With all the negativity I've been seeing on this forum regards to Tesla's misleading advertising, Tesla's autopilot delay, the MX delay, etc. I wanted to post how I feel about my car and why. I love my Tesla.
So I've had my 70D for almost 2 months now, recently got back from another road trip and wanted to post a review of a bunch of thoughts I have on the car, how it does on road trips, and some deficiencies I see.
In the almost 2 months, I have over 4,800 miles, I've been on 3 unique routes for road-trips (one way each trip was between 240 miles and 500 miles), I've visited superchargers probably 18-20+ times, and I've been to 10 unique superchargers in 6 different states.
We travel with 2 young kids, and made a mistake on our first 450 mile road-trip. We supercharged for about 40 mins while the kids played outside, and then decided to stop again about 20 mins later to eat, which took another hour. This made the commute a lot longer than anticipated. So from then on, we started planning much better. Now we try to time the longer supercharger stops with meal breaks. And this has worked perfectly. The car is almost always ready before we are. Even for the quick 15min charging stops, by the time I get the kids out of the car, go to the bathroom, give them a snack, load them back in, the car is ready. It does take a little more planning, but nothing major and while the length of time does increase for a roadtrip compared to how we used to do ICE trips, my wife likes it more, she says it's more relaxing for everyone.
For the Myrtle Beach road trip, the hotel wouldn't tell me if they have charging (they weren't listed on plugshare), but I booked the hotel before I got the car, so I still went ahead knowing there is a Nissan dealership which is Tesla friendly. I called Tesla and asked if I bought a Chademo adapter from them, but didn't open it or use it, if I could return it. They said yes. So I bought one (and returned it this week) as an insurance policy. When I got to the hotel, I asked the front desk again about finding an outlet for me. They said they don't think they have any, but called maintenance to ask. Maintenance said they have had several EV's and they were able to charge, and showed me one location which had an outlet. That was good enough for me, I no longer needed to use the Chademo! Charged the car up over several nights, and it was great. I also added them to plugshare.
Those ~5k miles so far cost me somewhere between 1 and 2 tanks of gas. So that's kinda awesome too.
As for the whole Autopilot debacle, TACC is amazing on road-trips. I can't wait for the auto-steering to come out, and each time I bring it up my wife laughs at me and says that with Elon time it'll likely be a while.
To be fair, I made a mistake with another product I purchased based on a promise (OTA DVR, promised DD5.1 "shortly" after release, 18 months later, still on the "road-map", but still only stereo... eh, whatever), and just like some members here I was spreading the word about the other product until at one point, I was no longer enthusiastic about it. I still use it, because for my needs it's one of the better products on the market, but I'm not "selling" any of them anymore.
Long story short, when I was getting the Tesla I set my exceptions correctly -- I'm paying for what's available now, not what can potentially be released in a future update (auto-steering. Don't care about self parking, I grew up in NYC, I can easily parallel park in very tight spaces). Because, from my prior experience, promises will be broken.
As for reliability, I've had 1 service center appointment so far. They fixed a broken door handle (these are the Gen II's, that don't extract all the way), and replaced my steering wheel scroll wheel (it worked great, and now it's occasionally doing what it did before. I'll bring it up when I have my next appointment. Maybe it's normal? But I would expect when I scroll it, that it always reacts, not 90% of the time). They checked my AC vibrations (which seemed odd to me, but maybe my ICE did it too, but the engine noise made it almost not noticeable), and said it's "consistent" with other models.
I have another service center visit scheduled in 2 weeks, this time my drivers right armrest fell apart (it's held by 2 torx screws, FYI), first the front fell out, and it was a PITA navigating through the cup-holder to put it back in, and now the back one fell out, and I don't feel like taking it apart on my own. And my rear parking sensors are acting up. It randomly thinks something is there and tells me to stop, and I can see that there is nothing even CLOSE to the car.
I think that for a new car this is still acceptable. I hope that in the next few months all the minor production issues shake out and the car will be very reliable.
I still use 120V charging at home (my daily commute is very short). But now that I started driving the kids to preschool, it adds just enough miles that I barely have enough to get back to 90% by the next morning. I'm sure I'll either pay someone to install a NEMA 14-50 (if I get a reasonable quote) or do it myself, before winter hits.
In hindsight I do have one regret. I should've gotten the UHFS audio upgrade, not because it makes the audio SO much better, but because even when I set the audio to the complete rear of the car, my kids complain that they can't hear it from the trunk (the UHFS adds speakers to the trunk, IIRC). So I end up cranking the volume up higher so they can hear it, but then it becomes hard to hear them talking to me...
As for things that still bother me (that are released, not things I'm waiting for)
1. The "Beta" (aka Alpha) route planning sucks. Though with the more recent updates, I believe it leaves a buffer of 7% for the timed charging (whereas before I could have sworn it was 20%, but I might be wrong)
2. The nav sucks too. Google maps does a much better job at avoiding traffic, and correctly timing the commute. Even my morning to-work commute, google maps tells me "25 mins" (for example) the nav takes me on the same route and tells me "20 mins". Seems it's not accounting for traffic as much, or at all.
2a. The nav does poorly in another location - when it's routing me on roads, it often doesn't take the best route compared to google. I'm assuming it does it to save a few rated miles or something, but really? Why can't I chose to have the fastest route, especially when I'm not worried about charging.
3. The AC controls are poor. I keep needing to fiddle with it, and I know that I'm not alone. If I set it to LO it'll blow cold air at a fan speed of 11. But if I set it to 67, it wont set the fan high enough to cool the car off.
4. The service centers need to grow with the customer base. My one visit and upcoming visit are very minor issues, I understand that, but why is there a 3 week wait?
5. I was planning on buying the extended warranty, but after finding out that I need to do annual service for the ESA to be valid, that puts a damper in my plans. I did not plan to get the car serviced at $600, when I require no fluid changes. That seems ludicrous (see what I did there?) to me. Now I'm either going to have to do all 4 service visits (I have 5 days to decide if I'm getting the prepaid plans or not...) and get the ESA, or do service visits every 2 year and hope my 50k-100k miles will be mostly trouble free.
6. The rear seats have no AC. Seriously? Sigh... my kids will only sit there when it's less than 85 degrees outside. I put on heat reducing tint and got the rear sunshade and got them handheld fans. But this is a serious design flaw with no retrofit in mind. They like the seats, but haven't been able to use them much.
I'm sure as Tesla grows, some of my issues with the software will go away. It's still the coolest car I've driven, a blast to drive, and I have no regrets getting the Tesla vs. another car manufacturer.
So I've had my 70D for almost 2 months now, recently got back from another road trip and wanted to post a review of a bunch of thoughts I have on the car, how it does on road trips, and some deficiencies I see.
In the almost 2 months, I have over 4,800 miles, I've been on 3 unique routes for road-trips (one way each trip was between 240 miles and 500 miles), I've visited superchargers probably 18-20+ times, and I've been to 10 unique superchargers in 6 different states.
We travel with 2 young kids, and made a mistake on our first 450 mile road-trip. We supercharged for about 40 mins while the kids played outside, and then decided to stop again about 20 mins later to eat, which took another hour. This made the commute a lot longer than anticipated. So from then on, we started planning much better. Now we try to time the longer supercharger stops with meal breaks. And this has worked perfectly. The car is almost always ready before we are. Even for the quick 15min charging stops, by the time I get the kids out of the car, go to the bathroom, give them a snack, load them back in, the car is ready. It does take a little more planning, but nothing major and while the length of time does increase for a roadtrip compared to how we used to do ICE trips, my wife likes it more, she says it's more relaxing for everyone.
For the Myrtle Beach road trip, the hotel wouldn't tell me if they have charging (they weren't listed on plugshare), but I booked the hotel before I got the car, so I still went ahead knowing there is a Nissan dealership which is Tesla friendly. I called Tesla and asked if I bought a Chademo adapter from them, but didn't open it or use it, if I could return it. They said yes. So I bought one (and returned it this week) as an insurance policy. When I got to the hotel, I asked the front desk again about finding an outlet for me. They said they don't think they have any, but called maintenance to ask. Maintenance said they have had several EV's and they were able to charge, and showed me one location which had an outlet. That was good enough for me, I no longer needed to use the Chademo! Charged the car up over several nights, and it was great. I also added them to plugshare.
Those ~5k miles so far cost me somewhere between 1 and 2 tanks of gas. So that's kinda awesome too.
As for the whole Autopilot debacle, TACC is amazing on road-trips. I can't wait for the auto-steering to come out, and each time I bring it up my wife laughs at me and says that with Elon time it'll likely be a while.
To be fair, I made a mistake with another product I purchased based on a promise (OTA DVR, promised DD5.1 "shortly" after release, 18 months later, still on the "road-map", but still only stereo... eh, whatever), and just like some members here I was spreading the word about the other product until at one point, I was no longer enthusiastic about it. I still use it, because for my needs it's one of the better products on the market, but I'm not "selling" any of them anymore.
Long story short, when I was getting the Tesla I set my exceptions correctly -- I'm paying for what's available now, not what can potentially be released in a future update (auto-steering. Don't care about self parking, I grew up in NYC, I can easily parallel park in very tight spaces). Because, from my prior experience, promises will be broken.
As for reliability, I've had 1 service center appointment so far. They fixed a broken door handle (these are the Gen II's, that don't extract all the way), and replaced my steering wheel scroll wheel (it worked great, and now it's occasionally doing what it did before. I'll bring it up when I have my next appointment. Maybe it's normal? But I would expect when I scroll it, that it always reacts, not 90% of the time). They checked my AC vibrations (which seemed odd to me, but maybe my ICE did it too, but the engine noise made it almost not noticeable), and said it's "consistent" with other models.
I have another service center visit scheduled in 2 weeks, this time my drivers right armrest fell apart (it's held by 2 torx screws, FYI), first the front fell out, and it was a PITA navigating through the cup-holder to put it back in, and now the back one fell out, and I don't feel like taking it apart on my own. And my rear parking sensors are acting up. It randomly thinks something is there and tells me to stop, and I can see that there is nothing even CLOSE to the car.
I think that for a new car this is still acceptable. I hope that in the next few months all the minor production issues shake out and the car will be very reliable.
I still use 120V charging at home (my daily commute is very short). But now that I started driving the kids to preschool, it adds just enough miles that I barely have enough to get back to 90% by the next morning. I'm sure I'll either pay someone to install a NEMA 14-50 (if I get a reasonable quote) or do it myself, before winter hits.
In hindsight I do have one regret. I should've gotten the UHFS audio upgrade, not because it makes the audio SO much better, but because even when I set the audio to the complete rear of the car, my kids complain that they can't hear it from the trunk (the UHFS adds speakers to the trunk, IIRC). So I end up cranking the volume up higher so they can hear it, but then it becomes hard to hear them talking to me...
As for things that still bother me (that are released, not things I'm waiting for)
1. The "Beta" (aka Alpha) route planning sucks. Though with the more recent updates, I believe it leaves a buffer of 7% for the timed charging (whereas before I could have sworn it was 20%, but I might be wrong)
2. The nav sucks too. Google maps does a much better job at avoiding traffic, and correctly timing the commute. Even my morning to-work commute, google maps tells me "25 mins" (for example) the nav takes me on the same route and tells me "20 mins". Seems it's not accounting for traffic as much, or at all.
2a. The nav does poorly in another location - when it's routing me on roads, it often doesn't take the best route compared to google. I'm assuming it does it to save a few rated miles or something, but really? Why can't I chose to have the fastest route, especially when I'm not worried about charging.
3. The AC controls are poor. I keep needing to fiddle with it, and I know that I'm not alone. If I set it to LO it'll blow cold air at a fan speed of 11. But if I set it to 67, it wont set the fan high enough to cool the car off.
4. The service centers need to grow with the customer base. My one visit and upcoming visit are very minor issues, I understand that, but why is there a 3 week wait?
5. I was planning on buying the extended warranty, but after finding out that I need to do annual service for the ESA to be valid, that puts a damper in my plans. I did not plan to get the car serviced at $600, when I require no fluid changes. That seems ludicrous (see what I did there?) to me. Now I'm either going to have to do all 4 service visits (I have 5 days to decide if I'm getting the prepaid plans or not...) and get the ESA, or do service visits every 2 year and hope my 50k-100k miles will be mostly trouble free.
6. The rear seats have no AC. Seriously? Sigh... my kids will only sit there when it's less than 85 degrees outside. I put on heat reducing tint and got the rear sunshade and got them handheld fans. But this is a serious design flaw with no retrofit in mind. They like the seats, but haven't been able to use them much.
I'm sure as Tesla grows, some of my issues with the software will go away. It's still the coolest car I've driven, a blast to drive, and I have no regrets getting the Tesla vs. another car manufacturer.
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