this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Teslas have one of the highest owner satisfactions. I know a lot of people who have them and not a single one of them has ever told me a major complaint.
They arent the garbage cars you are being tricked into believing they are. It's just that some people hate (for good reason) musk, so every failure they can link to him is going to be posted here.
So you're mistaking hearing about it more with it actually happening more.
Reminds me of the Ohio train derailment...all of a sudden train derailments were front and center and every one of them was being posted to reddit...and then plenty of people thinking that means it was happening way more.
I remember reading the quality control stuff was often cosmetic. Like interior trim pieces might fall off, or the exterior body panels didn't align as well as you would like. That was ages ago though. Not sure how they are now. Elon ruined the appeal for me.
Those were problems reported early in the production development process for some lines. It’s not currently dominating the news feed because they have their process fine tuned and that problem doesn’t happen much anymore… at least not any more than any other manufacturers.
It’s like everything you heard about the cybertruck rusting for a few weeks and then found out it had to do with metal dust on the vehicle’s surface from railway shipping. You hear about the problem and the “outrageousness” that it exists at all from the media, then never hear about what the problem actually was, whether they solved it, and whether it continues happening after they execute their fix.
I wouldn’t buy a new line of theirs for 2-3 years to make sure they work through all the manufacturing issues. Ford’s EVs… I wouldn’t buy one of those for 2-3 years after they get to scale production. At this point, it’s looking like that may be a decade, if it ever happens at all. Rivian is closer on the R1T/R1S, but still a few years from scale.
The media currently loves shitting on Tesla because Elon is a dick. The cars aren’t bad and a lot of the issues you hear about were early iteration problems that happen to all hardware manufacturers… that’s why you see a lot of the legacy auto brands backing off production despite the actual sales and adoption numbers. I wouldn’t buy a cybertruck for a few years, but most of their other cars are mature enough to be good purchases that save money over the life of the purchase.
I have a 2017 model s with 107k miles on it that I haven’t had any major issues with. I’ll never go back to an ICE vehicle and am waiting on a good electric motorcycle to hit the market.
Well, they're excellent dick substitutes. Most of the gearheads I talk to find them to be kinda janky just as a car.
I don't actually have hard data or personal experience either, but any luxury product is going to get great reviews from owners, so that's not much of a help.
Audi, Mercedes, and Infiniti are all near the bottom, so you're wrong about the final point.
What about, like, Lamborghini? (Linking the data would also be good)
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/most-and-least-liked-car-brands-a1291429338/
But where were you getting the idea that luxury brands were always well liked if it wasn't from data? I have two possible take aways from this: you either just made it up, or you have some data you are hypocritically not providing.
I have pretty strong anecdotal and theoretical data, which is inferior to hard empirical data, but better than nothing. I think most users would agree they've never heard someone say "I've never liked this Gucci bag". It's there to show off, and be proud of, even if it's the exact same bag as a cheaper brand. Even if they don't like it, it's a Gucci bag, and a huge sunk cost, so they aren't likely to admit it.
My impression of Tesla is similar. People buy them to show off. I know people who own cars from the nicer brands like Mercedes-Benz, but to them that's normal and more mainstream brands are cheap crap, so I asked about Lambos. In your data, Porsche is also high up, which makes sense, and maybe BMW. Cadillac is surprisingly low, though.
How convenient that your "theoretical data" supports your point. Unfortunately, my theoretical data - that people think Teslas are bad cars either because they hate Musk or because they think anything that even sniffs of green is some kind of scam and would never admit they are any good - completely contradicts yours.
Oh well, we'll have to use actual data...and look at that, it appears that luxury brands cars are not all well loved, which also contradicts your theoretical data, but not mine.
Convenient? I made my point because of my theory and experience. It would be weird if my reasons contradicted my conclusion. I don't really care what your opinion of my logic is, for the record. I stand by it.
You're allowed your own take on why people like or dislike Teslas, but there's options from other brands if you want to go electric. There's a lot of people that wouldn't buy a Tesla because burning dinosaurs makes them feel like a man, but there's also folks like me who wouldn't buy a Tesla out of quality and price concerns, but who would totally consider a Leaf.
You're missing the point. You just came up with a reason to support your conclusion. This isn't data. It isn't even really a theory, it's just an untested hypothesis. Most anyone can do this with any claim, which I demonstrated by doing it for mine as well. Which of ours is more valid? Both sound like reasonable hypotheses, at least IMO.
Sure, but my point is that those "quality concerns" may not be the result of actual quality issues (at least relatively to any other car brand), but because some people don't like Musk, and thus will continually point to anything that makes him look like a failure. This leads to a cognitive bias of people who think that because they are hearing about it a lot, it must be happening a lot (availability heuristics). Or simply, some people don't like Musk and are looking for a reason not to buy a Tesla, so they latch onto "quality" issues they've heard of to justify not liking Teslas, when in reality they don't like Musk.
Don't get me wrong, I was seriously considering buying a Tesla, now it's way down on the list of potential cars I may buy when the time comes. So it's not like I'm trying to get you to buy a Tesla. What I'm trying to ask yourself if it's your bias or reality that is driving your disqualification of Teslas. Certainly, which is a big driver for me, price is a concern.
I don't disagree with calling it a hypothesis. I said theory, which is synonymous in normal language. It's what I had.
It's also true that people hate Musk, and so I need to take what they say about Tesla with a grain of salt. I'm pretty sure I had heard this back when people still thought he was a savior of some sort, but as others have pointed out the cars themselves have changed.
Price is a concern, and for myself open-sourceness and repairability are a concern. Unless it's also anti-Musk hype and I'm misinformed, the Tesla ecosystem is a hell of a walled garden.