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Comment by ProAm | Hacker News Reader

> Bottom line, Teslas are incredible cars and most people that have bad things to say about them seem to never have owned one.

You can't argue about the stream of lies about capabilities and roadmap on Tesla. And everyone I know that owns one still complains about build quality, customer service and actual range. The only good thing I hear constantly is drive train.

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I own one myself and know several people who have gotten one more recently and they all love them and have had zero issues with any of those things.

Personally have taken my Model 3 on many long road trips and it’s great. Have the option to use our gas SUV instead but wouldn’t even consider that since it doesn’t have Autopilot/FSD

Unlikely to consider any but a Tesla when the time comes to replace our gas SUV.

Honestly, it's not really build quality and range that are my primary complaints about my Model 3. It's windshield wipers, phantom braking, and awful voice recognition. Those are the ones that annoy me most.

Also the heated steering wheel is like a binary switch, the vinyl is cheap and slippery (really noticeable on the steering wheel), road noise is loud, seats are just meh, phone-based access sometimes spotty, have to reboot once a week because music streaming hangs, and the headlights are an older matrix technology that has a mediocre pattern without even supporting the actual intended functionality of a matrix headlight.

But those are relatively minor in the grand scheme. Lots of cars have little annoyances like that. On balance I'm satisfied with the purchase, but I think it's unlikely that I'll buy another if there's an alternative. My next EV won't be a compromise, it'll have the performance -and- a nice interior with good seats.

Have you checked out any other of the EVs? I hear similar complaints about the interior quality (material, reboots, road noise, hatch stops not properly aligned causing weird ear pain [1] etc...) of the Tesla's The headlight information is new to me. I started to look at the Rivian R1S and compare it to a Model Y. Its ~40% more expensive but seems better finish, not sure about the range of the R1S but the charging network seems less than ideal if you can't do it at home overnight. They keep dropping the price of the Model Y and its still eligible at the moment for the 7500 tax credit. Makes it around $44k Telsa's seem to be about a 40,000 car so maybe worth it?

[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ear-pain-pressure-he...

This isn't responding to you but rather tagging along on the part you quoted.

I don't understand this perspective that I must own something to have a negative opinion or sentiment about something. Are we supposed to purchase cars starting at $40,000 just so we are allowed to critique them? Does it not make sense that someone hasn't purchased such a vehicle and has a negative opinion on it because they have done their research and discovered the negatives?

You don’t have to have owned one but I don’t see how you can have a strongly held opinion on a product you haven’t at least experienced.

Let's be honest. The majority of the cheerleading, at least in the past, was coming from non-owners. So it's fair to hear criticism from non-owners too. Can't tell you how many times I had someone tell me Tesla was perfect and all my experiences were invalid, when they didn't actually own a Tesla while I've owned two of them.

Hasn’t been my experience. Most people I see speak positively about them were owners.

I owned a model 3 and I had no complaints about build quality or actual range. Customer service was not great but similar to any other car dealer.

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