It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
In the EU, it's illegal to sell cars that don't have back camera, not beeping if seatbelt not fastened, and not beeping if speed limit is exceeded.
Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.
Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?
Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.
Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.
Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.
'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.
It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.
If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.
Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.
Agree. OP should have just bought a 10yo Corolla.
After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.
Great car.
Well, the volume knob for the car audio, while physical, is actually digital so it's uncomfortably laggy.
I only use the touch screen to interact with the navigation (it integrates with Android via USB).
Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.
Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.
But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.
Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.
Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.
No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!
Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.
What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?
The best of both worlds...
[1]: https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-ser...
EDIT: top is after, bottom is before.
Getting the software right is hard (and thus expensive), which is what traditional physical product companies have a hard time figuring out.
It told you the blind spot indicator isn't working anymore which is relevant safety information.
The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.
It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.
This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.
These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.
/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away. It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.
Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.
Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button. /end rant
For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!
Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.
- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.
- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.
- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.
On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.
At least it doesn't steal your personal data like Smart TVs do.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-10-09/car-brands-ar...
Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.
But yeah, bad software is bad no matter the tech used.
Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.
Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.
>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.
EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.
As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.
I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.
I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...
After my Nissan car started to have transmission problems that would cost thousands of dollars to fix (among various other small issues), I sold it as quickly as possibly and swore I'll touch the make again.
Why did you buy a second one??
First: has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it. Because comparing it to a Clio just because the Clio worked, well, seems a bit off. a Clio is a car, a fully functional Tesla is a gian iPad with wheels. There's a huge difference.
Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
Third: No doubt that a car with all these defects _must_ be changed, or fixed immediately at no cost of transportation, or offered a compensation to get it back. I think the owner should _also_ contact a lawyer and try to get a refund. I'd not accept this kind of treatment.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
At the first general inspection after purchase 2-3 years out, 14.2% of all checked Tesla Model 3s had issues. Comparing that to other models that are on record in sufficient numbers, its a high rate of failure. VW ID.3, for example, had 5%.
https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-leads-with-unmatched-...
Have yet not had a single problem for two years.
Surely the problem lies in a high variance in the production of later models.
Like when you visit a stellar restaurant and come back years later to realize the magic sauce was a chef who left.
Also, yes, it sounds risky to buy a car without being able to drive it back when it immediately breaks. I can also see myself as a victim of that because of experiences like yours and mine: Teslas are the most purchased EVs, they're everywhere, surely you'd know if their reputation is tarnished for other reasons than the mascot being unpopular.
If you buy the special red colour Y, it'll be German made. The other colours can come from China or US.
but- a car company that doesn't see the need to have emergency rear door releases has systemic issues. someone, anyone involved in approving that design could have said "no. i will not sign off on this", but they didn't.
it makes me wonder what other corners they cut, and whether those cut corners could kill a driver or passenger- because they're not going to cut corners on anything that would be immediately apparent in daily use: it would be detrimental to sales.
OP doesn't make any implication about Musk at all, his name is only mentioned in passing.
>I own a Tesla and I have the opposite experience.
This is not a useful contribution.
Obviously there are many satisfied Tesla customers. No one doubts this.
The point of an article like this is to bring to light just how bad a Tesla experience can be. Not a tiny bit bad, but really miserable and expensive.
You think it's useful to have a blog post to reveal the shocking truth that mass manufactured products aren't 100% reliable? A lemon could be produced by any auto manufacturer and the customer could have the same experience
To paraphrase Chris Rock: should we give Tesla a cookie? "Everything worked out of the box" is what's supposed to happen.
From middle of Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary is as far as Houston to Austin drive. No border or customs controls. Vehicle insurance issued in one, is valid in both. You only have to spend few euros to buy a vignette (road toll). I don't see your point.
I still wouldn't want to own a car where the nearest service center is a Houston-Austin distance.
> I have the opposite experience. Everything worked out of the box.
You did not have the opposite experience. You had no experience because nothing on your vehicle went seriously wrong.
I suspect the customer service might vary significantly across countries, but I can't speak to that myself.
So in one view, he is indeed the guru of legend, and is responsible for the successes of Tesla and SpaceX, so a good candidate to refactor the federal government.
However, if he's responsible for their success, he's responsible for their failure. And this is a massive failure in manufacturing, in quality control, in after-sales service, and in just plain ol customer service.
But, if he's just a canny investor and his best companies succeed by insulating the company from him, then why the fuck is he touching the federal govt systems?
As for "buying a car in a country with no service" - the parts shortage looks to be global, so local market wouldn't help that.
I live within 15 miles of two Tesla centres, and so far I've only had to use them once for a minor sensor issue, which was serviced at my property at no cost to me. If I didn't have any Tesla centres within a couple hours' drive I probably wouldn't have bought the car.
And as someone who drove multiple cars, from multiple East Asian and European marks, I suggest you try drive newer cars, because your opinions don’t match 2024-2025 MY cars from those brands (except for maybe MG, and Toyota, but both aren’t designed or sold for the driving experience. Toyota leaves it for their Lexus brand, and Chinese marks don’t even try to compete on that yet).
The Kia's we tried were mostly great (The EV6 felt like a cockpit though) - the EV9 was awesome but we couldn't convince ourselves to get such a large vehicle.
Not an EV, but I have a 2022 Kia Sorento with a fair number of weird software bugs-e.g. the sound from the navigation system randomly stops working and I have to restart the car to make it work again; the car tries to read speed limit signs using machine vision but its capabilities are too basic so it reads them incorrectly (in particular, conditional speed limits which only apply under a certain condition, such as at certain times of day, for heavy vehicles only, it will treat as absolutes)
Is their EV software better? Outside of cars, my experience with South Korean software hasn’t impressed me
I find the OS perfectly boring, and I like it that way. Most of the car functions has physical, clicky buttons. The one that doesn't are justified IMO (navigation, pairing bluetooth, etc.).
Contact ECC-NET and ask for advice on next steps: https://commission.europa.eu/live-work-travel-eu/consumer-ri...
There are zero screens, touch or not (not counting the instrument displays). Everything is operated with the old buttons and dials, though the windows are electrically operated. It has a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port (which supports USB audio). I haven't measured exactly but its fuel efficiency is fantastic, probably 70 mpg or more.
It has very common parts and can be serviced basically anywhere in the country. I see tons of the same car on the road everywhere.
Downsides of course are the engine is fairly weak, and it's not as safe in an accident compared to bigger cars. But if you're driving in a country where everyone else is driving small cars, that's less of a concern.
I don't know what the point of writing all that was, but I'm just glad to not be in the same car situation as the OP. It doesn't have to be that way!
- All my communications with the Budapest Service Center: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-04/all-my-communic...
- How to spit in a customer's face: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-07/how-to-spit-in-...
The customer went to the length of buying the domain of the type _company_ is terrible, started to collect reviews from other allegedly wronged customers, and SEO it to the first position in Google search results when you searched for any of the food items or the company name, above the company itself.
As a result the company had to advertise a lot on Google to make sure it's own order links are sponsored above the complaint website. That costed A LOT of money, but if they stopped advertising, the online order business would die.
We offered to buy the website or pay the owner to take it down, at basically name your price, and the owner refused any deal, out of principle.
It's amazing what an unreasonably determined individual can do
* they sold him a broken car in December, that keeps losing battery 8% per day even when standing out doing nothing
* they told him they could repair it, at the end of February, because of high demand for the part
* he cannot now go to holiday peacefully and has to charge it nonstop
* he doesn't consider the car safe to drive it all the way to the service center, because it basically doesn't work
* the customer support is ignoring him
Sounds like a nightmare alright. If I was him I would start getting lawyers/customer rights groups involved.
start writing paper letters instead of e-mails. Usually companies take those more seriously. Paper letters means "ok he is really talking business now".
You can write up a letter for them and they send it.
In many companies anything going through legal is immediately prioritised.
And what’s the point of a “summary” when TFA opened with a very good two paragraph summary of the situation? Can’t even tell if it’s gaslighting to make light of the problems, or some stupid AI summary service running amok.
Hyundai and Polestar are way better electric options that are actually enjoyable and comfortable to drive
But OP has clearly received a lemon, and Tesla service has a well-deserved reputation for being extremely slow when they need to fix any non-trivial issue. And in the OP's case buying the car in a country with no official Tesla presence is making things even worse.
I have no idea how it drives, and I am pretty sure the answer is not "horrible", but the sale numbers of a car that is ordered mostly online without test drives doesn't mean anything.
Some of the Hyundais look neat. That company has come a long way.
I was behind a brand-new Tesla Model S, a few months ago. Looked like about a $90K trim package.
The trunk was slightly out of line. Probably not enough to affect the seals, but plainly visible.
It would likely have taken two minutes with an Allen wrench to fix, and the fact that a car costing that much, was allowed to leave the factory in that condition, does not speak well for their QC.
Volvo’s owner is a front man for the Chinese government, who are supposedly not averse to ethnic cleansing, as far as I have read.
This is a common problem. I also have a severe dislike of the Tesla updating process. I have the feeling that it's made for people who have a garage with 24/7 wifi. Without that, you're out of luck. In Okt and Dec of last year I have spent 4 hours per month on updating. This is with a 2020 Model 3.
The solution by the way for this problem is probably to go into the service mode and reinstall the software [1]. It will give some nasty warnings but it should work. I tested it myself once and for me it worked.
Another note:
> But this is Tesla, and it seems like no one is behind the wheel.
Yes that's true. It's very hard to get support and I also have some gripes about how some serious problems are not fixed. Tesla does have amazing online manuals though so that does alleviate the situation a bit. Also, if I need service I learned it's best to just walk into the service centre and ask there. They are very reasonable then. Just don't try any digital way. There is no point.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/x00cbj/comment...
There being an "updating process" is already a huge red flag for a car.
I don't like the modern 'car OS as a service' system where every month or so defects need to be fixed for some reason, but OTA is a hell of a lot better than the system before software updates became available to consumers.
That is not true at all. You have EXACTLY the same protections no matter where you purchase from in the EU, and there is a lot of assistance set up specifically to help handling cross-border issues.
I do agree that the distance is definitely an issue for service though - its exactly why I haven't purchased a tesla
Edit: had this situation in 2024. BMW sold a faulty car with international warranty. When the buyer found broken rear differential BMW offered to cover 3% repair cost. So the question was to sue BMW or pay 4000€ for by warranty covered repair out of own pocket.
Overall, this seems like a car brand with many pitfalls and "special" service culture. Together with the CEO radicalizing himself, I don't see any particular reason to buy them.
If every wronged customer can sue the seller due to a clear breach of the law, then the seller/manufacturer quickly falls in line and stops being a nuisance to society.
Maybe pack those pseudocourts by registering a huge roster of consumer-oriented arbitrators?
But, since there aren't any dealerships / service points anywhere close, he has to drive 12 hours to the closest one. He got some error, I think it was the tire pressure sensors/tire pressure monitoring system, and had to drive 12 hours, sleep in hotel, and drive 12 hours back, to get that error fixed.
Two days after he comes back home, a new error with the AC pops up. Back on the road.
Local 3rd party techs can't do anything with it anyway. And since it was still under warranty, that's what he had to do. With that said, from what I've heard, they've increased their traveling / touring techs that will visit rural towns.
Hell, even repairing my 14 year old Audi is 50% mechanical work, and 50% knowing how to use the diagnosis / VCDS tool. I'm not even joking when I say that my electrical engineering and programming background has helped me more with fixing my car, than the mechanical skills I picked up in the garage. ¨
With very modern cars, there's just little one can do.
Exactly the same reason my dad did a total change in his profession (20 years as a car mechanic). He was fed up with all the electronics making his life as a mechanic more difficult then it needed to be, and that was like 20 years ago. He had those think diagram books and needed to constantly dig into them to figure out what sensor was on what for the onboard computer and other issues. What was a easy fix job, became a nightmary because the sensors / computer kept triggering when issues got fixed (or where never the actual issue but faulty sensors that randomly triggered).
Maybe today things are easier with VCDS tools, but in his days, it was manual work.
He became a IT helpdesk operator after reschooling. hahaha...
I had one of those cars, great car (toyota) but there was a sensor that just at random loved to trigger on exhaust mixture, and then power throttle the car. Even had a tool with me in the car, to reset it with my smartphone, whenever it trigger. It was not a sensor issue but too tight tolerances set from factory. It was cheaper to just reset it myself, then risk getting updated software to fix it (and potentially create new issues as i read some horror stories of people getting software updates for that issue).
I am still driving a 15 year old Opel, that has barely any electronics (compared to "modern" cars). I really do not see the benefits of newer cars. It drives me from A to B, with all the basic conforts, so why change?
Buying a car in London I check there is a dealer within a 12 minute drive!
Anyway, pretty shitty experience.
> To start with, the Dolphin falls victim to a speed limit warning system with no tolerance and a chiding beep that will quickly drive you insane.
The car has cameras to read speed signs and if it detects you are speeding beep at you. Sounds like a great feature! What's the problem if you aren't speeding?
> To make matters worse, the Dolphin is equipped with equally flawed traffic sign recognition technology that takes all speed limit signs at face value, ignoring the time stipulations common in school zones and busy shopping hubs.
Oh ... we have some speed signs that have time qualifiers, eg lower speeds around schools near start and end of school, or busy shops etc.
> It’s one thing to have a car bother you for breaking the speed limit, but another altogether for a car to unnecessarily distract you during safe, lawful driving. Rant over… for now.
> You can switch the system off, just not permanently. Settings revert to their default state every time you switch the car off, so setting up ADAS becomes a time-consuming daily ritual.
Absence of a feature is often far superior to a broken one.
[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2025-byd-dolphin-re...
If it's anything like the speed limit warning system in my Volvo, it's utterly useless. It gets the speed limit right about 80% of the time I would say. The other 20% it sees a sign "max 5 ton allowed" and thinks it means "max 5 kph", or it sees a sign in a side street and thinks it applies on the main street. Or a speed limit ends at a crossroad, which the system doesn't understand. The system often thinks the speed limit is 30 kph where it's actually 50 kph which is annoying; sometimes it thinks the limit is 90 or even 120 where it's only 50 or 70 which is outright dangerous.
The system is not to be trusted at all. There suggestions to make laws that would require cars to enforce these limits, instead of just showing the limits and warnings. I'm not against that in principle, but those systems need to get a lot better than the one in my Volvo first.
Could this mean you could get problems as this car does not conform to the standard?
It also does not conform to the reference cars which were used to acquire the type approval.
Owned a Model 3 since August 2023, didn't have any issues with it yet apart from those in place from the very beginning (left rear view mirror sometimes won't unfold or will but only partially, it takes a few cycles to get it to unfold fully, plus another small one that probably depended on use pattern and when mine adapted i can't reproduce it anymore).
tesla is (in)famous for customer service and quality issues.
Almost every popular company is infamous for bad customer service and quality issues, it's just a matter of luck. You're probably reading this comment on either a smartphone of a brand already known for quality issues and bad customer support, or on a PC built with parts from brands known for quality issues and bad customer support.
And anyways, "you have only yourself to blame" is not true. You have the seller to blame usually. And by law, not just in some vague moral sense.
> I estimate that the total import costs were slightly over 2000 EUR.
I live in Slovakia and bought a Model 3 in Slovenia. I rented transport plates in Slovakia, took a train to Ljubljana, stayed overnight, took delivery of the car in the morning and drove back to Slovakia.
It cost me maybe 150€ and I got a pleasant trip out of it. The car price in Slovenia was ~5k lower than Slovakia back then.
What principle? Aside from mouth gaping nerdy admiration early on ("oh EV! oh, sportcars! Oh, it can ~kill y~ drive itself! Oh, shiny panels"), they'd been nothing but trouble for a decade now. And let's not get started on the Cybertruck either.
Save you sanity - call a lawyer and have them discuss the situation with Tesla.
That's what I did with Mazda and around a month later things were solved.
Stop sending emails and calling people at the company- they don't care - call a lawyer and save your sanity.
First, they will tell you how to complain to the company - what specific terms to use, and how long they have to respond and to resolve your matter.
Second, if you don't get a proper resolution, they will advise you how to sue the seller. You will usually have law on your side by that point, so there is almost no way the seller can weasel out.
Third, the consumer rights office you talk to might have contacts for expert investigators who can act as a third party in your court case. They will provide a written statement to the effect of "this is what happened, this is the law, the buyer can demand this remedy".
Finally, the seller will likely settle out of court, because you're not the first customer they abused and they already know how these things go. In the EU, you will often get either a replacement of the item, or a full refund, or sometimes you might get to choose. That is the bare minimum, you can also demand that they pay your court costs in most EU countries, and some compensation for loss of income, cancelled holidays, and other such things. Depending on how strong your negotiating position is, you will get some of these things.
If you have a website about how bad the product is and you are willing to take it down or write about reaching a satisfactory conclusion after negotiations with the seller, your negotiating position is very strong.
The consumer rights office will tell you all this process and it will vary a little bit. But it's important to do this relatively without delay, there is no point in dealing with unresponsive customer service. You need to tell them the right things by law and they will be forced to respond or to face the lawsuit. An abusive company will not respond out of good will, without compelling them to, you are just wasting time.
In Holland, the consumer rights office is the ACM.
Legal Guarantee: Consumers are entitled to a minimum two-year legal guarantee for new cars. This means that if the car has a defect or does not conform to the contract, the consumer has the right to have it repaired or replaced at no cost.
Presumption of Defects: If a defect is discovered within the first six months after purchase, it is presumed to have existed at the time of delivery. This shifts the burden of proof to the seller, who must demonstrate that the defect was not present when the car was sold.
Repair or Replacement: Consumers can choose between having the car repaired or replaced. If neither option is feasible or if the seller fails to act within a reasonable time, the consumer may be entitled to a price reduction or a full refund.
Additional Rights: The directive does not limit consumers' rights to additional warranties or guarantees offered by manufacturers or dealers. Consumers can still benefit from any extended warranties that may be provided.
Cross-Border Purchases: The directive also applies to cross-border purchases within the EU, ensuring that consumers have the same level of protection regardless of where they buy their car.
Enforcement: Member states are responsible for enforcing the directive, and consumers can seek redress through national consumer protection authorities if their rights are violated.That said, Tesla opened a second service center in my country and it is far, far better than the first. It's a longer drive to get there, but it at least restored my faith in the company. My Model 3 is the quietest, best at passing, cheapest per-kilometer, lowest maintenance, most enjoyable vehicle I've ever owned. I would be a shame to me to not buy another Tesla, based on the service center experience.
I'm not sure why he's got problems returning, I'd expect Dutch consumer protection laws to make this an open and shut case.
That is the funny thing with the second hand market. 20y old cars sold 20k€ or 80k€ new are sold more or less at the same price 20 years later. Because of higher maintenance cost and parts price + higher number of stuff that can fail, the more luxury items are also the ones that are less wanted and people looking for inexpensive cars will favor the most sold small cars of that era they or an independent garage can fix easily and cheaply.
EDIT: oh wait, he did do that actually:
>> On January 5, 2025 I called Tesla Netherlands Sales Department to request the return of the vehicle and a refund of my money.
Sounds like he should contact a dutch lawyer to send them an official letter informing that he's returning the goods as unfit to use.
However, when it received the holiday update with Apple Watch support, and I paired my watch, it started losing several % charge every day. I contacted service who told me to reset my password, which effectively disconnects all connected devices from your account. That solved it. Then I paired my watch again, same problem.
In the next update, Tesla fixed it. And in the next update, it automatically paired your watch without asking. Brave/risky of them, given the previous issues.
My biggest concern for this car now, other than getting abuse for owning a Tesla or the brakes rusting up [1], is Tesla releasing a software update that breaks something, possibly dangerously. With Musk’s recent behaviour I wouldn’t be surprised if talented engineers are leaving or considering it, perhaps excluding Musk’s favoured h1b employees…
[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2024/11/tesla-model-3-comes-bottom...
Clearly there are still some things to iron out, and I personally know folks with a few problems in the new model, but as a 2024 M3 owner with zero problems I hate the one-sided online communication surrounding this.
I'm not condoning Elon's behavior at all, but this vehicle is such an insane value for money especially with EV rebates and such. Purely saying Tesla is bad quality is such an easy trope, especially if you have never driven in one
That is actually one of my pet peeves ... some basic math gives you:
12.5 kWh/100km * 0.4-0.8 €/kW = 5-10 €/100km [1] 12.5 kWh/100km * 393g CO2eq/kWh = 4.913 kg/100km [2]
Now compare that to the Toyota Corolla (Hybrid) that he originally looked at:
4.5 l/100km * 1.6-1.8 €/l = 7-8 €/100km [3] 4.5 l/100km * 2.237 kg/l = 10.7 kg/100km
There are some assumptions that tilt this calculations into the EVs favor though:
1. Charging is never 100% efficient, more likely around 90%. 2. That number is based on E5 fuel, E10 takes some of that off as well. 3. 12.5 kWh/100km is what is given by Tesla, independent tests e.g. by ADAC (German Car "Club") cites 17.2 kWh or 18.6 kWh.
So overall the numbers shift a lot towards the hybrid:
(18.6/0.9) kWh/100km * 0.4-0.8 €/kWh = 8-17 €/100km
(assuming 90% charging efficiency)
---
[1] Common price for electricity in German households, better if you have solar, much worse if you have to buy for 0.6-0.8 €/kW at public chargers. [2] Based on CO2 emmisions in Germany, averaged over a year https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo/monthly ... better in summer (solar), worse in winter (coal). [3] High price for E10 in Germany, more likely 1.6-1.7€/l
I too have bought a TM3 in Slovakia. The closest Tesla service center to Bratislava is 50 kilometers away, in Vienna.
What's the problem with not having a branch here as well?
For someone who is "not a car guy" and for whom this is their only car....that's insane.
I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience. Actually it is degrading my whole internet browsing experience nowadays. There is too much "btw, you should feel bad when you do X". It's divisive, the US could use less divisiveness or anti-divisiveness.
And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
But it turns out Teslas and Chinese EVs are among the worst performing in the mandatory periodic inspections in many European countries. This is not because of some anti-US/China bias in European car inspections because Ford (US) and Volvo (China) are doing well.
What happened to EV reliability and maintainability?
With nearly every other new car brand you have to go do a service once every year or so to keep the warranty.
With tesla & some Chinese brands that's not a thing
That was absolutely a lie. And the "we need the EV revolution" was pretty bogus too.
Zipping to 60 mph on the highway in 3 seconds was fun a couple times, but I would never own one. Especially if one guy could just delete my car if he decides he doesn’t like me.
Just tells you about the brilliance of Tesla cars.
Lack of mechanical fallbacks for many of the screen functions is a (distant) concern, but doesn't keep me up at night.
Re: @tobyhinloopen's complaints about nags: could not agree more. Tesla doesn't have any, but my friend's ICE vehicle is crazy full of them.
She should then know that "Tesla" stands for "technicky slabé" (technically weak).
No. Sales plummeted right before they released the long-awaited refresh of the Model Y. By far their best selling model.
We have access to weekly sales numbers in China, and guess what, sales are going through the roof again.
This refresh was introduced globally (all factories converted simultaneously), which is a first for Tesla.
I doubt Tesla can survive with US sales only.
Japan recently got the usual Trump pressure/blackmail of investing $1 trillion in the US.
Subsidies for Tesla would look pretty silly given that the Republicans have been criticizing the Democrats for that for the last 10 years. But YouTube influencers could rationalize even that.
Yet again, with two Trump presidencies, I don't understand a lot about anything anymore.
Uhhh...he's selling 5x as many cars than than when Covid hit and nearly the peak of sales...ever?
https://cnevpost.com/2025/01/02/tesla-global-deliveries-q4-2...
As for volume of cars sold in Europe I'd bet the ID series is by far the most common with the underlying platform being the same in many models. That means if you're in trouble about some issue you're not going to be lonely.
I am mostly tech enthusiast but as a proper adult I want to scream "fu* off I just want to use that damn thing I want to play with my child and not watch another progress bar".
Also I am fully convinced that if you don't look at the progress bar something will ALWAYS break during the update so you never can just leave it to update on its own, when I look at progress bar it always works. But that's just me :)
Shareholders must be thrilled!
Funny thing, he faked that too. For a guy with so much money he is weirdly insecure about some absurd stuff
First, luxury cars are known to have more maintenance issues than working class cars. The idea is you should have the means to own a secondary car, or just pay for fixes. To have so many problems within a few weeks is absurd, but this is pretty on brand for Tesla.
I was joking with a Kia salesman the other day, British cars will say mate I haven't gotten my oil change recently, I think I'll take a nap on the side of the road.
Asian cars will endure endless abuse and still run.
You literally get the opposite of what you pay for with cars.
I don't really want to buy a car right now, but I'm going with an Asian econobox if I do. My first car was 15k , which was very fitting for my new 6 figure salary.
I'd say the writer wanted a status symbol, and found it doesn't exactly work as a vehicle.
"
this is how the lobotomized/neutered people react... wake up people and get back your rights
12 days seems pretty reasonable for standby?
Try not to call them Hollanders, except possibly during national football matches. Tilburg is in an area of the Netherlands that has quite a strong regional identity (and that region is not Holland). You can call them Brabanders if you want to use the regional demonym.
Also that regional identity is going to be quite strong until carnaval has passed, should you visit any time soon.
The crazies are always there. But they don't belong on HN.
What is he expecting?
it makes you feel sick and disgusted before you even get in.
> I didn’t have a car, I had a tamagotchi with wheels
Was too funny it made me chuckle loudly.
Anyway f Tesla
Anyone have any idea what this means? What's power divided by distance?
People seem to get easily confused by the W/Wh and A/Ah thing. A rental car I've took recently showed power usage in 'kWh per hour'. Bleh.