For a number of years I was very skeptical about electric vehicles with, in my opinion, the only one worth looking at being the Tesla Model S but there was no way I could justify the huge cost of one. As much as it appealed to me.
Plus, it was a leap into the unknown in many ways, new tech, new company and a shitload of money so, I passed.
Then along came the Model 3.
Way more affordable with largely the same tech in it, great packaging, actually engaging to drive in many regards and affordable.. oh, I said that already.
But, the US-built cars were, hem, a bit shonky on build quality and when you’re lashing out £40K plus on a car, I expect the bloody doors to fit!
I doubled down on “affordable” because when I got serious about looking into getting one, Tesla started to build them better, as in they didn’t self destruct after five minutes and all the bits more or less fitted together to make an actual car and they started making them a lot better in Chine with a heat pump etc. But, the nice people at the Scottish Government were offering an interest-free loan, there was a £5K EV grant and a grant to get a home charger fitted.
Then, it made financial sense as well as you got a reasonably decent car.
So I snagged one of the first of the Model 3’s from Giga Shanghai.
At the time there was still a lot of hype around Tesla and you’d even get kids looking at the car in a car park and so forth but this before you saw the bloody things absolutely everywhere. For such an experience motor, they sure sold a shitton of them!
Picking it up was, ehm, an “experience” like no other handover for a car… ever!
I’ll just say, if you’re not comfortable using apps on your phone, buy something else.
But once you got going, oh my God, is it rapid! I had the dual motor one, not the performance as that seems just stupid and money not worth spending but coming out a diesel Euro-box, this thing was like mental fast.
I drive, I like to drive and I can drive pretty quickly when the mood takes me and conditions allow. Regardless of what you see or read about EVs this thing can hustle, seriously hustle. The sheer explosive acceleration you can get out a corner is otherworldly, it’s almost as if you can defy the laws of physics at times.
But that’s an EV thing; Tesla’s replacement can do the same. If you’re used to controlling the mass, which I can from more than a few miles driving laden vans at stupid rates of knots, it’s fine.
Most of the time, though, you don’t care and don’t use that power or anything even close to it. For everyday driving, it’s just smooth, quiet and comfortable but, the same is true of other EVs and I’ve driven a few now. Don’t get hung up on the 0-60 or whatever as it really doesn’t matter all that much.
I loved the Tesla, except…
The Bad Stuff
God, it’s poorly made. And spartan for a supposed “luxury” car, that it just isn’t.
The front seat squabs are too short, okay if you’re under 5'6” probably, but I’m not, I’m a lanky 6” plus and there’s not enough under-thigh support and on longer runs, that’s a problem.
Squeaks and rattles, they drive me freakin’ meant, I hate it and in that car you’d better get used to it as they do manifest themselves. That said, the same is also true of other EVS, as there’s no engine clatter to hide it, but Tesla’s material choices could probably have been better, as could the noise insulation, but cost saving, I expect.
Lights
Until I got shot of the car in late 2023 the auto dip didn’t work all that well, you were forever getting flashed, especially from trucks for some weird reason. And, at that point they’d not bothered to enable the matrix lights so, I can’t comment on that.
In fairness, the lights were really good, even without the matrix functionality but not as good as the Merc GLC I owned previously. So, there’s that.
The F***ing Wipers!
Affectionately known as” those f**king wipers”, it is one of the main reasons I got rid of the Tesla as it seemed that, for such a tech-focused business, they could get auto wipers to work as well as even the most basic of cars.
Like, how? How is that possible?
Turns out, head honcho Elon decided that they’d not use a rain sensor (like everyone else) and they’d rely on the cameras for that, as well as pretty much everything else. This is, in my view, a pretty dumb idea.
On dry days the wipers would just start wiping, for no apparent reason I could see.
On rainy days, they’d just not bother to work, depending on what sort of rain it was, and here in Scotland, it rains a lot, so this is a problem. A big problem.
I could live with that, kinda though it bugged the shit out me until they decided one software update after also ditching using radar for auto-cruise, that you couldn’t manually control them when the car was in auto pilot as they call it, which is a hugely misleading name but I’ll get to that. Meaning that if they fucked up, you couldn’t manually take control of the wipers and switch them off.
Old bit Elon promised a fix. Then promised again. Then again.
From what I hear they’ve still not fixed it.
Because I don’t think they can, well, they could, if they could fit a proper rain sensor. But they won’t as, every penny counts, even if it makes the car not as safe.
Great eh?
This absolutely drove me nuts, all the more so with the promises of a fix and, no fix so I started to think that the Elon dude was full of shit.
Turns out, I was probably right about that.
But my gripes are not the only ones I’ve heard about which leads me nicely onto…
How To Destroy A Brand
Tesla, until recently, had an enviable customer retention, evangelical owners who would wax lyrical about how good they were and seemingly an army of social media people spouting about the brilliance.
It was not entirely without merit.
After all, Elon promised us a world of zero-emission vehicles that would drive themselves around for you, clean battery storage, solar panels and so on.
All this appeals to left-leaning types of people with an interest in the environment and so on.
Trouble is, a lot of the promises haven’t been delivered on.
For several years the disquiet around Tesla, Elon’s promises and such as been slowly rising, even though if you say anything negative about Tesla or Elon Musk, there’s a bunch of cult members that will pounce on you at every turn. Internet, gotta love it.
But there’s been so much of late that attacks for being negative have abated.
Because I suspect it’s getting harder to ignore the failures and, easier to see past the hype.
When Musk did the whole “paedo guy” thing that really changed things and to me it looked as if a lot of support evaporated due to that. Then the smoking weed openly, admitting drug use and so on the guy tarnished his “pound shop Tony Stark” image.
Of all the things to do, offer to buy Twitter, then rescind it, then offer to do it, etc, finally buying the platform outright.
Subsequently remoulding it in his image. Changing the iconic name and all the iconic branding is textbook dumb IMO.
Then allowing the platform to get even more toxic, telling advertisers to “go fuck themselves” and more insane antics, late night rants and God knows what else.
Twitter (X) appears to be in freefall, bleeding users and, under current stewardship, extremely likely to fail in my opinion.
Then, DOGE. Then, meltdown
Seemingly, Musk thought it a good idea, despite the general political leanings of his Tesla user base, to sign up with the hard-right Donald Trump which is at odds with the stated aims of Tesla and that of the majority of Tesla buyers.
What was the dude thinking? Perhaps it was a ketamine fuelled brain fart, who knows.
Even if he did secretly harbour these extreme views for God’s sake keep it to yourself and don’t go on a media rampage bragging about it.
A Nazi salute didn’t exactly calm things down either.
Then, in what I can only personally view as unhinged, he gets onto a stage by video link at an AfD rally in Germany… where his bloody factory is, in a country previously ravaged by extreme right-wing crackpots. Alienating a bunch of German Tesla buyers but the look of the evidence.
But this stunt and the whole association with Trump seems to have cratered Tesla sales in Europe now.
Meanwhile, back across the pond, anti-DOGE/Musk/Trump protests start happening, which seem to have calmed down a bit now, but the damage to the brand is significant. Possibly irreversible.
But when you put all these things together, a reputation for shoddy build, poor performance in some ways or niggles, broken promises and the behaviour of the CEO with a growing stigma for driving a Tesla, it’s not good.
I mean, now, if you drive a Cybertruck in the US (another disaster), you’re probably viewed as something of a pariah.
Forcing Telsla owners to get stickers proclaiming that they bought the car before Musk lost the plot. Not good.
Death Of A Brand
We could well be witnessing the death of a brand that has been the poster child for Wall Street this past decade with a meteoric rise in value over that time but, the failure to deliver on promises, the broken promises and the seemingly insane moves by the CEO have dented all that.
Tesla was seen as the leader in EV tech, battery storage and was sorta getting there with robotics, but all this, it’s set that back, massively.
Can Tesla survive?
I think it will, but how well it’ll emerge from the other side of all this madness remains to be seen. They’ve lost a huge amount of ground globally at this point, and in the EV space, the Chinese competition isn’t just catching up, it’s overtaking them.
Traditional manufacturers are also catching up, rapidly.
Meanwhile, what was regarded as “the car to be seen in” is now, in many cases, the last thing you want to be seen driving. With other makers openly trolling them for it.
Not only that, there are "attack" ads on billboards and online slapping down Tesla and Musk it's a terrible look. Though some of them are just brilliant.
On almost every front, Tesla is under assault and that’s when you need a good leader with a clear vision of where the business is going and, I’m far from convinced Musk is that guy.
I’m not alone in this train of thought, and when others catch up that share price is liable to show signs of more rot until there’s a substantial change.