HN readers seem like one of the most likely group to buy a Tesla due to the technical nature of the readership. So what were your reasons for not doing so?
I really wanted one, but its too impractical. There are no or very few charging stations where I live, it gets very cold here, and I often find I need to drive across the country driving through rural areas that have limited charging coverage. I dont think its really a tesla problem, but an ev problem. Right now ice cars seem more aligned with my needs.
I am not sure what its like in Norway. My understanding is the temperature reduces the effective capacity [0]. Heated garages aren't very common around here (I don't have a garage at all), so raising the temperature of the car would be a challenge in the winter months.
I drove ~1,800mi this past weekend (mostly through rural parts of the country), that would have been challenging (assuming possible) in an ev.
It was —17C this morning and as every morning my car was warm and cozy inside.
But yes the energy consumption is a lot higher in the cold mostly because of the heating and the air density. On long trips it’s not so bad because the battery heats up during the charging stops and the car can transfer the battery heat to the cabin.
But you need chargers. Norway had an old projects years ago about having chargers at least every 50km on the main roads in many areas. It helped a lot.
"The climate of Norway is more temperate than could be expected for such high latitudes. This is mainly due to the North Atlantic Current with its extension, the Norwegian Current, raising the air temperature; the prevailing southwesterlies bringing mild air onshore; and the general southwest–northeast orientation of the coast, which allows the westerlies to penetrate into the Arctic." - Wikipedia
Norway's average low temperature in January is only -5C (23.5F), so it isn't as cold as Sweden and Finland and isn't anywhere near as cold as Canada's prairies which get down to -50C in the winter.
I like having the option to do a long distance road trip. It's easy to find gas stations and it only takes a minute to fill up.
I rarely see charging stations and I doubt it can recharge in just a minute.
I live in the midwest and own a non-tesla EV, and the minute you get out of any kind of bigger cities your chances of finding a level 3 are quite sparse. There are a LOT of chargepoint level 2s, but level 3s seem to be at car dealerships who don't offer it to everyone, hotels that don't allow it for everyone, etc.
We did a 80 mile each way day trip to visit someone and bring them back and had to line up lunch in an area with no great food options so we could sit for the 30 minutes to get back up to 80%.
With it being cold in the midwest our advertised '280 range' or '180 range at 80%' never is even close to that.
It's like the olden days before really efficient ICE vehicles.
If you don't like/trust your car dealer go to another one. Just make sure that they don't keep you from leaving. When they ask to make a copy of your drivers license make sure you get it back right away. Don't hand over the keys to your car to get a value for a trade-in until you've agreed upon a price for the new car. (And know the fair value of your trade-in before you walk in so you can turn down their trade-in offer.) And don't be afraid to walk. You haven't wasted your time if you've learned about a new way for car dealers to try to screw you. One time a "sales manager" showed me a number for a car which I agreed to and then he took it to his "manager" and came back with a higher number. I said goodbye and never looked back.
I don't have a £50k+ budget (here in the UK) to spend on a car and I am still cautious about the practicality, maintenance costs, and resale value of an EV.
At the moment it seems that Teslas/EVs are fine in term of practicality if you only commute locally and can charge every day at home, but then that makes the price tag even less palatable. So I intend to keep my diesel (boo!) for as long as I can and see where things go.
Why did I not bought Subaru? Why did I not bought Toyota? Why should I buy it? Why being technical would imply buying Tesla?
I did not had burning need to have electric vehicle and the charging network here is not super practical. It was always expensive car, I prefer better cost benefit ratio. I also want more reliable car (I always checked reliability indexes and stats before buying car). Tesla was status symbol, pepple bought it cause it was "cool", but I did not cared about having that all that much.
Tried to look into one about a year ago. Really long wait times, and feels weird that if anything goes wrong I can only go to Tesla for repairs. The "iphone" of cars? I don't use iphone...
I don't know how true this is. I'm used to taking my cars to my local mechanics. Can I take a tesla to a local mechanic?
Because the Rivian I bought is better in almost every way. Also, by the time I even considered an EV, Musk had begun associating with the IDW crowd and that made the idea of supporting him physically repulsive to me.
Basically a group of extremely successful people with massive audiences who complain about “the woke mind virus” and “being silenced by cancel culture” unironically.
Quality problems, and just wired early adopter computing glitches that make for a potentially frustrating experience. Ended up with a different brand electric
Tesla is too "sexy" for me. I want an electric car that works, is generally boring, does not have any hype culture, does not have an ongoing series of major software updates (or any, if possible...). I don't want a ton of cute gimmicks. I don't need my horn to change or my car to do parlour tricks.
Honestly... I just kind of want a base model Subaru Forester but electric.
Funny - that's exactly how I perceive my M3: boring. And I love it (3y driving it).
If you get the feeling it's hyped, stop believing the media (esp. about Elon) and rent it for a week, or a weekend's long trip.
Most of the stuff you setup once and you forget it exists, because the car was designed to stay out of your way. I have done 0 maintenance in 3y, except for tire rotations.
Most "OMG I NEED A BUTTON" things are either reachable via voice control (usually good enough if you ask me), or you may have already AP engaged and you can do it via touchscreen in <3s. Climate control is usually good at keeping a good temperature w.r.t. to the outside, so it's mostly a +- 0.5°C quick-tap when it feels to warm or too cold (and the up/down controls are always present on-screen).
Integrated navigation w/ Supercharger network is so amazing, it's boring. I can hop in the car for a 2000km unplanned trip, and the car will make sure I get there by planning all charging stops, preconditioning the battery for fast charging, and you can also add intermediate destinations to plan more complex trips.
The first time I checked out my parents new cars (my father owns VW ID.4, my mother a Peugeot e-208) it felt like the Enterprise's deck, with buttons popping out everywhere, and you usually need a phone to have modern/up to date navigation support in addition.
Updates are usually about rolling out new (mostly opt-in) features, or bugfixes, or sometimes improving quality of life considerably (latest was "auto blinkers", last month).
Sometimes they are required to improve or fix critical battery/powertrain/driving management issues.
When they decide to shuffle stuff in the UI without appeal, that sucks, agreed, but it's usually for the better and it's generally an easy transition - in a couple days I usually forget I had a different UI.
I can tell you for sure I'd rather have any time a 30m update installation overnight every couple weeks, than fiddling 3 days preparing a 64GB USB stick in the right format for the car to consume, only for it to fail multiple times. Or bringing in the car for service a couple days just to allow perform a "recall" that could have been only virtual. Or dealing with Bad Software Practices® anyway, like releasing v3.4 but calling it "v3.3 (rev 2205)" in the dashboard (all parents experiences).
The cute gimmicks are an opt-in, you don't need to use/enable them all the time, or at all :)
I bought an Elantra in the last year, and it's self-driving capabilities (lane tracking + cruise control) are an order of magnitude more responsive than a friend's Tesla. So my reason is quality, but it means I leave behind giant screens and pay about 10% more for fuel than my friend did last year (we ran the numbers last weekend - $910 vs $980 for 2022).
I really, really don't want to use a touch screen while driving. Unfortunately it's looking like my options will be very slim on that front even outside of Tesla by the next time I have to buy a car.
Just the other day I was considering what a modular synth UX for an electronic vehicle might look like. e.g. a satisfying AD/ADSR and cutoff with weighty knobs, precision milled rails and bearings.
It may be niche, but really, if I could tweak the power curve of my accelerator, and have my driving experience as an expression of those micro "tonal" adustments, I wonder if that could really make the electric vehicle experience.
I'm in the same camp, can't stand touch screens while driving.
I've been researching EVs and there are still cars with physical controls, e.g. Kia Niro, Hyundai Ioniq 5.
If you look at YouTube reviews of cars, the lack of physical controls is often one of the things they complain about. I'm convinced car makers are paying attention to feedback on this topic, and hopefully it's a fad that will die soon.
The ratio of quality of life acquired per dollar spent is simply too low, because you are essentially buying a giant battery with a car built around. And it shows given the boring design language and the lack of quality in materials (both inside and outside the vehicle)
And on top of all that I just know business owners, the moment they start talking about 'mission' and 'vision' or 'future' is the moment they are trying to screw you over. Likewise the moment they start to advertise themselves in their personal capacity it's because they know that the product is weak and can't stand on its own merit, so it needs constant cheerleading/fluffing.
I used Windows before I knew who Gates was, I used Amazon before I knew who Bezos was, I was googling before I knew who Sergey & Larry & Shcmidt were, same with Facebook and Youtube.
In the car department I am very happy with my BMW 3-series. If I ever feel the need to drive faster than that, I'll just go to the track and pay for 10-15 laps on a Corvette or a Mustang, a Ferrari or a Lambo if I feel exotic.
That's about it, I also don't care about climate change, emissions , the Ozone layer and all the stuff that Tesla zelots seem to be so extremist about .
1. I went through the checkout process years ago. The thing that struck me was how hidden and false all the prices turned out to be. It felt scammy with all the "Potential Savings" being shown. Right away my trust is down.
2. I believe they have cameras inside the car uploading to Tesla HQ. GTFO with anything like that.
3. As I understand it the build quality is fairly low for the price. This is possibly a rumor but it's another thing about trust.
A similar note that gave me pause. (I eventually pulled the trigger and bought a model 3 but it took me a looong time.)
- I want to be able to hook up a small, efficient generator, maybe as a back-mounted module. But Teslas can't be charged while in motion.
(I don't want to _own_ such a generator. I want to rent one for long distance trips. Preferably one that uses 100% Ethanol or some other carbon neutral fuel. You get the point.)
> The thing that struck me was how hidden and false all the prices turned out to be. It felt scammy with all the "Potential Savings" being shown
Uh... that's the only spot where there's any adjustment shown[1]. Everything shows list price in the configurator. You want red, it shows "$2000" right there on the button. No adjustments. I mean, have you actually purchased a car from a dealer? It's just wild that you'd thing Tesla of all parties was the one obfuscating the transaction. It's the smoothest and most obvious purchase experience on the market.
> I believe they have cameras inside the car uploading to Tesla HQ
This is wildly wrong, where did you read that? Someone lied to you. There's a camera for driver attention monitoring (IIRC there's a rumor it'll soon be usable for video calls too), but no video telemetry happens. "Tesla HQ" does see where your car is though, and has access to stuff like charge data. Mostly people view that as a feature; there's a robust community of analysis tools available for us to nerd out over the cars. (To be fair: FSD beta vehicles will batch upload video from the exterior cameras on disengagement for training purposes, but that's an opt-in program).
[1] For reference: they're adjusting for fuel cost of the vehicle vs gasoline, which I can attest is a very real effect. My 19k mile model Y has spent $1100 on electricity so far.
> This is wildly wrong, where did you read that? Someone lied to you. There's a camera for driver attention monitoring (IIRC there's a rumor it'll soon be usable for video calls too), but no video telemetry happens.
This article seems to say you can opt-out of the footage for the interior but maybe I'm wrong.
Their privacy policy indicates they gather Autopilot data (Vehicle equipped camera suite that provides advanced features such as Autopilot, Smart Summon, and Autopark) but not sure if that includes the interior.
"To protect your privacy, camera images do not leave the vehicle itself and are not transmitted to anyone, including Tesla, unless you enable data sharing."
On #1: For me the pricing was a giant breath of fresh air compared to traditional dealerships. Audi kept me there for nearly three hours, the final price was 6k more than what was quoted to me on the floor, and they gave me what felt like a spreadsheet "explaining" the costs.
My experience is that there are 2 flavors of tech people and cars:
- I make computers do cool things and having software running most of my car sounds fun
- I prevent computers from doing bad things and having software running most of my car sounds horrifying
I'm in the later camp. I drive a Nissan Frontier where the only computers are the CAN bus (and maybe some specific engine parts) and an aftermarket rear view camera addon. Hand crank windows. One lock.
That's a similar view I have when it comes to voting. I work with tech, and I'd not trust any tech-only system of voting because theres so many areas it can go wrong or be exploited.
I'd accept electronic voting only if they print a paper ballot after and a spot check system is in place to confirm the counts.
I have more faith in cars and planes, as at least those have more public failures.
I don't need another car -- one is enough for me and my wife. If I did need a car, I couldn't afford a Tesla. If I could afford a Tesla, I wouldn't buy one because of poor fit and finish, buggy and unstable software, and general disgust at Elon's antics. Besides, there's plenty of other choices for an EV, and many more on the way.
170 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] thread- they won't hold my whole family
Aren't they popular in Norway? (Are you somewhere colder?)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/hittin...
"Four out of five new cars sold in Norway in 2022 were battery powered, led by Tesla"
I drove ~1,800mi this past weekend (mostly through rural parts of the country), that would have been challenging (assuming possible) in an ev.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_charge#Voltage_method
But yes the energy consumption is a lot higher in the cold mostly because of the heating and the air density. On long trips it’s not so bad because the battery heats up during the charging stops and the car can transfer the battery heat to the cabin.
But you need chargers. Norway had an old projects years ago about having chargers at least every 50km on the main roads in many areas. It helped a lot.
Norway's average low temperature in January is only -5C (23.5F), so it isn't as cold as Sweden and Finland and isn't anywhere near as cold as Canada's prairies which get down to -50C in the winter.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Norway#Weatherboxes
We did a 80 mile each way day trip to visit someone and bring them back and had to line up lunch in an area with no great food options so we could sit for the 30 minutes to get back up to 80%.
With it being cold in the midwest our advertised '280 range' or '180 range at 80%' never is even close to that.
It's like the olden days before really efficient ICE vehicles.
But I heard friends bought a Tesla since an online order was easier than dealing with car dealers.
And Tesla is not a sports car or a luxury car. So why buy them.
I don't have a £50k+ budget (here in the UK) to spend on a car and I am still cautious about the practicality, maintenance costs, and resale value of an EV.
At the moment it seems that Teslas/EVs are fine in term of practicality if you only commute locally and can charge every day at home, but then that makes the price tag even less palatable. So I intend to keep my diesel (boo!) for as long as I can and see where things go.
I did not had burning need to have electric vehicle and the charging network here is not super practical. It was always expensive car, I prefer better cost benefit ratio. I also want more reliable car (I always checked reliability indexes and stats before buying car). Tesla was status symbol, pepple bought it cause it was "cool", but I did not cared about having that all that much.
I don't know how true this is. I'm used to taking my cars to my local mechanics. Can I take a tesla to a local mechanic?
Basically a group of extremely successful people with massive audiences who complain about “the woke mind virus” and “being silenced by cancel culture” unironically.
Honestly... I just kind of want a base model Subaru Forester but electric.
If you get the feeling it's hyped, stop believing the media (esp. about Elon) and rent it for a week, or a weekend's long trip.
Most of the stuff you setup once and you forget it exists, because the car was designed to stay out of your way. I have done 0 maintenance in 3y, except for tire rotations.
Most "OMG I NEED A BUTTON" things are either reachable via voice control (usually good enough if you ask me), or you may have already AP engaged and you can do it via touchscreen in <3s. Climate control is usually good at keeping a good temperature w.r.t. to the outside, so it's mostly a +- 0.5°C quick-tap when it feels to warm or too cold (and the up/down controls are always present on-screen). Integrated navigation w/ Supercharger network is so amazing, it's boring. I can hop in the car for a 2000km unplanned trip, and the car will make sure I get there by planning all charging stops, preconditioning the battery for fast charging, and you can also add intermediate destinations to plan more complex trips. The first time I checked out my parents new cars (my father owns VW ID.4, my mother a Peugeot e-208) it felt like the Enterprise's deck, with buttons popping out everywhere, and you usually need a phone to have modern/up to date navigation support in addition.
Updates are usually about rolling out new (mostly opt-in) features, or bugfixes, or sometimes improving quality of life considerably (latest was "auto blinkers", last month). Sometimes they are required to improve or fix critical battery/powertrain/driving management issues. When they decide to shuffle stuff in the UI without appeal, that sucks, agreed, but it's usually for the better and it's generally an easy transition - in a couple days I usually forget I had a different UI. I can tell you for sure I'd rather have any time a 30m update installation overnight every couple weeks, than fiddling 3 days preparing a 64GB USB stick in the right format for the car to consume, only for it to fail multiple times. Or bringing in the car for service a couple days just to allow perform a "recall" that could have been only virtual. Or dealing with Bad Software Practices® anyway, like releasing v3.4 but calling it "v3.3 (rev 2205)" in the dashboard (all parents experiences).
The cute gimmicks are an opt-in, you don't need to use/enable them all the time, or at all :)
- living in apartments which don't have charging ports/stations
- not enough home equity to buy model X/Y
- not enough salary to make monthly payments
- your kids get bullied because you drive model 3 [1]
- electric vehicle is always a second vehicle in a household, and you need to have another ICE vehicle.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4HX8qPrHUg
It may be niche, but really, if I could tweak the power curve of my accelerator, and have my driving experience as an expression of those micro "tonal" adustments, I wonder if that could really make the electric vehicle experience.
I've been researching EVs and there are still cars with physical controls, e.g. Kia Niro, Hyundai Ioniq 5.
If you look at YouTube reviews of cars, the lack of physical controls is often one of the things they complain about. I'm convinced car makers are paying attention to feedback on this topic, and hopefully it's a fad that will die soon.
And on top of all that I just know business owners, the moment they start talking about 'mission' and 'vision' or 'future' is the moment they are trying to screw you over. Likewise the moment they start to advertise themselves in their personal capacity it's because they know that the product is weak and can't stand on its own merit, so it needs constant cheerleading/fluffing.
I used Windows before I knew who Gates was, I used Amazon before I knew who Bezos was, I was googling before I knew who Sergey & Larry & Shcmidt were, same with Facebook and Youtube.
In the car department I am very happy with my BMW 3-series. If I ever feel the need to drive faster than that, I'll just go to the track and pay for 10-15 laps on a Corvette or a Mustang, a Ferrari or a Lambo if I feel exotic.
That's about it, I also don't care about climate change, emissions , the Ozone layer and all the stuff that Tesla zelots seem to be so extremist about .
2. I believe they have cameras inside the car uploading to Tesla HQ. GTFO with anything like that.
3. As I understand it the build quality is fairly low for the price. This is possibly a rumor but it's another thing about trust.
- I want to be able to hook up a small, efficient generator, maybe as a back-mounted module. But Teslas can't be charged while in motion.
(I don't want to _own_ such a generator. I want to rent one for long distance trips. Preferably one that uses 100% Ethanol or some other carbon neutral fuel. You get the point.)
Uh... that's the only spot where there's any adjustment shown[1]. Everything shows list price in the configurator. You want red, it shows "$2000" right there on the button. No adjustments. I mean, have you actually purchased a car from a dealer? It's just wild that you'd thing Tesla of all parties was the one obfuscating the transaction. It's the smoothest and most obvious purchase experience on the market.
> I believe they have cameras inside the car uploading to Tesla HQ
This is wildly wrong, where did you read that? Someone lied to you. There's a camera for driver attention monitoring (IIRC there's a rumor it'll soon be usable for video calls too), but no video telemetry happens. "Tesla HQ" does see where your car is though, and has access to stuff like charge data. Mostly people view that as a feature; there's a robust community of analysis tools available for us to nerd out over the cars. (To be fair: FSD beta vehicles will batch upload video from the exterior cameras on disengagement for training purposes, but that's an opt-in program).
[1] For reference: they're adjusting for fuel cost of the vehicle vs gasoline, which I can attest is a very real effect. My 19k mile model Y has spent $1100 on electricity so far.
When I used the configurator it did not look like the current site. You can see it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200205163057/https://www.tesla...
> This is wildly wrong, where did you read that? Someone lied to you. There's a camera for driver attention monitoring (IIRC there's a rumor it'll soon be usable for video calls too), but no video telemetry happens.
This article seems to say you can opt-out of the footage for the interior but maybe I'm wrong.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-interior-cameras-dr...
https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/teslas-in-car-camera...
Their privacy policy indicates they gather Autopilot data (Vehicle equipped camera suite that provides advanced features such as Autopilot, Smart Summon, and Autopark) but not sure if that includes the interior.
"To protect your privacy, camera images do not leave the vehicle itself and are not transmitted to anyone, including Tesla, unless you enable data sharing."
https://www.tesla.com/legal/privacy#information-we-may-colle...
That's not a rumor, that was announced.
Compare this to the final paper we got from Tesla: https://ibb.co/rsqGvFq
- I make computers do cool things and having software running most of my car sounds fun
- I prevent computers from doing bad things and having software running most of my car sounds horrifying
I'm in the later camp. I drive a Nissan Frontier where the only computers are the CAN bus (and maybe some specific engine parts) and an aftermarket rear view camera addon. Hand crank windows. One lock.
I'd accept electronic voting only if they print a paper ballot after and a spot check system is in place to confirm the counts.
I have more faith in cars and planes, as at least those have more public failures.