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Consumer Reports Withdraws Its Tesla Model S Recommendation (consumerreports.org)
An anonymous reader sends news that Consumer Reports, after earlier giving the Tesla Model S a perfect road test score, has now withdrawn its recommendation for the electric car after investigating its reliability. As part of our Annual Auto Reliability Survey, we received about 1,400 survey responses from Model S owners who chronicled an array of detailed and complicated maladies. From that data we forecast that owning that Tesla is likely to involve a worse-than-average overall problem rate. ... The main problem areas involved the drivetrain, power equipment, charging equipment, giant iPad-like center console, and body and sunroof squeaks, rattles, and leaks. ... Overall, squeaks and rattles appear to be the most prevalent complaint. But as one respondent commented, "The car is so very silent when driving that minor squeaks and rattles that you wouldn't be able to hear in a gasoline engine car become very annoying." The list of issues also includes more significant problems, which could be pricey to fix once out of warranty. Based on survey responses, Tesla has made a habit of replacing the car’s electric motors. The brake rotors tend to warp. And the door handles often fail to “present” themselves as drivers approach their cars.
That a car can fall this far this fast with little or no structural or locomotional changes says more about the raters than the ratee.
I think the touch screen console was a big mistake. You need to be able to manage things like climate settings, radio stations, etc. by touch.
Knobs and buttons in a car seem to be going the way of the dodo. It's a major pet-peeve for me--I can't stand the idiocy of car user interface design--they seem to be getting so much worse. Wife's Honda Odyssey has two screens (one touch, one not), and it's never clear which information will display where, the climate control is dreadful, tuning the radio is time consuming and attention-grabbing. It's just awful.
Nice car though.
I don't own one because it's $100,000 for a damn car. Any $100,000 car is going to be unreliable - the whole reason it is $100,000 is because it is all gussied up with extra crap that can break.
But when electrics become economically prudent I will probably get one. They should be mechanically simpler and I only commute 20 miles a day - my wife only goes 10 miles.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm not surprised. NADA wrote about their experience driving one for a year, and they experienced a lot of problems over that time. Their problems, like what CR indicates, were with drivetrain and touch screens mostly. Frankly, I don't even find anything about this concerning except the drivetrain problems. The only electric I'd be interested in would be a low-mid end model, which likely wouldn't have as much extra stuff to break (touch screens, pop out handles, etc.). However, if they can't even keep the drivetrain from breaking, that doesn't bode well for the lower models.
I like Tesla, but I have a nagging feeling that what's going to happen is that one of these days Toyota or Honda or someone will start taking electric very seriously, and Tesla will be done. Toyota and others have experience and economies of scale that Tesla can't match.
The problem is when the 4 years are up and its $10,000 to fix a "minor problem"
The resale value of a car with expensive repairs can go to near zero, fast, which will affect the price Tesla can demand for its new cars.
It takes a while to work out all the bugs during the incipient stage.
I just always figured the wealthy are covering the R & D expenses in exchange for the Look what I got! conversation starter;
so that, in the future, these become within the realm of affordable for us mere mortals.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
True, they will often look. The difference is the time needed to actually actuate the control. A quick glance is enough to get your finger on the right real button, because you can rely on touch to "zero in" on the control.
With a touch screen, you have to keep your eyes off the road a lot longer, because there is no point at which you can rely on touch alone.
Knobs and buttons will always be best in cars for physically manipulated interface controls. The reason is pretty simple - cars move. When they move, they hit bumps that makes everything inside jiggle. Unless through a remarkable coincidence the mass, springiness, and dampening of your body, arm, and fingertip exactly matches that of the LCD display, this means your finger will move relative to the screen every time you hit a bump. This makes trying to precisely manipulate touchscreen controls in a moving car an exercise in frustration.
Knobs and buttons are not just decorative. They support your fingers as you wrap them around the controls, effectively "docking" your fingers to the control. When the Shuttle or Soyuz capsule reaches the International Space Station, do they just kinda press up against the ISS and open the hatch? No. They dock the two with clamps which hold them together, then open the hatch. That's an extreme example because lives are at stake, but the principle is the same. By docking your fingers to the knob or button, you prevent your fingers from slipping around the control with every little bump you hit - your wrist and arm absorbs the relative motion of your body with the car, while your fingers remain stationary relative to the controls. Thus allowing you to precisely manipulate the interface in a moving, jiggling, bouncing car.
Don't get me wrong, touchscreens have their place. They're especially good for arbitrary 2-dimensional inputs, like typing on a virtual keyboard or flinging a GPS map back and forth. But the designers who decided to make basic controls like the radio and climate control touchscreen-only were idiots too caught up in the hype over the latest trend to bother thinking about why traditional interface controls are built they way they are. They can be somewhat forgiven because they probably used their phone or tablet inside and car and thought it was great. But what they didn't realize was that when you use a touchscreen phone or tablet in a moving car, you're holding the device so it doesn't move relative to you. And so accurate touchscreen inputs are possible.
a radio knob can be located in the dark of night on an unfamiliar interstate, on virtual autopilot, drinking truck stop coffee while needing to pee.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Throw more software at the problem. Oh! Now we need a faster CPU!