Tesla had a ridiculous lead over everyone and they spaffed it.
No new features, no HUD, no dashboard. They want 60k for cars which have nothing in them. Other companies have now ripped the software and the iPad, so they have nothing unique.
All they had to do was continue to improve the product. They didn’t even try.
> They want 60k for cars which have nothing in them. Other companies have now ripped the software and the iPad, so they have nothing unique
You are not wrong about Tesla's base models like the 3 and Y being light on traditional 60k car features, but the second part is much more debatable. With the exception of some Chinese car manufacturers, almost no Western car makers have managed to match Tesla's software stack.
I can't think of another car brand that makes its own silicon, ships OTA updates weekly, runs an in-house OS that isn't an outdated Android skin, and tightly integrates media, navigation, charging, and energy management all in the same platform. Most legacy automakers still rely on their old infotainment vendors, release update slowly (if at all!), and struggle with fragmented software architectures. Their driver assistance systems are improving very slowly, and they are behind Tesla even for basic features like lane-keep assist. And that's even before getting into self-driving ambitions, where no brand has been able to ship anything similar AFAIK.
Rivian and Lucid are closer philosophically and technically, but they're still quite tiny players compared to Tesla, and haven't proven they can execute at Tesla's volume and pricing.
Seriously, I don't need my car to get weekly OTA updates. And my 8yr old nissan qashqai had lane assist, it's hardly revolutionary. Tesla is pretty much dead in Europe, mainly due to Musks personality, but the quality of its product is also poor.
> I can't think of another car brand that makes its own silicon, ships OTA updates weekly, runs an in-house OS that isn't an outdated Android skin, and tightly integrates media, navigation, charging, and energy management all in the same platform.
VW (ID software 3/4/5), Mercedes (MBUX).
They don't update weekly (I don't think so, anyway), but I don't see how that would be inherently positive. They should be able to update weekly (e.g. security patches), sure, but car software should probably not be changing week-to-week for years on end.
That being said, since the US is basically a captive and stagnating market for EVs now, it seems most models from European makers are not available in the US anyway.
My personal bet is on nvidia. They always show advanced selfdriving capabilities based on ML.
They are also forefront of ml simulation. 3D, weather pattern etc.
Tesla also had plenty of missshapes like Dojo or cybertruck and the sitll not finished FSD.
My Car OS from Ford Mustang Mach-e works completly fine. No clue why this is some advantage Tesla should have? BMW just launched their new Gen 6 incl. their new os.
All the advantages of that fully integrated 'platform' also just works in my car?
BMW is very good in lane keeping, Mercedes can drive more km in germany autonomes than BMW and BMW can drive more km than Tesla.
I of course focus on german brands because i'm from germany. But XPeng and others working on all of that too.
Some other brands rely on Mobileye for driver assistance. It’s clear from demos that Mobileye is on the same level as Tesla, the difference is that the don’t use end users as beta testers. I suspect that when actual full self driving is possible, other car companies won’t be as far behind as you’d think based on the features Tesla has in their cars now.
I'm going to assert that Tesla's FSD™ does not, in fact work on city streets and highways.
Or, if you want to loosely define "work", Ernst Dickmanns had self driving in the 80s, and put in on the autobahn in the 90s. I'd rather define it more tightly as "statistically at least as safe to be in _and_ to be near, as a human driver".
Tesla claims to have achieved that, but I don't believe them. That's because the data they report 1) omits a fair bit of critical info, and 2) frequently changes definitions. Both serve to make comparisons difficult. If it was clearly safe, I think they'd put effort into making the comparison transparent.
Bear in mind that Musk has been claiming "Full Self-Driving" since at least 2016, and people involved have asserted that he wasn't wrong, he was lying.
Rivian recently moved away from mobileye in their newer models, because mobileye is are far behind and limited. The progression of their new in house driver assistance since then is already proving that was a good choice.
Why do cars need weekly software updates? Or - more specifically, what sorts of new software-enabled features (or bug fixes) besides FSD are rolling out weekly in Teslas? Genuinely curious! Is there downtime?
A couple of recent software additions to my ‘23 MY:
* Dynamic speed profiles for Autopilot/FSD
* The ability to specify individual drop-off locations for FSD arrivals (curbside, parking lot, driveway, etc)
* Grok as a voice assistant for the infotainment system
* iOS live activity viewer for the Dog Mode camera feed
* Speed/steering/control statuses being overlaid on dashcam footage
* “Santa Mode” which revamps the UI with Christmas theming for the holiday season
* Automatic HOV lane routing based on vehicle occupancy status
* Vehicle alerts/chimes when exiting, if leaving your phone within the vehicle
* Location-based individual charge limits
* 3D visualizations of supercharger locations, synced with active availability/occupancy per stall
* The SpaceX docking simulator ported as an in-vehicle game, playable on the infotainment screen
These are all additions from just the most recent update, and I can confidently say this is the only vehicle I’ve had that consistently gets better and better in terms of its software features over the course of ownership. Each update takes anywhere from 20-45 minutes during which, unfortunately, you’re not able to utilize the vehicle at all.
I own a Mustang Mach-E and I do not want to have weekly updates to my car software.
If you look at your updates, the FSD one is clearly a beta thing now for so long, of course you need to update regularly if you still change that much. Btw. Musk said 2014 that FSD will allow you to sleep in your Car while driving in 2023. Soooo?
Something like Grok was also added OTA in my Ford car. So yes they can do it apparently too.
Everything else just feels like gimicks I wouldn't want to have. I drive my car i do not play with my car. My car is not a gimmick.
> The SpaceX docking simulator ported as an in-vehicle game, playable on the infotainment screen
Really? People want that? I know that Elon Musk would think that it would be great to play a video game about Elon Musk's companies, but are Tesla owners similarly afflicted?
Yup, and I played it back when it was new. at an arcade, not in my car.
To me it is like someone saying, "Honey, I'll be on the garage watching Football in my Tesla all afternoon." Yeah, you can do it, but is a car really where you want to do that? The second aspect is it is a game glorifying Elon's "genius". What is next, a FPS for your Tesla where you have a chainsaw and you run through federal buildings trying to get the highest body count?
Honestly, i know a few Tesla users and at least for them their Tesla is more than just a car. Its like a gimmick.
Driving to tesla meetups, adding certain accessories for led light stuff, its (sry to say) just weird.
I get the basic idea of telling the internet about some issue and getting faster feedback than from the manufacturer, but I never had the feeling i needed any of this for my non Tesla EV.
And as i mentioned in my comment: I would hate all the regular updates. As long as everything works as expected, pls do not change anything.
Can you imagine an ICE vehicle having "Location-based fill-up limits" or "3D visualizations of gas station locations, synced with active availability / occupancy per stall" ? And of course, such useful features as a spacex docking simulator, which every vehicle needs (I guess).
And you wonder why Tesla is heading the way of the dodo? Wasting the SW talent to deliver drek.
FWIW the “location based charge limits” are entirely up to the user; for example, I may want a full-charge at home but a limited charge at the office (where it might be paid).
Because musk has been over promising and under delivering for years. What do you want to bet those updates still haven't put the "self driving" in FSD? Classic bait and switch. They give you a little thread of hope that one day your car will be better, and give you goofy infotainment features instead of autonomous driving.
Because traditional car companies aren’t interested in buying software that they can’t get built by cheap contractors. Tesla actually hires high end engineers to build software, and that’s not cheap.
This is purely anecdotal but at the local mall (Stonetown in SF) they are giving out free rides.
To me, it looks desperate, and poorly executed. I was even waiting outside shake shack for my order, and the sales person approached me to offer me a test drive unsolicited. While I was waiting, I saw groups of people flicking them off and trolling them.
The irony to me - they have paid me $250,000 back for vehicles under lemon law instead of acknowledging and fixing a safety issue in the software, instead labeling it from “bug” to “characteristic”.
Now, they’re approaching me outside a shake shack begging me to accept a test drive, and i bet the issue is still not fixed. BMW driver assistance pro may be more limited but it is boring in the ways you want.
I was really intent on supporting Tesla, but they refused to work with me when I repeatedly raised the safety issue. They just repeatedly returned the car and said it was an expected characteristic for the car to turn left when I’m turning the wheel right.
I suspect they don’t wanna fix the false positive lane departure avoidance because they probably know they would be even more cases of accidental FSD engagement that do result in a collision where it needs to kick in. At the time I was reporting the issue they did not disclose the hidden disabled lane departure state, either.
I' m not defending Tesla for a moment, but I disagree with your take...
1) Wasn't it always inevitable that, once tha large established car manufacturers really started to knuckle down to creating EVs, that Tesla's lead and 'moat' would mostly vanish? They still have some of the most efficient EVs available, and their UI/UX is still one of the best, but of course they'll face compeition, and of course their competitors will try to differentiate in all directions, and especially those that are superficially attractive (and less expensive to deliver) like interior design.
2) Back in his earlier, pre-crazy days, Musk suggested (something along the lines of) that Tesla's goal wasn't to be a huge successful car company, so much as to prove that EVs were viable as everyday cars, and drive a revolution in the car industry. By this measure, they've mostly succeeded.
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Big picture, totally agree that Tesla seems to have lost its way over the past few years, which unsurprisingly correlates (to an outside observer) with Musk's apparent changes in judgement and behaviour, with its consequent impact on Tesla's image and desirability amongst consumers. The Cybertruck turns out to have been a huge misstep, and not having delivered a 'model 2' - i.e. a small mid-sized option - (maybe instead?) is a huge miss.
Advantage for Tesla is that the rest of the auto industry has lost their way, too. For example, the infotainment in a brand new, expensive vehicle like a new GM is atrociously bad, unreliable, and slow/clunky to use.
Yes, I have. It has the infamous Android delays, and also conked out in the middle of a trip (this was in a renal); had to stop and start the car and re-pair the phone and navigation never worked again.
2025 model year, less than 20k miles.
I can get an iPad myself and a GPS myself that don’t have these problems.
I would argue that Tesla didn't lose its way, it used it way to get were they are and now you see the deficits of it.
They started without all the legacy and worries. Like existing suppliers, existing things, existing image. Fresh market, modern software development etc. brought them a proper market share.
Now the olds had to update themselves, which they did and now they are stuck with tesla.
But thats it. Tesla doesn't has that much innovation. Plenty of things did not materialize at all.
Nobody is even close on software. I’m honestly shocked more software people here don’t appreciate Tesla more for their software efforts. If you’d prefer the traditional automaker route of contracting out software to cheap labor in third world countries then ok, but you’re working against yourself
I can't tell if you're joking or serious. I recently rented a tesla on a vacation back east, and the nightmare that is charging cannot be erased. And FSD of course does not work (yet... they've been at it for 10+ years, maybe someday, who knows?). My rented 2025 MY with full self driving could barely keep itself between 2 white-painted lines!
I assume this post is a troll, 'no one is within a decade of Tesla' -- are you serious ? Have a look at Rivian, which is preparing to make the Cybertruck even more of a laughing stock.
I loath Musk and will never buy a Tesla, but your criticisms are strange. I don't want a HUD. I don't want new features. I want as basic a car as possible that goes forward when I press the gas and stops when I press the brakes. I had a 2007 Honda Fit which I still regret getting rid of. I have a new Honda and every single new feature (except for displaying the speed limit, which has it's own problems) is useless at best and dangerous and distracting at worse.
What "new features" are we talking about? What else do you need in a car? Do you complain about "new features" in an expensive bottle of whiskey? Or a nice computer? No, you want the basics done really well and made with the highest of quality.
When I went from a 2006 mini to a 2021 polestar 2, there were a bunch of things that were either "up in class" or "15 years makes things better" - traction control, non-invasive lane-assist (with invasive options), per-driver (per-keyfob really) seat adjustment memory, charge-aware navigation, radar cruise-control, 360° camera fusion, headlight washers, kick-to-open trunk, interior pre-warm (including seats, as a software upgrade), smart (camera-based) auto-dim of high beams, mirror-retract when parked, mirror tilt when backing up, retractable trailer hitch... little of this is structural, it's just an accumulation of details and attention paid to them.
And a few downgrades (if my 2023 Polestar 2 is an indication)
* Wait 60 seconds to start using the GPS / nav to become responsive
* Unreliable backup camera (even after several software "fixes")
* No buttons or knobs for climate control
* No way to disable intrusive line detection that makes car vibrate when you get close to yellow and white lines
* Overzealous auto-dim of high beams (our 2023 Mazda CX-5 is significantly better with almost no false positives)
It's not all bad, and once the infotainment warms up, it's plenty responsive. It's certainly a luxury car though (as an admitted Mazda fan) you can get a lot of nice from a $30k Mazda.
I'm with the other poster. You're comparing apples to oranges in a 20k vs 60k car. I assume people spending that much on vehicles do want the fancy electronics.
I’m looking for a new car. Not a single manufacturer achieved anything similar to what Tesla has achieved. Tesla’s software is so good, that I can’t drive anything else.
The comment you're replying to says other companies have taken the "software" and the "iPad". To genuinely believe that, one must have not spent much time using Tesla's software or "iPad" to compare with competitors.
It becomes more and more clear that traditional automakers see software as just another lowest-cost component of the car. I understand VW actually started putting effort into their software, but I haven't heard good things about it. Maybe it'll get better.
They cancelled that effort. They tried to create their own software company but shuttled that effort and are back on the "integrate the different vendors" bandwagon.
The updated self driving is also very nice, to the point where I would consider it worth paying $100 per month for aging parents or those who otherwise could use a slight guardrail. I might get one for my parents since Waymo is still probably 10 years out from being ubiquitous.
Also bizarre to me that only Tesla/Rivian offer dash cam recordings as a standard feature. All the other cars seem to come with cameras, they just choose not to allow the video to be saved?
No new features, no HUD, no dashboard. They want 60k for cars which have nothing in them. Other companies have now ripped the software and the iPad, so they have nothing unique.
All they had to do was continue to improve the product. They didn’t even try.