Consumer Reports has tested the Tesla 3 and the results sound pretty bad at first:
The Tesla’s stopping distance of 152 feet from 60 mph was far worse than any contemporary car we’ve tested and about 7 feet longer than the stopping distance of a Ford F-150 full-sized pickup.
Another major factor that compromised the Model 3’s road-test score was its controls. This car places almost all its controls and displays on a center touch screen, with no gauges on the dash, and few buttons inside the car.
This layout forces drivers to take multiple steps to accomplish simple tasks. Our testers found that everything from adjusting the mirrors to changing the direction of the airflow from the air-conditioning vents required using the touch screen.
The Model 3’s stiff ride, unsupportive rear seat and excessive wind noise at highway speeds also hurt its road-test score. In the compact luxury sedan class, most competitors deliver a more comfortable ride and rear seat.
Let’s think about Tesla’s home in the Bay Area, though. Population and accompanying traffic congestion have grown to the point where exceeding a speed of 20 mph is usually only a dream for Silicon Valley or Bay Bridge commuters. Why over-build the brakes to sports sedan standards when the car will usually be driven so slowly that the driver could simply drag a sneaker on the ground to stop?
Related:
- Honda Clarity versus Accord test drive (the painful annoyance of one missing knob)
- Business Insider piece comparing Tesla with the Reslas: “The four old-school companies I follow closely — General Motors, Ford, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Ferrari — are awash in cash and profits and have been raking it in for literally years. One salient statistic: GM and Tesla staged initial public offerings in 2010, but since then Tesla has never posted an annual profit, while GM has made over $70 billion.” (what a beautiful thing it is to have taxpayers fund all prior pension commitments!)
Obviously the main reason for taking multiple steps to accomplish simple tasks is to prevent the driver to fall asleep during traffic congestion.
You forgot about the part that the car is also totally unaffordable and also subsidized by the tax payers! These are qualities Californians really care about! http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-model-3-story.html
Although this braking performance is definitely concerning, the car itself shows well. I visited the showroom and the interior and exterior are handsome. I hear it goes like a scalded cat, too.
Unless this braking is a major design flaw which cannot be fixed, which I doubt very much, I think they’ll sell as many of these as they can produce.
I think the more important point is whether they will actually actually offer any for sale at the base price ($35k) in the near future, or if this will be an unrealized dream. Time will tell.
Any intelligent Californian will be relying on the Tesla’s autopilot to do all the stopping. It’s optimized for stop and go.
Regardless of the ergonomics, electric cars make no sense unless you want to feel good about yourself after drinking the Global Warming Hogwash. At $16,000 the battery cost more than a gasoline powered car will use in gasoline in 10 years — more than the lifespan of the battery. So it will save no money even if electricity is free; which it is not. Electrics won’t make sense until oil is at $200 a barrel. Even then, one can argue that farmed combustibles are a better alternative.
This is not to mention that a 1,000 lb battery means a heavy car, shitty braking distances and a high floor. The Model S was a rich early adopter’s play thing and article of status in the same manner that a Duesenberg was. The closer you bring electric cars to practical transportation, the less sense they make — an expensive car that takes 8 hours to refuel (recharge) which is neither world beating in performance nor particularly luxuriously done. Having to stop at some smell cattle ranch to plug in for two hours to drive to LA? No thanks. Cars are about FREEDOM to go anywhere whenever you want, if I want to be tied down to bullshit stops and schedules I’ll take bullshit public transportation. I am sorry Tesla, but Hyundai does better interiors than you guys — seriously, go check out a Genesis.
@dwight, your calculations are all wrong. A used, few-years old electric car cost me about $16,000, so not just the battery but the whole car. With my yearly mileage and local fuel prices, it will cost me about $22,500 in fuel for 10 years. The corresponding electricity cost would be about $3,750. The difference between electricity and gas alone is enough to have the car for free, even if the battery would die after 10 years (which is not a given). In any case, a new Nissan Leaf battery, including installation, is about $6,000.
It does not take 8 hours to refuel. My worst case scenario was a nearly empty battery in -15ºC that took about an hour to quick charge to 80%. Sure, at home it can take 8 hours because we don’t have enough power. But do you refill your gas car at home?
You need to realise that electric cars are not currently a general purpose car for all needs. You would not buy a large truck to drive to LA, and electric cars are not suited for large distance travelling either. Cars are about freedom? Most people use their cars for commuting less than 30 miles a day. If you want to drive to LA you don’t get an electric car. I use the electric car for day to day driving around town, and if I need to go for a long drive, I rent a gas car. Simple.
Hmm… Pipistrel’s “information packet” on the Electro says
“How long will the batteries last, what is their lifespan in years and
charge cycles before the batteries drop to 75% of the original
capacity? 17 years. 300 to 700 cycles depending on careful operation according to POH.”
(linked from https://www.pipistrel-usa.com/alpha-electro/ )
If a flight school does 4 flights per day they will need a new battery pack after about 4 months! Let’s be grateful that the California program is being run with an infinite supply of tax dollars!
http://sustainableskies.org/pipistrel-alpha-electros-come-to-california/ says that the trainers were shipped to California with two replacement battery packs as spares. It isn’t clear how much these cost. They are 21 KWh each. All of the cost calculations seem to assume that they are free. If they are the same cost/Wh as my bicycle’s battery, each one would be about $54,000.
I read the review(the actual review, not articles about the review) and thought the negatives was largely the keys by the street light fallacy. The complete stop from 60mph is a great test, it’s easy to standardize and eliminate other variables. But I have never slammed my foot on the breaks at 60 and had to come to a complete stop in 150 feet, If you’re doing that you’ve fucked up long before. Perhaps it is indicative of breaking problems elsewhere?
The stiff ride is a perfect example of designing for California, that doesn’t work for us northerners. (Perhaps California will reach our levels of potholes when they put “disadvantaged” youth in charge of fixing them)
Perhaps the wind noise is just lack of engine noise to cancel it out?
How old are the reviewers? Perhaps they are just geezers. I can navigate a touch screen exactly as easily as nobs. 100% of drivers are already texting, so distractions are just going to be the norm anyway.
Tiago/Dwight: Don’t forget that electric cars do not require many parts that gasoline cars require.
Tony: I don’t think that the noise issue is a fake one. We recently were passengers for a 60-minute round-trip drive from our suburb into the city in a friend’s Tesla X. Senior Management was seated in the back. She said “That was so uncomfortable [over bumps] and noisy compared to our Honda Odyssey.” (it is an apples-to-apples comparison because we go on the same roads in our minivan and she sometimes sits in the back in between the boys) The Tesla magic is most apparent to those who are already believers in the Tesla religion, I think.
@philg, a new Leaf 24 kWh battery costs about $5,500, so about 10x less than your bicycle battery per kWh.
Thanks, Tiago. In aviation a $5,500 part that goes through the various regulatory hurdles usually comes out somewhere between $55,000 and $550,000! On the other hand, this particular airplane is in the slightly less regulated “light sport” category. Here’s a 110 Wh battery at $4200: http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/emergencypower.php?clickkey=1083082
I confess that I am a believer in the Tesla religion, though my perspective is warped by the fact that I am always the driver.
….the interior and exterior are handsome.
Unless you look closely at the assembly quality, which is like a 1970s American car (not good). Also you have to take your eyes off the road and use the touch screen for every adjustment. Of course this makes for an uncluttered dash but dedicated buttons are ergonomically superior to going thru 3 levels of menu to turn down the fan blower.
Unless this braking is a major design flaw which cannot be fixed…
Musk is already saying that this was just a problem with the software for the anti-lock braking system and can be fixed with a firmware update. Perhaps Russian hackers can also “fix” your brakes so that they don’t work at all, thus obviating the need to poison the enemies of the Soviet Union – oops I mean Russia.
I think the more important point is whether they will actually actually offer any for sale at the base price ($35k) in the near future, or if this will be an unrealized dream. Time will tell.
Tesla has said not to expect any before the 4th quarter at least, by which time their 200,000 unit tax credit will have expired .
Even then, one can argue that farmed combustibles are a better alternative.
Depends which ones – if you mean using food crops to make ethanol, then no way – you need to burn almost a gallon of petroleum in order to produce a gallon of grain alcohol, not to mention the contribution to world hunger, damage to the environment, etc. There have been proposals to produce fuel from non-food crops that grow in poor soil but no one has figured out a practical method.
The sure hint that something doesn’t make economic sense is that government mandates/subsidies/prohibitions are needed to make it go. Generally, anything that makes sense happens despite and not because of government intervention.
Having to stop at some smell cattle ranch to plug in for two hours to drive to LA? No thanks.
The Tesla Superchargers add 170 miles of range in 30 minutes, which is still a long time compared to a 5 minute gas tank fill but not 2 hours.
The Tesla floors are not that low, especially compared to most SUVs where a high floor is a feature, not a bug. Sedans are so out of style that Ford is going to stop making them.
You are right about the Genesis interiors – they are lovely. And my G80 has a feature that few modern cars have – a back seat that you can actually sit in comfortably even if you are older than age 6.
But I have never slammed my foot on the breaks at 60 and had to come to a complete stop in 150 feet, If you’re doing that you’ve fucked up long before. Perhaps it is indicative of breaking problems elsewhere?
First of all, its brakes, not breaks. 2nd there are many real life situations where you are traveling at highway speed and an obstacle suddenly appears in the road and you have to brake as hard as possible. I don’t think a week goes by nowadays when I don’t have another driver pull out in front of me from a side street who forces me to brake hard. This happens not just at 60 but at all speeds but the 60 mph test usually correlates with braking distance at all speeds In some of those situations, having 20% less stopping distance will mean the difference between a collision and a close call.
Cars are about FREEDOM to go anywhere whenever you want,
No, they are about the FANTASY of freedom – this is why they show Jeeps on mountaintops in the ads but in real life people drive them to the shopping mall. The range thing is a red herring in that 99% of all trips are under the range limit. You could just rent a car for the one time/year that you drive from LA to SF.
Now the fact that Jeeps sell like hotcakes shows that fantasy is an important element in car sales but Teslas give you a different fantasy that also sells – that you are saving the earth in league with a Tony Stark like billionaire.
I can navigate a touch screen exactly as easily as [k]nobs.
This is provably false (all you need is a blindfold). In order to operate a touch screen you have to look at the screen so you know where to touch. In a car with knobs you develop muscle memory and can operate the knobs without taking your eyes off the road. Looking away from the road even for a second is dangerous. Texting while driving is dangerous too but why add even more danger? 100% of drivers are not texting (I am sure not) and a few more high profile crashes and it will be illegal everywhere.
I agree regarding the lack of manual controls in the Model 3. This is an ergonomic fail, and also likely a safety issue, as people have to look to operate the controls. Don’t worry, they’ll fix it with an over-the-air software update! (heh)