IMO cars that have no physical buttons for important task should not be approved for public road use as long as any interaction by a driver is required.
Touchscreens must avoid subsuming required, frequently used, or emergency controls. If/when car designers violate this rule, the interior UX is fundamentally unsafe and/or unusable.
I'm more wary about the huge SUVs and trucks people are buying. No consideration for pedestrian or children safety at all. Being unable to see a row of 5+ children in front of your car is a recipe for disaster when that car is used to drive your own kids to school..
Some of those will never be approved for road use in Europe at least.
For example the EV Hummer so so heavy you can't drive it with a regular license nor can you drive it in many places. The cyber truck will probably also not be approved in Europe.
If you want a Tesla S or X you are forced to buy a left-hand drive one. You are obviously not forced to make a purchase if you don't want one or decide the compromise is too much (which I imagine nearly everyone would).
When you become a trillionaire asshole, you live in a parallel universe indistinguishable from satire because there are many fewer rules and limitations for you and you listen to less real feedback.
Indeed. Even disregarding all the legal and moral issues, just the mental image of trying to use this crap to simply park the car is hilarious. Imagine trying to swipe your credit card holding it with a flimsy stick perpendicular to the contact pad. Or trying to insert a paper parking ticket upon exiting parking in the tiny slot two meters far. Or getting a paper package from a drive-thru with easily a kilogram of food and drinks. Clown show. :)
I didn’t realize it was legal to drive left hand drive cars in the UK. Isn’t that generally less safe? I’m really surprised a company this large would end support for the right hand drive configuration.
In Czechia, where we drive on the right, I occassionally meet British-side cars. Rarely, but yes. (Corrected.)
I suspect that already the fact that you drove on the other side for your whole life must mess with you. I certainly wouldn't dream of trying to drive in the UK, but I am the elusive below-average driver anyway.
It’s less disturbing than you might think, especially if it’s an automatic. The worst bit is when you’re trying to overtake, or when you’re trying to parallel park (coming as someone who learned in left-hand drive cars in the UK, but has since moved to the EU where right-hand drive is the standard).
CZ is, for some reason, a stick-drive country. Automats were very untypical here. Lately, I know of two people driving them, which is two more than during my youth.
I am not even sure why, probably can be filed under the nebulous "cultural pecularities" category, or there are some historic reasons.
Huh, I don't get the parallel parking one, at least in Bulgaria I regularly have to parallel park on both sides, I don't imagine it'd be that much different. I imagine roundabouts are Hell, though
You mean the elusive below-average driver who assesses their driving skills realistically? Because there are enough far-below-average drivers on the road who don't think twice about maybe not driving (or improving their driving)...
Trains do, yes, but not all of them - there are a whole bunch of different types of trains that use it - ones that are single deck for trucks (and has a small passenger car for the drivers because the truck decks aren't enclosed), ones that are mostly double deck for cars (and are enclosed, so people stay in their vehicles), high speed Eurostar trains that are just passengers/luggage and go to/from the major cities (the car and truck ones go from Folkstone to Calais and back), as well as some container freight trains.
As well as passenger trains from e.g. London, the channel tunnel carries car and truck trains, named Le Shuttle - which move either people in their vehicles, or for trucks, the vehicles and then a coach of drivers who can chat and eat food during the trip. These leave from nearer the tunnel on both sides.
it's a car train, like a normal train but with cars instead of people and a very loud scary alarm, at least that's how i conceptualized it when i was 8
Safety is tricky but I think in some situations, it definitely is more dangerous.
Most countries will allow cars from the opposite driving side but you’ll pay for it with your insurance premiums.
I’m also baffled they haven’t switched one plant to make right hand drive cars at least part time yet. I know the list of countries is small, but most of them are fairly wealthy. If they have so much profit margin, it should have been possible to retool a few interior pieces after a decade.
The Model S and Model X account for something like 4% of Tesla’s sales today. They are very niche models.
With cost-cutting and margin improvement driving everything at Tesla now, it makes sense they’d discontinue the expensive special configurations of the niche models.
But still, I mean, how much do they save? Both cars were already produced in that version, so the tooling for RHD already exists. Which means the only savings are from streamlining the production process (but I guess they have enough other options they need to keep track of) and maybe some simplification on the spare parts side (but most carmakers have already optimized this so the parts are mostly the same no matter on which side the steering is).
I guess it’d be legal to drive them for Europeans who drive here (via ferry or channel tunnel). We used to drive both ways quite often when we lived in/had family in Germany etc, and would keep using our car there. The bigger part of that is probably commercial lorries etc. doing deliveries both ways. I’m surprised if it’s legal to sell a left hand drive in the UK though.
For me, the worst thing would be "muscle memory". Never had a problem driving a rental car with right-hand-drive in the UK or Ireland. Different thing was the bicycle, after stops, I often forgot to start driving on "the other side", and I suspect I would be just as easily fooled in a car with left-hand-drive.
It's legal, but no way would I drive a left-hand drive car on the left side of the road and vice-versa. Saw lots of UK right-hand-drive cars tootling around France, and even been driven in one there. But no way would I consider doing that myself, or the reverse in the UK.
To pass anybody, you have to take the whole of the car out from behind the car in front of you to see whether it's safe enough to pass, instead of the normal 'just enough across for the driver to see ahead'.
You’ll find a lot of RHD cars in the Russian Far East (> 50%) as well because Japan makes cars older than 5 or 6 years unusable and so they have to be exported.
> To pass anybody, you have to take the whole of the car out from behind the car in front of you to see whether it's safe enough to pass
Well, you don't have to. I agree with you that taking the whole car out would be very dangerous.
But in many circumstances, you could take the car in (closer to the side of the road) and look ahead on the other side of the car you want to pass. Of course this requires either a long straight line stretch or a long and mild inside turn. And not much traffic.
Fwiw, I would also not drive a car with the wheel on the wrong side of it can be at all helped.
I am British but now live in Finland, I've driven extensively in both countries and have taken my European (LHD) car to the UK, it's not that hard. I had a harder time not knowing the local languages of the countries in Europe we crossed in order to interpret signs.
It is legal to drive a left hand drive car here, but I'm also surprised it's legal to sell one new. It is definitely much less safe. I was in a near fatal accident with a left hand drive truck who didn't see me in his blindspot because the steering wheel was on the wrong side.
Famous example in the UK in the last couple of years: the US spy Anne Sarcoolas killed a teenager on his motorcycle driving on the wrong side of the road and then fled the country.
i believe it was always legal to drive, but you probably could not register a car locally if it wasn't built for the appropriate side. at least in some EU countries this was the case, until the EU decided that this violated the free trade within europe because a car from a left-side country could not be sold to someone wanting to register it in a right-side country.
there was a court-case against poland and lithuania, and according to that, the countries could not prove that traffic safety was affected.
but apparently, it is also no problem to import and register these cars in the US. japan or australia also seem to allow right-side cars with a local registration, so not allowing that seems to be the exception rather than the norm.
How is it worth to lose the UK, AU and Japanese market with this move? I'm seeing a lot of Teslas in London, I don't see how eliminating the right-hand configuration is justifiable economically.
Yeah it might be a ball ache to design a car that supports both driving styles, but all brands with global reach have to deal with it.
The grabbing stick is equivalent to being told "fuck you for living in one of those countries, deal with it." Terrible idea.
Is he wrong though? Sometimes you need to make a statement, like Apple not willing to do chatcontrol. Sometimes it's just time. It's time to drop empirical units, to much damage has been caused. My own language has so many exceptions to the "rules" that every generation spends a lot of time learning them (i.e. we say all 2 digit numbers backwards, it gets every generation, every time), again and again. It's like technical debt for a country. I thailand I almost died getting on the road with my scooter, because of the other side of the road rule.
Just bite the bullet, switch, feel the pain, but then, feel that sweet sweet relieve.
The stick really is a "fuck you", that Tesla fan boys will think is funny; I think it's funny someone spending so much money would accept that, maybe they've never driven a wrong-handed car in the UK before and just don't realise how much of a hazard it is.
That said, I'm more interested in why it's not illegal to intentionally sell brand new cars with the wrong handedness, in any country. There are several manoeuvres that become dangerous when you can't see properly due to being on the wrong side of the car.
Tesla is basically not selling the S and X in the UK anymore. But they are still allowed to buy a LHD version for some reason, that must have more to do with UK’s own laws on fancier cars that they already import from Italy and Germany?
I'm not sure. Even Italian super cars in the UK are right hand drive, but with an import I can understand it being ok; the person buying it knows what's what, but I feel like Tesla (or anyone else) shouldn't be allowed to sell LHD direct to the public in the UK when we don't drive on the right.
Legally speaking there’s no issue with driving LHD in the UK, or RHD on the mainland, as long as you keep to the correct side of the road (which is a legal imposition).
Other drivers are usually quite accommodating, to the extent that they can be. The number of wrong-way drivers who don’t immediately die is impressive.
> I'm more interested in why it's not illegal to intentionally sell brand new cars with the wrong handedness
I reckon because cars are a very popular hobby, especially if you're rich and you really want to have a car which is made for another market. I don't think there's anything wrong with that: it's more dangerous, but they make up such a small percentage of cars on the road that it's not worth spending legislative and political capital on.
2. Teslas are not built in the UK, between the import duties from brexit and the extra strong recession from brexit, I wouldn’t assume it’s a huge market for tesla
3. Same as japan, where teslas are status symbols for people with a lot of money, they sell low-mid thousands a year, which is less than they sell in Norway (a country with 1/20th the population) in a month.
That leaves australia, I’ve no idea what the EV market is over there. Though I would assume range anxiety is pretty major concern, SA, NT, and most of WA (and QLD outside of the coast) seem to have very little coverage on anything but 3-phase in caravan parks.
This only applies to the S and X we are talking about, which aren’t huge sellers to begin with unlike the 3 and Y (that still have RHD versions and are the vast majority of UK, JP, and AU sales).
This is just plain wrong. Last year Tesla sold 56,000 cars in the UK. That makes it about the same size market as the next three largest European countries combined. Given the doom mongering in the news you’d assume everyone in the UK is foraging in bins for their food, but the reality is there is plenty of people with money.
Unfortunately Brexit means that people can just make up whatever they want to support their narrative, such as these mysterious import duties mentioned here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as remain as the next guy, but it does get a bit hysterical sometimes.
Australia has poor incentives to buy EVs. New Zealand is doing very well with 30-50% of new/all vehicles registered in June being EV/PHEV or hybrid.
India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh all want a word. They, with Japan, are all right hand drive and have over 2.1b people.
> The automaker decided to stop selling Model S and Model X vehicles altogether in some smaller left-hand-drive markets, like Australia, Singapore, and Thailand, and started offering right-hand-drive vehicles in bigger markets, like in the UK.
It's a "bigger market" for them, and not so small they could write it off completely.
I think in the UK and Japan the model S and model X are far too large to ever be big sellers. There are even some bridges in the UK that the model X can’t cross because it is too wide.
Some of the most popular higher end cars on our roads in the UK are Land Rovers and Range Rovers (and similar sized less high end SUVs from Kia etc), all of which are wider than an X.
I've driven some really rural narrow roads in my Range Rover and have never encountered a bridge or road I can't use... would be keen to read a source on that bridges thing as it's completely new to me and is failing my sniff test.
Right ok I misunderstood I thought you meant physically can't cross rather than not permitted, yes that is correct!
However if you stand at the Albert Bridge (which is the one you meant with that width restrictions) you'll see tonnes of LR and RR going through which are wider than that as well as Sprinter vans which are about the same as the X... I can only assume the police take the view that if you fit through the width restriction (which must have some leeway on them as bigger LRs are about 81") they won't bother you...?
Yeah I think that is true, I think the goal of the width restriction is really about weight - they don't want very heavy HGVs going back and forth over it all day so they probably don't care about SUVs
Well, there are quite a few existing S and X models in the UK. They are definitely large vehicles, but no more so than a Land Rover, and definitely smaller than most delivery vans not to mention heavy goods vehicles. It would be very unusual to find a bridge (or anything else) that an X couldn't cross.
Car orders: you can definitely get all your money back if they're cancelled, or need to change from what you ordered. The specific contract you signed might include a clause to say they will pay a fee for cancelling your order, but I don't believe this is a consumer right. I don't know what Tesla do, but there is no situation where they can change the driving side of the car (or any significant details of the order whatsoever) without offering a full refund at the very least. This would be covered by most countries' consumer rights laws.
The title is dishonest, Tesla hasn't forced anyone into a wrong-sided car.
Too many people with more money than sense. You don't know what to do with your money if you actually buy a car that's the wrong way round because they can't be bothered to support your driving side anymore... I couldn't imagine accepting a compromise like this for a trivial item, yet alone a car.
It's very confusing the way Fred uses one term to refer to two things.
If they are going to continue writing about cars they really need to clear up the difference between left/right hand drive and driving on the left/right of the road.
Sadly nearly every manufacturer has an equivalently-sized (or bigger) model. For example: Audi Q7s, Volvo XC90s, Mercedes GLSes, new Landrover Defender etc. All monstrously oversized for British roads. All nearly impossible to see past in a "normal" sized vehicle.
I guess the limiting factor is more the size of typical parking spaces, garages and so on. But still, there is an undeniable trend of cars getting "fatter" in Europe too. SUVs are currently the best-selling category. Ok, these are more "compact" SUVs rather than the "tank-type" ones, but still bigger (especially higher, which is bad for collisions with pedestrians, most of all children) than other categories.
Yeah there are a few exceptions (some people also just import them) but we have avoided the worst of it so far. Anyone who has driven in the US knows that the average car size way larger.
The level of disrespect Tesla is showing with this move is just insane to me. “Fuck you for spending tens of thousands on our product. Here’s a stick.”
It was the UK's top selling car. But I suspect that Tesla doesn't have the resources to maintain the necessary production infrastructure for the volume of cars produced.
I have to say I am really disappointed - from Tesla I would have expected more, like a robotic arm that can not only grab parking tickets, but also grab heavy take-out food bags, hand out cash, pay by card (incl. entering your PIN if needed), insert a key into a lock and turn it (in case your garage door isn't remote controlled) etc. etc.
... but I guess that would have negated the slim savings from throwing out the right hand drive option.
... and I fully expect there will be TikTok/Youtube videos appearing over the next weeks of people trying to do all of the above (and more) with this grabbing stick.
Isnit legal to use right-hand cars on those countries? I assume it would be legal temporarily, like if you are a tourist or something, but not for citizens
As much as I think this is a dick move from Tesla, I find the term "force" here to be misused. Customers were given the option to cancel their order or accept the left hand drive version. If I had been given this choice i would, of course, have cancelled my order and vowed never to buy another musk product again. I can't understand why someone would go through with the purchase after having such a anti-customer trick played on them by Tesla.
Nobody gets what they want with that guy. Right hand drive: nope. Tweets about Tesla’s with no right hand drive: nope. This is somewhat ironic that some people’s inclination will be to complain about a Tesla issue on Twitter, how long before the conspiracy theorists put this all together?
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadFor example the EV Hummer so so heavy you can't drive it with a regular license nor can you drive it in many places. The cyber truck will probably also not be approved in Europe.
Unless they deliver an LHD instead of an RHD without asking, it's "RHD is discontinued and there is only an LHD."
As an aside, The Onions video social media nowadays is on fire - they play the serious delivery of stupid stories far too well.
I suspect that already the fact that you drove on the other side for your whole life must mess with you. I certainly wouldn't dream of trying to drive in the UK, but I am the elusive below-average driver anyway.
I am not even sure why, probably can be filed under the nebulous "cultural pecularities" category, or there are some historic reasons.
There is a tunnel from UK to France, would be weird if only British cars would be allowed to use it :P
Most countries will allow cars from the opposite driving side but you’ll pay for it with your insurance premiums.
I’m also baffled they haven’t switched one plant to make right hand drive cars at least part time yet. I know the list of countries is small, but most of them are fairly wealthy. If they have so much profit margin, it should have been possible to retool a few interior pieces after a decade.
With cost-cutting and margin improvement driving everything at Tesla now, it makes sense they’d discontinue the expensive special configurations of the niche models.
There are many other amazing luxury EVs nowadays if you are into flexing.
To pass anybody, you have to take the whole of the car out from behind the car in front of you to see whether it's safe enough to pass, instead of the normal 'just enough across for the driver to see ahead'.
Well, you don't have to. I agree with you that taking the whole car out would be very dangerous.
But in many circumstances, you could take the car in (closer to the side of the road) and look ahead on the other side of the car you want to pass. Of course this requires either a long straight line stretch or a long and mild inside turn. And not much traffic.
Fwiw, I would also not drive a car with the wheel on the wrong side of it can be at all helped.
The Sacoolas fiasco is famous because she was protected by the US government because she's a CIA asset, while they should have put her arse in jail.
there was a court-case against poland and lithuania, and according to that, the countries could not prove that traffic safety was affected.
but apparently, it is also no problem to import and register these cars in the US. japan or australia also seem to allow right-side cars with a local registration, so not allowing that seems to be the exception rather than the norm.
Yeah it might be a ball ache to design a car that supports both driving styles, but all brands with global reach have to deal with it.
The grabbing stick is equivalent to being told "fuck you for living in one of those countries, deal with it." Terrible idea.
Agree the grabbing stick is a joke though.
Just bite the bullet, switch, feel the pain, but then, feel that sweet sweet relieve.
That said, I'm more interested in why it's not illegal to intentionally sell brand new cars with the wrong handedness, in any country. There are several manoeuvres that become dangerous when you can't see properly due to being on the wrong side of the car.
And a physical one.
I reckon because cars are a very popular hobby, especially if you're rich and you really want to have a car which is made for another market. I don't think there's anything wrong with that: it's more dangerous, but they make up such a small percentage of cars on the road that it's not worth spending legislative and political capital on.
2. Teslas are not built in the UK, between the import duties from brexit and the extra strong recession from brexit, I wouldn’t assume it’s a huge market for tesla
3. Same as japan, where teslas are status symbols for people with a lot of money, they sell low-mid thousands a year, which is less than they sell in Norway (a country with 1/20th the population) in a month.
That leaves australia, I’ve no idea what the EV market is over there. Though I would assume range anxiety is pretty major concern, SA, NT, and most of WA (and QLD outside of the coast) seem to have very little coverage on anything but 3-phase in caravan parks.
There is almost never a dearth of people with money. The median income is more telling about the state of a nation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm as remain as the next guy, but it does get a bit hysterical sometimes.
You should've read the article:
> The automaker decided to stop selling Model S and Model X vehicles altogether in some smaller left-hand-drive markets, like Australia, Singapore, and Thailand, and started offering right-hand-drive vehicles in bigger markets, like in the UK.
It's a "bigger market" for them, and not so small they could write it off completely.
I wonder how many people commenting here thinks this applies to all Teslas and not just the S and X?
I've driven some really rural narrow roads in my Range Rover and have never encountered a bridge or road I can't use... would be keen to read a source on that bridges thing as it's completely new to me and is failing my sniff test.
However if you stand at the Albert Bridge (which is the one you meant with that width restrictions) you'll see tonnes of LR and RR going through which are wider than that as well as Sprinter vans which are about the same as the X... I can only assume the police take the view that if you fit through the width restriction (which must have some leeway on them as bigger LRs are about 81") they won't bother you...?
At least if you reserve it and cancel as a consumer, you lose your deposit. Weird if they can do it with no financial consequences but not you.
The title is dishonest, Tesla hasn't forced anyone into a wrong-sided car.
If they are going to continue writing about cars they really need to clear up the difference between left/right hand drive and driving on the left/right of the road.
The damn things have fat arses and I hate driving behind them - they fall in to some kind of uncanny valley size wise.
https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1605256/tesla-model-x-model-...
I guess the limiting factor is more the size of typical parking spaces, garages and so on. But still, there is an undeniable trend of cars getting "fatter" in Europe too. SUVs are currently the best-selling category. Ok, these are more "compact" SUVs rather than the "tank-type" ones, but still bigger (especially higher, which is bad for collisions with pedestrians, most of all children) than other categories.
... but I guess that would have negated the slim savings from throwing out the right hand drive option.
... and I fully expect there will be TikTok/Youtube videos appearing over the next weeks of people trying to do all of the above (and more) with this grabbing stick.
They're a company that mostly makes cars, sure, but they (and investors) clearly view themselves as something else.