Tired of the $100,000 Car

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

A CD player! That's the funniest thing I seen this week

It' would be more simplistic than dealing with a buggy USB drive music system. Now I'm reading that with the latest update If you have an album on your USB with multiple artists it separates that album into multiple albums based on the name of the artists. Seems like I hear a lot of complaints about the USB drive system.

It would be nice to be able to insert a CD and listen to a whole album. Maybe I haven't figured it out yet, but it would be great to be able to play a complete album from the Streaming music instead. Is this possible?

 

[Austral]

Feel free to spend $100,000 on a Tesla, but it's really a $45,000 car, after the rebate, with a $15,000 battery. The base model is more car than 90% of the population really needs. Spending double the base price isn't going to get you a nicer paint job, better body panel fit and finish, more functional touch screen, or improved AP. Spending a little over base price will get you all of these things and a nicer interior finish though. If you really need ludicrous speed and 300 miles of electric range then go ahead and spend the money, but don't expect the cars fit and finish to match the $150,000 price. Is anyone else tired of all the people that exaggerate the price, just to make the point that it should be as luxurious and perfect as ice cars in the $100,000 price range? At most I think people should be comparing it to $55,000 cars when it comes to quality and reliability.

Actually, after a few months of ownership, I realized that the comparison is pointless because Tesla is outside of the ICE paradigm. Perhaps that realization is a difficult one. Some modes of transportation don't lend themselves well to comparison--the horse, the motorcycle, propellor airplanes, jets, and so on. The situation reminds me of the comparisons between prop airplanes and the introduction of jets, particularly the way operations and maintenance costs turned out.

 

[azred]

When I decided to move on from my beloved Porsche 911 (993), I wanted something that could be funded almost entirely from the 993 proceeds, but would not feel like a step down. The Base Model S 60 fit the bill -- and I feel I have a car every bit as special as the $150k versions. Other than the very rare opportunity to do a sub-3 0-60, it is hard for me to see the value in the $150k version of my $70k car. I recall seeing some sales stats that suggest the base models are far outselling the high dollar versions, which makes sense to me.

 

[ecarfan]

Actually, after a few months of ownership, I realized that the comparison is pointless because Tesla is outside of the ICE paradigm.

Exactly. Here is my personal definition of the vehicle class defined by Tesla:

Teslas are so far the only members of a new vehicle class: long range luxury EVs with a global high speed DC charging network purpose built for long distance travel ("global" in the sense of being available in nearly all countries Tesla sells in).

Some people can argue endlessly about whether a Tesla is a "luxury" car or not, but for 99% of the car owning population, they are.

The Bolt is clearly not in the same vehicle class as any Tesla, even the Model 3, and based on my definition (as stated above) no other manufacturer is going to produce an EV in the same class as the Tesla for several years because no other EV will have a global high speed DC charging network purpose built for long distance travel. That is as an essential characteristic of a Tesla as the electric drivetrain or the large center display or anything else. It is difficult for non-Tesla owners to understand that, and it has clearly been a difficult concept for other auto manufacturers to grasp.

 

[RogerHScott]

I'm thinking of putting sand bags in the trunk and trunk to make it weigh more like the cars I test drove in to see if that helps.

This is probably the key. Model Ss are notoriously underweight cars, after all.

 

[Ulmo]

Why wouldn't you just take it to a service center? Too far away?

I should ask service techs. The only service person I talked to was a rep, and he said it was not an adjustable part. I'm wondering, however, if it is a replaceable part, like a shock that absorbs more.

How about a cigarette lighter?

I am interested to hear more about Ulmo's bouncing. Is it the rear or front suspension?

I don't know. It may be both. I get some resonance amplification, on occasion, where the back will be going up when the front is going back down, and both hit waves in the road where prior heavy vehicles (cargo trucks and all traffic) worked the original bump into waves, and my car will just go nuts for a second. But when it's not resonating, they feel about equal, too.

Today when I started to drive it, it was smoother (acceptable, even) for 8 minutes, then it got bad. I'll have to revisit those pieces of road to find out if I just hit a smooth patch for a while.

This is probably the key. Model Ss are notoriously underweight cars, after all.

Humor aside, I decided to look.

I should verify at a CAT scale, but so far I found curb weight of Model S60 is 4,323 pounds, from a forum posting. So, I can haul 1,400 pounds of people, groceries, charging cords, luggage, and other cargo.

Curb weight of my MB was 3,461 pounds from Google search. That's a difference of 862 pounds.

One posters says about 100 pounds of battery per 5kWh. I test drove 90's. That's 300 pounds more. That doesn't sound like a lot. It's 6 50# sand bags. It should be relatively cheap to test, anyway. In the rear, I can deduct my luggage weight, and get away with 1 sand bag. The drunk would receive 3. All at lowest point. You're right, I don't think making the vehicle weigh more will help. But when I used to drive cargo trucks, they always handled better and smoother fully loaded to design specifications.

 

[Ulmo]

It' would be more simplistic than dealing with a buggy USB drive music system. Now I'm reading that with the latest update If you have an album on your USB with multiple artists it separates that album into multiple albums based on the name of the artists. Seems like I hear a lot of complaints about the USB drive system.

It would be nice to be able to insert a CD and listen to a whole album. Maybe I haven't figured it out yet, but it would be great to be able to play a complete album from the Streaming music instead. Is this possible?

I finally almost solved USB files. I learned all the solutions from these forums, so I'm just echoing everything others said, with my confirmation that it works.

I got a known good USB stick (did msnow post that?). Then, I set its partition type to Linux ext(4?) and I formatted it with ext4 (on native Linux). Then, I used ffmpeg to convert my Apple iTunes ALAC encoded files (which were losslessly taken from CDs by iTunes (on Apple Mac) (search Google for how to do that)) to flac (ffmpeg -i originalfile.m4a originalfile.flac). The beauty of the manual nature of the USB stick is you don't even need iTunes; you can use any CD or digital audio reading system that you can convert to FLAC. You could probably use all Linux, all Microsoft (and use FAT file system variant -- you'd have to do your own research on that, because I just used ext4), or all Apple (combo of my Linux and Microsoft solutions). Remember umask 022 or chmod -R go+rX if using ext4.

Then, I organized the files (which iTunes already had in albums in folders) into folders of any reasonable depth to my liking, onto the USB stick. Any organization I did myself, using Folders (and for now I borrowed liberally from the existing organization iTunes already did). That is the key. Go wild with good folder organization.

In the car, press Music: USB: Folders, and then the same folder organization you placed there is there again.

The car also does some automatic categories you can either ignore or play with. I think most current complaints are about those automatic categories, so I conveniently ignored them.

This limits the audio quality to CD quality. I'm open to better methods, but I haven't seen a phonograph player meant to be mounted to a car dash with racing suspension tuning on California roads, plus, there's no analog input to the sound system.

 

[Watts Son]

I'm with you @electro....I think people will complain about fit and finish on pretty much ANY car though so these complainers are adding an exclamation point that, how dare it happen on EVEN their $100K car. From what I've read, very few car companies have zero fit and finish issues, even very high end ones. Just the nature of the buyer and I think for the most part Tesla has tried to be good about getting things sorted-sometimes at he expense of some bad PR though. Fit and finish are just cheaper on cheaper cars, they still need to line up and be glued/screwed on properly.

 

[mkspeedr]

My dad has dozens of cars. His teams have won drag racing, time attack, star Mazda, Toyota Atlantics, championships etc...He can buy or drive any car. He is a car guy and knows cars. He just upgraded his P85D to a P100D. His Porsches, AMGs, McLaren never get driven.

The Tesla has had some issues but his philosophy is simple. The Model S is a giant leap forward.

 

[Canuck]

I recall seeing some sales stats that suggest the base models are far outselling the high dollar versions, which makes sense to me.

Lower priced vehicles always outsell higher priced vehicles, just like most other products. That's simply a matter of economics. The vast majority of the population can't afford a $70k vehicle let alone a $150k one so of course the $70k one will sell more. But if the population consisted of only billionaires the P100D's would vastly outsell the other models, if they even offered them.

The Base Model S 60 fit the bill -- and I feel I have a car every bit as special as the $150k versions.

That's why it's great that Tesla has such a wide range of options. When I bought 3 years ago there were only 60's and 85's and a 60 wouldn't make it to my cabin on a charge so it was out for me. I also needed dual chargers at 80 amps so I could just go for the day to my cabin and return home in the evening. And I wanted pano, subzero, tech package, etc. and it came to $100k plus tax. But there's not one option I got that I don't really like having. The base model wouldn't fit the bill for me.

 

[oktane]

I don't know about you guys but I would love for Tesla to step up the game and match Mercedes-Benz in fit and finish and interior quality. I think if I got the 60 D I would be happy with the price point. And with what I spent for the P 100 DL, sometimes I wonder if I acted foolishly considering the level of ICE car you can get at that price point.

 

[Ulmo]

I don't know about you guys but I would love for Tesla to step up the game and match Mercedes-Benz in fit and finish and interior quality. I think if I got the 60 D I would be happy with the price point. And with what I spent for the P 100 DL, sometimes I wonder if I acted foolishly considering the level of ICE car you can get at that price point.

I'm going to have to spend a few more months making my hindsight decision, but I think it's pretty similar to yours. I knew of this from others, so I accepted a lot of it. My basics were a comfortable ride -- not bumpy and good sound. Maybe I'll get it once I figure out how.

But I know there are features that could be added to the car to help with these concerns, and one of my dreams was working for Tesla to help add them. Unfortunately, I don't have any type of Resume that would help with that even though I know I'm smart enough, and even more important, it seems like Tesla is intentionally not addressing these in its plans for these cars. "All effort on Model 3" is a good idea, but I feel like they're going to be way behind when they get back to Model X and S later on, if they aren't already investigating solutions now, possibly slowly integrating first and second generation solutions to some of these issues in older models before their engineer teams are done with Model 3 rollout and can refocus on the revamping of the older models. Anyway, some of the solutions could trickle down to Model 3 -- like entry/exit profiles, which is just a software thing.

 

[ecarfan]

My dad has dozens of cars. His teams have won drag racing, time attack, star Mazda, Toyota Atlantics, championships etc...He can buy or drive any car. He is a car guy and knows cars. He just upgraded his P85D to a P100D. His Porsches, AMGs, McLaren never get driven. The Tesla has had some issues but his philosophy is simple. The Model S is a giant leap forward.

I like your dad and I haven't even met him.

 

[ThosEM]

Trolls should but the car they want, and quit their complaining. The point of a Tesla is not to do Mercedes one better at what they already do.

 

[oktane]

So the point is to make electric cars with shitty interiors and poor quality control? I don't get it. Tesla has done a great job with their EV and supercharger network, but they need to step up their game in certain areas. They are a new car company in uncharted territory so we give them slack, but doesn't mean we need to get defensive or sugar-coat.

 

[GoTslaGo]

So the point is to make electric cars with shitty interiors and poor quality control? I don't get it. Tesla has done a great job with their EV and supercharger network, but they need to step up their game in certain areas. They are a new car company in uncharted territory so we give them slack, but doesn't mean we need to get defensive or sugar-coat.

Well it seems that Tesla has recognize this as an issue, since they hired Mr. Bell from Volvo specifically to address interior quality issues.

Tesla poaches Volvo interior engineering boss Anders Bell

 

[ecarfan]

So the point is to make electric cars with shitty interiors and poor quality control?

My perspective is radically different than yours. I like the interior of my 3 year old S very much -- your use of the adjective "shitty" is irrational hyperbole -- and I have had no major problems with my car after almost 52K miles. Obviously some people have had issues, which is hardly surprising since no car company makes perfect cars.

I will also make this comment: Tesla has dramatically improved the Model S every year and current cars contain literally hundreds of improvements, major and minor, compared to my car. And I'm very happy with my S.

Of course there is still room for improvement, there always is. But if one prefers a rolling Lazy-Boy pinball interior, buy a Mercedes or a Lincoln. I understand they are readily available at hundreds of stealerships, I mean dealerships...

 

[oktane]

Shitty is too strong a term. Maybe "modest" or "cheap"? They continue to evolve so perhaps things will get better with time.

 

[Snerruc]

My perspective is radically different than yours. I like the interior of my 3 year old S very much -- your use of the adjective "shitty" is irrational hyperbole -- and I have had no major problems with my car after almost 52K miles. Obviously some people have had issues, which is hardly surprising since no car company makes perfect cars.

I will also make this comment: Tesla has dramatically improved the Model S every year and current cars contain literally hundreds of improvements, major and minor, compared to my car. And I'm very happy with my S.

Of course there is still room for improvement, there always is. But if one prefers a rolling Lazy-Boy pinball interior, buy a Mercedes or a Lincoln. I understand they are readily available at hundreds of stealerships, I mean dealerships...

+1. No problems yet ,and I prefer the base interior for its simplicity.

 

[TexasEV]

Shitty is too strong a term. Maybe "modest" or "cheap"? They continue to evolve so perhaps things will get better with time.

No modest or cheap aren't correct either. It's a minimalist style, which many like. You obviously don't. I actually preferred the open center rather than the console, which was even more minimalist. Tesla isn't trying to imitate others' interiors. It's doing something different. If your priority is for the cost to go into the interior rather than the EV portion of the car, then this car may not be for you.