Wow - this has turned into an epic thread. It’s interesting because I’m now half way through a European road trip in my 3 (currently in Denmark) so I’m getting a lot of time with the car. I’ve had it nearly three years now so I’m very familiar with it. Yes, the auto wipers are crap, auto headlights worse, AP suffers phantom braking all the time, the UI has some terrible design aspects, refinement could be better, ride is too hard on some surfaces, and bugs keep creeping into updates (currently suffering from the alarm going off bug when you open the driver’s door with the phone key).
But, and this is a big but … it’s still a great EV for journeys like this. It’s easy easy easy to do big journeys in Europe because the SuC network is everywhere with large sites, many at 250kW. The car’s sat nav works well for journey planning and it handles preconditioning and range planning extremely well. It even re-routed me to an alternative charger yesterday because the original one was busy! I feel very confident just pointing the car and going without dicking around with ABRP etc. And then it drives well, performs exceptionally well, and is pretty efficient (averaging 230 Wh/mile since I left the UK). And the app experience is great too.
All this is sharply contrasted by comparing it to my wife’s ID3. That’s a car with some nice things about it, but charging is subject to the vagaries of the public network, there’s no preconditioning so charging is usually slow, the software in the car is a nightmare, journey planning is nigh on impossible using the car’s satnav, efficiency is poor (amazing really given that it’s a smaller car than the Tesla), and the app/back end is basic, buggy and slow. But - the auto wipers are great and the headlights are amazing!
I know the Tesla ain’t perfect, but as a package it still works well and if I had to choose another EV as a family daily driver I’d buy another 3. Sure wish they’d fix the auto wipers and headlights though!