It’s good and it’s bad

[ammulder]

Odyssey is a keeper until kids go to college.

Yeah, eff that.

I mean, it’s not that I think you’re wrong in the point you’re making, it’s just that I’m much more willing to sacrifice the crap-carrying ability than the driving experience. It will be a bit of a bummer to not even have the option of carrying 8 people, but that will be increasingly unrealistic long before they get to college. My 11yo is already in size 10 men’s shoes, for crying out loud! The Odyssey might be roomy but it’s still not 8-adults-in-comfort roomy.

If push comes to shove, we could take two cars to the Jersey shore or the Poconos, which are our local ski equivalents. They’ll both have Autopilot, after all. Visiting the grandparents is the other, er, odyssey... and that just involves what we need to stay for a week or two. The subject of our overnight test drive will be packing the crap out of the X to see if we can really do it, but we don’t have skis or kayaks for that and I’m willing to downsize our sloppy packing a bit if that will make it work. Could I leave the 3D printer at home? Yes, I suppose I could.

== Important Update! News Flash! ==

Today, my wife said out loud that she likes the Tesla better, and the kids immediately started chanting ‘X! X! X!’ I have trained them well! (Best of all, she didn’t even say ‘no’! She left it to me to tell them ‘not now!’ Happy dance!)

 

[SeaNile]

How do you go about arranging an overnight test drive of an X? Do you need to put a deposit down, sign something stating you'll purchase the X after a successful test drive?

We are strongly considering an X, hopefully around the September timeframe. Due to budget I am sure it will be a preowned X.

 

[ammulder]

How do you go about arranging an overnight test drive of an X? Do you need to put a deposit down, sign something stating you'll purchase the X after a successful test drive?

I’m told my local service center does it, though I haven’t done it myself yet. So I’d ask your local service center, and otherwise, Turo.

 

[nvx1977]

love the stories of wives' about-face with Teslas. My wife is a geek like me so we were both equally excited when we got our cars. Not as entertaining a story but neither of us were sad to ditch our old ICE cars.

And maybe the author of this article should read this thread, given he cited one random woman who claims Model 3 is not a family-oriented car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/14/tesla-wants-everyone-drive-an-electric-car-now-it-risks-becoming-niche-brand/

 

[Skione65]

We have an Odyssey as family road trip van, and there is no way a Model Y, or even an X, would compete with it for a space in our garage. The amount of crap you can throw into Ody is ridiculous: full assortment of winter ski's and supplies to drive some place in Canada for a week - no problem. Full assortment of beach gear and surf boards for a summer beach vacation - no sweat.

Odyssey is a keeper until kids go to college.
TM3P is a great family EV for a family of 4-5. You have 6, so I'm not sure how you fit everyone into a TM3 (and S - maybe).
Add a proper fun/track car, if that's your thing, and you should be all set!


a

^^^^^This.....agree wholeheartedly...our Oddy is a keeper until the kids go to College....THEN.

Ski

 

[jboles]

We are going to start tracking the money spent on gas for the BMW X5. I'm guessing it's around $325-375 a month. Lets not even talk about the upkeep these things for general maintenance.

$325+ a month in gas is pretty significant compared to charging. Our S and X only averages around $40-50 in combined monthly energy cost.

 

[alexGS]

And maybe the author of this article should read this thread, given he cited one random woman who claims Model 3 is not a family-oriented car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/14/tesla-wants-everyone-drive-an-electric-car-now-it-risks-becoming-niche-brand/

What an amazing article Tesla is doomed! All those other carmakers who are so much better at making cars are “primed” to make electric vehicles! Tesla can go the way of the Tucker (a friend told me this too) or the Delorean.

I actually had to look up Tucker to verify that they didn’t even manage to produce 50 cars... how many Model S’s do these people think Tesla has made? How good do they think the Delorean was? Etc. etc. gave me a laugh anyway

-Alex

 

[dmurphy]

And maybe the author of this article should read this thread, given he cited one random woman who claims Model 3 is not a family-oriented car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/14/tesla-wants-everyone-drive-an-electric-car-now-it-risks-becoming-niche-brand/

You mean, the article from the article outlet owned by the same guy who owns the company that just invested in two startups directly aimed at Tesla?

Oh, that.

 

[Dublin 'Eer]

^^^^^This.....agree wholeheartedly...our Oddy is a keeper until the kids go to College....THEN.

Ski

The Rivian SUV may be the answer to the Odyssey/EV problem. I’m excited to see if it is as good as it appears.

 

[alexGS]

$325+ a month in gas is pretty significant compared to charging. Our S and X only averages around $40-50 in combined monthly energy cost.

The difference is probably even more pronounced in foreign markets. We pay the equivalent of US$6.60 per gallon of gas/petrol (I just worked it out) and our electricity is US$0.12 per kWh.

-Alex

 

[SoGA Fan Club]

Your story seems eerily similar to mine, except we don't have small children. My wife told me she would never drive a Tesla or any other electric car. She griped about it the entire trip to pick it up. Then, after driving it on a couple of errands, she asked if she could drive it to work one day to show her coworkers. After a week I asked why she was still driving it. She said, a couple people were on vacation and wanted to see it. After 2 weeks, I again asked why she was driving it. This time she shocked me and replied - "uhh, can we sell my car? I'm going to drive the Tesla from now on". A week after that, my car's name had been changed to "Kelly's Tesla" (my wife's name). It's been almost 2 years now and she'd kill anyone that tried to take that car from her. Often, upon arriving home, I hear the same comment from her - "d@mn I love driving that car".

And we also had a minivan sort of left over from when our kids were younger. When I took it in for an oil change last time, it had been 9 months and we had put 1000 miles on it. And 500 of that was from my brother-n-law borrowing it. It's just hard to drive a horse and buggy once you've driven a Tesla.

 

[dfwatt]

love the stories of wives' about-face with Teslas. My wife is a geek like me so we were both equally excited when we got our cars. Not as entertaining a story but neither of us were sad to ditch our old ICE cars.

And maybe the author of this article should read this thread, given he cited one random woman who claims Model 3 is not a family-oriented car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/14/tesla-wants-everyone-drive-an-electric-car-now-it-risks-becoming-niche-brand/

I love the Tesla-Is-Doomed genre of fossil-fuel centric press clippings from people who know a little bit about the market but not really that much about economics or for that matter technology. And more often than not although certainly not always they are climate change deniers. It appears to have become the most popular cottage industry for the minimally talented. They all read just about the same:

1) Tesla will go bankrupt in the next quarter or if not that quarter then the one after that;
2) even if they don't go bankrupt they will become irrelevant within the next year or at most the year after that due to how "serious car manufacturers" will eat their lunch because those car manufacturers are so much smarter and know soooo much more about making cars than Tesla which is Amateur hour by comparison
3) mix in some cherry-picked statistics about Tesla having quality control and reliability issues and then a few of Elon's more outrageous claims and tweets. Sprinkle in some anecdotal reports of horrible experiences with Tesla Service, a couple of pictures of battery Fires et cetera
4) never any mention of how owners actually feel about their cars and the staggering mid-90s percentage of owners who would buy another one ( 5 to 10 points higher than super popular iconic Brands with very high brand loyalty like Porsche and Corvette).
5) conclude smugly that available EVs from jaguar and Audi are easily as good or better than competing Tesla models - claims without a shred of factual basis. But make sure you don't mention the relative sales numbers across those Brands because those are god-damned embarrassing.
6) based on this entire collection of mythological Concepts, recommend that everybody dump their Tesla stock because it's about to crater.

It's actually become so predictable as to be almost boring. The best part though is when you uncover the conflicts of interest in these putative Market and Technology experts and these are virtually never disclosed but only revealed when you do a little careful digging.