Sure, Of course they also said the S would be about half the price it is, and that the 3 would be on the market by 2015. Other than that, sure the "Master Plan" was bang on... Of course the master plan isn't the only thing they've said about the car, but why let that stop us, we don't need to pay attention to anything they've actually said about the vehicle when we can just gloss over anything that doesn't match reality...
it's really difficult to argue that an EV you can buy and drive home right now is not competitive with a Tesla Model 3
That depends. Does the EV you can drive home right now do what you need it to do? The answer for the vast majority of people is obviously "no" otherwise there'd be more Bolt purchases, and fewer 3 reservation holders.
The Bolt is a nice city car. The 3 is an everything car. Without a fastcharging network the Bolt won't work for a huge percentage of the population, this is obvious when you look at the sales figures.
Just because you can't get the vehicle you want, doesn't make the other cars somehow competitive with it, it just means that it's inaccessible.
Someone buying a Bolt "because they can't get a 3" is an admission that the Bolt is not as good, not proof that the Bolt is competition.
Why bring self-driving into this? the only people stupid enough to think that the Tesla is in any way a self-driving car is Tesla themselves. Okay I guess they did manage to con a few people into paying the extra few thousand dollars for "full self-driving", but you have to be a special kind of stupid to think that the hardware that's on those vehicles right now has any hope of ever fulfilling that promise. Not that there's anything new here though, Tesla is very familiar with promising things that they can never hope to achieve. Just look at all the things they promised in 2014 around their initial autopilot suite, in fact there isn't even a single thing listed from that original presentation that the current cars can do.
Range even when using air con and heating, charging stations, the time it takes to charge versus filling up (whatever did happen to those quick replace batteries?), build quality, everything has to be spot on perfect.
And here's one of the reasons Tesla is in a segment with zero competition, they're the only automaker that has actually figured that part out. And until another company comes along with an actual long-distance charging network of fast-chargers we're not going to see any actual competition to Tesla.
As for what happened to quick replace batteries, the Tesla model S has them, and they ran a trial, nobody cared. Quick replace batteries have never been a good idea, they simply don't provide any benefit at all over a reasonable fast-charge Network, and add an awful lot of complications and expense. In fact the only reason Tesla did them at all was because California gave extra CARB credits for them at the time. Not because they were a good idea.
Really? Competition from who? I haven't heard of any competition coming anytime soon, and I follow these things very closely. I've heard of several vehicles that are expected to have a similar range to the model 3, however none of them are expected to have any form of charging network, which is somewhat important. Additionally I've only heard of one vehicle that might have a roughly similar driver assistance suite and that's a top of the line Cadillac, and even that's expected to be even more limited than Tesla's solution (which already can't match what Tesla themselves released in 2015)
It's a bit like taking a Rolls Royce and saying there's competition because Lexus put out a luxury sedan, or telling Lamborghini that the newest Toyota sports car is going to eat their lunch. Until you grasp what makes a specific vehicle successful you can't make a competing product, and trust me, the legacy car makes don't grasp anything about why Tesla has been successful.
Now don't take this as the rantings of a Tesla Fanboy, I am actually the complete opposite I absolutely abhor Tesla, and that's as someone who drives one every day. I think therapy scummiest company that has ever existed on this planet but as they don't have any competition, and there doesn't seem to be any coming anytime soon, I'm unlikely to sell my car just yet.
The tesla has arrived, and it is the best car ever. It's also nothing even close to what Tesla promised, but hey, that's not important when you don't have any competition.
In the new world it's over promise, and rake in capital from investors. Delivery at all is an afterthought, and not really required if you can talk a good game.
This is exactly why Tesla even still exists. They lie through their teeth in every single marketing presentation, they actively steal features from customers after purchase, they haven't met a timeline or target in their entire existence, in short, they're the scummiest company I've ever dealt with.
So why did I deal with them? Two reasons, fist of all I didn't realize they could really be as bad as they are until after I'd bought the car, but more importantly because despite all of that, and despite about ten years to catch up, there still isn't a single viable competitor on the market.
Their current generation of driver assistance features, while light years behind what they promised in 2014, and significantly worse than what they delivered in 2015 (and later stole from the customers who had it) is still way ahead of the next best competitor.
Their electric range is still the highest, and they're the only electric car with a viable long distance charging network in North America. A Bolt may go nearly as far on a charge, but if there's nowhere to charge it, and it charges at less than half the speed, it's not going to replace the tesla that can quite viably do a cross country road trip.
The only way Tesla will ever be in the kind of trouble that is so often predicted for them is if a competitor actually emerges, and despite years of announcements from many other companies, I have yet to see any indication that an actual competitor will exist in the near future. The sad truth of the matter is that none of the existing companies even grasp the basic concept of what's going on here, and none of the other startups have managed to attract enough funding/figure out their own strategy/just get cars built.
For now your choice is Tesla, or a car that feels (and effectively is) a decade behind in almost every respect.
Screw that, the airport is ON the strip, the terminal should be on the other side of the runway and nobody would need ANY transportation to/from it!
But you have to protect that taxi lobby...
The funny (sad) part is that the private terminal that the wealthy fly in/out of *IS* on the strip side, but those people take limos to/from the airport and wouldn't walk anyway.
I visited Vegas a couple of years ago, and the monorail was expensive, well hidden, and didn't go anywhere useful.
I don't think any of the potential passengers are likely anti-mono-rail, they just want to be taken somewhere useful for a reasonable price. They don't want to walk a block out of their way (and then a block back) to pay a ton of money, to take a trip that would have been faster to walk anyway.
This is a common problem with the "build it and they will come" mentality. Sometimes you have to build it somewhere people want to be...
it's when the app first tries to access the microphone. For some apps that will be immediately on launch, for others it will be later on (for an app that wants to monitor everything you do via microphone, I suspect it will be on launch)
Your information is several years out of date. On "newer" versions of Android (basically any phone made in the past 3-4 years) it will individually ask for the microphone permission the first time you use it, and you will have to specifically click "allow" on the microphone permission before it can do so. You can also go to settings and disable the individual permission after the fact, and there will be no warning that the app may stop working because the apps are simply expected to handle that.
If your OS is newer than a few years old it will ask for the permission individually when the app first tries to make use of it. You can also revoke it at any time through the settings menu.
If the hotel didn't charge a 20% premium to the price over and above what all the online resellers are charging, I'd consider it. But right now they complain that they pay the OTA too much, then flat out refuse to price match that OTA. Tough luck. If you want me to book directly with you, you'd make it cheaper than the OTA, not more expensive.
I can't remember the last time I found a hotel willing to price match their own room from an online seller. And honestly, I don't care who I buy through, I just don't want to pay more than I have to for the privilege.
I think you're reversing the roles here. My self-esteem is NOT based on the brand of phone, so I don't have to go around explaining to everyone why I chose a non-Android non-iOS device, and can instead just get on with doing whatever task it is that I'm trying to do, knowing that whatever app I need will exist for my platform.
The OP on the other hand seems to be more invested in the brand of the phone "It's NOT an Android!" or "It's NOT an iPhone" rather than just picking the tool that will best do the job needing to be done.
a) being able to tell everyone who doesn't care that you're sticking it to the corporations by not having an Android or iOS device b) having the best tool for the job.
You can do everything you ask on other devices sure, but it won't be as good. Specifically mapping and navigation which you list as your most important requirement, you simply can not beat google maps for that, and you won't get that on some random non-android and non-ios device. Sure there are various other mapping options, but for most up to date, most accurate, and including real time traffic, accident reporting, road closures, etc? Not likely if you don't have Android or iOS.
Beyond that though, invariably you'll have to explain to someone at some point why you can't just do some simple thing that everyone else can do because your device doesn't support the app needed for it. Sure you'll think you're cool while saying it, but everyone around you will be rolling their eyes.
Phones these days are all about the apps, and if it's not Android, and it's not iOS, it simply doesn't have the app support. This is what makes building a new smartphone OS so difficult, your platform can be better in every single way, but it will never take off unless you can sway millions of individual app developers and convince them to develop for your platform, something they have no reason to do as you don't have any market share until after you've got the app developers.
I don't think you grasp how #3 works. It doesn't mean they won't do anything that affects your life. It means they won't accept your input on it. Simply going about your business and continuing to do what you want only applies to people in category #1.
If only Tesla had thought to put fine print on their "Free, unlimited, supercharging for life" claim you'd be right. But they didn't.
That said, it seems this only applies to new purchasers, so for once they aren't illegally screwing over their existing customers like they've done so many other times in the past.
The problem isn't electric vehicles, it's a scummy company that abuses their technology, but that is hardly limited to one company at this point it's pretty much universal that all companies these days believe they are entitled to all the benefits of a full sale (full payment, no obligations for maintenance, or liability for the product after the date of sale) with none of the drawbacks (lack of control of how the item is used, inability to gain additional revenue from the product after sale, inability to change what you sold the customer on your own terms after the sale)
End result is that we seem to have agreed as a society that we're ok paying full price to "purchase" items when in fact all we're really doing is renting them at the whim of the company.
That said, Tesla is a particularly slimy example of this, frequently in blatant contravention of many consumer protection laws in regards to warranties, false advertising, changing contracts after signing, etc.
In any case, people should never have had the expectation that Tesla would subsidize the fuel costs for their Uber business indefinitely. As usual in 'modern society', a small subset of users, intent on pushing the absolute limit of any arrangement, screws things up for everyone else. Complain to those Tesla drivers, not to the company that provided a pretty cool ownership perk and trusted people not to abuse it.
For new drivers, apparently you are correct, however your wording seems to imply existing customers should have no expectation. That's untrue. Tesla explicitly sold those customers free, unlimited, supercharging for life. There was no fine print of any form on that claim.
So yes, they have every right to park in a supercharger stall with the cable connected 24/7 if they want. That's what they were sold, that's what they paid for. I'm not saying that Tesla *SHOULD* have sold that, but they did, and it's not the customer's job to evaluate Tesla's business decisions. The only reasonable course of action for Tesla is what they have done now, which is to change the plan for FUTURE customers, but there's nothing they can reasonably (or legally) do about existing customers who use more than Tesla planned for.
Not this time, they've done that in the past though.
This is probably one of the only times that Tesla has actually followed the reasonable approach and made a change only for future customers. Most of the time they just pull the rug out from under their existing customers, who cares what they were originally promised or sold?
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Sure, Of course they also said the S would be about half the price it is, and that the 3 would be on the market by 2015. Other than that, sure the "Master Plan" was bang on... Of course the master plan isn't the only thing they've said about the car, but why let that stop us, we don't need to pay attention to anything they've actually said about the vehicle when we can just gloss over anything that doesn't match reality...
it's really difficult to argue that an EV you can buy and drive home right now is not competitive with a Tesla Model 3
That depends. Does the EV you can drive home right now do what you need it to do? The answer for the vast majority of people is obviously "no" otherwise there'd be more Bolt purchases, and fewer 3 reservation holders.
The Bolt is a nice city car. The 3 is an everything car. Without a fastcharging network the Bolt won't work for a huge percentage of the population, this is obvious when you look at the sales figures.
Just because you can't get the vehicle you want, doesn't make the other cars somehow competitive with it, it just means that it's inaccessible.
Someone buying a Bolt "because they can't get a 3" is an admission that the Bolt is not as good, not proof that the Bolt is competition.
Why bring self-driving into this? the only people stupid enough to think that the Tesla is in any way a self-driving car is Tesla themselves. Okay I guess they did manage to con a few people into paying the extra few thousand dollars for "full self-driving", but you have to be a special kind of stupid to think that the hardware that's on those vehicles right now has any hope of ever fulfilling that promise. Not that there's anything new here though, Tesla is very familiar with promising things that they can never hope to achieve. Just look at all the things they promised in 2014 around their initial autopilot suite, in fact there isn't even a single thing listed from that original presentation that the current cars can do.
Range even when using air con and heating, charging stations, the time it takes to charge versus filling up (whatever did happen to those quick replace batteries?), build quality, everything has to be spot on perfect.
And here's one of the reasons Tesla is in a segment with zero competition, they're the only automaker that has actually figured that part out. And until another company comes along with an actual long-distance charging network of fast-chargers we're not going to see any actual competition to Tesla.
As for what happened to quick replace batteries, the Tesla model S has them, and they ran a trial, nobody cared. Quick replace batteries have never been a good idea, they simply don't provide any benefit at all over a reasonable fast-charge Network, and add an awful lot of complications and expense. In fact the only reason Tesla did them at all was because California gave extra CARB credits for them at the time. Not because they were a good idea.
Really? Competition from who? I haven't heard of any competition coming anytime soon, and I follow these things very closely. I've heard of several vehicles that are expected to have a similar range to the model 3, however none of them are expected to have any form of charging network, which is somewhat important. Additionally I've only heard of one vehicle that might have a roughly similar driver assistance suite and that's a top of the line Cadillac, and even that's expected to be even more limited than Tesla's solution (which already can't match what Tesla themselves released in 2015)
It's a bit like taking a Rolls Royce and saying there's competition because Lexus put out a luxury sedan, or telling Lamborghini that the newest Toyota sports car is going to eat their lunch. Until you grasp what makes a specific vehicle successful you can't make a competing product, and trust me, the legacy car makes don't grasp anything about why Tesla has been successful.
Now don't take this as the rantings of a Tesla Fanboy, I am actually the complete opposite I absolutely abhor Tesla, and that's as someone who drives one every day. I think therapy scummiest company that has ever existed on this planet but as they don't have any competition, and there doesn't seem to be any coming anytime soon, I'm unlikely to sell my car just yet.
The tesla has arrived, and it is the best car ever.
It's also nothing even close to what Tesla promised, but hey, that's not important when you don't have any competition.
In the new world it's over promise, and rake in capital from investors. Delivery at all is an afterthought, and not really required if you can talk a good game.
This is exactly why Tesla even still exists. They lie through their teeth in every single marketing presentation, they actively steal features from customers after purchase, they haven't met a timeline or target in their entire existence, in short, they're the scummiest company I've ever dealt with.
So why did I deal with them? Two reasons, fist of all I didn't realize they could really be as bad as they are until after I'd bought the car, but more importantly because despite all of that, and despite about ten years to catch up, there still isn't a single viable competitor on the market.
Their current generation of driver assistance features, while light years behind what they promised in 2014, and significantly worse than what they delivered in 2015 (and later stole from the customers who had it) is still way ahead of the next best competitor.
Their electric range is still the highest, and they're the only electric car with a viable long distance charging network in North America. A Bolt may go nearly as far on a charge, but if there's nowhere to charge it, and it charges at less than half the speed, it's not going to replace the tesla that can quite viably do a cross country road trip.
The only way Tesla will ever be in the kind of trouble that is so often predicted for them is if a competitor actually emerges, and despite years of announcements from many other companies, I have yet to see any indication that an actual competitor will exist in the near future. The sad truth of the matter is that none of the existing companies even grasp the basic concept of what's going on here, and none of the other startups have managed to attract enough funding/figure out their own strategy/just get cars built.
For now your choice is Tesla, or a car that feels (and effectively is) a decade behind in almost every respect.
Tesla hasn't met a timeline, target, or marketing promise in their entire career, why start now?
Screw that, the airport is ON the strip, the terminal should be on the other side of the runway and nobody would need ANY transportation to/from it!
But you have to protect that taxi lobby...
The funny (sad) part is that the private terminal that the wealthy fly in/out of *IS* on the strip side, but those people take limos to/from the airport and wouldn't walk anyway.
I visited Vegas a couple of years ago, and the monorail was expensive, well hidden, and didn't go anywhere useful.
I don't think any of the potential passengers are likely anti-mono-rail, they just want to be taken somewhere useful for a reasonable price. They don't want to walk a block out of their way (and then a block back) to pay a ton of money, to take a trip that would have been faster to walk anyway.
This is a common problem with the "build it and they will come" mentality. Sometimes you have to build it somewhere people want to be...
it's when the app first tries to access the microphone. For some apps that will be immediately on launch, for others it will be later on (for an app that wants to monitor everything you do via microphone, I suspect it will be on launch)
Your information is several years out of date. On "newer" versions of Android (basically any phone made in the past 3-4 years) it will individually ask for the microphone permission the first time you use it, and you will have to specifically click "allow" on the microphone permission before it can do so. You can also go to settings and disable the individual permission after the fact, and there will be no warning that the app may stop working because the apps are simply expected to handle that.
If your OS is newer than a few years old it will ask for the permission individually when the app first tries to make use of it. You can also revoke it at any time through the settings menu.
How would you know if an app is active or not? Anyone "non-stupid" assumes that ALL apps are active ALL the time. There's no "Exit" feature
Not on Android either, you have to explicitly grant Microphone permission (it even says so right in the summary!)
Of course many people are too stupid to think that if they allow microphone permission that the app might actually listen to the microphone.....
If the hotel didn't charge a 20% premium to the price over and above what all the online resellers are charging, I'd consider it.
But right now they complain that they pay the OTA too much, then flat out refuse to price match that OTA. Tough luck. If you want me to book directly with you, you'd make it cheaper than the OTA, not more expensive.
I can't remember the last time I found a hotel willing to price match their own room from an online seller. And honestly, I don't care who I buy through, I just don't want to pay more than I have to for the privilege.
I think you're reversing the roles here. My self-esteem is NOT based on the brand of phone, so I don't have to go around explaining to everyone why I chose a non-Android non-iOS device, and can instead just get on with doing whatever task it is that I'm trying to do, knowing that whatever app I need will exist for my platform.
The OP on the other hand seems to be more invested in the brand of the phone "It's NOT an Android!" or "It's NOT an iPhone" rather than just picking the tool that will best do the job needing to be done.
a) being able to tell everyone who doesn't care that you're sticking it to the corporations by not having an Android or iOS device
b) having the best tool for the job.
You can do everything you ask on other devices sure, but it won't be as good.
Specifically mapping and navigation which you list as your most important requirement, you simply can not beat google maps for that, and you won't get that on some random non-android and non-ios device. Sure there are various other mapping options, but for most up to date, most accurate, and including real time traffic, accident reporting, road closures, etc? Not likely if you don't have Android or iOS.
Beyond that though, invariably you'll have to explain to someone at some point why you can't just do some simple thing that everyone else can do because your device doesn't support the app needed for it. Sure you'll think you're cool while saying it, but everyone around you will be rolling their eyes.
Phones these days are all about the apps, and if it's not Android, and it's not iOS, it simply doesn't have the app support. This is what makes building a new smartphone OS so difficult, your platform can be better in every single way, but it will never take off unless you can sway millions of individual app developers and convince them to develop for your platform, something they have no reason to do as you don't have any market share until after you've got the app developers.
I don't think you grasp how #3 works. It doesn't mean they won't do anything that affects your life. It means they won't accept your input on it. Simply going about your business and continuing to do what you want only applies to people in category #1.
Sadly, in politics these days there are 3 options:
- Be stinking rich
- Be patronized
- Be ignored
So for those of us who don't fall in the first category (most people), your choice is really between the last 2....
If only Tesla had thought to put fine print on their "Free, unlimited, supercharging for life" claim you'd be right. But they didn't.
That said, it seems this only applies to new purchasers, so for once they aren't illegally screwing over their existing customers like they've done so many other times in the past.
The problem isn't electric vehicles, it's a scummy company that abuses their technology, but that is hardly limited to one company at this point it's pretty much universal that all companies these days believe they are entitled to all the benefits of a full sale (full payment, no obligations for maintenance, or liability for the product after the date of sale) with none of the drawbacks (lack of control of how the item is used, inability to gain additional revenue from the product after sale, inability to change what you sold the customer on your own terms after the sale)
End result is that we seem to have agreed as a society that we're ok paying full price to "purchase" items when in fact all we're really doing is renting them at the whim of the company.
That said, Tesla is a particularly slimy example of this, frequently in blatant contravention of many consumer protection laws in regards to warranties, false advertising, changing contracts after signing, etc.
In any case, people should never have had the expectation that Tesla would subsidize the fuel costs for their Uber business indefinitely. As usual in 'modern society', a small subset of users, intent on pushing the absolute limit of any arrangement, screws things up for everyone else. Complain to those Tesla drivers, not to the company that provided a pretty cool ownership perk and trusted people not to abuse it.
For new drivers, apparently you are correct, however your wording seems to imply existing customers should have no expectation. That's untrue. Tesla explicitly sold those customers free, unlimited, supercharging for life. There was no fine print of any form on that claim.
So yes, they have every right to park in a supercharger stall with the cable connected 24/7 if they want. That's what they were sold, that's what they paid for. I'm not saying that Tesla *SHOULD* have sold that, but they did, and it's not the customer's job to evaluate Tesla's business decisions. The only reasonable course of action for Tesla is what they have done now, which is to change the plan for FUTURE customers, but there's nothing they can reasonably (or legally) do about existing customers who use more than Tesla planned for.
Not this time, they've done that in the past though.
This is probably one of the only times that Tesla has actually followed the reasonable approach and made a change only for future customers. Most of the time they just pull the rug out from under their existing customers, who cares what they were originally promised or sold?