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Comment by stevage | Hacker News Reader

You are but one tiny datapoint. The internet is full of disaster stories from Tesla owners.

The Internet is full of disaster stories about everything. In the actual Consumer Reports ranking Tesla is far from the bottom. It's almost exactly in the middle, between Infiniti and Cadillac.

For a car that is, as Tesla fans like to point out, "far simpler than an ICE, with a lot less that can possibly go wrong", being in the "middle of the pack" with ICEs is actually pretty damning.

Tesla disaster stories are overblown, the smallest story gets a lot of attention, it does not help that Musk is hated by the media.

Nitpicking everything Musk-related is one of the biggest drivers of content on multiple social media platforms. Using the general trends of those sites that you've gleened from headlines to make generalizations is probably a bad idea.

There is huge, huge demand for a negative spin on everything and like we've seen a ton of times on the internet, if you say something exaggerated enough times it starts becoming the accepted truth.

And the world is full of Teslas. You really think if even 20% of the hyperbole was true that they'd be shipping the volume they are? All those Tesla buyers are just deluded marks who'd be happier in a VW or whatever?

Maybe... the situation is complicated and like all manufacturers they have some good points and some bad points and the market is in the process of deciding on what particular traits it values?

Of the people I know personally who bought Tesla's I do know they weren't aware of the reputation for difficult servicing and parts availability.

I was aware of the reputation, but just can't seem to get it to show up in real life. Darndest thing...

I'm not sure if you're just not unclear on how probabilities and random sampling work, or if you have some deeper point I'm not seeing.

I just mean that a systemic problem should be seen across the system. I'm not seeing it.

Do you actually think you have visibility "across the system?"

I've been to 6 separate service centers and always had better service than any ICE mechanic.

Do you?

"Your anecdote is irrelevant, look at my vast dataset of unrepresentative samples"

At the very least I am claiming that one data point is less valuable than multiple datapoints.

I know several Tesla owners - and live in a place where practically every second car is a Tesla. So my sample size is significant.

Personally, I wouldn't consider "several" to be "significant", but each to their own.

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