A little reassurance required

[Avendit]

Lights: perhaps go back to manual?

Bugs, no need to reboot for me since pickup. Voice commands have a better hit rate than the Leon. Ive had spurious braking, but only in situations well beyond the intended use cases.

I started a whole thread on the advancement of the wipers and it being evidence that most problems will fall to an AI approach, eventually. They aren't perfect, but they are as good as the old car.

@VanillaAir_UK - thanks for the reasoned response.

I don't think I could go back the engines and petrol. There are compromises with the Tesla, but they aren't that big in the grand scheme. I don't like the media player, but I didn't like the VAG system in the last car either. It drives well, fits the family usage well enough and doesn't pump noxious fumes into the air. Only real compromise from my pov is the lack of a hatch, but I'm coping.

 

[pdk42]

Lots of very good posts above. The summary for me is this:

- It's without doubt the best EV on the market this side of £80k.

- Ignoring the EV bit - the design and build quality is more Vauxhall than BMW. Adequate, but it's not in the same class as the German marques in terms of interior materials, design, or build.

- EVs are great if you can live with the range and charging options. Most can. Needs more planning that an ICE, but almost anything possible now. I drove to Germany and back in 2 days with a 9m trailer last month and it was painless.

- Reliability so far for me has been perfect. Time will tell if it continues.

- Tesla customer service is basically terrible. I prey I never need to use it. Maybe it'll get better with time, but right now just hope you don't need to use it. The SCs are OK once you get an appointment

- If you get a lemon, Tesla will screw you around getting issues fixed. Make sure you don't accept the car if you're not happy. Try not to go with a trade in and don't be rushed when you collect. Best to avoid West Drayton as a collection location, esp at month end.

 

[Jason71]

Lights: Do you ever drive on unlit country roads when the car dips it's headlights coming into a tight bend because it thought the chevron reflection was an on-coming car? Particularly nasty on hairpins with the slow return to full-beam. Do you ever drive on single track country backroads when it won't auto full beam under 25mph and you can't get to that speed without full beam? Do you ever see a car parked at the side of a narrow road facing you and car 'sees' switched off headlights as a reflection and dips yours unnecessarily? Have you compared the illumination of these lights with any other car of that price range?
If you rarely drive on roads without lamp-posts it's not an issue - try rural Wales.

Bugs: So you've never rebooted, all voice commands work, you've never had a phantom braking experience (I mean a real one where it slams on the brakes at 70mph), you've never had a red screen warning and alarm because of a difference in ultrasonic reflection from a bush or tree or a car angled slightly in the right turn zone coming to a junction or a car turning left ahead of you etc..False alarms can be more distracting/dangerous by distracting drivers in case it's an imminent breakdown warning. And your auto-wipers never let you down and keep the screen clear in all conditions?

I drive mainly in rural wales, between 100 to 200 miles per week in the dark on unlit roads in recent months and yes I find the time for the lights to return to main beam after dipping to be a bit long (you can always put it on manual if it bothers you). but apart from that I have not had an issue with the lights. Compared to my previous 2 cars with steering xenon headlights to me they seem fine. Maybe you have had cars with better lights than me but both the dipped and main beam seem fine to me in terms of pattern and brightness. The time to dip seems OK as well. I have not been flashed yet that I can recall. I have had a few phantom dips due to chevrons etc but it really hasn't seemed like much of an issue. I am very familiar with the roads I drive on so I guess that helps and It has been raining for a lot of that time so maybe I have been too busy swearing at the windscreen wipers to notice.

 

[sixela]

Apart from motors and battery (and they determine when they think batteries have degraded too far) the warranty is/was?? 4yrs or 50K miles which you will do in 2 years....

There is now a warranty on remaining charge on the battery at the end of the (longer battery) warranty period -- and let's just quote the figure for warranty on battery and drive train as well, shall we?
Vehicle Warranty

 

[pgkevet]

I drive mainly in rural wales, between 100 to 200 miles per week in the dark on unlit roads in recent months and yes I find the time for the lights to return to main beam after dipping to be a bit long (you can always put it on manual if it bothers you). but apart from that I have not had an issue with the lights. Compared to my previous 2 cars with steering xenon headlights to me they seem fine. Maybe you have had cars with better lights than me but both the dipped and main beam seem fine to me in terms of pattern and brightness. The time to dip seems OK as well. I have not been flashed yet that I can recall. I have had a few phantom dips due to chevrons etc but it really hasn't seemed like much of an issue. I am very familiar with the roads I drive on so I guess that helps and It has been raining for a lot of that time so maybe I have been too busy swearing at the windscreen wipers to notice.

At least you're aware of the issues.. stray sheep and wildlife, the guy who has left his quadbike and trailer part in the road, drunks strolling back from the pub in dark clothes, the old deaf and part blind sheepdog ... all on single track stuff with high banks and hedgerows. The tesla flat pattern and lower light level doesn't splash around the bends as much to warn on-comers.
I can't speak for the 3 but my S has a wiper tit on the end of the stalk and in rain I use it a lot....

 

[navt]

It’s different. I struggle to drive my wife's ICE now. It's a gem when it all works fine. It's a different story when it goes wrong. Unpleasant when it does. I don't think I would have rushed out an bought a Tesla knowing what I know now.

I've had reason to sit in SC reception listening in on service issues. One person was quoted a repair bill +£2K for water ingress damage to onboard charger. Sorry - not covered under warranty. What did they do, stick a garden hose in? Undertray ripped off due to poor design - not covered under warranty. Paint coverage - fleet standard. Condensation in light cluster - to be expected.

My 3 month old car probably needs a new steering rack due to water ingress. At present, it takes approx. 6 weeks to book a workshop service. There is no single point of contact. There is no grievance escalation. You have to be a very patient person to own a Tesla. I have zero confidence my car will work from one day to the next. Could be worse I suppose, I could have bought a McLaren.

 

[planehazza]

Forums, for essentially ALL products are always full of gloom and doom. They are places where people often go, just to complain.

I could create a forum that grants folks a million dollars and there would be thousands of posts of people complaining about it. (It's not real, it's not enough, I've got to pay taxes on it, It's not in my currency, It was too much money, I've got to now hire a lawyer (who's paying for them), and so many other things)

Go out to your nearest Supercharger and talk to the owners, I suspect that many will be friendly and want nothing more to do but talk about their cars!

Not picking on you, but I was waiting for this reply. I've been a member of various car forums. I'm not a real petrol head, but I like to chat about my cars and learn how to fix things. This thread pops up at every forum - "I'm looking at buying x car, but I see a lot of negative posts about problems - are they that bad??". As you say, people don't join forums to say "My car is awesome, it has never failed". Instead, they join BriSkoda to say "add me to the list - my timing chain has slipped on my TSI Octavia", as an example.

Now having said that, Tesla seems to be different. It really is a mix of "THESE CARS ARE AWESOME", "Tesla are crap", "my reversing camera isn't working", or "I hit a mild pot hole and I need two new alloys and tires". Normally I can look past the negative posts, but it's different with Tesla and I'm starting to worry about what I've comitted myself into for the next three years... Look at this forum and it's 95% negative posts about faults

Not trying to be Mr Pessimist, but the list of negative points seems to be growing. Voice controls being so broken is something that the king of tech Tesla should not be struggling with, when mid range 2008 Ford Focuses were able to do it reliably. Users should be able to say "I'm cold" and the car turn the heating up. Instead, saying "turn up heating to 25 degrees" shows the car having no problem recognising the user's command, but then not being able to tie it to an action.

I've seen people comparing Tesla to Apple. I don't buy into Apple's fanboiism - their products are great, and they work very well and reliably, but they're not cheap. It seems that frankly Tesla are in an era of being neither cheap nor perfectly reliable.

 

[DaveW]

Had my car since August, done over 7k miles so far, love the car and it's the first car I've had that keeps getting better because of the software updates.

Issues I've had;
Found some very very minor paint defects after I'd left WD (I did check, but they were so small, didn't see until washing the car for the first time). Tesla didn't tell me about the policy of reporting in 100 miles, which is a perfectly understandable policy but left a bitter taste as I wasn't told or I'd have washed it sooner and got them reported.
Carbon spoiler started coming away on one side - Ranger came out and replaced it, excellent service!
I've got the occasional high pitched steering related groan that happens when parking / moving the car at very low speeds. Haven't reported it yet, as it's intermittent (only seems to happen where there are other people around to hear it ) - I'll manage to film it at some point and get it reported.

That's it so far, the paint thing I probably wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for the amount of posts about it, no doubt I had the same / worse on my previous BMW.

Phantom breaking on AP was bad when I first got the car, very rarely happens now, AP has been great for me lately, I use it nearly every drive to and from work down the M1 without incident.

Auto-wipers, they work much better now in the day, still pretty useless at night. I think applying Gtechnique glass care has probably helped here, should improve though with NN in place, learning when users use manual wiping etc..

Voice commands, I only really use it to find songs on Spotify, which works great 90% of the time. Tesla have just let themselves down with the release notes of the thing, tell you that you can use commands (such as 'show me the rear camera') which don't yet work.

Of course there will be 'lemons' you get that with every manufacturer, the paint can be a bit suspect, which I think a lot of is down to the restrictions / paint type they have to use in Fremont.

However, the car is great to drive, I've got the M3P, it's a much much better drive than the BMW M140i I had, where the suspension was really crashy / harsh. The build quality isn't the same as a new Audi / BMW of the same price, but it's pretty good and certainly nothing that puts me off the car.

I know there can be service issues, if Tesla sorted the comms out, I think that'd be much less of an issue, it's just quite hard to be able to communicate with the right people, when you do however my experience so far has been good. I've had not so good service with BMW too where my brakes stopped working properly on several occasions (several times a week - with no braking power when driving off), BMW stripped the braking system to bits, told me there was nothing wrong and handed it back, surprise surprise the car was fine from then on....

As things stand now, I'd 100% get the same car again, I've got this one leased for 4 years.

 

[im85288]

I think we can all agree when things are working as they should we love driving our Tesla Model 3.

Not everyone here has had to experience needing to return the car to the SC for a fault that needs to be rectified. That is when you know that the current Tesla model is just not working. To be honest that should have been obvious to me during the order procedure...no communication..no update on when to expect delivery etc etc. The amount of issues being reported just ties in with what we all know (suspect) that Telsa are under staffed to cope with the demand, the quality control on their cars is just not up to standard.

When you have an issue, being able to talk to someone about it is not that much to ask for vehicles that are less than 3 months old. The other day when my car had gone into limp mode and was basically stuck on the side of a major road without being able to move it I waited over half an hour to try and get to speak to someone. Once everything had been resolved nobody thought the need to actually let me know what was wrong with the car or what had been fixed to repair it.

I could go on and on but there's no point. I love electric cars, they are the present and future and would not go back to an ICE car but I'm thankful I only have a 2 year lease on the Model 3 and look forward to my next Electric Car coming from a company that has a proven record with building/supporting cars.

 

[planehazza]

I think we can all agree when things are working as they should we love driving our Tesla Model 3.

I wish I could; I haven't gone mine yet!

 

[ewoodrick]

Not picking on you, but I was waiting for this reply. I've been a member of various car forums. I'm not a real petrol head, but I like to chat about my cars and learn how to fix things. This thread pops up at every forum - "I'm looking at buying x car, but I see a lot of negative posts about problems - are they that bad??". As you say, people don't join forums to say "My car is awesome, it has never failed". Instead, they join BriSkoda to say "add me to the list - my timing chain has slipped on my TSI Octavia", as an example.

Now having said that, Tesla seems to be different. It really is a mix of "THESE CARS ARE AWESOME", "Tesla are crap", "my reversing camera isn't working", or "I hit a mild pot hole and I need two new alloys and tires". Normally I can look past the negative posts, but it's different with Tesla and I'm starting to worry about what I've comitted myself into for the next three years... Look at this forum and it's 95% negative posts about faults

Not trying to be Mr Pessimist, but the list of negative points seems to be growing. Voice controls being so broken is something that the king of tech Tesla should not be struggling with, when mid range 2008 Ford Focuses were able to do it reliably. Users should be able to say "I'm cold" and the car turn the heating up. Instead, saying "turn up heating to 25 degrees" shows the car having no problem recognising the user's command, but then not being able to tie it to an action.

I've seen people comparing Tesla to Apple. I don't buy into Apple's fanboiism - their products are great, and they work very well and reliably, but they're not cheap. It seems that frankly Tesla are in an era of being neither cheap nor perfectly reliable.

Of course the number of negatives are growing, the number of cars in production are growing.
Voice commands are broken is a prime example. They have always worked for me. Just a few cars seem to get the problem, for which a software update generally fixes.
Of course no other cars get software updates, so that's an inherently Tesla problem.
But being on these forums for a number of years, the amount of issues seem to be a stable mix to me.

 

[Jez_GB]

look forward to my next Electric Car coming from a company that has a proven record with building/supporting cars.

Maybe Tesla will be in that category in 2 years time.....

 

[mnobleuk]

Here's my 0.02c - probably based on perception but here goes.

Most complaints of faults and issues are with the model S and X. The model 3 seems a step improvement especially as production has gone on.

I can't comment on service issues as I haven't had any.

I previously drove Lexuseseseses for over 15 years. I had no issue with them, they were bulletproof, but I had to go to a service centre every year to drop an average of £400 on servicing (as well as £200 a month on petrol) and I don't find the fit and finish on my model 3 to be any worse than them. I feel as luxuriated in the model 3 as I did in any previous car but for different reasons.

Maybe I'm lucky as I can't find any of the issues that others talk about and I haven't experienced service hell but that's my experience.

6 months in regrets from moving from Lexus to Tesla :

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