Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Would you own a Tesla without the tech?

Would you own a Tesla without the tech?

  • Yes

  • No


Results are only viewable after voting.
This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Tesla's biggest advantage is the electric drivetrain. Outside of "self driving experiments", Tesla "tech" is middle of the road at best, and on the bottom of the rung in the price category of S/X. 10 year old Lexus has better phone integration than a Tesla (e.g. can read you the text messages, allow you to reply, etc). Today's $100K cars let you mirror phone screens, have more functional GPS (waypoints, address books), etc. People still buy Telsas despite lacking of that "tech". I suspect most who said "No" to this, would still own a Tesla if it didn't have the tech.

I would turn the question around, how many would still own a Tesla if it used an internal combustion engine?
 
  • Like
Reactions: am_dmd and Watts_Up
Interesting thing happened to my car over the past week...it turned into a normal car, more or less.

My Autopilot and Cruise have both stopped working and found myself driving a car that's pretty normal. Yes its still electric, which I much prefer over gasoline, but on the other end it also lacks a lot of features that other cars have which Ive realized I put up with because I absolutely love the tech, and by that I mean Autopilot.

I actually dont think that I would be driving this car without the Autopilot feature, its that much of the car's "personality". Especially with other brands now offering electric drivetrains, for me the Tesla needs to have that feature to set it apart.

I have a 2015 S. I'm trying to think of what the "tech" is aside from the drivetrain. I only have Autosteer which works well, but is available on other lower end cars as well. No Sirius, so that's out. Browser is afucntional. Large screen is nice. No place to put a damned thing. The dash rattles. Some company is gonna eat Tesla's lunch. Besides that, the car runs great. If it had an ICE, this car would be a laughing stock and the fanbois would be too embarrassed to own one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: am_dmd
Guess I shouldn't have said Tech, should have said Autopilot. Though the electric drivetrain is also tech in my opinion and is one of the attractive features of Tesla.

For me, its the Autopilot that really makes the car. Hell, today we actually took my wife's Mercedes to my parent's for Mother's Day (about a 40 min drive each way) because her TACC actually works, and it has a version of auto steer as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: David29
Yes for me. EV drive train, price/performance, exterior appeal, cargo capacity, supercharger infrastructure/free supercharging, makes it still worth it for me.

But without AP, it’s only by a slight margin for what we’re giving up in the interior polish/luxury department.
 
No.

When other manufacturers provide solid TACC, lanekeeping, blindspot monitoring, and collision avoidance, things will get interesting.

Until then, Tesla has and will retain a commanding lead. Same goes for infrastructure.

Infrastructure and driver assist features - it’s a potent one-two punch.
 
Top 3 reasons I bought the car:
BEV with useful range
Looks good
Great performance

No other non-Tesla car is available that has my top priorities after so many years since the S was first announced. Now that I've grown used to AP, I would miss having it in a car. I would do fewer road trips without it. I would still buy a Tesla if I had to get a car.
 
As a prospective buyer, I'd be buying a Model S despite the tech not because of it. Compared to BMWs I've owned, I've found the tech lacking (atleast for things I care about). I dont really care about auto-steer, and I think other automakers do as good or a better job with TACC. Tesla's "secret sauce" is the incredible power plus great looks.

Compared to BMW (and this applies to most other premium cars):
-No heads up
-No surround view camera (and no, this is not as simple as a software update since the cameras in an AP2+ car are not mounted in the right locations to supports this. A surround camera system requires a camera mounted on the nose of the car in addition to 1 each mounted under each side view mirror pointed down)
-No ability to scroll through tracks or sources on instrument cluster (this is the biggest WTF since TEsla has a digital cluster and 2 scroll wheels)
-REally basic phone integration; no playlists/albums/artists or app mirroring; no option for USB data connection atleast for iphone (charging only)
-Worse navigation system (no waypoints; voice search didn't seem as good as my bmw surprisingly)
-Less stable (Tesla MCUs seem to require frequent reboots
-Less comfortable/easy/safe to use while driving (Control wheels are much better to use than touch screens while driving)
-No ability to customize or create shortcuts to frequent functions/screens. For example, on a BMW you can use the 1-8 preset buttons as shortcuts for anything (go to a specific destination; dial a specific phone number; play a song from the built-in SDD drive; etc).It's a really nice feature once you get used to it

Personally, I wish Tesla would stop spending so much time/energy on autopilot and more on just getting everything else up to par
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: David29