Data point: I'm a current Tesla owner who during Q1 was in the market for replacing my remaining gas-powered car with an EV. Looking at the options available, the direction I'm seeing with respect to charging infrastructure, and the character of the company (yes, there's a touchy-feely part to me), I went with a Jaguar I-PACE instead of another Tesla. I feel that directly contributed to at least one lost potential sale for Tesla.
If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.
For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.
Mazda developed their physical controls by blindfolding testers and making sure they could use everything on touch alone.
In comparison, Tesla's approach of putting everything in a single touchscreen is a cost cutting measure being sold as trendy BS. And dangerous to boot.
"putting everything in a single touchscreen is a cost cutting measure being sold as trendy BS" this, I am amazed at number of people (mainly investors) who think this is a _feature_ and something other OEM's envy. Even the damn McKinsey report shows that OEM's have to do this cut about $1800 in costs which will help bring EV's to mainstream in the next decade.
Wow I always felt my Mazda 3 was extremely intuitive to use and in a class of it own in that respect. They really nailed the information architecture and layout of the UI + Commander wheel input.
It’s not a misconception. Have you seen the model 3 interior? Almost zero buttons. And model Y is gonna be built on the same frame as model 3 so we can expect more of the same dangerous idiotic design that lead Tesla to force drivers to take their eyes off the road and look at a screen to do something as simple as turn on the Air Conditioning.
Everyone who’s ever driven a Tesla knows that they are fragile death-and-vomit machines masquerading as strong proud cars.
Source: used to own a model S. Traded it in for a Prius because musk is a false prophet and the car was a piece of shit
Who moved my cheese? It really isn't a huge deal. There is a divide that I notice, older people cling to buttons and younger people are fine getting rid of them. Is it dangerous? Hardly, I just wait till I stop if I need to adjust something that isn't on my steering wheel which is actually pretty rare.
Human brains generally work the same and not having to take your eyes off the road will always be the safest solution, whether using knobs or using your voice to speak commands. Distracted driving is deadly period.
Jaguar, Audi, and BMW are all working on electric cars to compete directly with Tesla. These are large car companies who know how to build millions of cars per year. They have large dealer networks already in place to sell and service their cars.
Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
The point was more that Tesla has already scaled beyond the level where "these companies know how to build cars" is reasonable spin. Tesla's building plenty of cars, making money doing so, scaling rapidly, and can only be expected to be doing better still by the time those competitors arrive in the market. That's not to say that they won't be highly competetive cars, they might (I for one certainly hope they are). But you don't get to handwave away Tesla's existing success on the basis of production numbers.
Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.
I am not sure that's a fair statement. The other manufacturers (most, but especially in the luxury segments) build higher quality cars with much lower rates of error. Tesla enthusiasts (much like early adopters of things) are forgiving and overlook a lot of imperfections (fit and finish on teslas vary greatly -see Youtube reviews). This has been the primary reason holding me back for purchasing one.
Tesla's existing accomplishments and ability to meet tough goals is admirable, but their first to market advantage is starting to fade away as more companies bring to market competitive cars without the quality issues (however few they might be pumping out for now).
> Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.
They are not building at the scale of the large automakers. To build at the scale of millions of cars per year is significantly more difficult than what Tesla is doing now, and it is not simply a matter of building more of the same factories.
> They are not building at the scale of the large automakers.
No, but they're building at the scale of the small automakers, for whom you don't seem to be predicting imminent death due to their inability to scale.
If Jaguar (which was your example!) isn't about to collapse under the weight of their low-volume inefficient processes, then neither is Tesla.
To wit: you're spinning. Pick a different argument, this one is old.
They have greater capacity to build batteries than any other car manufacturer.
They have a greater propensity to build BEVs than any other car manufacturer, since they are all dependent on dealerships who live and die on income from servicing ICE vehicles.
There is not going to be any rapid change to BEVs from established manufacturers. It will be all talk, no action until the last dealership closes down.
I didn't say they were big, I said they had scaled to a level where they were competing very well in volume with established brands (c.f. the Jaguar example above) and that by extension, this senseless prognostication that "Tesla is going to fail because they can't scale" is stale spin and you guys need to find new arguments. They scaled.
I mean, yeah, they built one big (heh, giga) factory instead of a few smaller ones. Your argument seems to be "OK, fine, they built one big factory, but they for sure can't build another!". And that's silly.
Tesla produced 77,000 vehicles in Q1, worldwide. Let's assume they hit their target of 400,000 vehicles in 2019. They would still need to triple production after that point to reach the top 20 of auto manufacturers in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manufacturers_by_motor...
And is being the top 20 some sort of required metric for being a "valid" car manufacturer? I'm growing increasingly tired of these arguments that because they're so far behind the "established" players that they'll never be successful or worth supporting. A company can be successful and valuable while not being the absolute leader. It's a bit disingenuous to put them down for not making as many cars as conglomerates that have been around for ~100 years...
I'm not putting Tesla down for not making as many cars as century-old conglomerates. They don't even make as many cars as Chinese and Korean manufacturers that were founded in the 1980's. In fact, the century-old conglomerates themselves manufacture fewer cars than Toyota and Volkswagen.
Tata isn't manufacturing it and neither is Jaguar. It's built by Magna in Austria (they build a few expensive models for BMW, Mercedes etc. too, but their yearly capacity is below 200.000 for all their contracts) and most likely too expensive to build in large numbers.
> Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
People have been saying this since the Gen 1 roadster came out in 2008. Where are these cars from the auto incumbents at? More EV's the better but they are nowhere to be found.
The Bolt reliably sells ~20k units per year which is clearly lower volume than the Model 3, but still a decent clip. Probably 2 or 3 billion in EV sales + whatever the Volt's done?
The Audi is crap (hundreds are already on mobile.de sold by merchants, they buy it from Audi so Audi can report sales > 0). The Jaguar is fun to drive, but has poor range. They're all 7+ years behind Tesla and haven't even learnt the importance of aerodynamics.
Another Tesla owner here. For me everything you say sounds convincing until I look at the Supercharging network. From my perspective every single issue you mention is a valid point; it's just that Tesla's nationwide (in North America) supercharging network is worth 5,000 points. When other manufacturers solve this problem (and Tesla hasn't met their quality standards) those manufacturers will be an option.
You wouldn't happen to be the Matthew D. Green at Johns Hopkins, would you? If so, you blogged about something I did in Android a few years ago. Hint: I designed and implemented eCryptfs and EXT4/F2FS fscrypt. Small world.
Anyway, I expect that Tesla's supercharging network will go the way of Betamax or 25519. Just because you're first and/or you're better doesn't necessarily mean that you win. With the entire automotive industry (minus Tesla) adopting CCS, Tesla clearly has an uphill battle on its hands. But I'll admit that anything can happen, and I'm terrible at predicting the future.
It doesn't seem hard for other manufacturers to come to an industry standard for car charging, and then have that built out. There's only 119 supercharging stations in the US. For the rest of the automotive industry to match that, especially if they all decide to collaborate, would take less than a year to catch up.
Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful. That makes your car useless for a large fraction of its lifespan. Whereas Tesla's charging network exists today. (And I would add that I've heard nothing serious about a plan like this being in the works, so it may in fact be several years away if it ever happens.)
CHAdeMO has, IIRC, 4-5× the number of chargers in the US that Tesla has and CCS is probably in the same neighborhood because most are dual or multi standard.
Tesla has the biggest single-provider network, but that doesn't really matter.
I don't need HVDC charging in my local metro area; I have AC charging for that. I do need charging along the highways so I can increase my range and travel to other cities. Looking at the PlugShare map, it seems like many of the chargers along the highways only have a single HVDC charging station. Even if we exclude malfunctions, that can mean multiple hours of wait or else a gamble on driving further and not getting stuck. There's no way I would gamble on making a long trip under those conditions.
I had expected we would debate applied crypto and key management if we ever were to debate. But the subject of EVs will do just fine.
Totally agreed on the road trip issue. I wouldn't want to bet my ability to continue a trip out of Superior, Montana on whether or not that one sketchy charger is accessible and functional when I need it.
By way of reference to an actual event, that's exactly the situation I was faced with when the Superior, Montana Tesla supercharger failed when I tried using it in a heat wave during the summer of 2017.
Well, whether the availability of rapid charging stations makes your car useful would sort of depend on your lifestyle. In my family's case, we haven't supercharged our Model X since we went to see that crazy lunar eclipse in northern Oregon, and we don't expect to ever need to rapidly charge our I-PACE.
That said, Electrify America is a thing and is in active deployment. I visited an EA station 40 miles from my house a couple of times and tried it out. It gives me the full 100kW that my I-PACE can currently take.
> Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful.
What if they started planning years ago, and also started deployment years ago? Because both CCS and CHAdeMO chargers are deployed (often as multi-standard chargers), with far greater numbers of stations than Tesla has, already.
I don't see this as being true. When I check Electrify America in my area (DC/Baltimore) it's a desert. Plugshare shows many stations, but when I view details they're primarily 1-2 chargers. These stations are useless for long-distance trips, because in any location that attracts traffic I expect to wait a significant amount of time for other vehicles who reached it before me. The Tesla network typically has stations of 6-10 stalls (or up to 40 or more in a couple of locations), typically placed and sized to match actual long distance travel routes and demand. The stalls are all networked, so I can see availability on the road. While I'm not a Tesla fanboy and would be happy to see this situation change, trying to pretend that other companies have an advantage on Tesla in this area is simply ignoring reality -- at least here in the US.
Looks like it’s just FUD. Appears it came from Wikipedia which clearly states that it was a 2014 figure, but OP conveniently forgot to note that their figure was severely out of date.
>There's only 119 supercharging stations in the US.
That’s an old figure from 2014. Five years ago. The number has already done a couple of doublings since then and is set to double again in the next year or so.
So much ignorance about Tesla here. It is really disappointing.
In my opinion, the Supercharger port (and the junction box) is way more advanced, compact, and cheaper than a CCS port. The Tesla onboard charger is clever enough to sense that it's connected to a DC charger, so they can use the same pins for AC and DC charging.
Otoh, the CCS is a bulky connector + the germans were clever enough to add the PLC protocol as well, to make it even more complex and expensive.
Don't get me wrong, I love standards, and I love, that the EU Model 3 can be charged essentially anywhere, but in my opinion, the Supercharger Type2 connector is better in every aspect, expect for it being proprietary.
It’s not proprietary in the sense that the offer has been made for any car company to use the same connector technology (and even the supercharger network) royalty free. No car companies have taken Tesla up on this offer. The ones that expressed interest wanted Tesla to make needless changes... but part of the deal with Tesla offering the tech is that it has to be done in a way that does not burn extra engineering time for the Tesla team... so the requested changes would not fly.
I don’t know. Probably these were internal communications between the companies. Where I heard about it was Musk summarized the situation in one of his interviews, but I have no idea which one.
Pretty much, as it would require the other party to make their own patents available to Tesla, or at least not use them against them - and Tesla just doesn't have anything like the patent portfolio that other manufacturers have, so they would be getting pretty much all the advantage.
Who is getting then advantage is arguable depending on the specifics. Tesla is trying to give sustainability an advantage. It will not benefit from the gasoline tech patents of a traditional ICE manufacturer. This kind of patent sharing is pretty common and is done to advance the state of the art, not to grab PR.
I tried the Jaguar I-PACE (a friend just purchased one), but the reason it is a no-go for me is the lack of fast charging. I would be effectively stuck in a one-hour radius from my home.
My Model 3 can conveniently do cross-country trips. I really wish Jaguar and Porsche adopted the Tesla charging system (I think Tesla tried to get them to).
The I-Pace is not as efficient as a Tesla so the range is not quite as promised.
As with any electric, Tesla ranges can be below what is promised too, if you drive fast, as you allude to. But the problem is amplified with the I-Pace since the car is not as efficient.
With some margin, a 1 hour radius sounds like about what I would expect from an I-Pace. Whereas with Tesla the radius is effectively unlimited in most of the US for example, due to the density of the network.
Would have to mostly agree here, but it's trading time spent at one place for time spent at another. (Disclosure: I'm a Chevy Volt owner, so I have the option of both EV charging and gasoline, on rare occasion).
I recently saw someone make a valid point (IMHO) that I hadn't given much thought in the past: The time spent a DC chargers is somewhat offset by lack of stops at a gas station. Assuming you stop for gas once a week, and it takes 5 minutes to fill up and go... that's around 4.3 hours you spend at a gas station every year.
On the other hand, you may spend time at a DC charger during long road trips, but you don't have any obligation to stop at a location to recharge during normal commutes, since you simply charge overnight at home.
In other words, you have to stop for gas every X miles in an ICE vehicle, but you may have to stop for a recharge in an EV (usually for long road trips).
Yeah but that's neglecting the time it takes to plug and unplug your car every night/morning. I'd say it takes about 15-30 sec for each action. If you do this once per day to make sure you're topped off, and you drive 30 miles per day, you get about 50 miles of charge per minute of your time.
A typical gas pump fills at 9 gallons per minute, plus 2-3 minutes to pull into the pump, swipe your credit card, etc. If you have a 15 gallon tank and get 30 mpg, that's about 5 minutes for about 450 miles, or about 90 miles per minute of your time.
Tesla should start selling their robot charging snake thing to aleviate this.
If your range is 325 miles (Model 3 LR), charged 90% max you don't have to plug in more than once a week, depending on your commute.
Also, people calculating road trip "stop time" seem to forget that when you leave on a multi-day roadtrip, there's usually a oh-crap-I-haven't-changed-my-oil-in-forever stop, and a "fill up before I get on the road" stop. Both of which are not needed before you take off with an EV. You'll leave on your with a full "tank" without the "lets gas up for the trip" stop, and when you return, you again have a full tank the next day without the "damn I'm empty and have work tomorrow so better fill up again" stop.
Plug-in hybrid is best of both here, assuming you have a charger either at home or work, you will increase time between fueling, and you can go on a road trip without worrying about range.
I don't understand the point of this argument. Yes, in a ICE vehicle you can reach your destination marginally faster (we're talking about an hour on an 11-hour trip up the I-95 corridor, in my experience), but is that actually an important factor? For 99.9% of trips that are within a couple hundred miles of home, travel time is the same. If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead. I would venture that the number of people that want to drive > 5 hours, and have a requirement to do so "as fast as humanly possible" is pretty small. In that regard, the Model 3 is a BEV that requires practically zero compromises for both day-to-day and long road trip travelling, which is primarily due to the money and effort Tesla has spent on building the SC network. For that reason, I would not consider another EV besides Tesla until other manufacturers (or whoever) puts their money where their mouths are and builds out a fast-charging infrastructure that enables such long-distance travel.
A Corolla gets double the range on a tank of gas than a Tesla.
> If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead.
This is rather tone deaf. Not surprised. A car designed and priced for rich people, attracts rich people. What a luxury it must be for you to afford to fly. Plenty of people make road trips. Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation. Can't imagine stopping every 3 hours for a half hour to charge. That's 2 and a half hours lost out of our vacation. Then you have to make sure there is a place to charge at your actual destination...
Tesla certainly has the best build out, they're the disruptors - of course they're ahead. But the value isn't there yet, for me to switch from ICE. It's really expensive. Servicing is an absolute nightmare. Charging at home isn't always quick enough. The supercharger network is on interstates mainly - that gets you a lot of places, not all places.
You can continually nip at the edges and say "who really drives like that" or "who's really going to those places." That's beside the point - they're excuses. ICE is simply a better product right now. it has none of the downsides, except eco-friendliness. I mean, hell, you can get a solid Corolla for a fourth of the price of a Model 3. It's great on gas, and gas is cheap anyway.
If Tesla figures out its scaling issues and the market adds some competition and the product is there, I'll buy in. Just not ready to yet.
> Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation. Can't imagine stopping every 3 hours for a half hour to charge.
This is laughable as someone who grew up comfortably middle class and made 20+ drives between PA <-> FL. We looked forward to the stops along the way for many reasons: to relax, stretch our legs, and eat the sandwiches we packed; to check out all the cool stuff at South of the Border; catch a beautiful view; or — my personal favorite — stop for Kristy Kreme doughnuts before they made their way up north.
I love to drive. And I’ve never taken a road trip — car or motorcycle — where a 30min rest stop wasn’t welcome.
Off topic, but I never realized until a couple years back just how racist South of the Border is as an idea in general. SC isn't even close enough to Mexico for it to make sense... Also, I'm not sure how they stay in business. Every time I've driven by, it's been completely empty.
> Plenty of people make road trips. Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation.
Same here. I also grew up taking long road trips with my family, and took plenty of long trips when I had an ICE vehicle, and now take plenty of long trips in my EV, which is my point. It is eminently possible and practical to do road trips in an EV with access to the super charger network. That is the only point I was trying to make. The parent's comment was that road trips are more conveniently done in a gasoline vehicle than in a modern (Tesla) EV. I've driven the Model 3 up and down the east coast twice now (both by myself and with human/canine accompaniment), and do not feel as though I'm sacrificing any convenience when compared to previously doing so in an ICE.
> This is rather tone deaf. Not surprised. A car designed and priced for rich people, attracts rich people.
Ad hominem, not necessary, and not correct. You have no idea or right to assume my financial situation or what I may have or have not sacrificed to purchase a given vehicle. I'm simply relating my personal experience and it appears it does not agree with your preconceived notions about EV ownership.
I do not think it's that outrageous nor tone deaf to say that if minimizing time spent traveling is the most important thing, you will optimize that equation by paying to fly instead of driving. Some people enjoy spending the time on the road with their family, just enjoy driving, or want to (or need to) save money on airfare, and will drive instead of fly.
> But the value isn't there yet, for me to switch from ICE.
And that's fine. I'm not a sales person, and I'm not trying to convince you to buy a Tesla. We obviously have different value propositions and that's fine (such as the relative importance of "eco-friendliness"). I commented because I genuinely hope for a faster national transition to EVs for the sake of our air quality, energy security, and foreign policy. I become bothered when people who have no hands-on experience with EVs bemoan their shortcomings, so as a driver in a very happy EV-only household, I feel the need to help educate people that there are very few sacrifices to be made by switching. I believe that the vast majority of people don't realize that they could switch to an EV today and it would not significantly impact their daily lives, except they would have to plug their car in at night like their phone, and wouldn't have to go to gas stations ever again.
> gas is cheap anyway
To an individual consumer, yes, but as a society (as evidenced by your exact statement), we haven't even begun to account for the externalities of our fossil fuel-based economy, and I hope (perhaps idealistically) that we will soon.
Charging is pretty fast if you run down the battery to say 10 - 20% and then charge only what you need at each supercharger along the way.
Overall it is a bit slower than an ICE car if the ICE car is not taking any breaks, but the other aspects of the car make this a very small price to pay.
Over time as the supercharger network gets faster and with free software updates the gap will narrow as well.
It is dramatically slower than ICE cars dude. Over time ... it will still be dramatically slower.
Teslas are an expensive fragile toy for rich people that can afford to stop for an hour every few hundred miles. But literally who wants to do that ?!?!? Not me
There are right and wrong ways to do charging on a road trip. If you’re such a noob that you’ve only done it once, you very likely may have been doing it wrong. So I wouldn’t give your anecdata much weight.
I would give your anecdata precisely zero weight because it directly contradicts with the hundreds and hundreds of Tesla owners I’ve met and chatted with.
Musk is a false prophet dude, leave his religion, your faith in him will not benefit you but it MIGHT make you die in a car crash.
Spent a lot of time at Superchargers bored as hell because supercharging sucks. Wound up talking to hundreds of other Tesla owners over the course of hundreds of supercharging sessions.
Maybe. It forces me to take 30 minute breaks every 3-3.5 hours, which I have found far more enjoyable than what I did in my gasoline car (drive for 10 hours with only one five minute break).
I quite like stopping at Tesla charging stations. They're generally in shopping areas with food and WiFi, and you can talk to other Tesla owners. It is like a new philosophy of traveling for me :)
This data point has no correlation with the headline. As Tesla has no problem selling Model 3s - the car with absolutely no buttons. The market has spoken and there is overwhelming support for no button car. Deliver reduction is primarily due to Fed tax credit expiry, shipping bottlenecks, and slowing S/X sales since they are very old cars. Also, Tesla making ~70k vehicles in a quarter is a remarkable achievement as they were selling 20k cars a quarter till last year
I think the Jaguar competes price-wise more with the Model S and X then Model 3. Since he/she bought it instead of a Tesla, parent does correspond to headline.
This. As much as I'd like my car to have the shiny, futuristic stuff, I think buttons are essential when doing more common stuff without taking my eyes off the road.
I don't mind hybrid approaches like the newer touchscreen capabilities on new BMW iDrive systems, but having physical buttons that I can feel and interact with without crashing is good UX design. Fwiw, you don't see high performance cars with an all touchscreen interface, because that'll be mental for the drivers under high vibrations.
You’re being fed false information if you think Tesla cars don’t have buttons. There are plenty of buttons and other physical controls even in the Model 3.
You’re being fed false information if you think that those buttons cover all the typical functions people rely on buttons to perform.
The fact is that Tesla cars encourage distracted driving by forcing drivers to avert their eyes from the road and look at an LED screen every time they want to do something as simple as turn on the air conditioning.
Nice try attempting to turn the wording around, but you fell flat, and it's not constructive. The OP thinks there are no buttons at all.
If you're changing the AC that often, AC can be reached and adjusted with muscle memory. No need to look. The controls are at a fixed point on the screen, near the edge, easy to brace a hand there (or not) if desired while using a thumb or finger to make a selection.
Next time have some actual experience with the car before drawing conclusions.
Ironically you drew your own false conclusion about me while telling me not to draw false conclusions: I have tons of experience with the car. I put many thousands of miles on the model S I used to own. I have literally thousands of hours of experience driving a Tesla. And at no point did my “muscle memory” kick in, because muscle memory only works with tactile feedback.
AC absolutely can not be reached and adjusted on a Tesla from muscle memory, even when you have thousands of hours of experience driving the Tesla. Muscle memory simply doesn’t work without tactile feedback and placing a button close to the edge of a screen is not enough feedback for anyone.
I challenge even the most experienced Tesla owner to turn their AC on and off from the screen while driving without looking at the screen, ten times in a row. $100 says their failure rate will be greater than 1/10. And then they’ll have to look at the screen while driving and become — by default — A DISTRACTED DRIVER.
Teslas are death and vomit machines. And this is coming from someone who used to be a True Believer in the Church of Musk like you appear to be.
Death and vomit... classy bro. The 3 is different from the S. And personally I do glance at the screen safely when needed and there is nothing wrong with that.
Actually, there is something wrong with that: taking your eyes off the road while driving is the very definition of a distracted driver.
Death and vomit are two things that Tesla cars create. Who cares about classiness, we’re anonymous screen names on the internet.
Also, you still haven’t addressed or refuted my points regarding physical feedback and muscle memory, or regarding my challenge to any Tesla owner to turn their AC on and off while driving ten times in a row, which literally no one would be able to do.
Someone should sell a tactile dash overlay kit for people like you. I’m half serious... if done well, some silly people would buy it to overcome the perceived problems you think you see.
Maybe it could also make “vroom, vroom” noises for people who feel that the absence of the feedback of engine noise poses a serious danger. I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of ICE car drivers and many of them think this is a serious concern.
Oh and block off the rear view mirrors because they might distract from the road ahead... according to your line of thinking.
And it could move the speedometer display down behind the steering wheel where the driver would have to bob their head to see the readout. But at least it would be centered like an old ICE car.
>block off the rear view mirrors because they might distract from the road ahead... according to your line of thinking.
What? Not true. Looking at a rear view mirror is still a form of keeping your eyes on the road and thus is not distracted driving. Looking at an LED screen is, by default, distracted driving.
Renounce ur faith in Elon dude, ur faith will not be rewarded.
I take it you're in favor of the rumored glass keyboards coming out soon in laptops. I'm not.
Physical buttons are key when operating a vehicle IMO. Furthermore, I'd prefer big ass buttons and knobs so that there is as little reason as possible for people to take their eyes off the road.
Oh, sorry. I wasn't aware that Tesla has actually been saying, "We're quickly learning that FSD is orders of magnitude more difficult than we originally thought. If you buy AP2 with the FSD option, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that you'll actually get FSD on your AP2, and you'll never be able to upgrade your car with the hardware we sort of think you'll maybe actually need." I guess I just haven't been paying attention!
Sarcasm noted. Elon and Tesla have in the past admitted mistakes, and you should credit them for that. If their current projections turn out to be off, based on their track record I am confident they will do the right thing. In the meantime whining about imaginary problems in a sarcastic manner doesn’t make you sound very convincing.
I haven't driven a car since I was a teenager, but isn't this desirable for an interface that needs to be operated by sense of touch alone? (So you can keep your eyes on the road.)
If there were only one or two, but I think the Audi has at least 5 or 6 different and seperate ‘interfaces’ on and besides the steering wheel. To me, it seems like an overly complex UX.
It would be easy to, and in a sleek way, integrate those limited requested number of controls all in a small row; I can't see it adding more than a few hundred dollars to the cost of each vehicle either - perhaps making it optional.
In complete agreement about the need for EVs in general to converge around one open royalty-free charging standard.
More on the side of Tesla when it comes to interior minimalism and less buttons. Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
> Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
Why would it? Voice interaction is both slow and distracting compared to operating physical controls with fairly rapidly acquired muscle memory; I would expect voice interaction as the sole mode of control for any feature to reduce safety and utility (which, for many car features outside of basic driving controls, is comfort), and only be an improvement if otherwise there was no practical way to provide the feature.
EDIT: It may be debatable whether this falls in “no practical way”, but I definitely think a need for complex input (such as occurs in navigation) is, if not strictly included in that exception, its own exception.
> Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
Maybe for safety, definitely not for comfort. At least not for me. I hate voice interfaces - the first time I have to repeat myself to turn the volume up a little bit I will be wishing for a knob to turn instead.
Audio can be controlled via the wheels on the steering wheel. Suspension height is remembered and adjusted automatically in accordance with your car's location. There's no vroom vroom to worry about in an EV yet the torque is always instant. A/C is automatic -you probably want it around 72F/21C, just let the car automatically figure out the best way to get to that level.
Model 3 supports CCS - in Europe natively, in the US via an adapter. While I agree about the self-driving goal shifting they're doing, it's still the best driver assist out there and you can simply opt out of buying it.
If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.
For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.