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
Braking by letting off the gas? So you can’t coast, it’s either go or stop?
Regen breaking. My guess they can't bake it into the brake pedal because some rules for what a break pedal is allowed to do or just bad design. Both very possible.
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.
Hard disagree on this one. The regenerative braking has a learning curve yes, but the pros outweigh the cons imo. When you brake (in a traditional car or an EV), you are wearing out yor brake pads, turning friction into heat. Done right, renerative braking means almost all energy is captured back, and even lower maintenance by not bothering the brake pad.
It takes getting used to, you hate it at first, which is why tesla has an option to disable it, but there is a reason why most people who own Teslas use it, and other EVs are getting it as well.
Regenerative braking is good thing, yes .But implementing it as one pedal driving is terrible. Other OEMs like Ford or VW blend regenerative braking into the brake pedal of their EVs such that it feels exactly like a normal car. The friction pads are there for either emergency braking or for bringing the car to a final stop after slowing down.
It's called regen braking and puts energy back into battery. You can also control how strong the regen is in settings.
I prefer strong regen and hold mode. The car will slow as soon as you release the accelerator pedal. Hold mode basically means the car stays put when it's stopped until you press the accelerater. Creep mode would have the car roll forward when you release the brake.
The one pedal driving works really well but there is a small learning curve. I would find it a bit annoying to switch back and forth like the valet guy.
Do you put your foot over the brake and maybe hold some pressure on the pedal?. Just asking as I'm going to just put this out there If not your doing it wrong. As a responsible driver your foot must at least press the brake pedal to hold you still and I'll tell you why. What if you get hit from behind. Where is your foot? Over the brake or gas? Most people like 99 percent tense when hit with sudden stress. But are you going to clamp down and shoot into traffic or help everything behind you also come to a stop?
B-but it looks so sleek and clean! Who cares about safety!
Does it? Looks outdated to me.
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.
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.
It's actually not. Tesla just won't care until the feds sue them in court for it.
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:
"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.”
Last time I looked up publicly available crash statistics in the US and calculated the per-maker numbers, Tesla was like 1/80th the typical per capita crashes of the average auto maker. That was a few years back, but I doubt that's changed without some sketchy statistic interpretations.
They looked at fatal crashes only, which is presumably a very small share of all crashes. They also normalised to per mile driven using a sample of data they have - presumably some data on miles driven by car type.
Could be sketchy, could just be a much smaller sub-population.
they used crash statistics for new cars with models from 2018 to 2022, where tesla is the most dangerous brand
