I have no strong feeling on Musk, but Tesla is far from being a good product.
The vision based system is a disaster, I have been driving a new Model Y MY 2024 for several days and got the following issues:
1. the cruise speed control stops working for 2 times due to "low visibility" on a foggy day. No sound alert but the car just slows down on motorway, which is super dangerous. As a comparison, my previous Hyundai Ioniq 5 can do cruise on foggy day perfectly.
2. There is another time on a single lane, the vision system got confused with oncoming traffic on the opposite lane and made a sudden break. Such behaviour is extremely dangerous on icy road now. Hyundai never had this issue on single lane pilot.
3. When I was on auto steering, the car somehow got confused with a motorway exit and made sudden break on motorway again. As a comparison, Hyundai will tell u: "ok, now I am not sure what to do, you have to control your steer". Tesla tried to be the hero but did a terrible mistake on motorway and I am sure if bad things happen it will just blame users.
4. The vision based system is terrible for reversing. It makes around 20 false alarms every time I reverse into my garage. And the sound engineering is so amateur that it pops/clicks because Tesla team is too unprofessional to know they need a crossfade or envelope. High school student mistake.
5. I have no time to test the emergent brake but Tesla reported a "failure on emergent brake" and I am waiting for service for this. As a comparison, my previous ioniq 5 saved me several times with the brake on parking lot.
6. During my car delivery, I found two scratches on the b-pillar. After they replaced it, the key card is not working... waiting for service again. Some irresponsible people put the types on the back seat and damaged the driver seat leather... unbelievable...
I am considering returning it, but on the other hand, I can hardly find a good alternative in Europe for Model Y, which is sad. I have checked ID4, Ioniq 5, EV6, Polestar and many Chinese models. They do have some other issues.
Don't trust those reviews online. Their trial time is too short to tell u these issues.
Model Y is also poor on suspension, window noise. And the door is harder to close compared with ioniq 5 that I had quite some time with (around 2 months).
Your car has tried killing you on multiple occasions and you're only _considering_ returning it?
I have no idea why people are even considering using auto pilot / cruise control. I would say, well, not my problem, let them be guinea pigs and kill themselves, but then again, they might kill me as a side effect.
This is clearly a failure of regulation. None of this should be allowed.
makes sense. cruise control does feel dangerous if there is a car trying to merge on the right. I have to cancel it and manually control every time.
In driving school they taught us to never use cruise control when passing. It’s only to avoid leg cramps when driving multiple hours in rural highways.
Unbelievable.
It’s unbelievable that you’re not supposed to use cruise control when passing? It sounds like common sense to me: you’re supposed to be accelerating to get past the other car.
It's unbelievable that something so unreliable is allowed to be built into cars, and then people are learning work-arounds in driving school for it, instead of just getting rid of it entirely.
Cruise control has been around for decades, and is a tool for maintaining a constant speed. When you're passing someone, you should not be maintaining a constant speed. Cruise control is therefore the wrong tool for that situation. Driving school teaches you to use the right tool for that situation, which is the accelerator.
Surely you don't mean "cruise control" in the classic sense of "maintaining a steady speed so you can take your foot off the gas" because that's been around since the 1950s and is well-established.
I mean any mechanism that cannot be easily understood and predicted by the driver because "AI".
I agree wholeheartedly that unpredictable software is unacceptable in cars, and I drive an older model car specifically because it's not loaded with touchscreen software "features," but cruise control is the wrong target for your anger. It's old enough to be a retiree with a gold watch.
Cruise control is as understandable as a turn signal.
There are many reasons. Tesla really makes the buying experience easy and delivery is fast. For other brand, I have to chat with different dealers and they always have some hidden terms and wiggling rooms for price. The interest rate for Tesla is also relatively low. perhaps they have some agreement with the bank.
The battery life and charging experience are perfect, and the car settings on single screen are also very easy. The app experience is also good, and I use the sentry function often.
So if I choose something else, maybe I’ll miss these too? As for safety issues, I think reversing is just ridiculous and annoying sound engineer (maybe because I am expert at music technology) but it has no safety concerns and can be fixed by firmware. for the autopilot issue, I just try not to use cruising as much as possible.
Bad news: Death machine! Good news: Death machine delivered quickly.
and conveniently.
Give me convenience or give me death! Never had I imagined we could have both.
Purchase and delivery are one-time things. It is in a past. Even if it is the best experience you can have in the world, it doesn't matter now. You don't buy a new car every day. You face the risk of hitting other cars every day.
A ten year old kid probably knows this well enough.
well if I don't use that pilot thing, it feels safe. and I have seen some tests that Tesla is as safe as Volvo. I doubt if any car cab offer 'perfect' autopilot system
I had two instances of emergency braking in a Mercedes and sold it the day after the second time. According to Bosch (the manufacturer of the radar subsystem) the system was just fine and that was my main reason for selling it, they didn't even want to test drive it across the two spots where their junk malfunctioned.
What are you doing that your parking brake is saving you in a parking lot (5)?
It brakes before I reacted to some potential crashes. I might have noticed them but the brakes are really impressive.
It sounds like you might mean something different by emergency brake than I think most non-Tesla drivers expect. I've always called the lever/pedal with a direct mechanical link to the brakes the emergency brake. Is this a thing on Teslas?
Isnt that a parking brake? Ther is an "e-brake" which AFAIK is basically an electronically actuated parking brake.
I thought an emergency brake was a technique, rather than a device? At least, thats how I understand it in the UK.
One of its functions is to allow you to slow down and maybe stop if the hydraulics fail. It's also called a parking brake, but that's an anachronism for cars with automatic since they have a parking mechanism. Using it to park is still a good idea to keep it functional so it's there in an emergency, and in case the parking mechanism fails. Some people find this out the hard way!
I don’t know about modern cars, but people used to say that parking an automatic on a slope without the parking/emergency brake would damage the transmission’s “parking pin” and make the “park” gear equivalent to “neutral”. No idea how true that is.
Bigger issue is the human in the loop. If you always engage the parking brake when leaving the vehicle so that it becomes a reflex then you never forget. People will claim that this will never happen to them and that it is pointless to do on flat ground... Until one day they hop out of the vehicle with the engine running / key in ignition and not in park and it rolls away from them.
Next biggest issue is probably if the car gets hit hard enough to break the parking pawl. Parking brake could save it from rolling away.
The pawl itself is not a tiny pin and will take some abuse, but maybe if you talk to mechanics in SF where people park on hills they see them fail all the time? That isn't the primary reason why I'd suggest always using the parking brake, even on flat ground though.
sorry for the confusion. I am a new driver and so far I have only driven e cars
It happens. For an entertaining introduction to the original's use outside normal driving, watch some drifting videos.
Unfortunately, it looks like it's no longer possible with an electronic e-brake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RCFfThqbe8
It's also how I learned driving safety. Our safety instructor would make us (slowly) drive over a wet rubber road surface. He also made us evade an object, randomly having to go around it to the left or right. And then one time he'd just pull the handbrake without telling us while we tried to evade.
I had a warning on my Tesla app saying that the "emergency brake" has some issues and may restart to work on the next drive.
the "emergency brake" is also shown on Ioniq 5 screen every time it gets triggered.
So can "emergency brake" mean a different thing?
There's a confusion of terms here.
There's the "Emergency brake" (aka e-brake) which is a misnomer for what is actually the parking brake (not to be confused with the Park setting in an automatic transmission) or also called the hand brake for cars where this brake is a hand lever rather than an extra foot pedal.
And then there's "automatic emergency braking", which is a computer-controlled automatic brake that gets applied when it detects an obstacle.
Words take on new definitions all the time, but you already saw multiple people in here (me included) assume you meant the original and much older meaning. It's good to define new and unconventional uses when it's not clear from context, and it isn't here if (like most people) you've never driven a car with this function.
Doesn't everyone drift into parking spots to get them before someone else?
Of course. Because Elwood Blues showed us the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfwpHAwaME
Yeah, I gave up competing with you folks and switched to flying a helicopter instead - I now get to identify parking spots and drop into them like a brick, autorotating to a soft landing at the last second, before any of you fast and furious even realize the spot was free.
It's the collision avoidance braking when parking in close quarters.
It applies the brakes automatically when you are within about 6 inches of an obstacle and moving towards it. Often false-fires when parallel parking in tight quarters or reversing with a bike rack attached.
This is a different, ultrasound-based system that had been on cars for about a decade now. It has limited range.
Not to be confused with the newer autonomous emergency braking systems that are radar-based(believe mm-wave radar) that has range more appropriate for road and highway speeds but has the limitation of not being able to differentiate stationary objects from terrain.
Probably avoiding people driving in parking lots like they are streets with added rage for finding a parking spot. See, for example, any Costco parking lot
I have an ioniq 5 as well and recently drove a 2023 model 3. It had some nice features but overall reaffirmed my decision not to buy a Tesla when I bought the Ioniq 5.
The braking algorithm for the adaptive cruise control on the M3 was not nearly as good as my Ioniq 5.
False alarms for collisions, times to "TAKE CONTROL NOW" were massively increased over my I5. I have essentially no false alarms on the I5.
Thr driver attention monitor seems based on steering wheel deflection vs torque. Extremely often it decided my hands were not resisting it enough on the steering and commanded me to move the wheel slightly. Except the force required to do so enough to satisfy it was very near the force needed for it to automatically disengage. It was also enough force for the car to noticably swerve in the lane and the passengers to notice.
My I5 just needs a slight jiggle on the wheel. It still false alarms, thinking my hands were not on the wheel when they were, but massively reduced from the Model 3.
Then there was the time that I unbuckled my seatbelt to take off my jacket. The Model 3 had an absolute meltdown. Screaming alarms, autosteer disengaged immediately. It was a WTF moment compared to my I5.
Any time the lane would widen to accommodate an upcoming exit, the model 3 would move to the right to stay centered in what it thought were it's lane markings. Very dangerous. My I5 doesn't do this, it will stay going straight and alert you if it loses confidence in its ability to identify the lane.
The only thing the autosteer did better than my I5 was navigating curves. I think this is because the system in the I5 is limited to the turn rate it can command, and anything more than a gradual curve exceeds that. It will disengage and run you into the guardrail or ditch, if you are not payjng attention.
Many times I got a "corrective action applied for your safety" in the model 3 and never could figure out what was actually done or what the danger it was avoiding was. Many times it mistook parking lot line markings as obstacles.
I barely tap my wrist when it says "Apply slight turning force".
When it gives you the 2 handed graphic to take control that's more of an alarm it's because the in vehicle camera can see you're not looking at the road for an extended period of time. It did that to me one time when I was sending a text while stopped in a traffic jam.
The 2nd warning is really annoying and unclear about the level of force needed.
Also test drove an Ioniq 5 and we liked it a lot too. Definitely the top competitor from what we saw. Every other vehicle that approaches the features of the Tesla that we saw costs a crazy amount of money.
Maybe it was something with the one I rented. The "slight turning force" was about 2 hairs away from "so much turning force that it disengages", and enough for a noticeable swerve in the vehicle path.
This one had a full FSD computer, and the depicted situational awareness on the screen was pretty neat with it classifying vehicles, pedestrians, construction cones, etc... but FSD was not enabled on the one I rented and was not able to be enabled since it was a rental.
I will say, the ownership experience is very different from the test drive experience.
When we test drove a model X a couple of years back we didn’t like it. Even after I test drove my current model 3 I was mostly doing it because it was essentially a free car. I was spending $500 / month in gas so the Tesla virtually paid for itself.
Owning it and getting used to all the features, configuration, using the app, the service experience, etc…it really changes things. I tell people all the time that I did not expect to enjoy this car as much as I do.
I’ve tried the FSD for 2 months and it’s really impressive. Not perfect though and I think the beta flag is warranted because of that. I love it on the highway in traffic. Anytime there are road cones it can be a little finicky though.
There are a lot of edge cases to deal with for FSD and that’s a big programming challenge.
There were tons things they did right. And there's plenty that was done wrong in my Ioniq 5. It's been in the shop twice in 60k miles, which is 2x more in half the miles that my previous vehicle(Chevy Volt) was.
It seems google maps is what backs their nav system, which means it's the only factory-installed nav system that can even come close to competing with google/waze/apple maps.
The touch ui layout seemed to be pretty well thought out, so it's probably about as good as a touch ui can be for vehicle control.
It seems with all the raving over FSD that whatever system operates FSD is entirely separate than the system that operates autosteer, because autosteer tried to kill me(swerve right, into the exit/divider/barrier) at just about every exit I passed.
I loved the Volt. I leased/owned 2 different ones for 3 years each. It was a sad day when they stopped making them.
I don't like the autopilot at Tesla at all.
I forget to mention this: it tries to "punish" me by disabling the function if I don't put my hands there. But the fact is that I put my hand there all the time and Tesla is just too stupid to detect it...
Model 3 MY 2024 even cancelled the stalk, which is a terrible idea for roundabout .
After seeing everything that was touch on the one I drove I was thankful at least the turn signals and wipers were physical.
Can't imagine trying to drive safely without those.
The layout of the touch UI was better on the Tesla. I question the I5 design teams sanity for making HUD controls and seat warmers take 5-6 touches to access.
I guess the right thing to do is live like a king in a gas burning beater until people stop posting about insane problems like this!
Yep.
This is a touch UI problem in general not specific to an EV.
For specifically the HUD, I'm often on dark rural roads at night where deer are extremely common.
The HUD is bright enough to affect my night vision in these roads so I turn it off when driving on them.
The GMC Acadia(gas burner) I rented had HUD controls as physical buttons on the dash to the left of the steering wheel. I push 1 button and the HUD is off.
The Ioniq 5? I don't have an exact count but it's 3-4 menu levels deep, probably takes 5-6 touches to get to it.
Based on these reviews, Tesla seems to want to avoid "OK, now I am not sure what to do, you have to control your steer" so much, to the point where it becomes extremely unsafe to drive it.
When dealing with a person who consistently won’t admit when they are wrong, it is better to assume they are generally wrong and act accordingly.
I didn’t try FSD, only Autosteer. There is a glitch on the road to work where Autosteer will jerk the wheel for a split second. It’s extremely alarming and it always occurs in the same spot, so it feels like bad road data.
I’ve learned to hold the wheel with a certain tension by default, leaning the car to the one side of the road. That negates this jerk.
Try to use FSD , unlike a year ago , it’s really good . I’m in New York and I’m using it in the city , not to mention highway
haha yes, ioniq 5 seat heating is so poorly designed. It will start when I get in the car but I always feel too hot and have to manually touch the screen several times during driving to turn them off.
I also feel that ioniq 5 makes too many warning sounds during driving. most of these warnings are actually unnecessary.
Look into the new ID7. I will get mine in a few months and from what I heard so far it's a damn good car. Everyone who tested it was thrilled.
It has VW software, so… yeah. No doubt, all the ID.s drive great. Their usability otherwise is not good however. Especially the capacitive “buttons” on the steering wheel are atrocious.
Dystopian authors got it all wrong, this is what we should have been warned about.
The trouble is that they were presented as utopian; see Star Wars TNG’s obsession with them. The Enterprise D doesn’t have any real buttons at all.
Just shows how far certification requirement dropped by the time of TNG. Nowadays, no Starfleet ship design would be certifiable.
Obviously joking, but the reason for this in TNG, as it is for cars, that it was cheaper. The same reason RBMK reactors are graphite moderated with a positive void coefficient.
Well, see also the lifts; I’m pretty sure that over the course of the series the Enterprise alone had more catastrophic lift incidents than most _countries_ today have in like time. And the consoles which explode whenever anything happens. And the _bloody holodeck_. Clearly, at some point in the next century, some catastrophe kills off engineering as a discipline entirely.
Next century? You, sir, are an optimist!
I regularly drive an ID3 and every ten minute or so I accidentally activate a button on the left side of the steering wheel. It’s happening in roundabouts, sharp turns or sometimes even on straights when I just adjust my hand position. The buttons on the left are for the cruise control which this car doesn’t have, so it’s always only showing an error on the driver screen, which is funny on it’s own, but probably a good thing in this case. The software has a lot of unforgivable quirks, but other than that it drives very well.
FWIW, I've found the VW group software for traffic sign recognition significantly more accurate than BMW, and I like the lane assist, it's far less intrusive than other implementations I've driven. (I'm not including lane centering - I can't stand lane centering.)
(I base this mostly on comparing driving my Skoda Superb 2019 and a BMW 5-series touring estate rental with luxury trim on the same roads, a mix of city, urban and autobahn.)
It would be very hard for me to live without a car in Winter. But if ID7 has some inventory and I like it on test driving, I can sell Model Y and buy ID7 instead.
The waiting time is also the reason why I did not choose Volvo XC40 recharge.
The XC40 was in the middle of a refresh which might explain the waiting time. Availability should be much better now, and MY24 has some really nice upgrades.
yeah, but it's still based on CMA so the space is not best optimised I don't know how much will the new Polestar 4 cost but it looks more competitive than XC40
The transmission tunnel indeed is an issue, but they do use it as additional space for batteries to make the seating position a bit better for the rear left/right passengers.
Why did you get rid of the ioniq 5 then?
I used ioniq 5 on driving school and rented it for one month after I got my license.
- ioniq 5 has a terrible bug on its turning signal; it often automatically turns off at wrong points. since I use it so often, it's so annoying.
- ioniq 5 has no rear wiper, which makes it super dangerous to drive on snowy/rainy days. the air dynamics just cannot remove the water or snow on the rear window.
- another deal breaker is the driving experience, the car is harder to control than Tesla. at every turn I feel uncomfortable.
These three points bother me every minute I drive it.
and it's even more expensive than Model Y. :)
The lack of rear wiper is standart for most sedans.
I haven't noticed that until I tried to turn on the rear wiper in a car of a friend. Now all I can see on the road is the lack of wipers on sedans. Keep checking for wipers all the time, like an obsession and most sedans don't have it. It's probably not super dangerous, the sedan's shape allows for the airflow to flow along and clean it.
Sedans have a sloped rear window. In theory, laminar airflow is sufficient to clear any debris from it.
SUV/CUV have a nearly vertical rear window. This creates a pocket vortex where dust and water stick to the glass and there is no airflow to blow it off. And the Ioniq 5 is considered a CUV.
but ioniq 5 is not a sedan and its rear window is unusable due to the lack of rear wiper.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how you're getting snow on the rear window while driving, and in quantities so large for the rear defroster (which surely the ioniq has?) to not be able to keep up.
when it's snowy, it's some kind of mixture of snow and the melted. I just cannot see anything behind
"a sudden break"?? You mean it suddenly braked?
yes, it's really dangerous. I was shocked
They're making fun of you for using the wrong spelling of brake/break. I guess pedants don't have anything better to do.
No, in this case I think it’s fair to ask for clarification, since the whole point of the article is that things are suddenly breaking on Teslas.
As someone who does not own a Tesla, but drives in a country where 25% of all new cars sold are now Model 3 or Model Y, we can all confirm this and it is now common wisdom to keep good distance if we are driving behind these vehicles. Beta testing in prod is great /s.
Not a native English speaker/writer, clearly.
So why not the Ioniq?
Teals is better in terms of ordering experience, battery life, driving control, charging experience, interest rate and price, screen, space and design.
But yeah it's a hard choice. no car is perfect, at least Tesla is easier to sell as used car
For visual system , you’re not on FSD , I’m one year on FSD and it’s much better , I heard they will rollout in 2024 FSD stack to EU . Car is a bit over alert on emergency break and I would say it is good but annoying
I bought a used 2020 Model 3 in May. It's fantastic. Best car I've ever owned. Most fun to drive by a mile.
My wife and I went shopping to test drive cars for her recently. After experiencing the Tesla...everything else doesn't even compare, especially for the price.
If it's far from being a good product then every other vehicle on the market is much, much farther.