I don’t get this. I live in the sweet spot for ev ownership: in an area with rich liberals who like outwardly show they care about the environment.
4 people on my block have Teslas. All of them say they love the car. The guy who lives across the street from me says his only regret is that he didn’t get the AWD version because his sucks in the snow. My boss owns a Tesla, said he would absolutely buy one again. My cousin leased one and said that when he goes to buy a car, it would likely be a Tesla. One of my best friends bought one, and loves it. I rented one (it was 15 dollars more a day, with free charging, so I’m pretty sure it more than made up the cost) and it was mostly a pleasure to drive (not a big fan of the touch screen for everything).
According to Consumer Reports, Tesla is one of the top brands for owner satisfaction.
Yet here on lemmy, you would think that owning a Tesla is some kind of miserable experience. I can’t help but believe it’s driven by a dislike of musk, rather than Teslas actually being bad cars.
I think our bias is that a huge portion of us are scientists and engineers, so the things that bother us aren’t the same things that bother everyone else. Most people don’t worry about how their car works, or want to repair it themselves, etc.
It’s not the car for a Linux user.
Im not buying this. If it could be demonstrated, I’d be willing to bet that at least 99% of the people who upvoted this have never even changed a spark plug, let alone anything actually complicated or difficult with their car.
It’s clearly en vogue on lemmy to hate on Tesla, which is almost certainly why this has so many upvotes. I just don’t get why people have to pretend the cars are shit when seemingly it’s really about hating musk.
I’m part of that 1% and I’ll echo the “Tesla hate” for that very reason. I do the vast majority of maintenance and repair on my vehicles – something I picked up as a broke young man that couldn’t afford to do otherwise.
I’m not buying something that’s designed to actively prevent me from working on it myself. And the other “99%” of people are absolutely right in being upset since independent repair shops are no longer an option. With no competition they’re at the whim of Tesla when it comes to the cost and time-frame of repair work.
I’ve changed a spark plug, and assume I’m typical here.
Dear readers: Please downvote this comment if you have never changed a spark plug.
Well so does Apple. Well, BSD, really, of which Mac OS is a heavily modified version. But who gives a shit as it’s lacking the most important part of BSD - the license. We’d rather praise Microsoft for open-sourcing stuff instead.
I think half of it is Elon Musk and the other half are the news stories about the numerous problems they seem to have.
There are some things that Tesla does wrong, but a lot of these issues are also found in other EVs. It’s a car for somebody who is fine using Apple products.
I love my Tesla and hate musk with the fire of a billion suns.
I’m sorry haters, but Teslas are absolutely fantastic cars to own and drive, in my 2 years of owning one. ZERO ISSUES and 100,000km down.
That said the only reason I’ll not buy one NEXT is because that nazi fuck head is attached to the brand and has poisoned the joy of owning it.
I’ve been thinking of buying a EV for a while now. Tesla was obviously the top of the list. Now it’s kind of the bottom of the list.
For the most part, the cars are fine. I really enjoy working on a car and find pleasure in purely mechanical things. I like internal combustion engines.
Sure, I think Musk is an idiot. But it’s much more that I think Teslas are overrated. My biggest gripe is the arbitrary changing of existing user controls and their ethos of the car should anticipate and do things for me. I don’t want the car to do anything unless I tell it to. Even if it is something as simple as turn signals.
- I don’t want solenoids for car handles.
- I don’t want controls on a fucking touchscreen.
- I don’t want automatic updates.
- I don’t want subscriptions.
- I don’t want to be able to change the horn (because a horn is supposed to be a safety item and sound a certain way.)
- I don’t want stupid games on the touchscreen.
On top of all that, I think they are pretty ugly too.
So, really nothing to do with them being bad cars, just things you preferentially don’t like.
As I said elsewhere, I don’t give a shit if anyone likes Tesla. I will consider one when I buy a new car, but I highly doubt I’ll end up buying one. My issue is with this pervasive belief here that Teslas are miserable, problem-ridden, locked-down piles of junk, like many modern day printers. It just doesn’t seem to line up with reality.
one pretty legitimate criticism i have heard about them is that they are essentially worthless after 10 years because the batteries are knackered and tesla charges A LOT (as in more than the cost of an equivalent car) for replacement batteries.
Hopefully the 3rd party battery market kicks its self into gear at some point. And hopefully Tesla doesn’t go the apple route of part pairing.
I’d like to be able to buy a second hand EV when i’m living somewhere where i can charge it (currently in an apartment block with no parking). I’d like to be able to do that without having to risk paying brand prices for a new battery.
My petrol BMW 3 series on the other hand is 19 years old and still going strong. It’s literally old enough to buy booze
I think the bar is pretty high for EVs. I have a non-Telsa EV, and the driving experience is just so nice. Even if the rest of the car had a bunch of issues I would imagine the way that Teslas drive would be enough to still make people love them. They would probably love a better built EV more.
Yeah but people hate the printers because they are a pita and not enjoyable to use. Which is why I switched to brother printers (well, just one, I’ve had it for well over a decade at this point).
People still seem pretty happy with a Tesla and would buy again, despite there being other options.
I can recognize that the driving experience of a Tesla is very nice, from the one or two times I’ve test driven one. It’s the other things aside from that experience that I take issue with though. Things like their subscription model to unlock certain features (which other car brands also employ, and turn me away from those brands as well), and, yes, the leadership decisions and actions made by Elon Musk. Both are valid reasons to not buy a particular product in my opinion.
Well yeah, on Lemmy, you’ll get the anti-Musk sentiment. I honestly rarely base purchasing decisions on who the CEO happens to be, and I’ll only avoid a company if I think purchasing from them actively harms either their employees, the environment, or the market as a whole (e.g. they’re a monopoly).
Here’s why I don’t want a Tesla:
- Too expensive for a commuter, not enough range for a family car (we do road trips)
- Battery is pretty much unrepairable, and too expensive to just replace
- Fire risk - I know it’s relatively low, but my ICE cars don’t have a risk of burning my house down
- Can’t turn off tracking, AFAIK - I don’t need my car to do anything but get me from A to B, and none of that requires network access
- Quality control issues - I don’t want to keep going to the dealer to get recalls serviced
- Crappy in the snow - I live in the Rockies
The first four are deal breakers, though to be fair the rest of the car industry is trying hard to fail point 4.
I’m looking forward to sodium-ion EVs, which promise to solve 1&3, and make replacement a lot cheaper. If I can find something that solves the first four, I’ll probably buy it. I’d love to never have to fill up gas again, but I’m not giving up my privacy or ability to repair my own equipment.
