The only edge Tesla has is the software stack. All the rest is meh. But it is kind of amazing that traditional carmakers are still struggling to catch up on the software front. To be honest, the whole auto industry is heading in a very bad direction, where they think of the car as a way to harvest data of their customers and to introduce their SaaS offerings
We've got an Tesla and an Volkswagen ID3. Tesla's charging planning is pretty good. Volkswagen's driving assistants are vastly superior to Tesla's (despite not being oversold as "autonomous driving").
IIRC, the first robotaxis are operated by companies owned by Google and General Motors, and the only car that has a licence for fully autonomous driving in Germany (up to 60 km/h, only on Autobahn) is a Mercedes.
No, Tesla's autonomous driving is not cutting edge.
Your vehicle needs to be capable of 60km/h to legally drive on the Autobahn, if you don't want everyone to hate you 80km/h as that's the speed limit for trucks.
The Mercedes thing is a traffic jam assistant, if you don't take over when traffic speeds up again it's going to pull over or something.
Unlike all other driving assistants you are allowed to let the car dive unsupervised on it's own. Since 60 km/h is sort of the minimum speed for the German autobahn, this is an autonomous traffic jam assistant – you can sleep, watch tv or do whatever you like during traffic jams < 60 km/h.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought FSD wasn't available in Europe until basically last month, and even then it's still pending some regulatory hurdles. So you're comparing VW's lane keeping tech to Tesla's most basic TACC (autopilot) right?
By the way, VW hasn't just a lane keeping tech, the car is able to drive autonomous in standard situations. Our VW (build 2022) was far better than our Tesla (build 2023) in lane detecting, lane keeping, reading traffic signs (dven in the Netherlands), navigation, detecting city and village boundaries, detecting crossroads, keeping distance and following lanes in curves – the tesla tends to ignore the law of physics and to go to fast. Tesla is far better at detecting waste bins though. It detects every single wastebin there is anywhere within 3 m of the road. VW lacks autonomous overtaking, and it slows for traffic lights but does not stop for them when they are red, that's two points for the Tesla. Though Tesla slows for traffic lights even when they are green.
The VW was able to drive home from work almost autonomous – there were two crossings, one traffic light and one roundabout it needed my assistance. The Tesla would crash multiple times.
The most annoying thing with the Tesla is that it does not cooperate with the driver. VW has a genuine assistant – the car drives, and when I correct it, the VW just smoothly accepts the correction and carries on. The Tesla just stops working anytime the driver intervenes.
Mine drove me from my driveway, through my neighborhood, through stop signs, railroad crossings, stop lights, interchanges, highways, on and off ramps, 85 miles an hour and down to a crawl in heavy and light traffic, in rain and on clear days, almost 200 miles round trip once a week for a year. But I'm in the U.S. with access to the FSD stack. I've driven rentals with advanced TACC tech, and they have failed to impress ( with the exception of Blue Cruise, I haven't had a chance to try that yet). If you get a chance to drive a Tesla enrolled in "FSD (Supervised)" as they call it now, I highly recommend it. It will get mad at you if you aren't looking straight ahead though, and the "keep your hands on the wheel" nags generally only happen if conditions get shitty or you play with the screen/stop paying attention to the road.
That's fascinating. Especially the rain part, because our Tesla's driving assistant just does not work in bad weather. I cannot imagine how it is technical possible to get a camera-based system to work reliably in bad weather without some mechanism to keep the cameras clean. Our rear camera is basically unusable during winter unless we get out of the car and clean it every single time we need it.
Only in North America. Europe has quite a few competing charging networks, and cars can work on all of them because of EU standardisation. The superchargers are typically more expensive compared to the others.
Teslas are badly made, with good specs. The issue is that you can buy a well made EV with similar specs for less nowadays. Musk doing what he does, does not help. The smart move for businessmen is to stay out of politics as long as it does not effect them.
I think it's Musk's behaviour that is the most off-putting to potential buyers. That idiot really needs to be replaced, otherwise the company will fail.
The board might get a kick up the butt by lawsuits from shareholders soon. When it comes to protecting the interests of rich people, the US legal system might be effective for a change.
Circumventing the Swedish labour model by refusing to talk to unions, stealing money from workers that wish to engage with strikes, and bringing in foreign labour force to circumvent union blockades.
It absolutely does in Sweden where it's become much harder and more expensive to buy a Tesla, and there's a possibility you won't be able to get a valid license plate due to sympathy strikes.
Yes, of course a product that is less available, more expensive and has potentially more hurdles to obtain will be bought less, but that's not what I meant and these things are specific to sweden and don't necessarily apply to the rest of Europe.
Tesla being a company with shitty morals and being owned by an asshole is nothing that influences buyers' decisions enough large. Look at other brands that build their cars with forced labor in china. Are people buying fewer of those cars?
Plenty of the Chinese EV brands strike a better balance between affordability and reliability than Tesla, so honestly you'd be dumb to buy the latter.
Look at other brands that build their cars with forced labor in china. Are people buying fewer of those cars?
Well no, but we also don't visibly see the suffering that goes into the making of products. People are still buying chocolate, bananas, and fast fashion. Besides it's not like Tesla cars are made without suffering, so it's all the same shit, really.
Given how high fascist parties like AfD, RN and the Brothers Of Italy are riding in the polls, you’d expect some of the glow to rub off on Tesla and boost their sales, but Musk doesn’t even have the soft skills to pull that off.
