Tesla cars are interesting. The drivetrain and the battery are very reliable and will likely be never need service.
But everything else is shitty. The construction quality, random breakages, neverending rattles are annoying. My Tesla spent more time in service than my partner's Toyota, and this includes regular oil changes.
This makes me a feel a lot better about choosing a Toyota over a Tesla back in 2019.
The one unforgivable thing about the Toyota is the infotainment system. What a blight on humanity.
But otherwise, such a great car. I’ve never really liked cars until this thing. It’s so comfortable, reliable, cheap to maintain, and makes all of our trips like camping and mountain biking such a joy. The Tesla would have been such a headache in comparison, I think.
At the time I was certain it would be the other way around, but charging networks weren’t sufficient in the places we travel yet. I’m glad that’s the way it went now.
> This makes me a feel a lot better about choosing a Toyota over a Tesla back in 2019.
To anyone not into cars I'll give a simple advice: unless you really do a lot of high-speed highway driving (that'd be 80mph+ / 130km/h+, european highways speed), simply buy a Toyota.
I don't think you can go very wrong buying a Toyota.
And this comes as a german cars lover.
The only reason wife traded her Toyota CH-R for a BMW is because we do lots of (european) highway driving and we felt the CH-R was too noisy on the highway (at 80 mph: at 55 mph it's totally fine).
Buy a Toyota, make sure to do the maintenance needed in official Toyota dealership so you can extended the Toyota warranty for as long as possible.
Even Toyota is moving in that direction. They put their remote start under a subscription model and to my knowledge haven’t backed off it despite the initial backlash. [1]
And GM is removing CarPlay and android auto entirely from their head units. Under the guise of “safety”.[2]
Frankly unless consumers react strongly, I don’t see the car industry righting the ship with their anti consumer crap.
I have a 2009 Toyota. Arguably the sweet spot for features. Have a backup camera integrated into the tailgate but minimal otherwise computerized stuff. The A/C controls are the traditional 3 dial setup which is ideal for me, I can adjust it without looking down at all. I had to pull over to turn off the heat when I borrowed my in-laws F-150 for a day. I did swap the head unit for a kenwood with wireless CarPlay and integrated dashcam.
Given what I had seen from new models, I’m going to be sticking with my 09 Tacoma for a while longer at least.
Even my wife’s 2018 Honda Pilot had surging issues at low RPMs that was caused by dirty transmission fluid. Nothing that would throw an error, luckily my mechanic had just seen the same issues before. Her car has had more issues than mine honestly.
Right? It's remarkable seeing people here defending Tesla while saying "I've only had a few major issues in four years"
I've had a Hyundai for ten years and literally crashed it into a tree and it had no major issues for five years after that (and I gave it away and it ran for another five until it protected someone from a head on collision!). Now I'm on a ten year old Honda and haven't don't anything except regular maintenance.
It's wild to see people saying they have only had a few issues with a car a couple of years old. That's a problem!!
That’s it. That’s the entire list of what I’ve had to do outside of regular fluid changes and basic consumables (e.g., break pads).
Subaru is generally not near the top of the list as far as reliability. And my car should be one of their less reliable models as it’s the turbocharged sports sedan. And it’s had one issue in a decade. A few major issues in four years is lunacy.
Absolutely, I have a 2012 Honda now and I can't remember any major issues. Maybe there was one "issue" like ignition coils or something, but I actually don't think so?
Toyota has never understood infotainment software. It’s my one and only complaint of the brand after owning many of their cars. They need to just give up.
I never understood why a car company would WANT to do better than a software company. Just make something with fully integrated CarPlay or Android auto with a failsafe for rentals or those without phones that don’t want to pair.
If you want the fully featured maps, guidance just pair your phone. Done. CarPlay is leagues beyond anything I have seen otherwise in an infotainment system.
I actually suspect this is a cultural thing with Japan and feature phones being a pretty dominant thing. Maybe they just don't see the priority in Carplay.
Car navigation unit for Japan was great (still great for navigation functionality), so perhaps people don't need CarPlay than other countries where car navi unit is poor. Though now most companies sell their car with "display audio" unit with CarPlay support.
The only mechanical fault I've had with my model 3 in five years of ownership was the bushings in the front upper control arms (part of the suspension, for anyone unfamiliar with car suspension parts.) Tesla replaced the UCAs under warranty. This occurred at around 50k miles, which is a fairly early but not unheard of failure timeframe (normally, I'd expect UCAs to to last around 100k miles and for it to be a crap shoot as to whether the bushings or the ball joint fail.)
I’ve thought about buying a Tesla for years now but stories like this have dissuaded me. I would have hoped that issues such as these would have been resolved by now. But, I’m glad that the other auto makers are starting to finally bring some competition in the EV market.
My personal advice is to wait until 2025. Many other automakers will be releasing models with NACS support, which will immediately make them much more usable in real life.
Tesla also outcompetes other cars on the price/range ratio, so it's the best choice if you want a car for road trips and if you're price-sensitive.
I'm going to lease Lucid Air once they release NACS-based versions.
This is like going to the Dell laptop support forums and concluding that 100% of Dells are bad.
Because Musk is an idiot it's fashionable to hate on Tesla. But there are plenty of us out there who have had an amazing experience. We had one minor issue in 4 years and it was fixed extremely promptly. The car is amazing.
But everything else is shitty. The construction quality, random breakages, neverending rattles are annoying. My Tesla spent more time in service than my partner's Toyota, and this includes regular oil changes.