[zaroth]

It’s amazing that this is considered “news”. My ex owned a Volvo S40 that had an electric wheel lock that failed in a way that required the car to be dragged onto a flatbed. Car refused to unlock the wheel or switch into neutral gear when the key was inserted.

Failures cause cars to be stuck all the time. The issue here was the failed response, not the failed car.

Doubly embarrassing that HN thinks this is front page worthy. It’s pure unintellectual click/rage-bait. Oh no, look what those gosh darn Teslas are doing now!

The human fear of new technology is the only remarkable thing about this story. That, and perhaps, the fact that some place in the UK couldn’t find a tow truck with a winch for 9 hours to clear a busy highway.

[orwin]

It's not 2010. Back in the days this type of error (as well as speed regulator not disengaging...) happened often in low-quality cars. Nowadays, it seems like even 'luxury' cars are low-quality, and Tesla, for better or for worse, started the trend.

[zaroth]

BMW famously degraded the quality of their parts to squeeze out every last dollar of margins. They pushed the envelope too far in putting plastics in place of metal engine parts, and has one of the worse reliability ratings because of it.

Tesla certainly didn’t start the trend, nor is there strong evidence that they are even following that trend. We’ll need to wait another few years to see how things play out with Model 3 / Model Y to know the long-term reliability, but after 5 years, Model 3 owners rate their own cars very highly in the long running Bloomberg study [1]

[1] - https://archive.is/dagIR

[orwin]

Sorry, you're right, I misspoke. I'm sorry, I meant 'tesla is the poster child of that trend' because Tesla is the most marketed car in the world (Elon is a genius at advertising),and the yoke, the misfired alignment, the lack of physical buttons are representative of the trend.

Also, sorry if it come as snark, but every consumer-grade car I drove in the US was uncomfortable imho (mostly rentals). Too high clearence, no feeling 'it' when taking a turn too fast, not feeling the road at all. Model 3 being quite lower than 99% of the cars I drove in the US, I'm pretty sure I would rate it highly. I still think it would be a far shittier experience than my old Xantia (best car I ever drove, and I'm including a sport BMW with sequential drive that could 0-140 in 5s)