Pleather for all...

[SomeJoe7777]

I like my car but as it stands today, I won't be buying another one... We've held off on purchasing our X because of various changes and we canceled our Model 3 preorder a couple of weeks ago as well.

I genuinely feel like as soon as MB/Porsche come up with a viable competitor, Tesla is in serious, serious, serious trouble...

1. Where is the competition's long-distance charging network? Without that, then their vehicles are strictly in-city cars, regardless of the battery capacity and range.

2. Where is the competition's battery factory? Without one, they must buy all cells from a 3rd-party supplier like LG or Panasonic, who can only supply a limited amount -- not enough for hundreds of thousands of vehicles. The alternative would be to use Chinese-manufactured batteries, which do not have the longevity required for an EV.

3. How does the competition convince their dealer network to sell a product that directly undermines the dealer's primary revenue stream of repair and parts?


Making an EV is the easy part. But there's a whole lot more that has to be done by Mercedes, VW/Porsche/Audi, and BMW before anyone is in "serious, serious trouble."

 

[Pinot.Noir]

We make choices that our physiology would otherwise allow, including refraining from torturing other mammals, treating them as inanimate objects, or ignoring their desire to live.

You do understand that if no humans ate beef then cows would quickly go extinct. That would likely affect their desire to live

This might be like the cork/cap debate with wine bottles. For a long time any decent quality wine was expected to have a cork, despite the fact that caps do a much better job. Slowly common sense and logic have sunk in and caps are more common.

Caps do NOT do a better job with any wine that is made to age. Some white wines and Roses....fine....a cap is great. However, nothing has yet been created which can replace a good quality cork for aging wines. There are some new concepts that some are trying, but cork is still the best product, and TCA free cork is possible....you just have to pay a bit more for them.

 

[sandpiper]

You do understand that if no humans ate beef then cows would quickly go extinct. That would likely affect their desire to live

Caps do NOT do a better job with any wine that is made to age. Some white wines and Roses....fine....a cap is great. However, nothing has yet been created which can replace a good quality cork for aging wines. There are some new concepts that some are trying, but cork is still the best product, and TCA free cork is possible....you just have to pay a bit more for them.

Durn. And I had just about escaped the room without a wine aficionado jumping on my comment. My rebuttal is simply to plead full and utter ignorance. My knowledge of caps and corks comes from a couple of short magazine articles that I had read, and in fact I don't even drink. My example was only intended to illustrate a case where perception of superiority is out of step with actual technical superiority, and not to open debate on the merits of caps or corks - a subject around which I freely profess ignorance.

Am I off the hook?

 

[Pinot.Noir]

Am I off the hook?

Sure! Just trying to inform, not attack!

 

[sandpiper]

You do understand that if no humans ate beef then cows would quickly go extinct. That would likely affect their desire to live.

The argument has been made that in-fact various crops/animals have domesticated humans as much as humans have domesticated them, and that the relationship is really a symbiosis. Consider the effort that we put into propagating our agricultural species. And yes, almost all of these species would die out if humans vanished. They're no longer well adapted to survive in nature.

 

[RayW]

Remember when these were cool in the 80's?

Amazon.com: Sheepskin - Universal Fit / Seat Covers: Automotive

You can still get them if you don't like your Tesla vegan-style

 

[teddytoons]

They are actually Ultraleather, made by Ultrafabrics. This is a very high-end polyurethane-based vinyl. This is the top-of-the-line material on the market today. It is used in high-end spas, high-end custom cars, yachts, cruise ships, and many other high-traffic luxurious applications.

Whenever someone sits in my MS seats, they're always nervous about the bright whiteness of them but, love the feel. I always kept quiet because I knew they weren't leather. My wife has a 13 year old Escalade and I know the difference. I'm very happy to now know the name of the material. I've had coffee, lipstick, blue jeans dye, fuchsia hair dye on these seats and it wipes clean with a baby wipe.

 

[Parzival]

I found this really interesting. You can put 1:5 bleach solution on this stuff. It seems like that would take care of ugly denim transfer onto white seats.

 

[0ptions]

I don't need to sit in the car to know that pleather will never be as good as the real thing. Ever.

^^ The most ignorant thing I've read this week.

 

[0ptions]

No, what it says is I won't accept a change that cheapens the quality of the interior no matter how many of you seem to think this is somehow an improvement. Don't for one moment think this has nothing to do with the social/political side of this. Tesla has been slowly catering towards the animal justice warriors since that stupid question was allowed at the investors meeting a couple of years ago...

Jeff

And I'm still sitting here trying to figure out if your hat is aluminum or tin.

 

[ecarfan]

Tesla has plenty of time to improve their interior before MB/Porsche come up with a viable competitor, including long distance charging network

Yep. Real competition to the S/X remains years away. And right now the 3 has no direct competition either. The Bolt does not measure up to the 3 based on what I know so far, and it costs more and it doesn't offer high-speed DC charging and it has not long distance charging network.

As to the lack of leather seats in Teslas going forward, I expect this to have almost no measurable impact on sales and will be offset by the many other ways the cars continue to improve.

 

[whttiger25]

You do understand that if no humans ate beef then cows would quickly go extinct. That would likely affect their desire to live

As a meat eater I will play devil's advocate. The individual cow does not care about the survival of his/her species, just their own personal survival and desire for progeny. Your argument doesn't really refute the arguments of the "animal right warriors", who probably wouldn't care if the cow species became extinct as long as all remaining cows led happy and peaceful lives. For them it's about the experience of each individual animal.

Anyway as I said, devil's advocate. I will keep eating meat, although I prefer fish for health benefits.

And that said, those that argue for "animal liberation" are totally nuts. Most of those liberated animals would either starve to death or be killed by other dominant animals or humans, vehicles, etc.

 

[stillageek]

I sit on Sheepskin almost every day at work....most aircraft have Sheepskin covers...even aircraft produced today (except Airbus...because they are French...and do things differently)

 

[GregKo]

We are omnivores , protein feeding our increased capacity brain is what made us dream up and accomplish our current civilization. If we are going to eat the animal we might as well use all parts. Cow hide falls under that, killing minks or seals just for the fur falls under another category.

.
Technically, I believe we are classified as "Frugivores".

A NEW LOOK AT VEGETARIANISM

Google Image Result for https://veganbiologistdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/05_humans_are_frugivores_750.jpg?w=1000

 

[0ptions]

Lamborghini uses carbon fiber called CarbonSkin for their seats. I imagine OP would never consider buying a Lamborghini because it's not "premium leather".

Sauce: Carbon fiber fabric debuts on newest Lamborghini

 

[Mediocrates]

This is all wrong. The small intestine is the center of digestion through enzymatic breakdown to small molecules that can be absorbed. The large intestinal function is mostly water and alkali retrieval.

I said nothing contrary to this in humans, although dismissal of the significance of microbial activity in the large intestine is a simplistic view of digestion. I recommend further study of intestinal fermentation in humans (see: cellulose, resistant starch) as well as largely/entirely herbivorous species (see: foregut/hindgut fermentation), hence I included that in my commentary (which you did not quote).

It is also besides the point. I agree that primates are omnivores, but so what ? Some of us humans have decided to not eat our children, or worse. We make choices that our physiology would otherwise allow, including refraining from torturing other mammals, treating them as inanimate objects, or ignoring their desire to live.

The discussion is biological imperative. I bolded the relevant part, which concludes your contribution to the discussion. The rest of this is tangential.

 

[SageBrush]

I said nothing contrary to this in humans, although dismissal of the significance of microbial activity in the large intestine is a simplistic view of digestion. I recommend further study of intestinal fermentation in humans (see: cellulose, resistant starch) as well as largely/entirely herbivorous species (see: foregut/hindgut fermentation), hence I included that in my commentary (which you did not quote).




The discussion is biological imperative. I bolded the relevant part, which concludes your contribution to the discussion. The rest of this is tangential.

You are spinning, and do not know what you talking about.

Large intestinal flora have a symbiotic relationship to their human hosts but significant food digestion for the host is not one of the benefits. Do you know how a person after a total colectomy fares ?

Biological imperative is nonsensical. Vegetarians live quite well, thanks. In fact considerably healthier than animal eaters if a varied diet is available.

 

[sandpiper]

At the risk of sticking my nose into this poo-flinging fest, I'm quite curious how vegetarians would view "cultured meat", aka, lab grown meat? It sounds like the best of both worlds, assuming that the economic eventually pan out.

 

[RayW]

Is it time to change the title of this post? I think OP probably headed down to his nearest Porsche dealership after the 4th page of off topic discussions.

 

[TexLaw]

I wear plenty of leather and eat plenty of meat. Prior to my Ms, I drove around on leather seats for nearly thirty years. I'll take my Ultra White synthetic seats over all that leather every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The only consistent, negative comment about this material is that it's not leather.

If one is concerned about them losing sales because they offer no leather seats, consider how many sales they lose from offering no gasoline engine.