That said, the production issues with the Cybertruck mean you’d be a fool to reserve one of these. Let others do it, find out how late it arrives, what glued panels fall off at speed and wait for the inevitable recalls. Tesla has torched their engineering reputation lately and this page is making a lot of promises about revolutionary things.
The Lotus Elise was famously glued together instead of welds. The original Roadster also had the same innards.
This is clearly not a car for someone who wants to go from A to B, but a lot of Tesla components gets binned together for the next iteration of the cheaper car because they always order too many of them.
Oddly enough this makes their cheaper cars more reliable than the expensive ones (think about the Audis right when Ferdinand Piech took over Lamborgini).
That's pretty standard. An M3 has long pushed the tolerances of things in the engine more than a base-model 3 series. An S-class has more whiz-bang-hope-it-still-works-in-ten-years stuff than a C-class. A Lexus has more going on than a boring base Corolla.
Christian von Königsegg mentioned in a radioshow (Sommar i P1, Swedish) a while back that the reason he got into luxury cars is that it was what he could afford having the mechanic skills and time but not a heap of research or automation money.
Tesla has very different reasons for doing what they did on the cybertruck. It's very much a form over function. Lotus has always been function over form (to a fault, in terms of their financial position).
You can add glass microspheres to adhesives to guarantee bondline thickness. It's often done nowadays whenever you have different metals meeting with a glue bond because it keeps them electrically isolated, preventing galvanic corrosion.
The issue isn't glue, its that parts are falling off.
there's a whole lot of systemic issues with wealthy people buying low-poly cars to their collection.
It's not a zero sum game, after all.
We're talking at a rate of 1000000000x in some cases but even in general what is the argument that it's obviously a good thing that few have much more purchasing power than most?
>It's not a zero sum game, after all.
No but I would argue that it's likely more beneficial to have a vibrant middle class over a few extremely wealthy individuals.
Saving up money naturally leads to wealth inequality. And the saved money can be used to earn more money.
> have a vibrant middle class
Are there countries with less wealth inequality that have a more "vibrant" middle class (whatever that means)?
Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.
I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.
FWIW, I'm into my fourth year of (Chinese-built) Model 3 ownership and it's been rock solid, the only services so far were to replace the air filter and wipers.
Rip away center tunnel carpet on rhs (lhd vehicle), remove 2 screws from below glove compartment, fold away panel, remove cap from filter compartment, remove 2 filters - put back together in reverse order.
That's literally a 20 minute job if you about know what you should be doing - a.k.a. read about the process in the free service manual of Tesla (only need an account, free) or watched a YT video...
Besides that, EVs are just really heavy and weight wears out tires. Just a fact of life.
https://www.michelinman.com/auto/auto-tips-and-advice/electr...
Apparently it's not just the weight, it's the instantaneous torque and noise that need to be considered. Lower noise and higher torque tolerance would, to me, imply a softer rubber compound is used, which would reduce longevity.
On the other hand, they also mention range and rolling resistance, which suggest that a harder compound might be used. Harder rubber typically corresponds to better longevity.
It's an interesting topic. Has anyone done a proper apples-to-apples test of EV tires versus their nearest equivalent "normal" tires?
Grandparent said they were on year four and seemed to be saying they were on the first set of tires, which surprises me.
This is less about EVs vs ICEs and more about Toyota's engineering quality vs Tesla's engineering quality, which is hovering somewhere in the vicinity of Homer Simpson's barbecue pit.
(Also my Tesla is 74.5k miles, so nowhere near 100k)
-edit-
I was a victim of misinformation from my local EV repair shop.
https://www.dormanproducts.com/pages/products/oe-fix/article...
The prices you are talking about are incorrect but there are 3rd party parts now.
Sound advice for people looking for a practical car. But if you have Lambo money who cares? I have never seen a supercar described as reliable.
I always heard they were a pain to get serviced with long wait times. Not sure how well they hold their value either.
Given some of the tauted 'features' of this thing, I'd be more concerned about it blowing up in my driveway.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/NextGenT...
(just personal preference)
Even if they make this work, what exactly is it revolutionizing?
Every generation of high-dollar sports cars has had something you could point to and say "that was way ahead of its time" or "they pioneered that." A few examples: fuel injection in the 1950s, variable valves and CFD the 1980s-1990s, dual-clutch transmissions in the 2000s, hybridization and electrification more recently.
You cannot tell me with a straight face that 20 years from now, my commuter will be outfitted with cold-gas thrusters and fans sucking it into the pavement.
Supercars have always been gaudy playthings for the wealthy. I think the difference is that Tesla doesn't even pretend the Roadster represents anything else.
Though they have not confirmed it, it’s basically a given it has teslas new networking, and is 48v which both lead to vastly less wiring (lighter, cheaper)
ALL of those things will be in every automobile within 10 years.
There are 20 year old family sedans with brake by wire. Unless you're referring to EMB specifically.
Anything invented before you are ~30 is cool, new, exciting.
Anything invented after you are ~40 is bad, wrong, not good.
If Waymo sets the bar for a "good" AV, riding in a cyber cab must be downright traumatizing. And now I know that its brakes are an open-road science experiment. Great.
This isn't anything practical. It's just cool. Like a hoverboard. Or landing on the moon.
9 years since the announcement of Roadster v2, people who paid 50k deposits are still waiting.
Time to up the promises, and ask for more $50k deposits for v3!
https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Lamborgh...
I'd argue it's not the Cybertruck that is evidence of lack of care, but the fact that this car was promised 10 years ago and Elon took people's money to fund it. And now it's going to "fly" somehow and it's still years away.