[andruby]

My personal opinion:

1. The navigation works really well for me. Including routing via superchargers

2. The UX of not needing a key. The bluetooth phone key works so much more reliably than other car manufacturers (n=1)

3. The screen is very responsive. Touch UI is fast.

4. The backup and side camera view is the best I’ve seen on cars.

5. Record the last X minutes from all cameras when you honk (someone backed into my car and it’s nice to have easy access to the video footage via the usb stick)

6. Auto defogging.

7. Heating and de-icing the car from the app when I’m having breakfast.

8. Autosteer (the free included one) works surprisingly well. It handles more roads and situations than I’ve seen on other manufacturers

9. Auto detect different drivers from the phone key and sets their seat/steering/settings (and even their spotify account)

There’s dozen more small things that show the attention to detail that some car manufacturers also have in their hardware but almost never have in their software.

It’s not all perfect (eg the Spotify app could be better) but it’s a lot better than any other car or rental I’ve been in, including carplay).

[verhaust]

2-8 do sound great. They are the reasons I was looking at a Tesla. Hadn't even heard of some of those. The car I'm looking to replace is a 2009 toyota corolla commuter car that is really starting to have maintenance issues. The right speakers even stopped working a few years ago. The speaker on my phone is better so I just put the sound all the way up and use that. The audio sucks, but it's easy. I sit down, press play, and I'm listening to what I want.

My wife's CRV is a 2018 which I only drive when we are driving long distances. Still, I just plug my phone in and all my data is there on android auto. I have starred places on google maps going back almost 15 years. I click a place on recents and it maps me there. I press shuffle on youtube music and it has all my history there to play through. Youtube music also has the download option so I can play music in non-signal areas. That was another thing I couldn't seem to find an answer for with a Tesla. Does spotify work without a signal? If so, how much storage does the tesla offer to spotify? I have multi-gigs of downloaded music on my phone. We hit 30+ minute terrible signal areas on our holiday travels to family.

The options seemed to be switch my apps to spotify/tesla navigation for "car riding" and have to double-entry everything from my home-listening or completely switchover. Which could maybe work for spotify (does that have the same option to upload your own music that google music had?), but definitely wouldn't work for tesla navigation. Then there's the privacy concerns that I'm now sharing more data with two places rather than one. Then the added monthly fee of using Tesla's data plan vs. android auto being free. All that made me think that getting a tesla would only increase my annoyances and costs rather than providing me a benefit. The advantages you listed are really, really nice, but hard to justify with the rest of it.

[vegardx]

You're also a paying customer of one of those services that you're sharing data with. It doesn't automatically mean that they'll be any better, and Tesla has had quite a few privacy-related fuckups, but one is in the business of selling your data, the other isn't. Take it for what it's worth. Lately they've been pushing quite a lot of privacy related things, but it may just be virtue signalling on their part. One feature I really like is the ability to share a destination from Google Maps on my phone to the car and it will instantly route there.

For some strange reason the Spotify app in Tesla doens't have the option to download playlists, it will only buffer ahead and cache things. I've had it happen that it stopped playing because it lost connectivity and I tried to shuffle ahead quite a few times. I think all Teslas come with at least 60GB of internal user accessible storage, you can also expand that by just plugging in a USB-drive in the glovebox. The Tidal app in Tesla does offer offline playlists, and much higher bitrate. I think Tesla is doing their audio engineers a disservice by the atrocious bitrate that they provide through the Spotify and Apple Music app. And Tidal is borderline unusable if you want innovative and ground breaking features like Shuffle, but apparently that is coming this "holiday update".

You don't need to have a "Premium Subscription" to use Spotify or any other streaming service in a Tesla, you just set up a hotspot on your phone and it will automatically connect to it. I've also seen some people connect a mobile hotspot to the glovebox USB-port. Some of them even come with additional storage and things like internal battery so it'll stay connected even when the car powers down the infotainment system. If you have an iPhone it's a little more convoluted, but it's easily sorted out with just using a Shortcut to enable hotspot that fires automatically when it connects to your car.

Tesla does a lot of things very well, and some things just don't make any sense at all. Like when they removed the "repeat playlist" option in Spotify for a year or so. It made impossible to use shuffle, as you'd usually reach the end of the playlist within a couple of shuffles, and it would just change to radio or something. It still supported the option, I could toggle it on in the Spotify app on my phone, they just removed the UI element. Luckily it came back not that long ago.

[Rebelgecko]

FWIW a lot of the things in 2-8 aren't unique to Tesla.

My non-Tesla does 3, 4 (camera view seems higher res than the Model Y I test drove, although I don't find the blind spot cameras that helpful because you have to take your eyes off the road to use them), 6, 7, 8 (Although I don't have enough experience to say how Tesla's compares), and 9 (except the Spotify bit, but since I use Android Auto and anyone who DJs in my car has either that or Carplay it's a non-issue)

[andruby]

I was doubting for a while until I took a test drive. You can ask for the last test drive on Saturday evening and keep it till Monday morning. At least here in Belgium that works and you get to properly test it. Which helped to try out the baby and kid chairs we use.

[pmontra]

> The UX of not needing a key. The bluetooth phone key works so much more reliably than other car manufacturers (n=1)

But do you still have a key?

My phone ran out of battery some 80 km far from home last Thursday because I forgot to charge it. I could enter my car and drive back home because I open it and start the engine with a traditional physical key.

[andruby]

I do have the keycard in my wallet but often travel without it. On longer trips, my wife is usually with us so we have two phone keys and the likelihood of both of us forgetting to charge are slim ( also, the wireless pads in the car is where you usually store it )

Additionally, if I were to be stranded somewhere there are 2 other people with phone keys that I could contact for them to remotely open the car, or just find a charger somewhere.

I have had more bad luck losing physical phone keys in the past.

[thorncorona]

I slip the key card between my phone case and it works fine.

[pmontra]

Yeah, a card. A very inconvenient form factor compared to a key. I forgot that new cars use cards more and more. A key can be put in a pocket and never breaks. A card needs a holder to protect it.

[vegardx]

You can always get a key fob, you just have to buy it separately.

I'll never go back to a car without being able to use my phone as a (reliable) key and store the credit card sized backup key in my wallet. Because it's just that - a backup key. In over two years I've used the key a total of zero times. And one thing I've noticed is that key fobs seems to become bigger and bigger, every year. Just look at the new Volvo key fob. It's the same size as AirPods charging case.

[Auracle]

I don’t have one, but something I can just put in my wallet as opposed to another thing that needs to be in my pocket seems nice.

[sundvor]

Agree, Tesla software is amazing. Have had a Model 3 for 1.5 years; I think I love the remote climate most of all, living in Melbourne, Australia.