I got one on March 29th, and it's been in the shop for the last two days (they haven't been able to find the problem yet!) because all of the sudden it gave eight errors and the power steering went out.
Hopefully they fix it soon...
And get the driver's window to roll all the way up.
And get the passenger side falcon wing door to close without always thinking there's an obstruction.
And figure out where a piece of plastic that popped off a chair is supposed to go.
And get the autopilot to stop seeing a "ghost car" (that causes it to slam on the brakes) when driving on the 10.
But, I still love that acceleration, with three car seats across the middle (because we're waiting on the recall for the rear two)!
> And figure out where a piece of plastic that popped off a chair is supposed to go.
This has happened in every car my family has owned for the past 20 years. Some piece of plastic appears on the floor one day and not even the dealer knows where it's supposed to go. We always keep them in the glovebox in case we figure it out some day.
Yeah! I'm pretty stoked for that! But then the tesla autopilot kind of obviated the need (since bumper-to-bumper traffic is its specialty)... but thanks to this glitch, I'm happily stoked again!
They offered to, but we're fine with just "old reliable".. our 2013 Honda Odyssey! And it has Netflix (via chromecast tethered to our phones) hooked up to the flip-down TV!
Reliability problems in exotics/supercars in the $150K+ price range are not uncommon. It's somewhat more tolerable for most as those cars are not bought as daily drivers, but I get the sense that's not the case with most Tesla owners.
Rather funny to read all the excuses. "We all expected a few bugs, like beta testing software" --- I'm not buying it. Beta testers usually don't pay six figures for the privilege.
Compare to my $2,500 secondhand Ford that has had no faults in several years of ownership. Yes it does need occasional oil and filter changes. I'll take that compared to doors that won't open or brakes that activate upon sensing ghosts.
$150k isn't really exotic nor supercar territory. $150k is nicely optioned Merc or Porsche territory. When you're competing against those two, mistakes like this are costly.
Tesla's only saving grace with the Model X is that they're selling vehicles to fanboys and not serious car-shopping buyers.
The Tesla is not a supercar. It's a luxury car. Its competitors are BMW/Mercedes-type luxury cars. Just because a car is $150k does not make it a supercar.
Well it's in top trim 0.5 sec faster to 60 then Porsche cayenne Turbo S and just a bit slower then Lambo Aventador. Tesla model S p85d is faster then Aventador and same time to 60 as Lambo Veneo (costs over 4 million USD).
To say that it is a "bit slower" than an Aventador is very misleading. In a 0-60 straight line drag race, maybe. But that's not particularly hard to do (that's why Mustangs are cheap), and also not the point of any serious supercar.
Well Shelby GT350 is not particularly cheap at 70K yet can't touch those numbers either :). The point of serious supercar is to demonstrate the status of the owner :). If it was track performance then GTR Nismo is making majority of super cars look very bad and at 1/4 to 1/20 of the cost.
Big difference: Those cars can maintain that performance until the tank is empty. Tesla's will go into overtemp protection and throttle you down significantly.
Get a Tesla on a race track with any decent mid-range car for a 200 mile race and see what happens.
We are talking here about the Tesla S P85. It goes from 0 to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds and easily handles 220km/h. Sure acceleration from 100km/h to 200km/h is pretty slow at 12 seconds but does the average family sedan really have 700hp?
What's false about it? I drive through Germany regularly and there are stretches of the autobahn where there's no speed limit, I've driven at 130mph past police cars and it's absolutely fine - are you saying that the "big" part is false?
I'm commuting every day through the a section of the Autobahn where the speedlimit is 130km/h and some sections go as low as 100km/h. Posting about personal experiences is obviously equal to inflamatory trolling and should be voted as such.
Ok, then ignore the second part of my post. I'm asking what exactly is false about saying that big parts of the autobahn are unrestricted? Which part of that sentence is false?
I somewhat agree -- you're right, $150K is actually too low for a real supercar, those are more like $350K and up.
But a Tesla is a supercar in terms of performance. No other BMW/Mercedes/Audi in the price range will touch its acceleration. It rivals a Lamborghini Aventador.
But overall you're right. Supercar isn't really the right word for Tesla.
There was an episode of Top Gear where the 3 presenters drove 3 supercars to a drag race. They've lost to everything there including a truck. I believe a used Civic and a few hundred/thousand dollars in parts will give you a car, which will also beat any BMW/Mercedess/Audi in acceleration.
In terms of acceleration they're certainly impressive, but does any Tesla qualify as a supercar when other indices of performance are considered? They're pretty heavy for one, and while they wear it extremely well, a low CoG can only do so much.
Maybe Teslas aren't supercars, but they're instead super cars?
In fact, after trying numerous approaches and trying to work through the car’s software controls, Deeter found himself driving to a board meeting with one hand on the steering wheel and one holding shut the driver-side door. “It wasn’t terribly smart, but I didn’t have time to call an Uber.”
He's not driving a '55 mack truck. The Tesla has power steering. You don't need two hands to turn the wheel. As long as he's willing to not screw around with the touch screen for the duration of the drive it's barely less safe than driving a manual and resting your hand on the shifter.
No big surprise here. The design screamed "second system effect!" I'm surprised nobody at Tesla was able to reign in the feature list. Big management failure IMO. Tesla should have focused on the electric drivetrain + control software and avoided all the needlessly complex tangential mechanical features. The Model X showed that Tesla's engineers lack wisdom.
I'm not sure lack of wisdom is a fair characterization. It does not look like they have functionality regressions caused by new features in other sections of the car. Had the new features ruined some old ones, I would have agreed with you, but these issues are all centered around the new features themselves. With that in mind, your characterization of wisdom in this context will be a prescription of never changing anything radically. They took a risk and they'll likely make it work just fine in near-term updates despite the embarrassing v1 and then we'll look back and see they have made a great car which wouldn't have existed had they been wiser.
I didn't take blt's comment about lack of wisdom to mean that he felt that Tesla shouldn't make any radical changes. Just that Tesla was already making radical changes to the drivetrain and and software. It would be prudent to not add unnecessary complexity to a new design with frivoulous things like falcon wing doors.
I have no idea how analogous the auto design industry is to the software, but if this was the first version of a new software product I was making, I wouldn't add high risk features at launch which could jeopardize my release when my product is already groundbreaking in its primary function. I'd iterate on next years model after I had a stable base.
But, maybe the "wow" factor and the differentiation those high risk features gave Tesla was worth this risk?
My parents used to have an Audi A5 - sometimes, when you've hit a decline just right, it would shut off completely, no steering, nothing, all you could do was to let the car roll and reboot it.
A family friend's Mercedes E500 brakes stopped working on 280, and he had to shift the gears down and pull over to the side (this is back in the early 2000s). He brought it to the dealer, and something along the lines of the dealer claiming they couldn't see a record of electronic failure in the logs, then refusing to give the car back to our friend.
He only got the car back when he engaged a lawyer to sue the dealer. The lawyer was happy to work on a contingency since "we have no chance of losing this one in court".
But in the link you provided there's several comments that it happened shortly after refueling, which suggests to me a much simpler hypothesis of the root cause --- bubbles in the fuel line.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. (Fight Club)
It's actually a paraphrasing of the Ivey (GM) and Grush-Saunby reports (Ford) from the 1970s. This was several years after Ralph Nader's famous book, Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)
Something like this would happen in my Civic too, not a decline but a small bump on the road like where two concrete blocks meet would set it off. It turned out to be a MAP sensor issue. This is something in the exhaust that feeds back to the controller, it was giving wrong values which caused the software to decide, fuck it let's shut it down. We all know the Toyota acceleration story. So the point of my story is, dont trust even reliable cars' software.
Or alternatively, you're trying to get out and neither the doors nor windows will open. To add more excitement, you really have to go to the washroom.
This is why I believe there should always be a mechanical override for safety-critical features; locks, brakes, steering. I trust hardware far more than software.
I don't disagree, but it is worth remembering that purely hardware systems aren't foolproof either. I had a fuel pump fail on my old car (would be 15+ years old if I still had it), and it took out the brakes and steering at the same time (virtually standing on the brakes to slow down at all, and I ended up running the car off the road as I couldn't physically brake or turn the wheel enough to stay on the road).
I meant hardware in the "old-school" sense of physical linkages and hydraulics, not computer hardware whose behaviour is controlled by some massively complex blob of software.
For example, if I pull the door handle of my car, it directly activates the latch, and the only way that could fail is if something physically breaks or jams. It's not just a switch sending a signal to some "brain" in between that could just decide, deliberately or otherwise, to not honour my "I want the door to open" request.
People are often surprised to learn that, despite me making a living off software development, my daily driver is one that has exactly zero lines of code controlling it.
I meant hardware in the same sense as you. My point was that even if we assume the brain (borrowing your metaphor) makes no mistakes, introducing it does not reduce the amount of physical breakage and jammage that is likely to occur.
You're not choosing hardware over software, here - in which case I might choose differently - you're choosing to eliminate an entire link in the chain. That's always going to be a win for reliability.
Perhaps "trustworthiness" is not the best word for the concept. I'm not sure mechanical hardware is more trustworthy (mechanical stuff also fail often and can be unreliable), but their behavior is somewhat more malleable by the user (i.e. via extra force), as opposed to complex blackbox electronics/software.
I think we need a good term to describe this specific kind of trustworthiness.
Yep, that's what scares me about the "drive by wire" systems standard on most cars today. Oh, and to add even more excitement, the car is on fire and the doors/windows won't open.
One should always keep a tool in the car in reach to use to break the windows in case of emergency.
I am not sure mechanical hardware is less likely to fail than software. For example, ford recalled door latches for a mechanical problem - https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2015... what is worse is my friend can't get the door latch replaced on her ford because "the part's on backorder."
You can smash the window by driving the pillars of the headrest down into the door to the edge of the glass. Twist down to start a crack at the weak edge and the whole tempered sheet will shatter.
In normal cars, when you're on the freeway, it doesn't really matter if the door opens, because the air pressure will keep it tightly shut. It takes some considerable effort to push open a car door at 80 km/h.
Gull wing doors are different though, not to mention rear-hinged doors (aka suicide doors).
That's a very good point about rear-hinged doors. Never thought of that. I've seen Honda Element and some other cars have that rear-hinged doors and the setup didn't feel quite right but never able to figure out why.
The Element, and all the other modern, pillar-less 'suicide rear door' cars I've seen (Landcruiser FJ, Mazda something-something), have the rear door latched by the front one, so you can't open the rear without first opening the front, 'normally hinged' door - it's a pretty good safeguard against latches failing and doors being sucked open while driving.
In Element and similar pickup-SUVs the rear door is still quite small so it doesn't feel so scary. In others, such as current Opel Meriva B, the door about as big as the front door. And just look at Rolls Royce Wraith.
My dad's first car (which he bought in 1960) also had suicide doors in the rear; that was a Moskvitch 400, which in turn was practically the same design as Opel Kadett model 1938 - the Soviets took the design, toolings and machinery from occupied Germany after WWII.
I don't think that any of the Tesla owners really thought their cutting-edge cars would be worry free. They have the same expectations as someone who uses beta software, and in exchange they get to experience an amazing car. Also don't forget that we have had problems like this with mechanical devices in cars, too. Slowly, we started using regulation and other tools to mandate additional safety checks (like the latch on your hood that prevents it from blowing back and smashing your windshield) to prevent those from happening. We're nowhere near anything like this for chips, really.
On the other hand, this is what the future is really like: in a few days or weeks, Tesla will release an update to fix this, and will probably deliver it wirelessly to every affected vehicle, and it won't be a problem any more. That's magic.
Alternatively many companies and governments spend licensing fees magnitudes higher than that for software that works terribly if at all. It's nothing new in the technology sector just a bit new in a consumer device.
I think Tesla owners bought the car expecting a fully functioning vehicle. Running a long running public "beta" a la Gmail isn't an option when your customers have paid you tens of thousands of $.
I just rode 80 miles in a friend's Fiat 500e tonight. The regenerative braking and the stability control are both inoperative with the dash lit up like a Christmas tree with warning lights. They've had it to the dealer multiple times and they reflash the software or something. It'll be good for a day but then fail again. Apparently the workaround is to disconnect and reconnect the 12 volt battery before you start it every time. They're going to try to Lemon Law it.
>I just rode 80 miles in a friend's Fiat 500e tonight.
So, what's your point? That some cars are lemons? That's well understood.
The consumer reports article isn't about one car; they systematically review complaints from all kinds of owners and report a score. In this case, the overall score is below average.
Maybe I'm a total Luddite, but with how fast cars depreciate, and with how fast electronics become obsolete, right now I have zero interest in the marriage of the two. You might as well just take the 138k it costs and start a bonfire.
I'm totally sure it's the future and all that, but when I bought a new car in 2013 I got a stick shift with the most advanced electronics being pretty much the radio (and even that could be mistaken with a cassette player from 1980 if you don't notice the bluetooth connection). You know how many problems I've had with the car so far? ZERO!
That may be because not many roadsters were sold and the rarity makes them more desirable. The newer models sell in larger numbers and (i assume) will fall faster in the used market.
It's possible. The P85, for instance seems to have depreciated more rapidly. But that might be because Tesla keeps pushing the line out on their top of the line model.
By comparison, though, the 2011 Mercedes SL500 cost around $105,000 and is currently worth (depending on mileage) right around $50k. That's more typical depreciation for high end sports cars.
Guess what - my 5 series bmmw just won't open a trunk becaus there is a broken latch mechanism in the trunk, no big deal, things like this happen, especially to a new company like tesla
You've probably already checked this, but there's a switch in the glove compartment of BMWs that will lock the trunk and prevent it from being opened. Try flipping the switch and see if your trunk opens.
Funny anecdote time: my first car was a used Honda Civic. The owner was selling it much below KBB price, because it had a problem: the rear doors would not open from inside.
I take it home, and was going over the car with some friends, and one of them finds a switch on a rear passenger door: hmm, what does this do? He flips the switch, and we try to open the door from inside, and voila! The door opens. Flipped the other switch too, and the doors were functioning fine. I think I saved 20% of the cost of the car simply because the owner didn't know about child-proof switches. :D
This is why I don't understand people who are ready to rush headlong into autonomous vehicle world. I especially don't get it with tech people, and more especially with software people.
We know what can go wrong. I've heard the arguments that "yeah, but software is less fallible than humans". Maybe, but what happens when a situation arises that requires human judgment beyond what mere sensors can provide?
And, what happens when an OTA update regresses some safety feature or conflicts with another?
These sorts of expensive problems are not unknown in top-end cars from long-time manufacturers either. The list of problems an S-class Mercedes will have over the course of its life is long, and can be very, very expensive.
So, not to say this isn't a problem, just that buyers of fancy, super-fast 'super-car' type cars do put up with a lot of maintenance issues.
>These sorts of expensive problems are not unknown in top-end cars from long-time manufacturers either.
On the one hand, we have random internet people saying, "This is normal!". On the other, we have a 70 year old magazine that has reported on thousands of cars (and hundreds of thousands of consumer goods) stating that the reliability is "below average" to "well below average", which implies "This is NOT normal!".
I guess that comes with having the new toys in low production runs. Fewer testers and technologies or implementations that are yet to be run through their paces, I wouldn't be too surprised as an informed buyer.
An uninformed buyer would be pretty annoyed though!
Same thing happened with Model S when first released. Mine had window that wouldn't rollup, door that spontaneously opened, noise from engines and noise from sun roof. All fixed, but annoying. Thank goodness cars have longer warranty than other tech and tesla stands by car.
I long to return to those days when a car's panes where adjusted by means of a simple mechanical crank ... I despise this obsessive compulsive digitality.
I know people who sold beanie babies on the secondary market for thousands of dollars because they were "limited". That says more about the buyer than the product.
Obviously, in this case, Ford ($8BB in profit) overspent to look at a leading product. I fail to see the humour.
It is true. There are issues but they have been minor and Tesla is fixing them. My guess is that they were pushing these out by March 31st for quarterly numbers and quality control slipped in their haste.
If a large percentage (by that I mean 10% or more) of that model car were having the same issues, I'd be concerned. Hell, even if 1% were it would be grounds for a model-wide recall. But this is two anecdotal reports. TWO. I'm not saying there aren't a few more people with these issues, but neither is it a widespread issue (that we know of yet, based on this article).
It's my understanding as an admittedly sideline spectator, that Tesla stands behind their vehicles and is always quick to address any issues. Granted, these are safety issues and should receive the fastest attention possible, but there's no indication (other than an indirect inference by one of two affected people) that Tesla is ignoring this. They can't ignore it, because they are too young to afford to.
I'm calling it a hit piece, or at the least, poor journalism for now.
It's like the story of the Tesla catching fire. It was a big deal, and then it turns out that, statistically, Teslas catch fire at like 1/4 the rate of your average car, and harm their passengers even less often.
These stories aren't interesting to me until you can statistically compare the incidents to the malfunctions of equivalent vehicles.
It's more than two: in between TechCrunch and WSJ there are four... which isn't much better.
Except there's also a statement from Tesla: "we believe the issues with falcon wing doors are largely behind us".
That sounds like a known issue.
Not to mention Tesla offered a loaner vehicle while these issues were being repaired...
A Chrysler Town and Country.
Wah?
"Yeah, your $140,000 vehicle is in the shop due to manufacturer issues. Here's a Chrysler minivan from us while we fix it." I don't know - that to me would be more than a little insulting.
I'm also ... quite surprised ... that an uncommanded parking brake activation while the car is in motion isn't the subject of a recall (even in name only, if it proves to be software related).
Not quite, you left out the part where he had to drive to a meeting with one hand on the steering wheel, and one hand holding the door closed. Oh well!
This is the pitfall of not having manual backups for critical systems.
I hope this "do-fast, shiny, fix later" culture hasn't spread to SpaceX too. From what I'm seeing Musk wants to prioritize the look and feel of Dragon instead of the raw functionality that's necessary in case something goes wrong. That'd be a very, very bad idea if something were to happen. Space is not a forgiving realm.
Really ridiculous connection. SpaceX has spent years working on redundant safety systems for Dragon, testing them, refining them. That's a large part of why it's taking so long.
And if you haven't forgotten, Tesla reigns over all other manufacturers for safety ratings. Trying to imply their cars are aesthetic and not functional exhibits a level of ignorance on the topic that renders your contributions essentially meaningless.
And, lastly, are you inferring this from the fact that Musk spent 5 minutes explaining that the interior was actually pleasant and modern and well-designed? From that, you jumped to the conclusion that most functionality at SpaceX was taking a backseat to the interior design? I'm sorry, have you noticed what they've accomplished? Do they seem to be slacking on core functionality to you?
His eventual goal may be citizen space flights, so a reputation for looking comfortable might be beneficial.
At this point, SpaceX should have the backing of NASA and all their experience on things that could possibly go wrong. They've also done very well in unmanned flights.
The first manned flights will run into issues, but the problems they face are likely to be orders of magnitude less dangerous than their precursors.
Let's change the argument. There's a much larger financial incentive to make sure a shuttle doesn't blow up. The testing process is going to be far longer, far more rigerous and everyone remembers the challenger disaster too well.
Hopefully they fix it soon... And get the driver's window to roll all the way up. And get the passenger side falcon wing door to close without always thinking there's an obstruction. And figure out where a piece of plastic that popped off a chair is supposed to go. And get the autopilot to stop seeing a "ghost car" (that causes it to slam on the brakes) when driving on the 10.
But, I still love that acceleration, with three car seats across the middle (because we're waiting on the recall for the rear two)!