Posted on 08/10/2018 6:18:40 PM PDT by logi_cal869
A guy I know harbors the atypical lefty viewpoints on climate, government, the right, etc. Liberalism in general, but totally hypocritical on other issues such as trade and firearms.
He & his wife put deposits on twin Model 3s and wait...and wait...and wait...until finally they got theirs earlier this year.
One day I noticed that his old car was being driven so I poked around and got the skinny:
His brand-spankin-new Model 3 was taken for a cross-country trip and ended up with a very minor problem which any mechanic could have fixed in 30 minutes. In this case, it turns out he was now in New Mexico. Most reading this and familiar with Tesla will know why there are no Tesla service centers in New Mexico (others can look it up).
Tesla flies in a mechanic from out of state prompting him to stay while the rest of his posse who accompanied him on his trip venture homeward. Sure enough, it was a simple fix and he was back on the road within hours of the mechanic getting his hands on the car (took 2 days to get him there).
On the way home, he plugs in to a supercharging station.
Nothing. Won't charge.
He plugs in the trickle chargers.
Nothing.
After an eternity on the phone with Tesla support, he's warned DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHARGE. They end up sending a truck to trailer the car 2 states away and he flies home.
He is not being compensated for the hotel or 2 plane tickets.
The look on his face being picked up from the airport would have been worth gold.
There is a Tesla charging station in my home town. Every now and then I see a car charging. Also have seen a truck with a partially enclosed trailer with a car on it. The truck and trailer are parked across the street from the charging stations.
I have no idea what is going on but have wondered if maybe the car did not make it to the charging station so they had to call Tesla who then sent a truck to haul the car to the station.
A cross country trip in an electric car with a range of about 200 miles if you keep the a/c off...
What could go wrong?
Expected...it is a Tesla after all.
My home town is DeFuniak Springs. It is only about 5000 population. I think it was chosen because it is about mid way between Tallahassee and Mobile.
Either one is about 130 miles distant. A Tesla should be able to make it on I-10 or Hwy. 90.
Yet Tesla keeps ranking tops in owner satisfaction. Maybe your friend’s experience was not typical.
https://electrek.co/2017/12/21/tesla-tsla-tops-customer-satisfaction-survey-auto-industry/
Interestingly enough, I was approached about using a Tesla for my job (driving people to their medical appointments.) They were going to specially configure a Model 3 with enough battery packs to provide AC or heat with an estimated 500 mile range. (They were partnering with a state health care plan.)
‘Engineering issues’ was the last thing I heard from them about 3 months ago, nothing since, not even a reply to any e-mail about it.
It would have been interesting to test it, especially with the wide variety of roads I take on a daily basis; heck, just the data from my daily driving probably would make it worthwhile for Tesla (here’s what a deer in the road looks like, and a cow, and an emu, and a alpaca, and a chicken... And here’s passing tractors and big rigs and well, the list is very varied, as well as the terrain.)
I suspect I’ll never hear from them again; would have been also interesting to see how the battery packs survive through 100k of driving every 18 months. I know how the hybrids do - they don’t.
I would need 400 mile range per charge ti be practical .
It’s more typical than you think. The ones people seem to like are the top of the line model. Folks with more money than sense
I have two friends who have owned Model S Teslas for years here in SoCal. They both love the cars. Just don’t get into any sort of wreck with one, because there are not a lot of shops that work on Teslas and you may end up with a long wait for it to get repaired.
And I’m sure he’ll defend them to the hilt. /s
Here’s the deal: Almost any other vehicle would have been fixed at the dealership, no harm no foul.
They didn’t even pay for his airfare or hotel.
That’s damned shitty for a 6 month old all-electric for reasons totally beyond the owner’s control.
That door now swings both ways...
Approximately one hundred years ago, Erwin “Cannonball” Baker began driving cross-country, as quickly as possible, in anything he could get his hands on. His point: to demonstrate the reliability, range, and ease of refueling internal combustion cars.
On Thursday, December 28th, 2017, Alex Roy joined Daniel Zorrilla, a Tesla Model 3 owner, to test the range and reliability of that vehicle—which happens to be one of the first delivered Model 3 customer cars. The pair departed the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California; their final destination was the Red Ball garage in New York City. The two completed the cross-country drive in 50 hours and 16 minutes, setting a new electric Cannonball Run record.
Total time: 50 hours, 16 minutes, 32 seconds
Total mileage: 2860 miles
Charging cost: $100.95
I have two friends who have owned Model S Teslas for years here in SoCal. They both love the cars. Just don’t get into any sort of wreck with one, because there are not a lot of shops that work on Teslas and you may end up with a long wait for it to get repaired.
...
I’ve read that they get loaner cars, which could explain the high customer satisfaction rating, in spite of some having long wait times.
Halfway! Halfway? Whoo! Halfway! Oh, boy, you’re good! Whoo! You got me halfway! That’s fantastic!
Here’s a review from one of the cross country drivers:
I just drove 2,860 miles cross-country in a Tesla Model 3, setting a new electric Cannonball Run record of 50 hours and 16 minutes. This wasn’t a specially prepared press loaner or pre-production employee car; this was one of the first customer-owned cars delivered at the Fremont factory on December 27th, 2017.
For those gambling on the 3’s failure and Tesla’s collapse, don’t count on it. The Model 3 is delightful, odd, and brilliant—but there is one big, crackling bolt of a caveat.
The issue is not the build quality, nor is it the 15-inch touchscreen, which has absorbed almost all vehicle controls. Instead, it’s the Autopilot user interface, which has gone from seamless to kludge overnight.
The good news: The majority of Autopilot UI issues are fixable with an over-the-air (OTA) software update.
The bad news? Until the Autopilot UI is updated, Tesla fans will bend like yogis to make excuses for it, and the $TSLA shorts will exploit it to deter new customers from what is otherwise a wondrous step forward for passenger cars.
I love this car, but Tesla cannot solve the Autopilot UI problem fast enough.
http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/17280/tesla-model-3-the-first-serious-review
It’s too bad we can’t get the whole story directly from your friend.
Had they had the unfortunate experience of this guy:
Total time: 14 days, 50 hours, 16 minutes, 32 seconds
Total mileage: 2860 miles, + 1200 + another 500 or so
Charging cost: $100.95
One-way, last-minute airfare (minimum): $300
One-way, last-minute airfare (minimum): $300
Hotel, 3 days: $300.00
You can spin it & put icing on it any way you like, but this was a major CR & PR failure representative of a company that could give a shit about its customers.
WTF else do you want?
Funny...I didn’t know Tesla’s policy until the last week or two (saw some article linked on FR) and the more I thought about it, the sillier it sounded.
I understand the ‘why’ of their ‘policy’, it just seems...well...silly.
Then I read your thread. Honestly, I would love it if I won a Tesla, and I could just screw around with it and not depend on it for day to day travel.
I know nothing about the car. But I would like to drive one around.
I love interacting with technology I have never used before, just to see how it is to just use it. The first time I recall having this sentiment was when GPS first became available to cars.
I don’t remember the year, but I had gone to some conference in Philadelphia, and when I had to fly home, the airport was closed due to thunderstorms. When it became apparent it was closed indefinitely, I got the thought to drive home. In the group I was in, I asked if anyone was interested, and three or four people said yes, and then backed out. So I went it alone and rented a car to drive to Boston.
They rented me some small low end sedan, but when I went to pick it up, it was gone and they upgraded me to a Cadillac. Pretty cool, don’t rent cars enough to get upgraded. Anyway, the Cadillac had a GPS system in it, and I had never seen one.
I determined not to read the manual, and as an experiment, see how easy it was to figure it out without documentation. Turns out it wasn’t so easy, but I was stubborn. And I vowed not to use a paper map. (And I don’t know the roads down there except for I-95, and that is it.)
I ended up driving nearly 100 miles out of my way before I finally realized that yes, I really was going in quite the wrong direction. (Never had a great sense of direction anyway, but could make up for it by using maps effectively) In the end, it turned out that satellite signal locks never quite finished locking in before I began driving away, so it was giving me bad directions...would have been better if it didn’t really look like it was working at all.
But sometimes, things like that turn out to be interesting. I was feeling my way back to my original destination, and coming to a crossroad, I saw a beat up truck stopped on the side of the road, ladders sticking out over the cab, hood up, with an old guy (little guy with gray, short hair, probably about 5’4”, wiry, wearing dirty white coveralls. I passed, thought again, and banged a u-ey to pull up behind him.
He was a little Italian guy, maybe Seventy years old, squinty eyes, short disheveled white hair, and all over his face, white beard stubble. I took a look, and told him he wasn’t going to get it started...I forget what it was. So I offered him a ride home, and it turned out to be fifty miles away. So we talked, it was fun. When we got to his place, a bunch of little row houses with a highway ramp literally right above his backyard, he invited me in to dinner. (He lived alone) I was going to, but changed my time because I still had to drive to Boston because I had to be at work the next day, and in those days, I simply would not take an unscheduled day off.
But I did sit and have a soda with him. As I pulled away, I looked back and saw him standing in the door of that row of townhouses, giving me a wave.
Funny. I remember nothing about that conference. Don’t remember where it was in Philadelphia, any of the people I met, or even the subject of the conference.
But I remember standing in that glassy area of the airport talking to those complete strangers about pitching in for a shared rental to Boston. And as we talked, I noticed just how absolutely golden the sunlight was, low on the horizon, coming in from the West, while the dark thunderclouds were on all other sides. I remember discussing the mechanics of all of us renting a car and doing this, and as I am talking, I suddenly became aware of this gorgeous golden sun coming in from the West, and even though I am still talking, my mind is nearly 100% on the way everyone’s face was lit up, the clouds, all of it, and I don’t even remember finishing the thought. And I also remember driving down some large interstate and finally realizing I had to pull over and figure out this newfangled GPS.
But most of all, I remember the silhouette of that little wizened man, standing in the door of that townhouse under the highway onramp, with the yellowish light of his kitchen that his front door opened into, lighting him from behind...waving goodbye.
A thin slice of a life.
(Heh, sorry to chew your Internet ear...just thinking about that day took me away a little bit...:)
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