If this is OT then it can be deleted, but I figured a discussion of The Competition (tm) is relevant to Tesla investing.
My 2018 AWD 3LR is at the service center for an upper control arms replacement. This is a common suspension repair on Model 3's of this generation, unfortunately. I guess the upside is that this is also the only significant repair work that I've needed done on the car outside of the warranty, which has already ended on my car because I've exceeded 50k miles driven.
Anyways, that's not what this is about. I was given a rental car during my service, and it turns out Enterprise is now renting out EV's. I drove home in a 2022 Kia Niro EV. This is a compact crossover SUV with a rated range of about 240 miles. It includes Kia's Smart Driver Assist features. So I guess I can talk about the competition for awhile, since I'm temporarily driving a competing EV.
The little Niro is a nice driving SUV, though the higher center of gravity causes it to wallow a bit when changing lanes too fast compared to my 3. In Sport mode, it has a nice little kick when I'm trying to accelerate fast. I haven't bothered to look at what the claimed 0-60 is on this guy but it's enough for me to overtake and pass drivers who block my path similarly to what my 3 can do on the freeway. When I set it to Regen Level 3, it has a similar amount of regenerative braking feeling. If I want to make the car stay stopped at lights, I need to manually engage the Auto Hold mode which is a button on the center island below the circular gear shifter.
In general, the car is fundamentally competent as any ICE Kia, it has a similar instrumentation layout and a similar center screen. The center screen is a touch screen and the UI isn't terrible, I was able to navigate around and find the options for controlling charge level and such fairly easily. It has some sort of nav system which can automatically search for nearby charging stations but I had no desire to actually try any 3rd party charging on such a short rental period.
The Niro has a decent sized trunk, though relatively short as this is a compact car footprint. There is no frunk, as with the Ford Mustang Mach-E, there's a bunch of stuff under the hood instead. Storage space doesn't seem great for an SUV comparatively speaking but at least the rear trunk area can be piled high with stuff if you want to carry more stuff.
All right, so it's a car and it's not terrible. That's a good start, so let's talk about the Smart Driver Assist features.
I was unable to figure out how to engage the "Smart Cruise Control" on the freeway, no matter what I did, it said the conditions were unable to be met. So let's skip that and talk about the Automatic Lane Keeping. Push the button on the steering wheel and the light comes on on the driver instrument panel. The car stays in the lane while you drive. On a straight freeway, it works fine as far as I could tell. There is no audible indicator when it engages and disengages as far as I could see, much like the Blue Cruise on the Mustang Mach-E, this seems really unsafe to me but what do I know.
The car has all the usual driver safety features, beeping and letting you know when you are leaving the lane, when someone is in the lane next you and you're trying to change lanes into them, when a car in front of you is braking, and most helpfully, it beeps at you when the car in front of you starts leaving from the stop light and you haven't moved yet.
"Leading car is moving" indicator and noise is helpful and I think Tesla should add this, especially when it's not properly seeing the light turn green or the camera's view of the light is blocked and not sounding the chime it does when it sees that. Also Tesla really should add an audible noise for when you're trying to change lanes and someone is in your blind spot, the side camera video feed is nice but if you're looking at the road and not the center screen you will never see it.
In general, driving the Kia Niro EV was pleasant. If I didn't have a Tesla, I would have been happy with the Niro. Unfortunately on the way home I got stuck in some rush hour traffic and then I was very unhappy because I actually had to drive the car myself instead of just putting it in Autopilot like I normally would and letting the car deal with the stop-and-go traffic. Then I realized why I like my 3 even though there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the Niro. The Niro is nice, but the Tesla has all the technologically advanced features.
My 2018 AWD 3LR is at the service center for an upper control arms replacement. This is a common suspension repair on Model 3's of this generation, unfortunately. I guess the upside is that this is also the only significant repair work that I've needed done on the car outside of the warranty, which has already ended on my car because I've exceeded 50k miles driven.
Anyways, that's not what this is about. I was given a rental car during my service, and it turns out Enterprise is now renting out EV's. I drove home in a 2022 Kia Niro EV. This is a compact crossover SUV with a rated range of about 240 miles. It includes Kia's Smart Driver Assist features. So I guess I can talk about the competition for awhile, since I'm temporarily driving a competing EV.
The little Niro is a nice driving SUV, though the higher center of gravity causes it to wallow a bit when changing lanes too fast compared to my 3. In Sport mode, it has a nice little kick when I'm trying to accelerate fast. I haven't bothered to look at what the claimed 0-60 is on this guy but it's enough for me to overtake and pass drivers who block my path similarly to what my 3 can do on the freeway. When I set it to Regen Level 3, it has a similar amount of regenerative braking feeling. If I want to make the car stay stopped at lights, I need to manually engage the Auto Hold mode which is a button on the center island below the circular gear shifter.
In general, the car is fundamentally competent as any ICE Kia, it has a similar instrumentation layout and a similar center screen. The center screen is a touch screen and the UI isn't terrible, I was able to navigate around and find the options for controlling charge level and such fairly easily. It has some sort of nav system which can automatically search for nearby charging stations but I had no desire to actually try any 3rd party charging on such a short rental period.
The Niro has a decent sized trunk, though relatively short as this is a compact car footprint. There is no frunk, as with the Ford Mustang Mach-E, there's a bunch of stuff under the hood instead. Storage space doesn't seem great for an SUV comparatively speaking but at least the rear trunk area can be piled high with stuff if you want to carry more stuff.
All right, so it's a car and it's not terrible. That's a good start, so let's talk about the Smart Driver Assist features.
I was unable to figure out how to engage the "Smart Cruise Control" on the freeway, no matter what I did, it said the conditions were unable to be met. So let's skip that and talk about the Automatic Lane Keeping. Push the button on the steering wheel and the light comes on on the driver instrument panel. The car stays in the lane while you drive. On a straight freeway, it works fine as far as I could tell. There is no audible indicator when it engages and disengages as far as I could see, much like the Blue Cruise on the Mustang Mach-E, this seems really unsafe to me but what do I know.
The car has all the usual driver safety features, beeping and letting you know when you are leaving the lane, when someone is in the lane next you and you're trying to change lanes into them, when a car in front of you is braking, and most helpfully, it beeps at you when the car in front of you starts leaving from the stop light and you haven't moved yet.
"Leading car is moving" indicator and noise is helpful and I think Tesla should add this, especially when it's not properly seeing the light turn green or the camera's view of the light is blocked and not sounding the chime it does when it sees that. Also Tesla really should add an audible noise for when you're trying to change lanes and someone is in your blind spot, the side camera video feed is nice but if you're looking at the road and not the center screen you will never see it.
In general, driving the Kia Niro EV was pleasant. If I didn't have a Tesla, I would have been happy with the Niro. Unfortunately on the way home I got stuck in some rush hour traffic and then I was very unhappy because I actually had to drive the car myself instead of just putting it in Autopilot like I normally would and letting the car deal with the stop-and-go traffic. Then I realized why I like my 3 even though there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with the Niro. The Niro is nice, but the Tesla has all the technologically advanced features.
from 2018-2019 who was last seen posting about the “demand cliff”, Tesla’s precarious free cash flow situation and how Zach Kirkhorn is wholly unqualified to be CFO.
