This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I work as a valet driver and the Tesla - unlike any other car including the newer EVs from other brands - seems like it was designed by people who have never driven a car. Ever.
Call me crazy but having nearly all the controls in a stupid idiotic touch screen where you have to scroll through multiple menus for basic car settings is a terrible idea. And so is braking by letting off the gas.
And the people who buy them tend to be a certain kind of person… not the brightest
I rode a Tesla Uber once and the guy clearly didn't know how to drive it because we were lurching forward and backward while just going down a straight road. We got carsick.
That sounds like he doesn’t understand how to use one pedal driving.
The touch screen is an interface-design antipattern. It causes worse driver distraction than a phone, since experienced users can often interact with simple phone apps without looking. They should be banned, and Tesla (and all carmakers) should be forced to retrofit car controls that are proven safe by third-party testers.
But instead, we have Trump, so next year's Teslas will have automomous chainsaw-bots prowling the car's cabin.
And so is braking by letting off the gas.
First thing I disabled when I was lent a model Y by a friend. Second thing was any kind of self-drive.
I think it’s a huge factor in the increase in traffic deaths. That, inexperienced new / rusty drivers after covid, covid fucking with peoples brains, bigger heavier faster vehicles, increased day to day life stress.
People always clown on BMW drivers, Tessholes are the absolute worst.
Teslas replaced bmw for sure, now I'm just like "sure they are dicks but at least they can drive" while teslas are mostly dicks who don't know how to drive.
My Nissan Leaf has the one pedal regenerative braking and I prefer it because you are not wearing down your brake pads and rotors. Thankfully, Nissan continues to use buttons and not a bloody touch screen. I agree with you on that point.
Idk I live where there’s snow on the ground six months out of the year and I like the finesse one gets by being able to let off the gas without braking. Braking can trigger a spin or loss of control in slick conditions.
+1 Indeed!!! My Leaf has winter tires, a heavy ass battery in the middle and the constant regen braking pressure keeps the car under control. Accelerating, this thing leaves the ICE powered pick-up trucks and SUVs in my mirrors. It really surprised me.
Braking by letting off the gas? So you can’t coast, it’s either go or stop?
Lot of assumptions in this thread about how terrible one pedal driving must be. No, you can just set the car to coast like normal if you want. There's still a brake pedal of you need to slam the brakes. One pedal driving takes maybe an hour to get used to, but once you learn it you won't want to go back. There's a level of regen that can be adjusted, and you quickly learn how fast that is. I generally have my foot set at a certain level to maintain a speed and if I need to stop at some lights I've gotten very used to when I need to lift my foot up for the regen to stop me at the right spot.
Yeah and I HATE it. I drove my cousins Tesla when it first came out, way before musk started publicly acting like the douchebro he is and before there was really a Tesla fanboy club with a bunch of wannabes slobbing musks knob online.
I think I drove it in the neighborhood for like five minutes, stopped and parked the car and asked my cousin to drive it back. Hating it is an understatement.
Last year all the valets and I agreed we won’t be parking Tesla’s because of how much we hate them, but management overruled us this year.
I’ve been driving for 20 years. I shouldn’t need a lesson from a Tesla owner on how to drive their car. The fact that I do shows how fucking dangerous they are. They’re not designed by people who drive and it’s so fucking obvious that the computer nerds who design them get chauffeured everywhere by Ubers.
It's a Good Thing their Boss Elon Musk isn't in Charge of Vehicle Oversight now! That would be REALLY Corrupt!
Makes sense to me, most people who own them seem to drive like jackasses.
My partner and I joke that they're the BMWs of electric vehicles. I once saw a 1-star review on an Electrify America station by a Tesla driver who was freaking out about the station not being compatible with their car and whining about how it should be because Teslas are the most common EVs on the road and how they're never going to patronize Electrify America again. Meanwhile, there's a Tesla charging station just a few blocks away that has at least a dozen available spots whereas the Electrify America stations only have four.
I’ve never heard of electrify America
Our university campus and a couple of hotels have Tesla Chargers set up
They think the self driving feature is always on.
Which is odd, because most electric vehicles (including some models of the Tesla) have better crash ratings due to having a crumple zone where the engine would be. Assuming that’s still true, there must be another factor that tips the balance towards deadly accidents. Some thoughts:
Maybe Tesla drivers are more irresponsible than other car owners.
That was going to be my suggestion.
More irresponsible than Nissan Altima or Dodge Ram owners isn't easy
"A vehicle’s size, weight, and height certainly play a part in its ability to protect passengers in a crash,” said Brauer. “But the biggest contributor to occupant safety is avoiding a crash, and the biggest factor in crash avoidance is driver behavior. A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”
When this was posted last week, I mentioned that it was odd that all the most deadliest models on the list were all low production cars, meaning there might be something wonky with their methodology.
There was a similar "study" done a year or so ago where they simply looked at car insurance applications and used people's accident history and whatever vehicle they were trying to insure at the time to generate a list of which models had the "most accidents" in an incredibly flawed manor (Pontiac and Oldsmobile were among the safest even though neither company exists anymore).
Or, hear me out, maybe they are just shit because so many corners have been cut in manufacturing that tesla cars should be perfect spheres by now.
i hadn't ever thought about how the headlights having space between themselves on cars really helped judge how far a vehicle was and how fast it is moving toward me.
that is nigh impossible to judge with the teslas with the unibrow lights when moving in the dark.
New VW vehicles also have this. Seems to be the new thing
Mercedes does that too with all their new electric buttplug shaped cars
But all they did was market their pretty good lane-assist and automated braking as a magic butler that lets you nap in the driver's seat.
How could this happen??
It really shouldn't be legal to call it "full self driving" unless you can take a nap in the back seat.
It shouldn't be called "full self driving" unless the company is going to cover the collision part of my insurance.
As an ev driver, some people shouldn't be allowed this much acceleration 0-60 time, me included.
I've got a "shitbox" VW Golf - the twin charger version, it's only around 118kw. It's not quick by any stretch of the imagination even with the bolt-on mods mine has so far.
I'd not like to imagine the levels of trouble I'd find myself in owning even a midrange EV. Being able to give an EV a ham sandwich and hit 100kph in ~5 seconds or less is absurd.
Not to mention the weight. Those premium vehicles with long range stats are very heavy. That's what makes them so terrifying to me.
I wonder if they have the data broken down by propulsion technology rather than manufacturer. One thing about Teslas and other luxury electric cars is that they have insane amounts of horsepower and instant torque. If you buy a Model S to schlep the kids around and are expecting it to behave like a minivan you'll be really surprised what happens if you floor it.
I'm curious to know if this trend is the same for other high-powered electric cars like the Hummer or Rivian. Cars that go that fast used to be limited to supercars, not large and widespread SUVs and pickups.
(Note this is not saying electric is bad or we shouldn't use it. But maybe manufacturers could ease up on the mo powah baby.)
But I also agree with the article that it could be related to their claims of "full self driving" because people might trust it too much and just not pay attention, or have it fail to detect something.
