CarlThompson
Member
Welcome to the world of Tesla. This has unfortunately been normal from the very beginning of the Model 3. For example, when the car was first introduced all the marketing and advertising photos showed it with a really nice Alcantara headliner and trim and all the articles written about the car talked about the premium materials used. The first Model 3s built all went to Tesla and SpaceX employees and they all got the Alcantara. But only the first few hundred regular buyers got it because Tesla switched to the cheap cloth you see today without any kind of notification. The same goes for the suspension. The first cars produced which all the rave reviews were based on (including my own review) had a much better suspension that was just about as good as you would find on a BMW M. But while Tesla employees got it only a few of the regular customers did before they switched to a much cheaper suspension. The suspension in current Model 3s isn't terrible but it isn't nearly as good as what was on those first cars. I was one of the many early supporters who waited in line for hours 2 years earlier to give Tesla our money before we even knew what the car would look like. Then all the reviews came out and we were out of our minds with excitement of the awesome car we were getting. But despite the fact that my car was one of the first 10k built I wasn't early enough to get the better quality Alcantara interior material or the much better suspension. That said, the car is still the best car I've ever owned and I've owned a lot. And I am buying another but those early seemingly shady moves by the company did hurt a little.
And then there's the Premium Upgrade Package we early adopters paid an extra $5,000 for. We were told that the much cheaper shorter range version of the car coming later wouldn't have the glass roof, the faux leather adjustable seats or seat heaters and that we needed to pay extra to get those things. So we did pay it (they didn't give us a choice) but of course it turned out that the cheaper car got those things anyway. So what did we pay $5,000 for? Pretty much the main difference ended up being a couple of speakers and a subwoofer. That hurt too.
And finally of course there's Full Self Driving. Back then Elon Musk was everywhere telling everyone who would listen that Tesla had FSD figured out and that by the end of 2018 or 2019 at the latest they would have full-blown level-4 self-driving where you didn't need to pay attention, stay awake or even be in the car at all. They even made a big deal of announcing the "Tesla Network" which would enable owners to rent out their cars as robot taxis while they were sleeping or at work and thus the cars would pay for themselves if we would just give Tesla $10,000 more! So many of us did give Tesla the money but Tesla kept pushing the date back over and over and changing the wording of the feature so that it no longer promised that the car would be able to drive itself. Expensive lesson learned.
This is just the way Tesla does business. So after all of that why am I buying another one? Because despite all of that the Model 3 is still a very good car and a better EV value than anyone else can offer me.
