegation anywhere in that article that Tesla was skipping training for service employees. It's all spin.
Anti-Tesla headlines are an eyeball magnet. There was one going around a few days ago about something like 300 autopilot accidents had been identified by the NTSB (or NHTSA?), failing to note that if that holds up it represents an accident rate something like 6% of the average passenger car.
[1] Albeit as transfers from other departments.
Note that for pretty much all other automakers, "training" means something more than a few minutes watching a video. It means actual reading, instruction, and supervised hands-on exercises.
A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training, and most automakers will further certify technicians so that customers know that the person working on their car actually knows what they're doing.
A "new" Tesla technician might have almost an hour. It's great that they're "starting somewhere" but it sucks for the customers whose service will be fucked up by someone who has no business handling paid, unsupervised service calls.
The fantasy that BEVs are 'much simpler' than ICE vehicles has confused a lot of people. The reality is that the complex electronics, battery management systems etc can only be worked on by Tesla techs with access to DRM protected diagnostics and restricted access online workshop manuals. All modern vehicles, whether ICE, hybrid or BEV are incredibly complex so fewer and fewer people can or want to work on them.
This is a huge problem going forward for everyone. We need to get back to the VW Beetle/Golf etc era where it was possible for even a knowledgable owner could perform major repairs on the vehicle they own, and which were bread and butter for local mechanic shops
This sounds like a problem Tesla created for itself, unnecessarily.
Aptera is taking the opposite approach: https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui...
As Teslas Age | Gruber Motors
https://youtu.be/GcpPyBYRDcM
Please never say "back to the VW" and "Beetle" in the same sentence. They're shoehorned together in the worst of ways.
If we're going to go back to the Beetle era where it was easy to work on, I think you have to go back pretty far. That's probably too old for most people.
Completely different than a Golf or Jetta the same years, which usually allows you to get to whatever you'd like. If not, at least the service position let's you yank the engine quick.
I'm thinking back really hard, but I don't know if I've ever looked around a 50's/60's Beetle more than a quick glance. If they built a new electric car as cheap and easy as those supposedly were to work on, I'd be very interested.
Well sure. It’s just the state of the world. I’d expect a Tesla owner to be someone who can handle repairs having to be re-done. They are luxury cars, after all.
For reference, I’ve owned several Teslas and none of them have been at the level of fit and finish appropriate for their price. All of them have needed some finicky part or another fixed under warranty.
The cars, though… they’re just so much fun to drive that all of that doesn’t really matter to me.
I don’t agree that is a huge problem going forward for everyone. I think it’s something that will work itself out given the incentives that Tesla has to get their act together. And it’s not really a problem for the vast majority of owners, who have other options for transport while their car is repaired.
Teslas are not Corollas. Teslas are not “EVs for the Everyman” no matter what Elon says.
I’m not interested in picking up a wrench and working on my own car. I don’t mind that Tesla is sending out newbies to work on cars because I’ll just keep taking it back until I’m satisfied. But, you also couldn’t pay me to go to a traditional dealership.
Why is it any more amazing than taking a random person off the street[1] and have them service cars?
What you're doing is exactly what the author of the linked article wants you to do: you're taking the frame from the headline (that the new servicefolk won't be trained before working on cars) as a prior and assuming it to be true, despite that fact that this isn't alleged anywhere in the article.
> A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training
It's not hundreds of hours. These people get trained, but you can start on stuff like tire replacements or diagnostic reading after a day or two. Not every service is replacing a cylinder or rebuilding a transmission!
[1] A "new employee", in the jargon.
Really? In the experience of myself and my friends, dealer repair is at best hit-and-miss and at worst feels downright dishonest... most of the people I know who felt "in the know" always used third-party repair people that they trusted.
> As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them.
This just means you need to hire people, not that those people need to be hired at arm's-length by third-party related businesses. Tesla has buildings where people work in them all over the world, just like Toyota. Their location near where I live looks just like a normal car dealer because it used to be a Buick dealership. They have a service center full of technicians, they are simply hired by Tesla.
Taking a step back this is like insisting that companies like Panda Express, Starbucks, or Chipotle can't ever compete with franchises because obviously they are going to have to hire a billion people to cook and serve the food... well, you just hire them! To me the only thing that franchises are inherently good at doing is helping to fleece unsuspecting franchise purchasers with bad models.
> Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
And this is the real problem: Tesla as a company doesn't even have the parts available to make NEW cars right now (Musk has even been talking about pausing new orders as they have cars sitting all over the place just a few parts shy of being ready for pick up ;P) much less repair OLD cars, and their demand scaling up both processes at once is of course going to be hard.
And like, to be clear: maybe their current lack of service people is inexcusable and incompetent... but this has nothing to do with being "dealer-free".
Agree. I use dealers since they are the ones who provide authorized recall repairs. Otherwise, I go to the local, independent for much faster & cheaper service.
Dealerships have a really bad reputation so they are sometimes called stealerships.
Which is part of the puzzle people are seemingly missing.
Get rid of dealerships - and you're stuck with the manufacturer's service - for better or worse.
Don't like that one particular dealership? Go to a different one... Unless you live in the middle of no where, you likely have at least two or more dealerships for your car's make within a reasonable distance. Find one that treats you right - for both service and sales.
That's not true at all. Independent mechanics service cars, including almost most gas stations.
My understanding is that all work has to be done by Tesla to keep OTA updates.
The same probably applies for Tesla. I cannot afford one myself, but I imagine that a certain % of people get excellent service or no problems at all, and another percent like comment OP get many problems and then whoever they're dealing with probably shrugs and says, well, most of our customers never had any issue, we'll just drag this guy along. It sucks and these businesses that earn such huge margins on EVs should strive to dig into their pockets and deliver better customer service. For me personally, it's the treatment of that last percent of customers who are outliers and have rare issues that's very influential of how much I trust a company.
They've always got the work done within a day and if they think it's going to run over, they give me a loaner no questions asked and tell me to come back at my convenience in a few days time. Conversations typically run along the lines of "I talked to the mechanic who saw your car last time and he's confident on his time estimate. He's suggested doing x while he does y, as it's really only going to be a parts cost as he's stripping x off in the process of doing y, and it'll need doing in x months anyway, but it's up to you".
Anything they want to raise to my attention, they send me a simple clear video with a mechanic clearly describing/visually highlighting the problem(s), how long they think it's safe to leave to be fixed and have an open discussion with me about what I want to do and when I want to do it. I literally can't fault them. It's certainly dealer specific - I researched where to go on a UK car forum, and found out the nearest dealership seems like an absolute shit show of basically scamming customers, so I travel a bit further out and haven't been disappointed (yet).
[1]: one of recent examples - Gears & Gadgets f150 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UCnYeiYY9g
[2]: broken motor at bronco: 50 days in service, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB-ZV-7JVeY
It's an anecdote, of course, but the solution 11 months later was to buy another car. You can bet it wasn't a Hyundai.
I've had a dealer claim that my car wasn't covered by a manufacturer engine warranty extension when it plainly was. That was after struggling for a long time to get them to acknowledge the fix that was needed.
Dealers are often not good at all at fixing problems. Ironically, one of the big problems with Tesla service is that they've copied the "that's in spec" mantra of a lot of dealers.
3rd party repair shops are generally going to be the better way to go and from an outside perspective, the two flaws in Tesla’s service model are 1) not producing & distributing enough parts, and 2) not partnering with more repair centers to train and certify technicians to work on Teslas.
I'm going to have to stop you there.
A little about me, I was a college dropout and worked as a mechanic for a few years, then went back and completed my undergrad, got a Master's and I've been white collar for a couple of decades, but I've always done as much work on my car myself as possible.
20 years ago we used to call the dealership service department the "stealership." I'm afraid nothing has changed.
I normally won't let the Toyota dealer lay even a finger on my car but I recently had some recall work done (fuel pump). I also asked them to look at another issue since the car was there and they presumably had the specialized equipment and knowledge to diagnose a tricky automatic transmission problem.
Well they couldn't even replicate the problem, even though I left detailed instructions on how to reproduce (yay bug reporting experience!). I watched the test drive on my dashcam and he didn't do what I said.
Worse, they messed up the recall repair and left equipment in my car. I told them it was probably the sending unit. They diagnosed the car for over 6 hours, checking everything BUT the sending unit, before finally giving in and realizing it was indeed the sending unit (it's the fancy name for a float in the gas tank). It took them another 4 hours to finally fix it.
I was left without my car for two full days for a repair that they told me was a 3-hour job.
Never, EVER take your car to the dealership EVER once your car is out of warranty. I have friends that used to have car dealerships in the family. They don't make much money on the sale of cars, the service department is under intense pressure to generate most of the profits for the dealership. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get your money. I cannot stress this enough. STAY AWAY FROM AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SERVICE DEPARTMENTS.
The average HN reader, with a little internet searching and some common sense, is better equipped to diagnose cars than a dealership.
After a quick oil change place put the wrong oil in my car, the service center got my entire engine warranty replaced.
They regularly wave diagnostic fees, fix little extras for free, and are incredibly pleasant to deal with.
The Kia dealership itself is terrible, trying to buy a car from there is literally insulting at times.
That they cover a rental car for the duration of however long they have my car is a nice extra that independent repair shops don't offer.
Never again. Thankfully, that crummy location is out of business for whatever reason.
So it really varies by location.
They've had the same head of their Kia service department for over a decade.
Reputation matters.
Then I got a model 3 and for the last 3 years I’ve only had to do 2 things: replace tires and have a sensor in the driver’s seat replaced which was done quickly and for free. I am never going back to ICE.
Dealerships for the most part take care of this. They aren't selling people broken cars because if they do, it becomes their problem.
In fact, service and part supply are a huge reason mature car companies are profitable at all.
Telsa controlling the both in house rather then sharing profits with dealers is a gigantic advantage.
The only problem is that while you are growing most of the cars are under warrenty most of the time. Therefore service is hugly negative. Tesla is only now getting to the point where service doesnt lose a huge amount of money.
So its literally the exact opposite of what you suggested.
The main reason Tesla has such problem is because of their growth. Any other startup car company even with dealer model would also face many of those challanges. But those companies wouldn't in the end get all the profits.
It took a a year to get my Model X into an "acceptable" state, and it still has seven outstanding issues, six of which they simply refuse to fix.
If I wanted to get another service appointment now I would have to wait at least a month, and if they decide they're actually going to try to fix something (they often refuse), they keep it for at least a week and no, you don't get a loaner car in return.
It is an absolute disaster and I would recommend no-one ever buy a Tesla simply for this reason.
Here's the full list of issues with my car: https://ibb.co/VJJdNVk
(Thanks for the suggestion of imgbb)
https://rclone.org/union/
I'm not, but that doesn't change what they think.
I have plenty of other reasons to get rid of the car anyway. This one is just a bonus.
I see. Musk being an asshole attracts assholes who act like assholes towards you for your choice of car. I have to admit that would also be a factor in me wanting to sell a Tesla if I owned one.
CEOs loose their mojo. When Elon fails to follow-through with taking Tesla private, and (seemingly) acquiring Twitter -- its a sign that he isn't thoroughly thinking through the weightiest of decisions.
No one likes giving money to assholes. And to be fair, he is doing a pretty good job at revealing himself as one.
[1] https://twitter.com/Kristennetten/status/1217992009794740224?
by ya'lls definition of Indent. Serv. any loan at all is equivalent to Ind.Servitude because you have to pay it back.
Second of all, It's not 'his cities'.
The goal is hundreds of thousands of people in those cities and they will form their own government just like they have on earth.
Is transmitting qualia too far fetched? Maybe, but how about lightly buzzing the brains pleasure centers when employee is at work to improve esprit de corps?
Multiplanetary? Really? We'll all be so far dead by then...
> Not what free speech means?
Multiplanetary? Really? We'll all be so far dead by then...
> Asshole for trying?
Trying what exactly? We're literally killing our planet and instead of doing what we should do to save it, we praise some rich asshole for building a rocket? Why?
this looks like it's referring to recent actions. in my opinion, musks actions in the past year (including the past week or so) have been far, far more acceptable than those in the past decade
My problem with Musk is who he is getting politically aligned with, for several very close reasons.
Everyone else is disagreeing with you, but I'll take a different tack:
Why shouldn't his behavior be a factor?
CEOs set company strategy and drive execution.
Mr. Musk is the largest individual shareholder.
I also wouldn't want to be funding a future political play by Musk by buying a Tesla now.
I believe there have been problems at Tesla and Musk was known to sometimes lose himself against his employees. Didn't seem to interest anyone and they still bought the cars.
For a company that can become a problem too when customers are seen as assholes.
Luxury items function significantly and social signals. Associate the brands with things potential buyers don't want to be associated with, and those buyers won't want to buy (or display) them. Tesla has benefitted from Musk’s image when it was less partisanly political and more “To Mars!”; his recent shift may shift where the brand has appeal.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/brands-politics-axios-harri...
One person's impact is the reason for Tesla, no?
However, the AP, formerly, in less advanced cars, allowed the car to change lanes with a simple operation of the turn signal -- all the while, maintaining position in the new lane, and adjusting for traffic aware cruise control. Now, the '22 model S, at least, you are forced to deactivate autopilot with a lane change. I'm now starting to think that there is no specification for autopilot, and every model year it will operate differently (worse) than prior model years.
A lot of people do like it though!
Hyundai, who lied about MPG and had to pay hundred of millions in fines? Whose chairman was arrested and convicted for bribery and embezzlement and had to spend several years in prison and fined over a billion dollars?
Kia, who had severe issues with engine fires that they failed to recall, and only became public after a whistleblower told them? That had to pay over $100 million in fines? That caused over 5000 fires and 158 injuries and several deaths?
Where are your standards for the leadership for these other companies?
People love to talk about their morals and not giving money to support things they see as evil but when push comes to shove and it’s time to make a purchase, 99% just throw that out the window. I mean people are still dancing to Michael Jackson’s music at their weddings.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2020/09/15/merced...
warning: awful forbes website
As much as I'd love this to be true (and it should be), I have yet to buy a newly manufactured vehicle that didn't have to go back to the dealership for something at least once... often more than once.
I don't think it's entirely fair to lay that aspect at Tesla's feet. It is fair, however, to expect better and more timely service in getting those repairs made.
This has to be close to qualifying for lemon law status?
California lemon laws require a car to be in service for at least 30 days in the first 18 months.
The established auto manufacturers have a long standing pattern of paying lip service to electric vehicles. General motors went so far as to reclaim, disable, crush, and/or shred virtually every model of the EV1, the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era. [1]. The manner in which GM created barriers to entry for electric vehicles with the EV1 program is the stuff of legend. [2]
TSLA has been the most shorted stock in history, with close to $57 billion being lost by short sellers between 2010 and 2021. [3]. That entrenched economic forces want Tesla ended is no secret.
The mass adoption of electric vehicles was Elon's stated goal with Tesla, and it looks like that is well on its way to being accomplished.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car
[3] https://qz.com/1979325/tesla-not-gamestop-is-the-most-shorte...
> That entrenched economic forces want Tesla ended is no secret.
Literally a conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy theory to have your stock undermined with unsurpassed short selling? Or for the president to hold an "EV Summit" and not even invite the company with the most US electric-car sales (74% over the past three years) who were recently dubbed the "most American-made"? [1]
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-beats-ford-as-most-ame...
When several of my Tesla-owning cow-orkers reported waiting six months for things like body panels, I resolved not to buy one.
My BMW took at least a couple of years before I ran into problems.
A new vehicle shouldn't have any problems for at least a couple of years, period.
“Price, quality, manufacturing at scale. Pick two.”
Ok, that’s a little flippant. But the underlying truth is that quality for software and manufactured goods is one of many variables that can be dialled up or down at the expense of other variables.
(Well, maybe not price right now because the entire car market is insane.)
So my claim is that Honda and Toyota provide high value by balancing a low-ish (but not the lowest) price against high quality.
https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2016/01/toyota-tops-fiat...
To get a feel for the actual statistics, a very useful trick I came across on a Porsche forum is to look up the model on cargurus.com. E.g.:
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/inventorylisting/viewDetailsFi...
Note the number of listings (401 nationwide listings for the Taycan at the moment) shown in the 'Filter Results' area. Scroll down to 'Vehicle History' and note the availability of the option to 'Hide vehicles with Lemon History Reported.' Next to that is a number reflecting how many used cars of a given make/model have a lemon title out of the set of cars currently for sale. With a 25:401 ratio, it can be inferred that almost 6% of used Taycans on the market were bought back by Porsche at some point.
I'd even go as far to say that the majority of a 1-2 year old car model will still be with the original purchaser.
I guess all that can be said with any certainty is that the proportion of lemons could be as bad as 6% or as good as 0.1% (if the ones for sale on Carguru at the moment happen to include all of the lemons ever produced.)
There's no way a modern Kia or Hyundai would appear anywhere near the same level as on that list (and definitely not below any American car company or Fiat or Volkswagon).
And how could that take in account how often brands are talked about in general.
Considering the founders of a few other car companies have said or done truly horrible things[0][1], I'm curious what Elon has said that is so beyond the pale.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1939%E2%80%931944:_...
I've often used imgbb[1], which is free, requires a direct link to view images, and has the option to expire URL's at your choosing.
[1] https://imgbb.com/
Of course if you're going to post it to HackerNews that's very public so be sure to redact anything you don't want the world to see.
I expect tens of thousands of Tesla fans will eat this up, quit their jobs, and go work for free at Tesla to help "train the neural net". TSLA stock will improve drastically as Musk will be able to fire the entire factory floor, replace them with volunteers, and labour costs will be greatly reduced.
If the car hasn't been a good one, so be it. But if you let your personal politics color your life's view, you're going to have a tumultuous life.
The real nail in the coffin was that they dropped mobile service in our area. I had a to replace the 12v battery, tried to do it myself, could not get parts.
The nearest service center is a 6-8hr roundtrip for me, more than happy to pay for mobile service but they didn't offer it any more.
Either way the shift to EVs has happened, with the F150 lightning and other offerings Tesla has largely achieved one of the main reasons we were an earlier adopter.
Issues from your list like “tesla mobile app incorrectly identifies car as 100D” and “Autopilot down chime is distorted” are rightfully lower priority than things like brakes not working properly. Most people (including me) would not even notice most of these things on your list. I am not surprised you had to wait a while for those things to get fixed, I have a feeling you’re going to also be disappointed with your next vehicle.
I mean these are things that might need improvement, but to me a car transports me from A to B. Given, I also don't pay much for them.
Even changing tires requires at least some training, including proper threading of the lug nuts and especially proper torquing. Too much or too little torque will both lead to problems, and just braaapp-ing them on with the air wrench is definitely not cool (and no, the "torque bars" between the drive lug and socket do not work properly either, I've had to redo more nuts some yahoo put on with those than I can count).
So, ya, this is really not cool.
To people like you and I with that kind of experience and sensibility already trained in, a few sentences and we're more than good to go, because we'll intuit the rest from our pre-existing knowledge.
And, even to a person with general feel for tools and materials but new to automotive, even eplaining torquing takes more than a few sentences. You can't just say "pull the towque wrench until it clicks" - you need to explain that you cannot push it faster, and you cannot keep clicking it mutiple times, as both of those will result in overtorquing. Ensuring that both stud and lug nut threads are clean & properly lubricated, or the spec'd torque won't actually create the required thread tension to hold... it's not just 3 sentences, it's more like a 15min lecture.
For everyone else, it is like explaining it to a monkey — they might hear it, but will get some of the explicit instructions wrong and make bad or random judgements about everything else. Even if some of the major things are gotten right, there's a 100 other things that can go wrong - they don't mount the socket quite right on the nut, push too hard and slip with the wrench, scratching the adjacent body panel, and sure, they redo it and ultimately get the torque right, but now there's a scratch on the customer's car... or something is off and they don't have the shop sense to know it, then some accident happens... I've had even good mechanics who properly torque things spin the nuts on then forget to torque one wheel (maybe distracted by a call, didn't get back to it).
We've all been around the cringefest of people with zero (or negative) mechanical or tool sense in a shop — constantly hoping that they'll leave soon or learn fast. At least the people who want to learn probably will with good experience and guidance. But I sure as heck wouldn't want some poor salesguy who doesn't even want to be there working next to me or working on my car.
I do get the personnel shortage, and Tesla definitely needs to address their constantly reported nearly Google-horrible service. I also think it would be OK if they asked for volunteers from other staff who has experience. but somehow, it looks more like it's just another mad scramble. Some will get it right and learn something, but it'll mostly be more fckups, done faster.
Edit fmt
When I was young, learning to work on cars was just a normal part of adolescence.
Edit: My personal interpretation is this: It is very difficult for a man to sit on the sidelines and watch another man do things. And yet that is what every journalist has to go through. While others are doing things and changing things, he is merely sitting there and commenting. While the other is the artist, he is the mere critic. While the other seems to have power of a nature, all the critic seems to have is power over people’s opinions. Now, if such a person focused on the greater whole, he would still be able to find purpose in what he is doing. After all, we need good journalism. But if he is focused on his own ego, the act of comparing himself to the person he is writing about will make him bitter and resentful. He will feel as though he is standing in the shadows of this other person. As if, if he could only make this other person smaller, he himself would become bigger. That the very act of comparing himself to another person and trying to derive his sense of self-worth from such a comparison is itself what makes him feel small doesn’t even occur to him.