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Comment by bhauer | Hacker News Reader

As a reservation holder, I can answer fairly quickly: Not really. I suspect many early issues will be worked out by the time they finally get around to building mine.

And most importantly: there is no other car I want more that I can afford. So I will tolerate some quality issues.

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But there will be a point where Tesla has to sell to beyond the fanbase and early reservation holder/enthusiasts, they have to sell it to the masses who don't even necessarily know who Elon Musk is.

The Model 3 is aimed to be that car, but I have a feeling the general buyers will be a lot less tolerant about issues than early adopters/long time fans.

People buy bmws and Mercedes and those cars all kinds of quality issues especially after the warranty ends.

And Tesla has all kinds of issues when the car is brand new. One can only guess how bad they will get after the warranty ends.

And Mercedes and BMW don't go out there and make fun of other people's manufacturing.

Just sold my Audi to get a Tesla. 3.5 years and 42,000 miles and the car was never in the service center for more than a scheduled service.

Tesla has been in the SC 4 times in 6 months of ownership.

Presumably, they're still working out problems in their manufacturing process. By the time they're selling to people who don't care about Tesla and just want a car, most of those issues will have been long ago solved.

The unknown is where the quality level will be when it levels off after all the obvious inefficiencies and easy-to-fix flaws are addressed. There's a limit to the quality that some organization can achieve at a particular price point.

That’s what the Model S was for. If they didn’t figure out how to build that without these issues in 6 years why do we think they’ll figure it out for the 3?

> There's a limit to the quality that some organization can achieve at a particular price point.

Look at a Honda Fit at $16k. Look at how well it’s made.

Why can’t the $35k Model 3 do that? The $74k S? The $79 X?

Maybe cars are complicated and it takes more than six years to figure out how to make them well? Maybe Tesla is using a very different process to make the Model 3 than the model S? Maybe we shouldn't compare a car that's been in production (with some changes) for 17 years with a car that's been in production for a couple months?

The Model 3 is substantially different than the Model S and has been in production a couple months. Just because Tesla made a similar car before doesn't mean that making cars is a solved problem and there won't be new problems with each new model that have to be overcome.

New models from the big companies like Honda or Toyota don’t have those issues. Not new model years (like most 2019s), not real overhauls (like the 2018 Accord), but turkey new models (like the Honda HR-V).

They don’t get an excuse.

They have a long backlog of enthusiasts to sell to first. That's a long runway to improve quality.

They have been building cars for literally 10 years, and their quality is still way below industry average.

The "long backlog" of enthusiasts is a few hundred thousands or so, and that's an absolute small percentage of the total market in this segment.

I shouldn't have to point this out since Tesla, after all, is the company that "focus on long term visions". Well I'm kindly suggesting Elon to see further than their immediate backlog.

You make a fine point.

Yeah? My $100k+ Model X built over a year after the release has been into the service center 4 times to fix 42 issues. One of which they refuse to.

What do they refuse to fix? Did you try another SC?

They say it's within spec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABAR362zLw

EDIT: I emailed the Seattle SC and they seemed indifferent at best.

I can't quite figure out what's going on in that video. Is it the quick decelerating?

Listen to the audio. The whole front dash is shaking during acceleration. The front suspension of the car vibrates pretty badly during moderate to heavy acceleration. They claim that of the 5 suspension settings (Very High, High, Standard, Low and Very Low) that one should keep their car in "Low". In Standard it feels like the car is trying to create rattles. I feel like this is BS because it's an engineering flaw that they haven't figured out how to fix yet.

What's happening is premature wear of the front half shafts and CV joints and they CAN fix it they just won't.

> I suspect many early issues will be worked out by the time they finally get around to building mine.

I had this same attitude with an ICE car I purchased. The pre 2015 models had weak CV joints that appeared to fail after 10/20,000 miles. It sucked for owners of those earlier cars, but the good news is that dealerships will replace the CV joints on the S1 free of charge without question irrespective of milage.

I hope that Tesla do the same with the first Model 3 owners because it's just the right thing to do.

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