> It was not the first time Chan tried to buy a Model 3. In 2016, he placed a reservation for the EV and was charged seven times by Tesla. He canceled the reservation and only received all his money back three and a half years later – without any compensation or interest.
Jeez, I was thinking of getting a model Y but some of these stories are scary.
Also the video and images in the link show some pretty bad quality engineering.
I came here to quote this same line. And he still bought a car from them after that?!
Tesla has also apparently just ended their money-back guarantee. Tough to imagine buying a new one now. Maybe a year or two old, where you can fully inspect it before committing. I don't know that I want to deal with their service either though. Fortunately there are a lot more EVs coming on the market now.
> With so many bitter stories to share about his Tesla experience, Chan said he likes the cars despite how the company treated him over these years.
This mindset just baffles the hell out of me. Why? Just...why? You're paying a staggering amount of money for something that's broken from the start and the seller's response is "well, that sucks, doesn't it?" and you turn around and still like what you got sold?
All of the hassle involved in buying a car, new or used, is a big reason why my family didn't replace our last one when it went out of service. It's disappointing that an "all-new entrant" to the automaker scene like Tesla falls into the same sort of take-it-or-leave-it stuff that used car lots have long been known for.
I remember being so disappointed, when I was finally able to buy my first-ever new car, to find out that you CAN'T really get it the way you want it, not anymore.
Too many decades of Americans buying whatever car happens to be sitting on the lot today (usually in silver paint with beige interior) means that most vehicles aren't available with any real selection of options (they're typically packaged together), no interesting paint colors, and dealers that are uninterested in finding what you actually want. It's staggering to me that people apparently feel they don't have any power to get what they want when laying out a huge chunk of money.
It's possible to configure a car to your specifications, but you have to find a dealer willing to commit their order quota to it and wait a few months for the car to arrive. Do not expect much haggling if you take this path.
Same! What’s especially misleading is that most of the car manufacturer websites have a “Build your own” tool where you can select the features and options that you want, only to discover that no cars exist in that configuration.
For some reason this type of behavior is very specific to Tesla. There is something to be said about feeling as part of a community (or as some would say, a cult).
Yes his attitude baffled me as well. I won’t buy Dodge products because as a back yard mechanic they are the vehicle that has let me down the most. They have ghost issues that are near impossible to track down and fix. Transmission issues. Electrical issues. I could rant all day. I finally saved up and went with a Toyota and now feel comfortable driving long distances again and know I should be good for several hundred thousand miles. I honestly believe Tesla is playing with fire with this poor quality control. They may get away with it for now but I promise as they grow if they don’t address these issues you will have the opposite of a fan club and people who hate your product and promote others to their friends. I have convinced several people not to buy dodge/Chrysler. They are cheap to but cheaply made as well and guaranteed to let you down. Will Tesla become the next Dodge?
>“In Hong Kong, any new car demands a 100 percent tax. Electric cars had no tax, so I bought the Model S and the Model X. Now we have to pay a 25-percent tax on EVs, which is still lower than with regular combustion-engined vehicles, but what will happen to the company when these incentives are over? Will people still want to buy cars that seem to come from a junkyard?”
He's not complaining about the service, because the car is half the price of any other car. It's like complaining that a Chevrolet Aveo is small and the engine is underpowered.
"As for the Model 3 he was not able to refuse, Chan said he paid for the EV but cannot use it. The Hong Kong Service Center said he would have to wait until mid-February to pick up his car. Only by then they would be able to fix some of the issues he spotted. His Model X is also at the Service Center, which left him pretty much on foot."
What exactly does make Tesla a tech company compared to other car manufacturers?
Nearly all car manufacturers have adaptive cruise control somewhere in their lineup - they just don't claim to reach FSD with the currently used hardware. But almost all are actively researching FSD with different hardware.
Making EVs doesn't make you a tech company. ICE are even more complicated than electric engines and Tesla doesn't make their batteries themselves.
I'm getting strong WeWork vibes from Tesla's claim to be a tech company.
> most people don’t know what a panel gap is and would never think to measure the ground clearance
No, most people would just describe this as 'general poor quality'.
Six Sigma quality manufacturing is all based on reducing deviation and defects - these are red flags.
And although they might not know to check these things, I think if you explained to the average consumer that some cars are 25% lower to the ground, while some are 25% higher, because of general manufacturing inaccuracy, they wouldn't be impressed.
This is weird to me because it seems much easier for a mfg company(read, all other car makers) to throw cash and catch up in tech, than it is for a tech company(tesla) to nail manufacturing. AutoPilot aside, for now.
There were also extreme cases. Some of them were so sloppy that they prevented safe participation in road traffic. One of the readers of “Motor” received the FSO 1500, in which a factory defect in the body made its driving almost impossible. In the TV program “Kram”, aired on October 12, 1986, an interview was conducted with a man who found 41 defects in a new car he had bought. After consulting with an expert, it was found that there were 45 of them. There was an opinion that in order to drive the new Polonez without any problems, it was necessary to invest 100,000 zlotys in its renovation (~10% of total value). These cars, however, passed the zero inspection without any problems. The sentence of one of the engineers working at FSM can be considered the best justification for this: “People will buy any car”
This is why I’ve been telling people to not order end of quarter and to instead order right at the start. You’ll wait a bit but you won’t have a rushed car or delivery.
Part of why this keeps happening is Elon knows it’s possible to deliver x many cars so he pushes even if it hurts quality. They end up pulling it off and that ends up as justification to push harder. Probably cheaper in the long run to fix the cars post sale. I’ve had a few issues but they fixed without question.
More curiously, how is it acceptable to even let that leave the factory?
This is just pure WTF!?:
They said the car was too heavy for its suspension components. Both the lower and upper wishbone in my Model X cracked due to the heavy weight.
EVs are new so one could expect some roughness around those parts, but the basics like body/frame/suspension have been around for more than half a century.
I wonder if you went to buy a car 60-70 years ago, from one of the Big Three, what were the chances of getting one with such defects?
Are EVs really that new? The first Nissan Leaf came out in 2010, the Tesla Roadster began development in 2004 and launched in 2008. Other modern consumer EVs came out in 2009 or earlier. You could say "new compared to internal combustion engines" but research (and functioning prototypes, even consumer-adjacent builds) on electric cars dates back to the early 1900s of earlier.
I think people need to stop cutting car manufacturers slack on this stuff, they've had time to get it right.
Tesla is a great software company with unique battery technology, but they are in no way a good car company. Even the expensive model S has terrible build quality compared to the entry level models of the typical German brands.
I'm curious whether they can fix this on time, because VW is making progress on the EV side of things and several other big car brands aren't far behind.
This intrigues me as it appears that Tesla is shipping their production mistakes to China.
Things work differently in Michigan. Ford deliveries of the new F-150 pickup trucks were held up as they shipped them to a lot outside the city where non-union help fixed the manufacturing defects. This is how the Big 3 operates fixes manufacturing defects.
The official term is yard hold. This is nightmare for any engineer who’s part is responsible for yard hold. The vehicles are made, but not allowed to be shipped to a dealership. And everyone’s breathing down your neck unless the issue is fixed and they are allowed to leave. Issues can be anything from simple part squeaking to major design flaw. Each vehicle is test driven over a course before the manufacturing teams give it a ‘ship it’ tag. Door fit is a major issue for anyone and everyone. You simply cannot engineer doors to fit right, the assembly line guys always have to pull it, twist it and ‘align’ it. Tolerances exist, but the tighter you go the more parts you’ll reject, the more the cost of that part will be i.e. cost of your car will go up. Everything can be fixed and it’s never too late, the only problem is the cost of the fix. The later in production a fix is issued, the higher is the cost.
> Door fit is a major issue for anyone and everyone. You simply cannot engineer doors to fit right, the assembly line guys always have to pull it, twist it and ‘align’ it.
I know nothing about manufacturing for cars or anything else, but ... why can't doors be engineered to just fit? In terms of absolute tolerances, I'm guessing all the stuff in the engine or transmission for a typical car is far more stringent, right? Is there something specific to the manufacturing process for doors or frames that is less controlled or precise?
I wonder if there's some kind of monkey business going on with being able to maintain production and shipping numbers by "shipping" to some intermediate location. I grew up south of Detroit and remember a time period when Detroit Metro Airport was being used as a storage facility for acres and acres of excess new car inventory.
It's more about keeping the line running. The line has a fixed throughput, and if it stops, it's hard to catch up. It's a stupendously expensive thing, staffed with a similarly-expensive complement of workers.
Rework in the yard, on the other hand, is "soft", it can can be parallelized across as many workers as you can deploy, and they're usually contractors so you only bring them in when you need them.
So if cars can be finished enough to roll 'em through end-of-line and then into yard hold, that's what you do. Clean it up as soon as possible of course, but whatever you do, don't stop the line.
Wait until the start of the next quarter. Vast majority of the cars are fine, but just be aware what to look for. They will fix issues after the fact but it’s helpful to catch anything early on.
Or just steer clear of Tesla completely. They have some nice to haves, but the price you pay (not $$) for it is too high.
I have two colleagues who got Model X's, they both drove as much Model S the first 6 months (at least) after getting the vehicle as the quality was so subpar. One door had to be repainted because the gull wings were scraping against eachother, panel gaps, the car started to kernel panic after an update and was immobilized, the list goes on (This is only what i know off, i stopped asking after awhile).
It's only a sample size of two, but I've never heard of anything like it before. I wouldn't want that from a 1.5MSEK purchase. The problem is that they won't just magically become better without lowering production speeds, which they can't to because then the stock might just finally pop. So buying a Tesla you're stuck getting something rushed together rather sloppily. Go Lexus/Toyota unless you really need the Tesla "cool factor" but rather a good vehicle.
Readit News
Jeez, I was thinking of getting a model Y but some of these stories are scary.
Also the video and images in the link show some pretty bad quality engineering.
Tesla has also apparently just ended their money-back guarantee. Tough to imagine buying a new one now. Maybe a year or two old, where you can fully inspect it before committing. I don't know that I want to deal with their service either though. Fortunately there are a lot more EVs coming on the market now.
This mindset just baffles the hell out of me. Why? Just...why? You're paying a staggering amount of money for something that's broken from the start and the seller's response is "well, that sucks, doesn't it?" and you turn around and still like what you got sold?
All of the hassle involved in buying a car, new or used, is a big reason why my family didn't replace our last one when it went out of service. It's disappointing that an "all-new entrant" to the automaker scene like Tesla falls into the same sort of take-it-or-leave-it stuff that used car lots have long been known for.
Too many decades of Americans buying whatever car happens to be sitting on the lot today (usually in silver paint with beige interior) means that most vehicles aren't available with any real selection of options (they're typically packaged together), no interesting paint colors, and dealers that are uninterested in finding what you actually want. It's staggering to me that people apparently feel they don't have any power to get what they want when laying out a huge chunk of money.
>“In Hong Kong, any new car demands a 100 percent tax. Electric cars had no tax, so I bought the Model S and the Model X. Now we have to pay a 25-percent tax on EVs, which is still lower than with regular combustion-engined vehicles, but what will happen to the company when these incentives are over? Will people still want to buy cars that seem to come from a junkyard?”
He's not complaining about the service, because the car is half the price of any other car. It's like complaining that a Chevrolet Aveo is small and the engine is underpowered.
he doesn't even have what he paid for though
And there is no other practical (ie road trips) EV in the US.
These stories tend to be outliers, most people don’t know what a panel gap is and would never think to measure the ground clearance.
That doesn't excuse poor engineering. You also might measure ground clearance if you can't park your car:
" His car has a 12 cm (4.7 in) ground clearance, which will not allow him to enter his parking spot – hence his concern about it. "
Nearly all car manufacturers have adaptive cruise control somewhere in their lineup - they just don't claim to reach FSD with the currently used hardware. But almost all are actively researching FSD with different hardware.
Making EVs doesn't make you a tech company. ICE are even more complicated than electric engines and Tesla doesn't make their batteries themselves.
I'm getting strong WeWork vibes from Tesla's claim to be a tech company.
No, most people would just describe this as 'general poor quality'.
Six Sigma quality manufacturing is all based on reducing deviation and defects - these are red flags.
And although they might not know to check these things, I think if you explained to the average consumer that some cars are 25% lower to the ground, while some are 25% higher, because of general manufacturing inaccuracy, they wouldn't be impressed.
Dead Comment
Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:
- waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it's of poor workmanship and quality
— In 10 years what difference does it make?
— I have the plumber in the morning.”
(Russian jokes told by Reagan)
Translation:
There were also extreme cases. Some of them were so sloppy that they prevented safe participation in road traffic. One of the readers of “Motor” received the FSO 1500, in which a factory defect in the body made its driving almost impossible. In the TV program “Kram”, aired on October 12, 1986, an interview was conducted with a man who found 41 defects in a new car he had bought. After consulting with an expert, it was found that there were 45 of them. There was an opinion that in order to drive the new Polonez without any problems, it was necessary to invest 100,000 zlotys in its renovation (~10% of total value). These cars, however, passed the zero inspection without any problems. The sentence of one of the engineers working at FSM can be considered the best justification for this: “People will buy any car”
Part of why this keeps happening is Elon knows it’s possible to deliver x many cars so he pushes even if it hurts quality. They end up pulling it off and that ends up as justification to push harder. Probably cheaper in the long run to fix the cars post sale. I’ve had a few issues but they fixed without question.
This is just pure WTF!?:
They said the car was too heavy for its suspension components. Both the lower and upper wishbone in my Model X cracked due to the heavy weight.
EVs are new so one could expect some roughness around those parts, but the basics like body/frame/suspension have been around for more than half a century.
I wonder if you went to buy a car 60-70 years ago, from one of the Big Three, what were the chances of getting one with such defects?
I think people need to stop cutting car manufacturers slack on this stuff, they've had time to get it right.
I'm curious whether they can fix this on time, because VW is making progress on the EV side of things and several other big car brands aren't far behind.
There is a sucker born every minute. Does any one really think their extra 6k for FSD will get switched on before the end of the cars life?
Ask the person who accepted it, perhaps?
It's "take it, or leave your money, and maybe we will get around to fixing it eventually".
Things work differently in Michigan. Ford deliveries of the new F-150 pickup trucks were held up as they shipped them to a lot outside the city where non-union help fixed the manufacturing defects. This is how the Big 3 operates fixes manufacturing defects.
I know nothing about manufacturing for cars or anything else, but ... why can't doors be engineered to just fit? In terms of absolute tolerances, I'm guessing all the stuff in the engine or transmission for a typical car is far more stringent, right? Is there something specific to the manufacturing process for doors or frames that is less controlled or precise?
Rework in the yard, on the other hand, is "soft", it can can be parallelized across as many workers as you can deploy, and they're usually contractors so you only bring them in when you need them.
So if cars can be finished enough to roll 'em through end-of-line and then into yard hold, that's what you do. Clean it up as soon as possible of course, but whatever you do, don't stop the line.
> Giga-Sweatshop Meets Corporate Overlords: an Exclusive Look Into How Tesla China Runs its Shanghai Gigafactory 3
https://en.pingwest.com/a/8154
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/top/?t=year
I have two colleagues who got Model X's, they both drove as much Model S the first 6 months (at least) after getting the vehicle as the quality was so subpar. One door had to be repainted because the gull wings were scraping against eachother, panel gaps, the car started to kernel panic after an update and was immobilized, the list goes on (This is only what i know off, i stopped asking after awhile).
It's only a sample size of two, but I've never heard of anything like it before. I wouldn't want that from a 1.5MSEK purchase. The problem is that they won't just magically become better without lowering production speeds, which they can't to because then the stock might just finally pop. So buying a Tesla you're stuck getting something rushed together rather sloppily. Go Lexus/Toyota unless you really need the Tesla "cool factor" but rather a good vehicle.