You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one.
What else could it be missing that you can't practically check for?
Still I guess at least it's good to see Tesla living up to the reputation for American cars to be generally shit build quality. I feel like they're going a bit overboard on that factor though.
>The electric SUV owner told me he still prefers that I use only his initials and his other nickname (Cracked_Tesla) because he wants to give another Tesla Service Center a chance to do the right thing.
The owner received a car with cracked structural components and is still going to give them another chance. I could understanding asking to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation or public scrutiny, but not whatever this is.
Cracked_Tesla, if you're listening, the correct response is to demand a complete refund or replacement. If refused, take legal action. This could be an ordinary lawsuit in civil court or a complaint filed under the local lemon laws. You are owed tens of thousands of dollars, so hire a lawyer. And then spread the story far and wide, naming the particular Tesla employees involved, because these people tried to kill you.
Unfortunately when people are so emotionally involved with something be it a CEO, a brand or a religious group they will go through all kind of brain gymnastics to not really blame them. Look at the child abuse in the catholic church (and all the others that are just barely starting to be known), their congregants protected the priests too and found all kind of excuses.
This definitely seems like a little Stockholm syndrome. You see it also when it comes to doing a chargeback against a company that defrauded you. Inevitably someone will say "But, if you do a chargeback, the company will close your account and ban you!" These people have gotten to the point where the company has stolen their money, and they still want to continue doing business with them! A lot of simping for companies that don't deserve the affection.
It’s not just simple simping. Those companies have such large operations, with so little competition, that it’s hard to find an alternative.
What if you’re not a tech person at all and you can’t use Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, eBay. You’re screwed, cause the alternatives might as well be wizardry.
For what it's worth we've wanted to own a Tesla for a long time to own an EV. The overpriced nature and all the terrible things I've read about the build quality continually shied me away from actually spending money or even leasing one.
That is until I just so happened to make a little extra money on TSLA stock by accident. I then turned around and found a salvage title, dirt cheap, home wall-charger included 2018 Model 3 and sold off some that TSLA profit for a free car for my wife. We've owned it long enough to confirm all "the build quality is crap" rumors. I'm a mechanically inclined person and I'm not idiot so I have taken the car apart enough to verify it is safe and it isn't dangerous (salvage title, total loss vehicle) but once you start taking things apart you see the corners they've cut where other car manufacturers do it differently - things like water drainage and body panels alignment is just too easy to spot if you've owned 15 cars over 30 years.
Long story short, I wouldn't buy a new one. I certainly wouldn't spent my _hard earned_ money on one. But I don't mind gambling a bit on a rebuilt title mass-produced one. That's about the level of trust I have in Elon's ability to build a quality automobile.
They are ok cars but everything you've heard about build quality and defects is absolutely true. I've never attempted to use the autopilot because I value my life.
Former colleague of mine was Tesla from day 1. Started an online journal of the life of his car. It's stuff like "well this car is great but this year I spent a huge amount of money because A, B, C broke and wasn't covered under warranty". As time goes on the journal just gets worse & worse. Can't help but laugh and be reminded by the family guy episode where they see a Tesla driving itself while the driver's busy sucking his own dick.
People are weird about nearly all car companies... Tesla hits some other nerves and feels with electricifaction and being a new "American company" but it's the same as most other car companies. There are crappy car companies out there and there are people that will buy their cars.
It's a status/whatever symbol, build quality doesn't really matter. I've a friend that drives a Model 3 and said "it's just like driving a BMW" and of course he has never driven a BMW.
Anyone who has so much as sat in a mid to top tier car from BMW/Mercedes/etc will instantly come away with an overwhelming sense that a Tesla feels cheap by comparison (because it does). Classic things like the sound and feel of closing a door, gripping a steering wheel, pushing a button, etc.
If you pay attention to detail this can often be experienced from the car externally - famous cases of Tesla tending to have poor tolerances and high variability in things like panel gap, etc.
> You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one.
Sometimes, you have to make tradeoffs. You may want a Tesla for a variety of reasons, and the reputation for unreliability is not enough to tip the scale for another maker. With that in mind, buying the Tesla and thoroughly checking for known issues may be the most rational thing to do.
>You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one.
Yeah but the company is run by a hip cool memelord who's gonna get us to mars, and his cars have nice softwares like my iPad. Who cares about the metal parts of the car's rigidity structure? That's just something old boring people think about. Everyone knows EVs are more reliable than ICE so no need to ever look under the hood. $TSLA to the moon! /s
>Still I guess at least it's good to see Tesla living up to the reputation for American cars to be generally shit build quality.
The shit build quality has less to do with being American, and more to do with Tesla chasing higher margins, high margins which in part come from cutting a lot of corners in places where customers aren't looking for, which in a tracic-comedy way is what most American auto-makers did to get to their shit-build quality reputation.
To be fair, many brands have QA issues all the time, but that one from the article is so big and obvious it should never have made it passed inspection.
> The shit build quality has less to do with being American
I'm not suggesting they're shit because they're American. I'm just saying it's nice to see them living up to the existing standard of shitness set by the existing American manufacturers.
I'm sure each American car manufacturer has their own unique and interesting reasons for having reliably shit build quality compared to European or Japanese manufacturers.
I posted an HN comment [0] a while back that is one example from prior work experience. It shares how specification differences between the domestics and Japanese auto-makers impacts downstream and overall system reliability/quality.
I was hesitant about buying a Chevy Bolt EV for similar reasons, but honestly, zero complaints. Well made, pleasure to drive. They did have a battery recall but that was due to defects introduced at an LG factory in Korea IIRC
Some people love to claim that electric cars will be more reliable due to mechanical simplicity. And yet somehow the highly complex Prius is still far more reliable and durable than any Tesla. It turns out that simplicity doesn't help if your engineers and assembly workers are incompetent and badly managed.
Toyota Prius is one of the simplest currently made ICE cars. There is nothing simpler and more reliable than port injection inline 4 engine and eCVT transmission.
Got a friend working for tesla after-sales service in Europa and he claims the Chinese-made Teslas are better quality than the ones that are American-made
>Chinese-made Teslas are better quality than the ones that are American-made
Shit rolls up-hill. It's not that american factory workers are worse at assembling widgets than chinese factory workers, it's that american factory management is shit.
British Leyland would also traditionally make garbage cars, but when the Japanese came, those same workers were churning out good cars.
Processes, culture, management and leadership makes all the difference.
As the post you’re replying to mentions, this is indeed a thing that US manufacturers did back in the day. It didn’t work out for them, in the long run.
> a thing that US manufacturers did back in the day
Is this...a joke?
We are currently going through inflation caused directly by margin chasing and stock buybacks. If you look into any industry you will see a long race to the bottom to get the most money for the least product imaginable.
It's the #1 function of a capitalist system, to extract the most value for the least work. Margin chasing is all we do. It should be included in our national anthem.
Obviously US automakers want all the margins they can get, but in the past they pursued margins _to the extent of making very low-quality cars_ (then had their lunch eaten by foreign competition; it did not work out well for them at all). They largely don't do that anymore; their quality is more comparable to foreign competition than it used to be.
You knew the manufacturer had a reputation of forgetting hard to check parts... and you still bought one.
What else could it be missing that you can't practically check for?
Still I guess at least it's good to see Tesla living up to the reputation for American cars to be generally shit build quality. I feel like they're going a bit overboard on that factor though.