"issues with “heat pumps, air conditioning” and notoriously, misaligned panels. It’s also worth noting that Tesla’s Model X ranked dead-last among all cars for reliability, scoring a 5 out of 100."
I'm wondering if Elon will lash out on twitter or be mean to elderly folks with all this bad news coming his way.
Model S was launched almost 10 years ago, that's enough to get a car out of shape. Then, we're talking about a first generation product of a company learning how to deal with any of that. I don't find it surprising they're not outstanding.
In fact, I've seen a brand new Model 3 last year... The amount of manufacturing defects and design issues its owner found in the first week would be unthinkable for a Skoda Fabia. If Tesla wasn't leap and bounds ahead on the drivetrain (including batteries), they'd be on their way out.
I don't mean to be flip, but I tend to check out white Teslas while driving by on the highway for rear panel gaps. White paint makes it especially obvious.
I'd sy 80-90% are fine, but 1 in 10 or the gaps are so bad you can see the asymmetric gaps from 30+ ft away, most often
Model Ys anecdotally. I even see what looks like added seals around sides of the rear hatch sometimes.
It's a little unclear exactly what the scores even mean, Consumer Reports doesn't share their methodology. They're just unitless numbers supposed to represent the relative likelihood of needing a repair. But the sense of the description is that these are supposed to represent the risk for a new car, not an existing one.
Really... this seems like a study designed to get clicks and not make real predictions. An actual result with units saying something like "16% of vehicles surveyed lost more than 1 day of utility due to maintenance problems in their first year" would be really interesting. No one has that, alas. So we all end up arguing about bad science.
I think high reliability should be easier for EVs. Electric motors have fewer moving parts, and can be sealed. They don't need to withstand literally thousands of explosions per minute, or be open to outside air.
It seems that Tesla is just an outlier with their panel gaps and over-engineered falcon wing doors.
Not to defend the company, but degraded performance of the AC (which they cover under warranty) is probably not what most think of when they hear "reliability"..
Teslas require AC when parked in some year ranges because they didn't use automotive-grade touchscreens (which began delaminating). This then apparently started making some accumulate mold in the AC system somehow.
Drivetrain failures on modern cars are much less common, ICE or EV. Reliability nowadays is mostly about things like AC and all the tech on the cars. I’ve had friends lemon cars over rattling and squeak or radio cutting off randomly, that service wasn’t able to fix.
My car is reliable, as in, it drives, applies nowadays mostly to old beaters, that you buy only to drive and fix anything with a duct tape.
Same here: I would prefer Tesla to rate well on reliability but I can also tell you that in the mid-80s I spent many an hour explaining to a recent Detroit transplant that American car manufacturing quality needs serious improvent and that, no, Japanese quality isn't better mainly because of Japanese government support. Japan took our own Deming seriously; we didn't.
Kia isn't Japanese. And Toyota has had problems since their zienth mid 90s. So nobody has got a lock on this. But one has gotta stay after it
It's also worth noting without Tesla there would be almost no electric car market. The occasional Leaf is about as common as a Ferrari.
It's also worth noting that Tesla is the first American car manufacturer to bring a vehicle to mass production in almost a century. The only other American company to come close would be DeLorean, who failed after two or three model years and less than 10,000 chassis I think. The previous one was Chrysler.
Honestly, under-warranty misaligned panels and air conditioning complaints are not signs that the company is bad. They are signs that those with an interest in keeping us burning their oil are stooping to any low to kick up dirt on the company responsible for bringing electric cars to mass market appeal. My children smile and point in delight at every Tesla the see, like I used to do in the 1980 at Porches.
>It's also worth noting without Tesla there would be almost no electric car market. The occasional Leaf is about as common as a Ferrari.
Nissan has manufactured over 500,000 Leafs[1] since 2010, Ferrari has produced about 220,0000 in their entire existence [2]
>Honestly, under-warranty misaligned panels and air conditioning complaints are not signs that the company is bad
That's a sign their manufacturing process and QA are terrible. What are you objectively measuring Tesla's reputation on if it's not their ability to manufacture cars? As a life long auto enthusiast I can't roll my eyes any harder at Tesla fanboys who excuse this kind of poor quality on such expensive cars.
500k in just over 10 years, meanwhile we're expected to see 40-50% of new cars sales be EV by 2030[0], which will be at least 8 million a year[1]. No doubt Tesla is the force that got the industry moving towards that growth.
Comparing Tesla to Porsche is just ridiculous. Tesla might get some of the battery thing right, but they get so many car thing wrong.
For example, that touchscreen. Using physical buttons and knobs to adjust things in the car means that the driver do not need to move their sight away from the road, and can do it blindly (because the buttons and knobs are physical that you can feel with your finger). With a huge touch screen and almost no physical buttons, you need to look at the screen almost every time you need to touch something to make sure that you are touching the right thing. This, and the whole "auto drive" shitshow, among a lot of other examples, shows how Tesla don't care about the safety of anyone outside of their cars. And for a car, safety should be treated with the foremost importance.
Tesla owner. While driving, I rarely use the touchscreen, as the knobs + sticks that are available cover everything I need. Then, I find everything about the interfaces vastly, immensely superior to anything I've seen in any other car.
Like - what do you even need, while driving? Music controls ("next", volume) and wipers, and blinkers? Done, and easily, and (nearly) clearly. The minimalism is (IMHO) beautiful and very effective.
Otherwise, occasionally move the map around. Very rarely change destination address after I've started driving. One a season or something for other stuff (signing into Spotify), but that's pretty much always before I start any drive.
What do you even do in you car, while driving, that needs tactile buttons that aren't already covered?
Front and rear defrost, mist light, wipers, rear passenger airco are things I miss physical buttons for. Mist light is the most annoying since you can't even use voice control and it's fairly deep in the menu. Same thing for passenger airco.
I'm pretty sure that the brights (are those the same as mist?) are activated through the normal "pull" action on a stick; but I don't live in an area that gets mist with any regularity so it might not have ever come up for me.
I've never even heard of a situation where someone needed to turn on defrosters while driving; I've certainly only ever turned it on before driving (and then it stays fine).
I can see the rear passenger airco, but only if you only have rear passengers, since reaching up there isn't going to work.
> I'm pretty sure that the brights (are those the same as mist?)
They are not the same and are not activated through the pull action. The only way I've found to turn them on is `car`, quick controls, rear mist lights. Maybe your car doesn't have them but they are mandatory in Europe.
> I've never even heard of a situation where someone needed to turn on defrosters while driving
Ideally not, but have you never started driving and only then realize how bad your vision in the back is? Or maybe you would want to turn it off when the frost is gone.
> I can see the rear passenger airco, but only if you only have rear passengers, since reaching up there isn't going to work.
When you have kids that's something that will happen frequently.
I disagree, modern wipers on auto sense just work. At least, they work far better than lane assisted cruise control.
My major annoyance is the glove box. I probably only opened the glove box 3-4 times a year, but the inconvenience of navigating the touch screen for that far outweighs my cumulative annoyance about wipers, which is pretty nonexistent.
I'm far more annoyed at massive view of the car and it's bad estimations of nearby cars. I'd much rather have that prime real estate be occupied by geographical map than a useless and inaccurate map of nearby cars.
>I disagree, modern wipers on auto sense just work.
Not from my experience. Having a dirty windshield or worn out wiper blades causes them to act erratically because the sensors aren't being properly cleaned. I've never heard of another manufacturer with rain sensing wipers removing the physical controls from them too. It's a horrible design choice.
this is only partially true; on my model Y you can manually wipe once by pressing a physical button on the left stick of steering wheel, though you’re still right about needing to use screen when switching between wiper speed settings
You still have to look at the screen to change them, which is especially ridiculous considering you're likely only to use wipers during inclement conditions when your eyes need to be on the road the most.
From my experience, most Tesla apologists do not have a good frame of reference for what other manufacturers offer in the same price point. It's usually their first car that was not an economy car/base model. Of course a Model S is going to feel like the greatest car on the planet if you've only been driving Camry's or whatever. There are so many nuances of experiencing a car that they just don't understand and have no interest in, because when it comes down to it they like the tech experience Tesla provides, not the experience of driving a car.
This simply isn't accurate. My first car after college was an Audi A4, and later an S4. And then a BMW. I've lived and driven all manner of higher-end cars while working in Germany.
I'd take the Model Y any day. It's the easiest and most intuitive vehicle I've ever driven. I used to think the same way about physical buttons. But in reality, as others have said, you rarely use the touchscreen while driving--and basically everything can be controlled by voice with a tap of a button on the steering wheel. Unlike other carmakers, the voice recognition actually works. I'm guessing they use Google for voice processing?
All the primary controls that you might need are located along the bottom of the screen. That includes front/read defrost, heated seats, etc. The volume controls are conveniently found on right, which is ideal for passengers (since the driver would just use the scroll wheel).
While driving, I use voice commands for turning on heated seats and/or steering wheel. For setting the temperature, it's literally a single tap on steering wheel, "temperature 67", or "I'm cold", and it'll lower it by 3 degrees. Probably the only time I really use the touch screen is to pull up The Bike Shed podcast and select an episode (which can also be done by voice). Other times include starting the karaoke, which is great fun when you're with family.
My mom's Lexus SUV, by comparison, is an unusable abomination of complexity. I think I counted nearly 100 buttons, including a useless "tactile" trackpad. Much of the criticism aimed at the touch interface are from people who have one thing in common: they don't drive one, and therefore make assumptions based on existing experience and intuition.
For what it matters, I'm a millennial. But regardless of age, every person who's driven my car remarks on how intuitive and easy to use it is. To be fair, there's stuff that isn't initially intuitive. When I first got the vehicle, I couldn't figure out how to put it in reverse :-). And the interaction of Autopilot and its fallback to TACC (cruise control) during disengagement, the use of the accelerator or right stalk to confirm going through traffic lights--all of which take some getting used to. But the same would apply if those systems existed in other vehicles.
I drive one and I disagree about the voice control, I think it's pretty bad. I tried ten different ways of saying turn on front defrost, but the only thing it understood was rear defrost (or was it the other way around?). I had to Google how to do it and since I don't remember I just use the touch screen now. Rear fog lights and passenger airco I never got working using voice control. After a while you just stip trying what works with voice control and what not and which exact sentence you have to say.
The touch screen isn't that intuitive either. I've yet to figure out how to take an address suggestion and then also add a street number.
I said MOST Tesla fanboys, not all. Being intuitive in certain places doesn't excuse other areas from criticism, just like you seem to be doing now. Lexus having an awful infotainment, which every automotive reviewer on the planet would agree with, doesn't make Tesla immune to criticism for decisions like the wiper controls or their often shoddy build quality. Even my favorite cars have flaws that I will readily identify. I have a GT-R and it's one of the best all around daily drivers I've ever had, but the infotainment is incredibly dated and the interior is nothing to write home about. The transmission is jerky under 5mph. The paint is soft so I had to spend a lot to get a clear bra installed on the front 1/2 of my car. I bought it because of the way it drives, not for any other reason. I love a lot about it, but I'll be the first to admit all of its shortcomings when anyone is interested in buying one.
This made me tremendously sad. I've been waiting for the Y 7 seater to reach Europe. Now I feel betrayed by none of the reviews I've ever glanced making this clear. And I'm at a loss on what car to hope for instead.
>And I'm at a loss on what car to hope for instead.
If you can afford Porsche the Taycan is leagues beyond anything that Tesla offers from a quality and driving dynamics standpoint. The Taycan uses the 992 911's (latest generation) steering rack and it really shows. It provides lots of feedback and feels very precise and responsive. It feels like Porsche, it's not numb and toned down just because it's an EV. They're also working on an electric Cayenne.
Sure these are fine cars, but the "7 seater" is actually significant to me. I don't think even Cayenne does that, despite being larger. And being large is a significant disadvantage where I live.
For what it's worth, the Tesla wipers are by default in automatic mode. They work so well that I didn't even realize they were automatic until about 10 minutes of driving in the rain.
Unlike other auto-wipers I've used in the past, the wipers on my Telsa Model Y are fantastic. By that mean, in nearly a year of driving, I've never once manually adjusted the wiper speed (or even thought about it). That includes extremely heavy downpours. The only time I interact with the wipers on the touch screen is to disable them before going through a car wash.
I believe they use the optical cameras for rain detection, unlike traditional sensor-based approaches (which were genuinely terrible).
> Unlike other auto-wipers I've used in the past, the wipers on my Telsa Model Y are fantastic. By that mean, in nearly a year of driving, I've never once manually adjusted the wiper speed (or even thought about it)
I disagree. Dirty windshields and worn out blades often make them act erratically. Anyone who lives in a snowy climate knows how salty roads instantly cover your windshield and turn it into an opaque screen without constantly spraying it. I've seen them turn on just because the windshield was dirty, there wasn't even water on the windshield.
Here's a pretty ridiculous video of some guys showing how the wipers will turn on for just about any kind of obstruction of the camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SSYFMtdJ5k
I have never, ever had to open a menu for wipers. The sticks work and the button is big, obvious, on the "home" screen, and not on the part that changes, so IDK what you're talking about.
If only it weren't run by a narcissist, Tesla might have been even better. Imagine a world with the reliability of Toyota but using Tesla drivetrain technology! Instead, we have a whiny man child who limits that great drivetrain to a handful of models of unreliable cars built in a way that's much more harmful to the humans on the assembly line due to poor manufacturing engineering. It's really sad, to me.
> without Tesla there would be almost no electric car market.
This is the Great Man theory of history applied to industry. Without Tesla, someone else would have done it because the confluence of available technologies came together.
> The only other American company to come close would be DeLorean, who failed after two or three model years and less than 10,000 chassis I think.
Huh -- what was "American" about DeLorean, besides the founder/owner being from the US? The company was based in the UK (Northern Ireland) AFAIK, or possibly Ireland.
The tesla isn't really common though; I've never even seen one, and my guess it's much more common in wealthy areas as a status symbol more than a widespread success.I don't even see electric vehicles as a whole where i live much, apart from the occasional prius or hybrid. I looked up the superchargers in my state, and they tend to be concentrated in the capital and the communities near new york state.
I think people kind of overemphasize the things the rich people do, and don't get how much a nonissue they are otherwise for everyone else. Like everyone talks about remote work constantly, but really only a minority of people can even hope to do it; many people got laid straight off during the pandemic instead.
This doesn't match my experience. I live in a small town in north Georgia, and I typically see 3-5 Teslas when driving nowadays, including small country roads.
This is a good achievement by Kia. However I'm surprised that no one is pointing out that the Tesla record is from 2015 in a Model S 85D[1]. The Model S 85D had an EPA estimated range of 265 miles and the maximum charging rate was 125 kw. It would be far more interesting if this was done again with a 2021 Model Y which has a range of 330 miles and can charge at up to 250 kw, and is physically closer to the Kia EV6 in size.
It also looks like this was a pre-production model. It's very easy to change the charging params and achieve super fast charging if you sacrifice some battery health/longevity.
Also, apparently while the Kia took 7 days to do this trip, the old trip took 59 hours: https://jalopnik.com/they-drove-a-tesla-from-la-to-new-york-... . The different speed might account for some of the charging difference as well. In any case saving five hours of charging to lose over four days on the road seems like a weird trade-off.
All cars on the list should be able to do the trip in under two days. Furthermore, median predicted charging time is seven hours as well. The best results could be under six hours.
I’m sure there will be rotation in the leader place.
I’m just glad there are now other brands matching the performance of Teslas. Their marketing and brand image, so popular with many people, are total anathema to me. I’m not in the market now but can’t see myself getting a Tesla.
> To clarify before we begin, advertising and marketing are not the same thing. According to the American Marketing Association marketing is “the process of identifying customer needs and determining how to best meet those needs.” In contrast, “advertising is the exercise of promoting a company and its products or services through paid channels.” Yes, Tesla does spend money on marketing albeit significantly less than the competition. For instance, in 2015 Tesla spent $58.3 million on marketing when competitors like BMW spent $196.6 million.
They needed to put mass into space, might as well make it funny
How can you compare these absolute numbers? In 2015 BMW had 25 times more revenue than Tesla, and only spend 4 times as much as Tesla on marketing. So in relative terms Tesla is spending way more
I assume they are long $TSLA. In my experience, they pick whatever comparison is convenient for their narrative. Absolute in cases such as this and relative for growth numbers.
I should say marketing expenses minus advertising - There's a base price you must spend on marketing, eg. tesla.com could be seen as a marketing expense since it's the final selling point before someone puts down a reservation fee, along with the obvious "every car needs the T emblems which cost $0.90 per car".
My point is that Tesla can achieve the same revenue levels without necessitating a 4x increase in marketing spend.
Tesla didn't send a car into space. SpaceX did. And since SpaceX needed to send something on the new Falcon Heavy's test flight, and nobody was willing to trust an actual satellite or space probe to it, I wonder how you could even place a budget on it. It was just a glorified mass simulator.
Tesla is the one that supplied the VIN 686 roadster (~109k opportunity cost) but enormously benefitted from the marketing and social media crazy of launching a car into space and having a website dedicated to tracking it (they don't even pay to run this; lucky TSLA) https://www.whereisroadster.com/
Musk's personal roadster was VIN 1, so while the rumors are that this was his daily driver Roadster (which would make sense since it looks like a 2.0 with 2.5 stuff in it), it came free from Tesla either way.
So he had multiple of them, cool. It was his personal property when he donated it for the purpose. So no Tesla involvement was necessary. Not quite sure how it's relevant how he'd previously acquired it unless Tesla commanded him to use it in a specific way.
Nobody is hitting the same range / power / price points as Tesla yet, but they are creeping up on it. Next gen model y may put them ahead some more though.
The EV6 and the Ioniq 5 are at the same level as the Model Y. They charge as fast, if not faster, are slightly cheaper (at least on the UK market) and have a better range.
I just finished 2k+ california => florida road trip in an electric car and can say with confidence that this comparison is total and utter garbage.
Here are the factors that influence your total charge time.
1. Charger speeds vary from 50 kWh to 250 kWh. That's 5x difference just based on what charger you'll happen to use.
2. The energy usage (due to air resistance) is non-linear with speed. Driving at 85 mph could use twice as much energy as driving at 65 mph.
How fast you drive will have an enormous effect on how much energy you use and therefore how much you'll need to recharge during the trip.
In extreme case, you can hypermile i.e. drive very slowly. For example someone in 2018 Model 3 did 606 miles on a single charge (a car rated at less than 300 miles). It just took them 32 hrs because they drove so slowly (https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17405906/tesla-model-3-hy...)
BTW: this is why EPA range is not representative. Their test is at 65 mph while my un-scientific observation of highway driving tells me people drive at least 75 mph.
3. Details of recharging matter because it's non-linear. Charging to 80% of battery takes roughly the same amount of time as charging remaining 20% to 100%
3. More people in car => more weight => more energy usage.
Use a/c? More energy usage.
Strong winds? More energy usage.
Driving uphill? More energy usage.
The point is that unless you strictly control for all those factors, any comparison is useless garbage, just like this click bait article with zero information about how the test was done.
Those days you can't even trust car magazines to do a decent comparison test.
The points you're making are valid, but the article is about a Guinness World Record. A world record is by definition the best case, and it must have been verified by Guinness.
I don't think anyone expects their Sunday road trip to beat a world record.
World record in exactly what, however? Not in total trip time since the old record is way better than the new one in this respect (like, one third time of the new one). I'm pretty sure that if someone attempted that in a Tesla, it would be much better than at triple the speed. Apples and oranges here.
In that case that's not even what the old ride was trying to minimize, which was apparently total trip time (driving+charging). Apples and oranges here.
> The energy usage (due to air resistance) is non-linear with speed. Driving at 85 mph could use twice as much energy as driving at 65 mph.
Does this mean I'll use twice as much gas when driving an ICE car at 85 vs 65? Or do gas cars have a higher constant factor or something that makes air resistance relatively less important?
> Does this mean I'll use twice as much gas when driving an ICE car at 85 vs 65?
Probably closer to 50% more, because while drag is roughly proportional to the square of speed (which would yield ~70% more with this speed difference), there is also rolling resistance and powertrain losses - so the function of energy consumption vs speed is of the form: ax^2 + bx + c("c" being accessories like air conditioning).
air resistance doesn’t care whether the motive force is a gas engine, electric motors, nuclear powering steam turbines, Flinstone feet, or a wound up spring. All that matters is the cars form factor, i.e. the shape and texture of the outer shell.
Gas cars lose energy to heat loss and timing/efficiency of combustion cycle, that due to air drag. So even though you could gain little more mileage driving at 65mph, the relative difference is less compared to electric cars.
> In extreme case, you can hypermile i.e. drive very slowly. For example someone in 2018 Model 3 did 606 miles on a single charge (a car rated at less than 300 miles). It just took them 32 hrs because they drove so slowly (https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17405906/tesla-model-3-hy...)
It was done on a closed loop track 1 mile long driving 20-30mph.
> BTW: this is why EPA range is not representative. Their test is at 65 mph while my un-scientific observation of highway driving tells me people drive at least 75 mph.
Wait, is this really the speed of long-distance driving in the US? I've just did the conversion and when I'm taking kids to see their grandma, we set the cruise control to 110mph for the most part.
Edit: this doesn't make it my average speed, as much of the time is spent decelerating because of whatever is happening and accelerating back. The average through that 850km stretch is likely closer to 160km/h, I should measure it one day. For the curious: over the whole 3000km roundtrip I seem to be burning fuel at about 7l/100km, or 33.6mpg.
Not sure that's quite true. They had "reasonable and prudent", IIRC, which meant that a cop could still write you a ticket for 140. If there was much other traffic around, he might have been justified in doing it.
Also, I get it for eastern MT, but my mom and step dad were living in Helena at the time, and my step dad drove way too fast for those unstraight mountain roads. It wasn't just traffic that they brought the speed limits back for.
It took me 5 days to go from San Diego to Miami. Could have done in 4 but first 2 days I stopped driving early (6 pm instead of 8-9 pm). Maybe even 3 if really pushed it.
I did it in Model 3 LR which is rated ~335 miles but I was driving fast (75-90 mph) and my car was loaded with boxes so I got ~220 miles between stops.
I did 3 or 4 stops a day, 30 min - 1hr per stop, which I used to eat and rest. About 2-3 hrs of driving between stops.
The car told me where and when to stop. I just typed the destination address and followed what Tesla navigation system told me.
One time it even warned me to slow down so that I don't run out of battery (I was driving 85 mph and slowed down to 75 mph).
First day I used autopilot but I didn't like how often it kicked me out thinking I'm not paying attention.
Rest of the time I used adaptive cruise control which was amazing. I could just focus on the steering (and there wasn't much of it on those straight highways).
In summary, driving for 5 days straight sucks no matter what car.
Tesla's built-in navigation and adaptive cruise control made the trip so much better.
Built-in spotify was also great (listened to some music and some podcasts).
I think the real winner here is consumers. As the more competition in the space the better.
The article doesn't have a lot of details, but it would be interesting to know how long ago the Tesla set that record, as they continuously improve on their vehicles.
The EV6 has a lot of things equivalent Teslas don’t offer - cooled seats, 360 view cameras, Apple Carplay/Android Auto and it offers similar performance.
The world is such an odd and funny place now. My 2007 Toyota Avalon Touring drives pretty well with none of those 'trinkets'. The utilitarian value of a car seems to be an outlier to a lot of people these days.
I wonder if we'll be able to get back to the place where products we manufacture will span decades and commands good value.
Electric cars in my opinion should have fewer points of failure but here we are, hankering for adornments.
>My 2007 Toyota Avalon Touring drives pretty well with none of those 'trinkets'.
Does it? This reminds me of a constant refrain on the internet about nearly any medical or safety advancement, where people say something along the lines of "we survived just fine before". But we didn't. Life expectancy for most of human existence, and right up until early 1900s, was mid-50s. And we had billions fewer people, because the death rate was so much higher despite a much higher birth rate. US modern car fatality rate per 100k people peaked around 1970, at around 26. Now the rate is 11. Or if you want to normalize by VMT (vehicle miles traveled), the rate is still over 4x less, 5x less compared to the 60s. And that's just fatalities. What about simpler injuries, or even plain old fenderbenders which can still be quite expensive and time consuming?
These days, accidents involving blind spots are an obvious next thing to pursue. Looking at stats from the NHTSA and such, seems to be around 2000 deaths per year from parking lot accidents and 91000 injuries. 360 degree cameras have obvious value there. Even more so because now we care a lot more about fuel efficiency, but aerodynamic shapes don't always lend themselves to great native visibility particularly since we also care about driver/passenger protection.
Cooled seats is more of a comfort feature, but then again a significant number of accidents are due to people getting sleepy, irritated or otherwise distracted. And too hot a car can definitely affect that. Cooling the seat can be an efficient way of greatly improving comfort without the energy of cooling all the air in the car so much.
Carplay/Android Auto obviously have more minimal safety implications. They could be negative if they are badly implemented and increase distraction, or positive if they allow more control without removing attention from the road via voice or navigation that is more attention friendly then trying to use a phone while driving. But nevertheless they are now becoming more important features in terms of navigation and roles that were previously played by radio.
So as is so often the case I don't think a naked "my ancient car 'drives fine'" is justified as the standard that should exist forever. And I say that as someone still driving a pretty old car (2006 Volvo) much of the time. And it was fine for the time. But that doesn't mean I think progress stopped in 2006 anymore then it stopped in 1996, 1986, 1976, 1966, or 1956.
The utilitarian value of a car seems to be an outlier to a lot of people these days.
The utilitarian value of literally all cars is that they get you from A to B. Your Avalon has a V6 engine, tire pressure monitoring, alloy wheels, side airbags, traction control, a stereo system, climate control, power adjusted front seats, etc. You don't really need any of that.
Or maybe you literally can't go anywhere unless you have a leather-covered gear shift knob.
I used to think like this, that my manual transmission was just fine and that really you don’t need all that tech.
Then I bought an electric car and besides being so much nicer to drive, automatic emergency braking saved my and my partner’s life at least twice on 101 from insane drivers merging like crazy.
Of course it drives well without those conveniences because they don’t have anything to do with how it drives. They are niceties to have though because they increase comfort and usability.
For one, cooled seats is almost a must if you want to be comfortable in certain climates. Even in cooler climates, I typically run hot, and having my back cooled is a major benefit to my comfort and reducing fatigue on longer trips and even shorter trips.
Also, a Tesla and Kia EV6 cost a bit more than your 2007 Toyota.
My 2015 Kia has all these niceties and is still basically brand new and still has warranties in the drivetrain. It will easily last over a decade. For the Tesla, I get it, because they add stuff that does indeed break all the time. Kia is a different story.
I used to think the same before I got a car with trinkets. Heated/cooled seats (and heated starting wheel) are very nice on cold/hot days. Safety features like auto-braking and blind spot warnings actually do make you safer. Apple Carplay is great for Google Maps, podcasts, etc. Backup cameras are sooooo nice for parking, as are the audio beeps letting you know how close you are to objects (beeps faster as you get closer) - I can reliably get a few inches from other cars while parallel parking in tight spots, and never hit them.
None of these features are necessary, but they’re really nice.
Have to say you're right, apart from the 360 cam. It allows me to park confidently in a way that just can't be done without it. Also if you have kids is good to know they aren't going to be squashed.
The base model of EV6 doesn't have most of these fancy features.
There are simpler EVs, e.g. Peugeot e-208 and Renault Zoe are "normal" cars with an electric motor.
There's also the new cheap Dacia Spring that has nothing fancy. The base model doesn't even have a touch screen, and looks like a car from the early '90s.
The electronics for these trinkets are so cheap now though, that there is not much gained in removing them.
I drive a 2017 Suzuki Spacia, which is a bargain basement family micro- van (kei box car). It cost around $16,000 new, I got it for $8,000 used 2 years later.
It has auto emergency braking, lane departure warning, 360 degree parking cameras, CarPlay/Android Auto, and smaller niceties like auto lights, auto mirrors and keyless entry, and one power sliding door.
And it's a mild hybrid, so it has a Li-ion battery and electric motor assist (mild hybrid means it can't run on the electric motor only, it can only assist in acelleration).
All these trinkets for $16,000 i still find pretty impressive
I understand why you would prefer cloth seats and no screens (I totally agree), but what do you gain from hand crank windows or the absence of air conditioning?
Not a big fan of the styling of the car but I am interested. No price listed anywhere I can find so we will see how that all pans out. If someone would make an electric car with the space inside of a minivan, I would be very interested. Instead the market is all about giant SUVs, which are big but not a lot of space inside.
I put my eyes on the Ioniq 5 but I think its aerodynamics are worse than the EV6 (but I have no numbers and I'm not an expert). Anyway this record is about charging time, not energy usage. E-GMP supports fast load with 350kW chargers, and I'm pretty sure that, being a benchmark, they used all the tricks up in their sleeves.
The article is about how in a real world test they charged faster than Teslas.
YouTube has a lot of amateur enthusiast videos of real world range tests and charging speeds and things for most electric vehicles. People drive different electric cars to meet at some random charging station and compare their efficiency and recharging.
(I should know, I attentively watched a bunch before testing and then ordering an EV6 last week :) )
Literally from the linked article: "Hyundai and Kia have the same parent company, however the Kia Niro EV has completely different batteries on board—sourced by a different South Korea–based supplier...". So nothing about Kia's having a recall.
Also Tesla's have caught fire. It's a risk with all EV's.
I believe that is the same battery manufacturing issue that caused GM to recall all Chevy Bolts over potential fire concerns. (only a tiny number of cars have actually caught fire). This was finally traced down to problems with a specific manufacturing problem in batteries supplied by LG who supplied those batteries to GM and Kia and another manufacturer.
For being such cheap cars, Kia on the whole is actually fairly reliable. They have been pretty easy to do maintenance / repairs on. My family has had two Kia Rios and a Niro.
Kia also loads up the options on the second trim up (the bottom trim is often stripped down). You do get a lot for the money.
This article talks about their new electric sedan and future SUV.
And here I am still waiting on electric minivan. I regularly have to carry six people around, two of which are children and two of which are elderly, so I can't use anything that requires climbing to get into the seats (like every six seat SUV).
Am I really that small of a market that no one wants to make an electric minivan, or is it a technologically difficult problem?
Speaking from a European perspective, I think classic minivans are dead. There are just a handful of minivans left on the market, and I doubt any of them will be electrified.
People who used to buy minivans now have 3 options:
- if you don't need to transport more than 5 people, you can get an SUV. There are lots of electric options.
- if you want to transport 5-7 people and want a lot of cargo space, you can get what wikipedia calls a "leisure activity vehicle" (VW Caddy, Renault Kangoo, Mercedes Citan). A new electric Kangoo with longer range is coming, and there's the Mercedes EQT concept based on it which is as close to an electric minivan as you'll get.
- If you want an even bigger car that can transport up to 8 people there's the EQV from Mercedes.
European minivans never really existed in the US. The European vans (V-Class, Staria, T6.1/T7, Vito, PSA van etc.) are size wise almost on the same level as the classical US minivans (Pacifica, Carnival, Odyssey). Sure, small minivans are dying out but at the same time there are a lot of new van designs many of which are already electrified but don't have good range yet.
VW is positioning the new T7 as replacement for Touran/Sharan/Alhambra and the ID.Buzz for instance is supposed to be a replacement as well when it's available.
I actually looked at gray market importing of European vans (we don't have any of those in the US) but it was cost prohibitive or straight up impossible depending on the model.
Unfortunately I think it’s just a smaller market. SUVs are easy to make and REALLY popular.
The only thing that might be a problem is that there’s a thickness to the battery. Because SUVs are higher up it’s sort of easy to “hide“. But since minivans are much lower there may not be much space between the battery and the bottom of the car to put one.
But more than anything I would guess it’s a demand thing.
I'm with you there. I tried all the currently available vans (Mercedes V Class, eVito, Opel Zafira Life (and related models)) and nothing so far I enjoy. Hoping the ID.Buzz is going to be a reasonable replacement for our current Diesel Minivan.
My biggest gripe with SUVs is that even the biggest ones like X5 and XC90 comfortably fit 3 passengers in the rear. There appears to by an Audi Q7/8 that could do it but it isn’t hybrid/electric.
Then If you want more, you have to get a 7-seater. But actually using it as such eliminates any cargo space from the boot.
And this while the outer rear seats are hugely wide and there is a ton of space between theseat and the door. My Passat gte has 20cm on each side where the sitting part of the bench extends further than the back of the bench. That could also have been used to make a comfortable seat in the middle.
I actually almost bought that instead of my current minivan, but the build quality on it wasn't very good and more importantly it's all electric range was tiny (like 30 miles).
Definitely depends on your driving patterns. I had a Prius Prime with a similar range and did the vast majority of my driving on electric (and quite appreciated the gas engine with 50mpg when I was driving longer distances).
That's a shame to hear; I thought the pacifica hybrid seemed like a good option for my own upcoming purchase, especially since I would've been able to do the vast majority of my non-travel miles on the battery.
What about the Nissan e-nv200? It can come in different configurations, including a 7 seat one. A friend has it to log his family around. It does not have the greatest range, but decent enough.
They are certainly available outside the UK, there are plenty of them here in Norway. But I googled it now and surprisingly they don't seem too be available in the US at all.
I searched a few weeks ago and find there should be a number of EV minivans for model year 2022.
For those saying that SUVs can fit this use case...the SUVs are almost entirely small crossovers. They have the shape but you can't fit more people than a car.
We tried one of those. It’s a spaceship for the driver and a Corolla for the passengers. Super uncomfortable for everyone but the driver. My MIL who never gets carsick got carsick in it.
It would be very surprising that this represent real world experience.
Tesla supercharger are everywhere and work well across the board, that is not the same experience with most fast DC charger.
I think the the real world experience is the inverse of what the article suggest.
Kia and Hyundai will make good competition on the low end
I've driven across the US a bunch with the goal of getting it over with as soon as possible, and I have no idea how you would do it in a way that doesn't constitute real world experience. It's mostly driving in a straight line on open road for hours upon hours. There's little room for divergent experiences.
Also the Guinness record they beat was Tesla's old record so even if the test wasn't an accurate representation of real life, Tesla still underperformed Kia in those conditions.
If your real world objective is indeed "getting it over with as soon as possible", then I don't see how you could say that Tesla's 2.4 day long trip "underperformed" Kia's 7 day long trip.
Knowing Musk, I’d expect Tesla to regain the record. Obsessive people want to win, and Tesla’s vehicles and Supercharger network could support the charge rate required for a dedicated run.
> Kia and Hyundai will make good competition on the low end
The low end in price or quality?
Because it’s price, yes, and quality, no. Hyundai and Kia make some of the most quality cars available and have extensive warranties, both far better than Tesla.
Weird seeing this ranked so high. The record in this situation isn't anything anyone has tried to "beat" before, nor is it something anyone called a "record" until Kia tried. In fact it's just a side note from a six year old press hit Tesla did where they drove a Model S across the country in like 60 hours or something. And while doing so, it spent twelve hours on chargers. (Again, this was back in the days of the 75 kW v1 supercharger).
Well, Kia dusted that off and drove their new car across the country. And they took a week to do it, but in the process it was only being charged for seven hours.
To be fair: 800V cars do indeed charge faster! It seems like a nice car. But this is just silly.
This is because Guinness offers "consulting" services to companies that want to break records for PR, where they find records only one person/company has done before that's easy to break.
Traveling USA coast to coast a Kia spent about 7 hours of travel time charging whereas a Tesla in an earlier trip spent about 12 hours. Whether this means chargers have gotten faster or cars are charging faster or something else is hard to tell.
The Kia has an 800V charging system so it's bound to charge way faster than most 400V systems (like Tesla's) as long as the charger supports it (which Kia certainly made sure of while planning the route for this trip). 800V charging is certainly rare and super expensive right now - e.g. Ionity in Europe charges 79 cents per kWh, which is 4+ times more expensive than charging at home - but eventually it should become standard.
CCS has a 500 amp cap in the spec, so here is a limit to how fast 400V batteries can be charged on public infrastructure. Going to 800V removes that limitation as well. Tesla doesn’t care since they control everything and can ramp up the amps, but all other cars that want to charge more than 200 kW need to have higher voltage batteries.
No charging curve is flat (apart from e-tron, but I don’t see anyone devoting that much unusable buffer ever again), but taycan can sustain more than 200 kW past 30% state of charge. Ionic 5’s curve is weird, but it can sustain more than 200 kW between 30 and 50% state of charge. We haven’t seen a lucid air’s curve yet, but inside EVs reports it can crack 300 kW and have hinted it’s extremely good and will be publishing in the next couple days.
As people switch to EVs range anxiety is a big thing, but once I became an owner I realized charge curve mattered way more than static range. I’d rather dump charge in at low state of charge and make a couple more short stops than sit around waiting to get to 80+% as the curve tapers.
The curve doesn’t need to be flat to benefit from peak flow above 200kW. Cars in later generations will likely charge above 200kW in the 20-80% SOC range.
Higher voltage also reduces power losses.
Not sure what you are arguing against here, to be honest - are you defending Tesla‘s system? Slow charging is one of the main arguments against EVs, it’s great that this is finally being fixed.
This is fishy. Not that I doubt it did indeed happen, but my experience is that finding non-Tesla high speed chargers on a road trip ranges from tricky and inconvenient to impossible. From that, I conclude that this was a well researched stunt using a specific route that had such a population of such chargers. I’m pretty sure that if the challenge were presented that assigned a specific, random route across the country, a Tesla would win easily given the ubiquity of their charger network.
Are there any auto manufacturers that produce really good software? A few have better design, but even then the hardware is so low spec that the interfaces are laggy.
Compared to most other car software, BMW is pretty decent. But it’s still archaic compared to a Tesla. I’m very much looking forward to being done with my X3 and moving on to a Y.
Indeed, Nyland is an absolute gold mine for this stuff. And indeed: 800V CCS cars tend to beat Teslas by 10-20% overall at time-on-the-charger. It's a good architecture, if not a huge deal (it also pays benefits with lighter and cheaper cabling at the charger). Swapping pack voltage is somewhat of a compatibility hassle, but I'd expect Tesla to try to follow this at some point in the coming years.
Is it possible to do something like put a gas generator on a tow hitch platform and charge as you drive for a longer range extension? I am guessing the manufacturers don’t let you charge as you drive but I am curious if there are theoretical blockers to this.
what you are describing is a PHEV (plugin hybrid electric vehicle). The Chevy Volt and Toyota RAV4 Prime are examples of that. Those vehicles are intended to address range anxiety, not charging speed.
Trying to do it with a Mickey Mouse contraption like a generator in a trailer would likely be inefficient and inconvenient compared to an integrated system like a PHEV. Generators are not as efficient as just getting electricity directly from power lines. PHEV's engines are there to power the vehicle when the battery is depleted. they don't try to recharge the battery as that would cost more than just plugging in on a charger.
And the cost? The only thing I care about in cars is the cost and how far it drives. The cost and distance between charges (obviously infrastructure comes into this) is why I don't own an electric car.
EV6 price is in the same ballpark as Model 3. EVs have a higher initial cost, but the cost per mile is low. Even in the U.S. with relatively cheap gas and expensive electricity, EV is still cheaper per mile. In Europe it's a bargain, especially if you can charge at home using off-peak/night tariff.
I bought my current car 5 years ago second hand outright for £12k. These cars are at least £35k out of my price range and are about half the cost of my house. I'm not rich.
Until these cars are more reasonably priced (up front cost) the majority of people can't afford to buy them regardless of their range or potential saving on fuel.
You really can't fairly compare cost between new and used. EVs have been around long enough now that you could find a used Leaf, Tesla, or some others that would be in that price range.
Currently prices are still high because most manufacturers are addressing range by adding larger batteries. They have been able to do that because the price of batteries has been dropping year over year. As the battery costs continue to get lower, the auto manufacturers will be able to start bringing out models with a lower initial cost.
Prior to this, the market for EVs has been small so the manufacturers have had to focus on higher margin, premium vehicles. As the market expands, the increase in volume will let them bring out models in the more affordable price points.
> EVs have been around long enough now that you could find a used Leaf, Tesla, or some others that would be in that price range.
At least in a regular market; the used market right now is one where Teslas appreciate in value, since buying a new one is likely to be 1-2 years out[0]. Deliveries will likely be normalized for 3/Y within the next year as Gigafactory Texas comes online.
You're correct. My last care was a 6 month old second hand. Depreciation is the reason I go second hand. The EV costs are still too high though for a 6 month second hand. I'm also worried about the battery. To be fair my only knowledge of lithium batterys is smartphones. So from that how long does an EV battery last? How much is it to replace? And the nonsense that is buying the car but renting the battery?
EV batteries hold up much better than in smartphones. Data from Teslas shows 1%-2% degradation per year (so you can expect to have 80%+ of range after 10 years).
Leaf fares worse (~4% per year), but it only has air-cooled battery. Tesla and other modern EVs have active battery management system that heats and cools the battery to keep it in the right temperature range.
Replacement is costly, unfortunately. It's the most expensive component of an electric car.
>As the market expands, the increase in volume will let them bring out models in the more affordable price points.
I'm still not sure how this is going to shake out in the secondhand market. I have a feeling the cost of replacing a battery is going to put a floor on the price of EV's.
Sounds like you might not know how to charge properly. I’ve discovered that a lot of Tesla owners don’t. Five hours, for how many miles of a trip?
Edit: Or maybe you did not buy the long range model, in which case you are forced to charge up into the top of the range, where charging is slowest. Yeah that’s bad.
I assure you, I know how to charge properly haha. 2021 SR+ Model 3 and 12 hour drive turns into 17 hours when I did the trip planning for our last vacation using the Tesla trip planner. Believe me, I wanted it to work out.
The Tesla trip planner doesn’t make the most optimal decisions. It prefers longer, less frequent stops. Since the battery charge rate isn’t linear you can do significantly better than Tesla’s plan by keeping the battery state of charge low and hoping from charger to charger, getting just enough juice to reach the next one. A recent 7 hr drive I spent less than 40 minutes charging in my 2021 SR+.
Play with a better route planner and you can almost certainly do a lot better than Teslas basic plan.
They could mean that the EV6 is the first made-to-be-electric Kia?
Previous were ICE cars retrofitted to support hybrid and electric-only versions. The electric-only versions still have the transmission tunnel and other leftovers from their heritage.
Meta: Anyone owns a 10 years old model S? What is the range of battery? I wanted to buy a used electric car, but 10 years Nissan Leaf has 40km of range, which is not enough.
Tesla ranks almost dead-last on Consumer Reports reliability list
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/Tesla-ranks-almost-dead-...
I'm wondering if Elon will lash out on twitter or be mean to elderly folks with all this bad news coming his way.