Just completed 10 day Road Trip with 2023 Model Y RWD - Mixed feelings

[Konicom04]

To quote George Carlin: au contraire mon frère, or better put, tout le contraire. They’ll win over senior management with cost savings bonuses, senior management with production bonuses, every shareholder, and all those consumers who place a higher value on things Tesla delivers than things it does not. If and when sales tank, there will be gnashing of teeth and wrenching of hands but that’s today an unlikely happening with so much concentration on the quarter, not the multi-year horizon.

And there’s another more disturbing factor: people don’t seem to care. Other than rants in forums, people are still buying the vehicles even with the perceived lack of quality but with built-in disposability, just like they/we buy computers, washers, HVAC systems, clothing, even homes, etc. One perhaps only remotely relevant example: I have a 48-year-old KitchenAid stand mixer purchased new that is still kicking it with all of its original attachments. 48 years of typical near-daily use. 48 years. A mixer. A friend bought essentially the same mixer five years ago and has had it replaced twice under warranty and twice more not in warranty (really likes the way it works, but….). But 48 years. Who does that today for any consumer product, vehicle or not?

OK, maybe a bit too much caffeine this moring. Oh wait, have I mentioned my mixer has worked flawlessly for almost half a century?

Where I come from the 48 years would be called " built like a Russian tank".
As you can imagine, lack of ingenuity, tools, and independent thinking got replaced with overdoing things to make it like a Russian tank.
Its great, but is traumatically wasteful - both material, and employment wise.

That era has ended.

We are here, because average wealth and related consumer demand globally "traumatically" exceeds manufacturing capacity.
So, we make many more things that are cheap, with an army of employees who have a job that otherwise wouldn't be there for them.

They are colorful, technologically clever - playing right in the hand of a genetically curious human being who has means now.
You know, like Tesla

The circle of life

 

[Konicom04]

Funny - just remembered.
My family still owns a fridge built in 1963, serving cold drinks in the barn
running strong, and cool - ironically quite better than many others that replaced it over the years.

 

[Leytonstone]

I don't really understand this argument.

That's because it wasn't my argument and reading back I can see that it could be read two ways.

My point was this: that the claim set out in the message before mine (i.e. that various commonplace features, such as panoramic glass roofs and flush door handles, were "novel ideas when Tesla introduced them") simply isn't correct, and that presenting Tesla as the quintessence of everything, as a lot of folks are keen to do, undermines all their real contributions.

 

[Eto Demerzel]

Tesla isn't pefect by any means. They are way too focused on cost savings and streamlining manufacturing and assembly. That is good for them, not good for the customer.
Megacasting is impressive. For them. It's not buying the customer anything.

At this stage, Teslas should be much more solidly built with much fewer issues. I mean, that stuff is really unacceptable.
Every year they should be improving for the customer, but they focus on profit margins.
So far that has worked, but I would like to see much more value added for customers. I'm not even speaking about design or refresh but just fit and finish, materials, trim details and manufacturing quality. If they kept improving, these would be untouchable cars.

Tesla skips processes that are normal in legacy brands- even Corollas have more finish in that regard in some cases.

No one is perfect but I honestly think Tesla has a far superior product for daily life and how most people use vehicles. I hope everyone else catches up. That would be great.

There is a really very compelling argument for manufacturers having copied numerous Tesla hallmarks, not to mention the EV drivetrain itself, but claiming they fostered the move into e.g. panoramic glass roofs or flush door handles or trumpeting the company's manufacturing innovations when the end result is a manifestly lesser quality product won't win anyone over.

Legacy ev's all benchmarked Tesla. Look at the earliest effort like the Mach E, which was, in design, a Ford Y. All the Tesla characteristics I mention, the legacy makers have copied and benchmarked.
I never said the legacy makers copied the drivetrain because they didn't. That's where Tesla holds a big advantage. They are a purely ev engineered product with none of the baggage of trying to amoratize costs by parts sharing whatever they can with their ice products.

That's because it wasn't my argument and reading back I can see that it could be read two ways.

My point was this: that the claim set out in the message before mine (i.e. that various commonplace features, such as panoramic glass roofs and flush door handles, were "novel ideas when Tesla introduced them") simply isn't correct, and that presenting Tesla as the quintessence of everything, as a lot of folks are keen to do, undermines all their real contributions.

Where did I say Tesla is the

quintessence of everything

and how did anything I say

undermines all their real contributions.

 

[Leytonstone]

A question was asked: what original Tesla design elements have been copied? In response you presented a list of now mainstreamed features such as the ubiquitous centre screen, frunk, NACS connector, integrated dashcam and so on, but included a few things Tesla did not introduce but borrowed from others themselves. To my lasting regret I pointed those out. That is all.

 

[Eto Demerzel]

All of these were novel when Tesla introduced them. Tesla didn't invent this but Tesla defined the EV market with it.
Even now a decade later, most have not been able to replicate or compete. I'm most impressed with the internals. Very efficent and out of the box thinking. Every legacy ev i've seen has mostly carryover ICE parts bin engineering mixed with the ev parts.

A question was asked: what original Tesla design elements have been copied? In response you presented a list of now mainstreamed features such as the ubiquitous centre screen, frunk, NACS connector, integrated dashcam and so on, but included a few things Tesla did not introduce but borrowed from others themselves. To my lasting regret I pointed those out. That is all.

How did anything I say "undermine Tesla's real contributions"?
Where did I make it seem like Tesla is the "quintessence" of everything?

 

[Leytonstone]

You've gotten well into the weeds dodging the actual point and I'm now unwatching this thread. Carry on.

 

[Eto Demerzel]

You've gotten well into the weeds dodging the actual point and I'm now unwatching this thread. Carry on.

Yeah you can falsely criticize others but when someone tells you to explain, it's all deflection.

 

[bmah]

At some point this thread ceased to be a discussion about someone's road trip. Please stop.

Thanks for understanding,

Bruce.

 

[Otto Lotsie]

I am biased negatively toward BMW. While the car was used when I got it, it looked great, held a ton of stuff, and had a classy feel to drive... the problem was that every 3-4 months it was in for repairs. I sold it to the Acura car salesman who sold me an MDX. He had it only one week before he had to have it in for repairs (I paid for the repairs!), then a month later it was in for service again. After he told me, my suggestion was for him to sell it to someone else.
I love my MY LR from Austin.

 

[Eric33432]

I am biased negatively toward BMW. While the car was used when I got it, it looked great, held a ton of stuff, and had a classy feel to drive... the problem was that every 3-4 months it was in for repairs. I sold it to the Acura car salesman who sold me an MDX. He had it only one week before he had to have it in for repairs (I paid for the repairs!), then a month later it was in for service again. After he told me, my suggestion was for him to sell it to someone else.
I love my MY LR from Austin.

My MDX was the best car I have ever owned (I am 76). Drove it from 2011 to June 2022 when I got Red Ryder, my MXP. No problems with RR after about 16k miles so far, other than it cost too much and the Plaid part is unnecessary for normal driving.