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.
The Tesla Model 3 is now the second most reliable new electric vehicle you can buy. Only the new-for-2022 Kia EV6 is more trouble-free, but we don’t know whether it will match the proven record of the Model 3 as it ages. Data from over a thousand Tesla Model 3 owners tell us that every model year going back to 2018 has either average or better reliability.
Have you driven one? The Model 3, particularly the 2024 update+, is super fun to drive. Zips around town really nicely. There's very little to maintain.
Most of them don't go wrong, so the dominant experience is the above.
+The new model is usefully more quiet and has better suspension. Previous were a bit rattly and very noisy.
What I mean is - I've driven a small selection of EV's, and the Tesla's usually have been setting the bar pretty high. This is changing nowadays however, with increasing competition.
I've never seen the Cybertruck in person but I've driven a Model 3 and a Model S recently, and I think the quality is still pretty high. The performance is excellent and the UX is great.
As for the customer service, I can't say much as I've never owned a Tesla.
I agree with the sentiment that they are really terrible cars in general, but they seem to have cracked the EV efficiency riddle, almost no one else can come close to their miles/kWh numbers in real life usage. I don't know how they do it, but it's just consistently at the top of the league among EVs.
It's aerodynamics, pure and simple. The Model 3 coefficient of drag is very low. It's one of the reasons the Model 3 looks a little weird.
It's pretty easy to replicate by other manufacturers, but aerodynamics is just one factor in a large number of tradeoffs made by a manufacturer when designing a car.
