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Why I recommend AGAINST buying a Tesla

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I have a 2015 70D. Perfect in every way and no issues with Tesla when I have needed them (which is close to never so there is that).
The downgrading in charging rate is certainly not cool. I haven't figured out if I have been downgraded yet - don't supercharge much.
But I think it is fair to say that we all purchased knowing that we were beta testers on battery longevity and charging. Mostly, we are doing pretty well. I have 7% or so at 80k miles.
Tesla has been far from perfect regarding all this. It would be nice if they would come forward and offer us battery replacement options or rejuvenation as well as MCU options. Not that I am ready for these things but would be nice to know what I would be able to do in a few years. I am perfectly fine holding this car for 10+ years especially if I could upgrade the computer and the battery (if needed).
Replacement would be another S for various reasons so Tesla doesn't really have any great motivation. I would never downgrade efficiency and for that there is no substitute on the horizon.

Especially when at the time of manufacture of these vehicles, the company was barely a decade old. If someone wants a sure thing and want to know how something will work for at least 20 years, wait until the product has actually been around for 20 years. The newer Tesla’s seem to have many of these issues resolved. I have a 2017 S90D and the battery is still more than sufficient. And one day I would like to upgrade the battery if that becomes an option.
 
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"LOVE the drive. Not the company." so true. For me It was other reasons still I got a second tesla in less than a year. I fought with them for months to take back my first car which they damaged and I was exposed to how they work and what values they stand for. Not a fan of the company. Today if there was another car that is as good as tesla in drive and cost I will switch but there is none...
why would you buy a 2nd car from Tesla if you feel that way??
 
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Especially when at the time of manufacture of these vehicles, the company was barely a decade old. If someone wants a sure thing and want to know how something will work for at least 20 years, wait until the product has actually been around for 20 years. The newer Tesla’s seem to have many of these issues resolved. I have a 2017 S90D and the battery is still more than sufficient. And one day I would like to upgrade the battery if that becomes an option.
when we bought our 2016 MB our friend who owns the dealership said.."all the mistakes MB ever had in any of the "S" vehicles have been corrected in this iteration...VIOLA, everyone has mistakes & issues..
 
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I went on what felt like a bit of a limb back in 2015 and bought a Model S P85D in the US. I was willing to buy a Tesla because its reputation up to that point was of a company that stood by its product. The overall experience with the P85D was fantastic – amazing car unlike anything I'd ever owned before and a great overall ownership experience. I really got the feeling that Tesla wanted to go the extra mile to make the overall experience a pleasant one. Offering the Ludicrous upgrade for a reasonable price to keep the P85D owners happy was a great gesture, and further added to my evangelism for the brand.


I moved to the UK in 2017 and bought a 2017 S P100DL. It's coming up on 3 years old. It's been a great car as well, pretty much trouble free. My initial plan was to keep it for 5-6 years, maybe more. But IMO, Tesla is no longer the same company it was in 2015. In a desperate push to become profitable, it has decided that its bottom line is more important than being upfront and honest with its customers when it comes to its batteries and other matters. Hence I sold my P100D last week rather than shepherd it into old age and have no plans to buy another Tesla unless Tesla takes drastic steps to right the course of the company as to how it deals with its customers post-sale.


Even though I wasn't affected by batterygate/chargegate, how Tesla is handling these issues influenced my decision to sell my car. We now know that Tesla has decided to artificially cap voltage in battery cells and slow supercharging speeds of certain cars for what we can only assume is to avoid exposing issues with these batteries that would necessitate replacement under the 8 year battery warranty. This is huge. Up until recently, I thought the battery warranty was going to actually cover battery failures. Now it looks like Tesla has decided that rather than do the right thing and replace the defective batteries, it will push out updates to cripple the range and charging speeds of the affected cars to conceal the problems, if possible. I have no confidence that these same problems won't arise in other battery sizes and Tesla will try to do the exact same thing.


There are several other issues that Tesla is being difficult and/or being downright dishonest about: yellowing screens that they absurdly claim are "normal" and not covered under warranty, forcing owners to go to arbitration, is one. Another is MCU failures that are clearly due to poorly designed, improperly used components that cause out-of-warranty owners to get stuck paying thousands to replace when the defective memory chip itself is probably a $10 part. And after experiencing the reduced performance and additional lag of the MCU after updating to firmware V.10, I worry about further degradation of performance as newer, more bloated firmware is pushed out in the future. And will I experience the dreaded control arm failure that many have experienced?


Then there are the myriad of other things that make the owner experience frustrating: one is dropping prices of P100Ds overnight by £43,000 (roughly 32%) in the UK this year, resulting in existing customers losing tens of thousands of pounds. Also, making us schedule service with the app is annoying, and having to wait months for a service appointment is worse. I was told recently that there were no service appointments available for the foreseeable future at the service center nearest me (over an hour away) and that if I wanted to book one (still two months out), I'd have to book it at a service center that would take me about twice as long to drive to (two hours). And knowing that if I ever had a collision that my car could be off the road for an inordinate amount of time due to the Tesla parts supply chain, and the repair would be of a magnitude more than a comparable ICE car isn't comforting either.


I used to wholeheartedly recommend Tesla, now I tell people the exact opposite: stay away. I truly breathed a sigh of relief when I closed the sale of mine. These cars are complicated, the technology relatively new in mass deployment. I was not willing to hold onto this car knowing that if I have a serious issue in the future, Tesla's first thought will not be how it can fix it and keep a good customer happy, but to obfuscate and conceal to help its bottom line.
 
I received my S90D on 25 March, 2016.

It was a fantastic car. I recommended them to everyone. My 12-hour trip between Charleston, South Carolina and Merchantville, New Jersey took 14 hours with the Tesla because of charging stops, but I knew that would be the case going in, and all the other features of the car (including the free charging on the road) easily offset that inconvenience.

Besides, from its inception until about two years ago, Tesla seemed to be genuinely "partnering" with their customers on the whole electric vehicle experience.

Then the software downgrades began. One of the biggest ones was, of course, the unannounced and draconic degrading of my charge rate. This was apparently compounded later with additional degrading. All with no notification from Tesla.

The last time I checked, my 12 hour ICE drive was now over 16 with the Tesla - over FOUR HOURS of charging. That was a year and a half ago.

Since then I've made several trips from New Jersey to Wyoming and back in the Tesla. My time at chargers amounts to a full third of my total road time. That's one third of the time I'm on the road. Any idea what that does to your average rate of travel? If you drive at a sustained 70 mph, your total average trip speed is about 46 1/2 mph!

So maybe I was just unfortunate to have purchased a 90 kw battery? Then more recently I heard about the draconian attack on non-90kw battery charge rates AND max charge levels. Some with almost new cars have reported something similar - even in a few Model 3's!

So how can Tesla be trusted to stand behind any of their products? Answer: they can't. They seem to think it's okay to degrade anything that might become a warranty issue (read: financial liability) for the company.

So when people ask about the car, I tell them about the great features, how fun it is to drive, etc. Then I tell them about the underhanded way (IMO) Tesla has dealt with the early car purchasers, and how they should avoid buying a Tesla until all this is straightened out by the courts.

I hate doing that, but even though Tesla's collective conscience may be unfazed by their treatment of loyal customers, mine will not allow me to recommend a product produced by a company that behaves in this manner.


Wow. My experience back and forth OH-FL (6 times) and ownership experience has been nothing like any of this. Sorry yours has been so bad. But I made myself feel better anyway by spending 15 min on the Audi forum reading eTron owners posts. What a different mentality than Tesla forum posts. Over there electric is such a small part of the experience with most posters seemingly unaware of what an electric vehicle can do when it has no (or limited) limitations on charging locations and a reasonable range. My fun meter continues to be pegged!
 
Cannot find a reference anywhere that requires you to come here and check what people are posting. While I cannot act in an official moderators capacity I will step up and say "you are free to go; don't read or post anything else despite still owning Tesla stuff". If I take heat for that decision or someone harasses you send them my way and I will take your heat. Enjoy the after Tesla life.

Great post. I was kind of wondering the same thing. I also took a look back at this guy's posting history - he essentially went from LOVING his car to getting rid of it and then complaining about Tesla, with no posts in between. It was really kind of odd.
 
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Low cost of ownership? I spent more money and time trying to fix all the problems my car had in a year than I would have spent on 5 years of fuel and oil changes. See my point about what is and isn’t under warranty.

Looks great, yup. From the outside. I won’t say much about the interior.

Nice big yellow screen? Certainly :).

Farts. Yeah. Exactly what a car should have. Apologies for preferring handling, quality materials and craftmanship over farts. To each their own.
My screen has never yellowed. But, you should have gotten the extended warranty. You always do that with new models, and especially for a company rolling out its first ever sedan and second car. I was being somewhat facetious, of course in my post, but all in all this is the best car I've ever owned, service included. I won't ever convince you because you had a different experience, but highlighting your bad experience as if it's the norm is a huge stretch.
 
I went on what felt like a bit of a limb back in 2015 and bought a Model S P85D in the US. I was willing to buy a Tesla because its reputation up to that point was of a company that stood by its product. The overall experience with the P85D was fantastic – amazing car unlike anything I'd ever owned before and a great overall ownership experience. I really got the feeling that Tesla wanted to go the extra mile to make the overall experience a pleasant one. Offering the Ludicrous upgrade for a reasonable price to keep the P85D owners happy was a great gesture, and further added to my evangelism for the brand.


I moved to the UK in 2017 and bought a 2017 S P100DL. It's coming up on 3 years old. It's been a great car as well, pretty much trouble free. My initial plan was to keep it for 5-6 years, maybe more. But IMO, Tesla is no longer the same company it was in 2015. In a desperate push to become profitable, it has decided that its bottom line is more important than being upfront and honest with its customers when it comes to its batteries and other matters. Hence I sold my P100D last week rather than shepherd it into old age and have no plans to buy another Tesla unless Tesla takes drastic steps to right the course of the company as to how it deals with its customers post-sale.


Even though I wasn't affected by batterygate/chargegate, how Tesla is handling these issues influenced my decision to sell my car. We now know that Tesla has decided to artificially cap voltage in battery cells and slow supercharging speeds of certain cars for what we can only assume is to avoid exposing issues with these batteries that would necessitate replacement under the 8 year battery warranty. This is huge. Up until recently, I thought the battery warranty was going to actually cover battery failures. Now it looks like Tesla has decided that rather than do the right thing and replace the defective batteries, it will push out updates to cripple the range and charging speeds of the affected cars to conceal the problems, if possible. I have no confidence that these same problems won't arise in other battery sizes and Tesla will try to do the exact same thing.


There are several other issues that Tesla is being difficult and/or being downright dishonest about: yellowing screens that they absurdly claim are "normal" and not covered under warranty, forcing owners to go to arbitration, is one. Another is MCU failures that are clearly due to poorly designed, improperly used components that cause out-of-warranty owners to get stuck paying thousands to replace when the defective memory chip itself is probably a $10 part. And after experiencing the reduced performance and additional lag of the MCU after updating to firmware V.10, I worry about further degradation of performance as newer, more bloated firmware is pushed out in the future. And will I experience the dreaded control arm failure that many have experienced?


Then there are the myriad of other things that make the owner experience frustrating: one is dropping prices of P100Ds overnight by £43,000 (roughly 32%) in the UK this year, resulting in existing customers losing tens of thousands of pounds. Also, making us schedule service with the app is annoying, and having to wait months for a service appointment is worse. I was told recently that there were no service appointments available for the foreseeable future at the service center nearest me (over an hour away) and that if I wanted to book one (still two months out), I'd have to book it at a service center that would take me about twice as long to drive to (two hours). And knowing that if I ever had a collision that my car could be off the road for an inordinate amount of time due to the Tesla parts supply chain, and the repair would be of a magnitude more than a comparable ICE car isn't comforting either.


I used to wholeheartedly recommend Tesla, now I tell people the exact opposite: stay away. I truly breathed a sigh of relief when I closed the sale of mine. These cars are complicated, the technology relatively new in mass deployment. I was not willing to hold onto this car knowing that if I have a serious issue in the future, Tesla's first thought will not be how it can fix it and keep a good customer happy, but to obfuscate and conceal to help its bottom line.

I don’t disagree that some of your points may be valid, but:
* Many of us have had our yellowing screens repaired without going to arbitration.
* Some would argue that Teslas are less complicated than their ICE counterparts.
 
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why would you buy a 2nd car from Tesla if you feel that way??

I'm pretty sure I would not. Tesla should be interacting with their customers to constantly improve the ownership experience. Instead the warranty coverage was has been so poor to date I tell everyone who asks not to buy a Tesla for at least five years to see if they can pull themselves out of this state of constantly nickel-and-diming their customers.
 
My 2014 MS p85D was just in service and had the 85kwh battery changed out to a 90kwh and I have to say I love the replacement battery installed. 264 miles 100pct charge is great.

I did just pick up a 2016 MX 90D from Tesla with warranty and the battery seems to be ok with normal degrading. I will check the battery version number and press to get battery replaced by bringing it in multiple times .
 
Wow. My experience back and forth OH-FL (6 times) and ownership experience has been nothing like any of this. Sorry yours has been so bad. But I made myself feel better anyway by spending 15 min on the Audi forum reading eTron owners posts. What a different mentality than Tesla forum posts. Over there electric is such a small part of the experience with most posters seemingly unaware of what an electric vehicle can do when it has no (or limited) limitations on charging locations and a reasonable range. My fun meter continues to be pegged!

Happy Tesla owner for 6 years although I do recognize that some updates were buggy, charging speed has changed, and service is not as awesome as 2014.

However I still think the experience is better.
Audi e-tron Owner May Wish He'd Chosen A Tesla Due To Charging Issues

Grass is not always greener.
 
@mattwhite I'm curious .. now you have sold your Tesla, I presume you are buying an ICE car. What are you going to do when you discover that the power output of the engine has declined by 20% after (say) 30,000 miles? Sell that in disgust and buy a horse?

I'm not saying Tesla could not have done better (they can and should). But I think what we are talking about is not reality but expectations. You expected Tesla to do better, and are angry they did not. With ICE cars, no-one seriously expects the engines to last without deterioration, so we accept this fact even though this is essentially the same issue that made you mad at Tesla. We are used to cars deteriorating when they are ICE .. and dont think to complain about it. (In marketing terms this is called depressed expectations.) But apparently Tesla is to be held to a higher standard.

So what you seem to be saying is "I expected this car to not deteriorate over time, so I sold it and bought a new I KNEW would deteriorate over time." This seems a little odd to me.
 
@mattwhite I'm curious .. now you have sold your Tesla, I presume you are buying an ICE car. What are you going to do when you discover that the power output of the engine has declined by 20% after (say) 30,000 miles? Sell that in disgust and buy a horse? ...

Internal combustion engines generally make MORE power when they have 30,000 miles compared to when they were new.
 
@mattwhite I'm curious .. now you have sold your Tesla, I presume you are buying an ICE car. What are you going to do when you discover that the power output of the engine has declined by 20% after (say) 30,000 miles? Sell that in disgust and buy a horse?

I'm not saying Tesla could not have done better (they can and should). But I think what we are talking about is not reality but expectations. You expected Tesla to do better, and are angry they did not. With ICE cars, no-one seriously expects the engines to last without deterioration, so we accept this fact even though this is essentially the same issue that made you mad at Tesla. We are used to cars deteriorating when they are ICE .. and dont think to complain about it. (In marketing terms this is called depressed expectations.) But apparently Tesla is to be held to a higher standard.

So what you seem to be saying is "I expected this car to not deteriorate over time, so I sold it and bought a new I KNEW would deteriorate over time." This seems a little odd to me.

First of all, what kind of an ICE engine loses 20% of power after 30k miles? Have you ever owned a car before?

Secondly, losing battery range means A LOT more than losing a few mpg. Refueling an ICE car still takes minutes, refueling an old battery will a) take longer and b) give you less range meaning you have to do long recharges more often. There are very real consequences there.

And yes, of course I expected Tesla to do better, because Tesla ITSELF markets THEMSELVES as a company that knows better and will always do better. Elon is a master of overpromising and constantly saying ridiculous stuff to raise expectations. How come it's a problem when we measure them against those same expectations?
 
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My screen has never yellowed. But, you should have gotten the extended warranty. You always do that with new models, and especially for a company rolling out its first ever sedan and second car. I was being somewhat facetious, of course in my post, but all in all this is the best car I've ever owned, service included. I won't ever convince you because you had a different experience, but highlighting your bad experience as if it's the norm is a huge stretch.

You are absolutely right, no one is going to change anyone's mind on this forum anyways. Posting things that go against the common opinion is literally just wasting time and I should really stop doing it. I will stop.

I am pretty sure most of my experience IS the new norm with Tesla, but still, that doesn't mean everybody is unhappy and it sure as hell doesn't mean everyone or even anyone will agree with me. I never said or implied that. Peace.
 
Internal combustion engines generally make MORE power when they have 30,000 miles compared to when they were new.

I admit its been ages since I looked at this, which I why I was careful to qualify my mileage quote. If I recall ICE power goes up to about 5,000 miles, then stays more or less steady until wear sets in. However, my point was that the power curve vs mileage does turn down at some point. My quick google searches didn't turn up anything definitive (i.e. not someone just sayIng "I heard that..."), would be interesting if you can point me at sources.
 
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@mattwhite I'm curious .. now you have sold your Tesla, I presume you are buying an ICE car. What are you going to do when you discover that the power output of the engine has declined by 20% after (say) 30,000 miles? Sell that in disgust and buy a horse?

I'm not saying Tesla could not have done better (they can and should). But I think what we are talking about is not reality but expectations. You expected Tesla to do better, and are angry they did not. With ICE cars, no-one seriously expects the engines to last without deterioration, so we accept this fact even though this is essentially the same issue that made you mad at Tesla. We are used to cars deteriorating when they are ICE .. and dont think to complain about it. (In marketing terms this is called depressed expectations.) But apparently Tesla is to be held to a higher standard.

So what you seem to be saying is "I expected this car to not deteriorate over time, so I sold it and bought a new I KNEW would deteriorate over time." This seems a little odd to me.

Not saying anything remotely like what you describe. Plus not "angry" or "disgusted" in the least. Did you miss the part of my post where I said I've owned two Teslas and have enjoyed them both? I just made what I see is a rational decision to sell the Tesla with a year left on the four-year warranty given what I now know about how Tesla is going about dealing with battery defects and other warrantable issues. And yes, I expected Tesla not to try to cover up defects by capping batteries artificially and reducing supercharger speeds. From your post, I'm not sure you understand the point I'm making. Please go read the 400+ posts that describe in detail what Tesla is up to if you're unsure about the difference between normal degradation which everyone expects and capping battery voltage via software updates in an attempt to cover up battery issues and avoid replacing what are obviously defective batteries: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/sudden-loss-of-range-with-2019-16-x-software.154976/page-429#post-429502. And no ICE cars loses 20% of its power in 30,000 miles, that's an absurd statement.

I've got other non-electric cars. I'm going to sit out the electrics until one of the major manufactures makes something that interests me. The Taycan is interesting but doesn't have the range and Porsche doesn't have enough fast chargers in place.
 
... Please go read the 400+ posts that describe in detail what Tesla is up to if you're unsure about the difference between normal degradation which everyone expects and capping battery voltage via software updates in an attempt to cover up battery issues and avoid replacing what are obviously defective batteries: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/sudden-loss-of-range-with-2019-16-x-software.154976/page-429#post-429502. And no ICE cars loses 20% of its power in 30,000 miles, that's an absurd statement ...

You mean over 400 pages and 8500 posts.
 
OP here.

The 90kw battery has silicon in the chemistry to increase the power density over the 85kw, for the person who was asking. Unfortunately this had the apparently unforeseen consequence of the battery degrading faster than the non-silicone versions.
OK, this caught Tesla by surprise. I can't (and don't) fault them for discovering it after many of us bought those batteries. What I can (and DO) fault them for is not being up front about it when they did discover the problem. They sent out an update to limit the max charge rate and increased the taper by a large amount, and apparently hoped no one would notice, since they didn't tell us what was going on. I had to learn that here. They've since made it even worse.

Then on top of that they did little to nothing to mitigate the changes they made. The most obvious one (to me) would be to update the software that calculates where you need to stop to recharge by taking into account the new max charge rate and taper. While there have been some adjustments, the estimates are a bad joke, and "5 minutes to continue your trip" when the battery is over about 80% are more like 15-25 minutes. How hard can it really be to put the taper into those calculations? And for those who would say "That's only an estimate," I respond, "That's not an estimate; it's a joke." It is constantly, and from what I can tell, consistently very wrong.

I'm a retired engineer. I spent my career doing cutting edge work in the aerospace field, and we certainly had our share of unexpected events and conditions. But we communicated with our customers about them. Tesla very pointedly does NOT do that. Instead, they employ stealth to simply remove performance that was already bought and paid for. That's unethical in the extreme, and means NONE of their products can be trusted.
 
Don't forget about high insurance costs.

Low cost of ownership? I spent more money and time trying to fix all the problems my car had in a year than I would have spent on 5 years of fuel and oil changes. See my point about what is and isn’t under warranty.

Looks great, yup. From the outside. I won’t say much about the interior.

Nice big yellow screen? Certainly :).

Farts. Yeah. Exactly what a car should have. Apologies for preferring handling, quality materials and craftmanship over farts. To each their own.
 
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