This feels very much like a marketing fluff piece pushed by Tesla PR.
Take this gem: "Young companies like Tesla, on the other hand, are not shackled to suppliers and are free to pursue the best technologies available."
Try the automated windscreen wipers on any big car brand, they're mostly made by Bosch and they work, even on a 15 year old car. Then Tesla came along with their own approach, guess what, they didn't work for more than a year on any second generation model S because they switched from buying a working module to creating their own in software.
After having driven a model S for a while I'm very much a Tesla sceptic. Because I noticed I was accepting a lot of things from them that I would never have from BMW or Audi. When the "this is a cool innovation" feeling goes away, you're looking at a very mediocre car that can't compete in the price range that it's in.
I used to be a BMW driver and then have been driving a model S for 4 years. I would say I receive WAY more things from Tesla that I ever did from BMW. My car today is actually better than the one I bought 4 years back. I remember when I bought my X5, the map was outdated the minute I stepped out of the dealer lot and needed a $200 CD based upgrade. BMW never improved a single feature in 4 years of ownership. The voice recognition sucked, the driver assistant didn't improve beyond basics, acceleration, efficiency didn't change, no new infotainment features were added etc etc. The story is fluff, but Tesla provides so much more to its customers than traditional branda
I don't think it is, there was an article a year or so ago where a famous detroit car expert, that specialised in tearing down cars and inspecting them did so for the Tesla.
What he said was that the electronics were light years ahead anything he had seen before, but he wasn't surprised given its a silicon valley car. The chassis on the other hand was way behind the likes of Toyoda.
I can understand that your mileage may have varied but this was through visually inspecting the electronics, not using them in action.
I don't disagree that they've put much more advanced chips in their car, the point I disagree with is that it's "ahead by 6 years" and "others can't keep up due to supply chains" because Tesla's super advanced chips couldn't get something as simple as my automatic windscreen wipers to work while every other brand has them working fine.
The difference is that everyone just buys a simple moisture sensor and Tesla decided to go with a needlessly complex setup based on their cameras. Sure that requires a way more advanced image processing chip, an impressive software achievement in image processing etc.
However, from the consumer perspective (that matters much more if you sell millions of cars to the masses instead of a few hundred thousand to enthusiasts): They had no working automatic windscreen wipers, that puts them 15 to 20 years behind the others. Not 6 years ahead.
They really need to get better at the basics of car making quickly, before the likes of Ford, BMW, Volkswagen etc get good at building electric cars. I guess they have several years left to do it because the big guys move slow, but in their current state they're going to be in trouble no matter how advanced their CPU is.
I agree with you this is mainly a fluff piece and must be taken with a grain of salt.
I also agree that Tesla overcomplexifies some aspects of their cars and I would appreciate a simpler efficient design. After all, its the simplicity of an electric drivetrain that appealed to me.
That being said, I'm puzzled when you say its mediocre in comparison. My 3 got smashed and I have a Mercedes replacement for a few days during repairs and it really feels like a big, loud and clumsy car with an obnoxious amount of chrome. Maybe its the difference in price range, the 3 completes at a much lower price point.
Prices here are incomparable to the US due to tax, but a model S starts at 90k if you accept it being only available in white (nobody does at that price). If you pick any other color, reasonable rims and a "luxury interior" as you would expect on cars in this price range it's 110k to 120k euro. That's more than a full option BMW 5 series or Audi A6 and comparable to a very high-end Audi A8 or BMW 7 series.
Not sure about Mercedes, but I guess they gave you an A or B class without much luxury options as a loaner. I've seen those as rental cars as well, not great compared to their higher end cars. That would be a 30-40k kind of car here, the model 3 starts at 64k if you pick anything but white and want long range (not performance), and that's excluding autopilot.
So in my opinion they're pricing themselves into a market their cars can't really compete in.
Exactly. It makes some sense because they're also in a different price range, but Mercedes is risking the quality reputation of their brand of this is your first encounter with their cars.
True, but it’s been like that for a long time with the A/B class. It’s quite surprising - I can’t think of another brand that has such a wide quality differential between the low end models and the mid range (let alone high end).
- Quality in general with a lot of rattling sounds and cheap materials. Asked them to fix a few of these, service was super friendly, but they never really got it fixed. Not easy to describe but the magnitude of this is really worse than a low-end VW. Which is super annoying if you live in a place with non-perfect streets. (And the engines being quite makes it worse because it's more noticeable)
- Seats were not what other brands offer in adjustability etc. I didn't mind so much in the test drive, but it's annoying if you drive a lot (this has been fixed in the newer generations so you should be fine now).
Software:
- Automatic windscreen wipers just not working, for which they promised an update. Took almost a year for them to work.
- Entertainment system crashes, had to sort of reboot it sometimes to get things back to work.
Mechanical:
- Adjustable suspension failed twice, about a year apart. They claimed it was my fault for driving over speedbumps, but our other car (BMW 5 GT) is older, has the same system, and never failed.
- One door handle failed, which I think was a build quality issue, it just didn't come out anymore.
- Sunroof was leaking after winter, which took them multiple attempts to fix. And after that it had annoying wind noise at highway speed as if something was misaligned. Did not bring it back again after that because I was a bit done with it, just bought another brand as a next car.
Take this gem: "Young companies like Tesla, on the other hand, are not shackled to suppliers and are free to pursue the best technologies available."
Try the automated windscreen wipers on any big car brand, they're mostly made by Bosch and they work, even on a 15 year old car. Then Tesla came along with their own approach, guess what, they didn't work for more than a year on any second generation model S because they switched from buying a working module to creating their own in software.
After having driven a model S for a while I'm very much a Tesla sceptic. Because I noticed I was accepting a lot of things from them that I would never have from BMW or Audi. When the "this is a cool innovation" feeling goes away, you're looking at a very mediocre car that can't compete in the price range that it's in.