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Comment by skullone | Hacker News Reader

I tried to like Teslas, but I find them incredibly cheap and uncomfortable. The road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru, which I found baffling since there's not even an engine, and I thought they were supposed to be aerodynamic and smooth. But no, they're harsh and always feel like you're driving on a noisy worn out road. What's the appeal of Teslas? For the price premium of them, what do you actually get?

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I'm no fan of Teslas but they do still have one distinguishing feature over other EVs: last I checked, they were still by far the most efficient, in terms of kWh per km. It's as if nobody else even bothers streamlining their cars, they're too busy making chunky SUVs with massive grilles.

It's weird that for petrol cars, most people are really concerned with miles-per-gallon (maybe not so much in the US, until recently), yet for EVs all anyone seems to care about is range. I guess electricity is cheap enough that efficiency doesn't really matter, except when it gives you more range?

The grill thing is weird to me, do EVs even need an air intake?

Various things probably need the air for cooling.

Still need heat exchangers for cabin climate control and cooling high energy electronics and even the battery.

My wife has a new EV and it says we saved 44 gallons this month and I only spent $100 on charging. $45 dollars of it was testing an expensive DC charger that’s 3x as expensive as my house.

At current US prices that would be, what, $150-$200 in gasoline? So the electricity is 2x cheaper. That’s a great saving, but you could save that much with a hybrid as well. It still seems worth making the EV as efficient as possible.

There are relatively few ways to mask the fact that a car weighs 2000kg. One of the non-ways of solving that problem is to put ultra-low-profile tires on huge wheels to make it look cool online and ride like shit.

Yeah I feel like the low profile tire trend is terrible in a lot of ways. Tire wear, resistance to flats, mileage, and road noise immediately come to mind.

Why are people are downvoting you? I hate low-profile tires. They make absolutely no sense.

I found the user experience terrible as well - just trying to turn on the wipers or change the heat required trying to remember where they were in nested menus on a touchscreen while driving at 100kmh on the 401.

The wipers are a physical button under your thumb, easier to activate than being hidden on a stalk

Temp is always visible in bottom left of screen, no sub menu needed

And you can use voice commands for anything, you should test drive a new one

Not the model I rented (not my first choice anyway) in Jan 2022.

Ah, see, the danger there is doing 100kmh on the 401. Traffic's (trying to be) doing 140+, keep up ;)

When I sat in the back of a model 3 I thought it was a joke at first, I've never sat so low in a car, my knees were above my hips, comfort was subpar.

They're the safest cars on the road and they drive themselves. If you want to maximize your family's safety, you put them in a Tesla. For me, the stress of driving is completely gone now. Traffic jams, slow drivers, complicated turns in unfamiliar areas, none of that bothers me anymore.

If Chinese cars were available here for cheaper, drove themselves just as well, and were similarly safe, I'd consider them.

I'm calling BS on "road noise is worse than a 27 year old Subaru", this is an insane claim that needs some hard evidence. Please just google what you actually get, or test drive one. They've been a best selling vehicle brand for a few years, with literally millions on the road at any given time.

If you can't be bothered to operate in even a little bit of good faith, please stop littering forums.

I know they sell great, and my most measures they are a win, glad they allowed EVs to go mainstream, I love it. It just isn't the car for me, I don't like the driving experience, their features aren't my interests (dont care about screens or self driving and the materials or comfort, for me). I'm not going to get decibel meters, but they are just "loud" and harsh to my feeling. Maybe its the lack of the engine behaviors in a regular car, and the silence of the EV makes the road noise seem more than it really is, I dunno. Other EVs feel quieter, more insulated, but only so much weight you can add to hit a target efficiency, I get it. Just my opinions, man

Fair enough, I got a bit defensive and came off a bit harder than intended. I just get frustrated hearing a lot of comments like this then it turns out the people never even went in a Tesla for more than one Uber ride to an airport or something, yet they take every chance to spew hate. There are plenty of things that are not perfect about Tesla's but their acoustics imo are one of the best parts. I drive one daily and I've been in old and new suburus and it's crazy to me that they can be compared, but also I understand that there are many factors that could make significant changes to the comparison.

The appeal is that it will drive you itself.

Into the back of a parked semi truck

Basing that on any stats? Check actual data at tesla.com/fsd/safety

Please provide a better source if you have one

Using Tesla as a source is hilarious. They don't even report accidents with proper FSD attributions to the government July 2026 was teslas worst month on record: https://electrek.co/2026/09/15/tesla-four-fatal-driver-assis...

https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study

https://www.informedforlife.com/tesla-safety

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

https://www.tesladeaths.com

This response is half a decade old. I use FSD every day and it drives much much safer than I would. I've owned my Tesla for less than 2 years and it improves further with every update.

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