Tesla makes improvements at a much faster rate than conventional car companies, which results in what we might call 'hacks' as those changes matriculate through the other design components. It's not ideal, but decades of building software has pretty conclusively shown that agility and shipping quickly is a better practice than waiting for perfection.

You might say "well agility is great, except in my self-driving car" but I would remind you that people said the same thing about security software, infrastructure, etc. and were wrong every time. My believe is cars will get safer and better built faster with them innovating than with the traditional model of annual incremental releases. As a Tesla owner, I can also comment that the car feels no less well built than any other car I've owned.

> Tesla makes improvements at a much faster rate than conventional car companies

Is that really the case? I heard their motors are pretty good. But the batteries are mostly Philips and there is a lot of innovation happening thorughout the industry. The software is in parts miles ahead, but their latest UX dicisions are getting dumber and dumber.

> shown that agility and shipping quickly is a better practice than waiting for perfection.

I would argue there is a sweet spot, which Tesla is obviously missing.

> You might say "well agility is great, except in my self-driving car" but I would remind you that people said the same thing about security software, infrastructure, etc. and were wrong every time.

Except for example with the 737 MAX development or the whole "a package got deleted from npm and broke everything". There is a reason for LTS-versions and thorough testing, especially when lives are at stake. My best counterexample to your argument would be Teslas "Full-Self-Driving". It's next year for the last five years, totally insecure and unpredictable, killed people and isn't even better than what the competition has to offer.

If consumers are buying them, it’s somewhat of a moot point. How long did legacy automakers make poor quality vehicles for and still had demand for them?

(own Teslas, all mostly well built, the newer the better)

True, there are plenty of accounts of Cadillac’s and Fords having pieces falling off cars as people were driving down the road.

My parents GM was a constant piece by of crap and would endlessly overheat and brake.

> Your sentence is falling apart as well.

While it can be valuable to point out to ESL speakers/writers, in this case that's not a productive criticism.

I think the Tesla has always gotten an unfair amount of negative criticism in my opinion. Yes they have had quality issues, but usually those go down as the production line stabilizes and they usually come out and fix it for you if there’s an issue.

I myself put my Tesla under a microscope trying to find every unsatisfactory item on the delivery day and I did see some uneven panels. But my wife also got a Subaru the same year and I put it under the same kind of scrutiny and it also had similar differences in paneling. Especially under the hood, either the design of parts wasn’t that great or they just put some non standard items to hold things together. It didn’t seem any better than a Tesla (or any cheaper).

I understand how the perusing the media gives this biased feeling, just feels like Tesla mentions make for a more engaged article. I ordered a MYLR without ever sitting in one due to how neat my friend's Model 3 was. After driving it for the first time, I doubt if I will buy another car. Tesla just makes amazing cars period. Much better than the 3 series I had before as a comparison.

Where does the acronym "MYLR" come from? (Not what it means, but where you got it from.)

I know I can slowly work out "Model Y, Long Range." But it's not intuitive and you kind of have to be a "Tesla insider" to get that far, or at least closely follow their options/trim levels.

It's a bit better than the "M3" I sometimes see thrown around, because an M3 is a BMW, through and through. The car is actually a Model 3, and there's no reason to abbreviate it further unless you're on a Tesla forum (in my opinion.)

Agreed, spent way too much time on the Tesla forums and did not consider the target audience :+1

What is sad then, is that the reliability of the other automakers has been so optimized for income that their cars fall apart just as fast.

Maybe we should have more zip ties and wood in this industry, then? It's frustrating you've formed such a strong opinion without having inspected an actual car, or investigated why people love these things so much.

I don't think anyone needs to do anything at all to realize that zipties and wood are not things that should be holding a modern automobile together.

Zipties are all over the place in any modern car. They are used especially to hold wiring and hoses securely so they don't flop around and abrade against other parts of the car.

Why? If the fastener works, what is the issue? This is the exact sort of thinking that compounds into large delays.

In this case, Tesla obviously ran into an unexpected problem, and did not have a part to fasten this piece. They used various fasteners to secure it, and I'm not aware that anyone has had any problems with it, except that it seems strange.

At the time, Sandy Munro saw something similar in his tear-down, and didn't think it was a big deal. Obviously not a permanent part, but nothing to be worried about, either.

This is the kind of fix you can get with a recall or late problem. It's not a "zip tie" it's a steel cable tie. The wood's a bit shonky but another manufacturer might have got plastic clips made instead of the wood and otherwise made exactly the same fix.

I don't think zip ties and wood are a structural part of the car. It look like it was just there to absorb vibration when they ran out of the foam or plastic part. Not great, but hardly deserving of all the criticism that it is getting.

> https://drivetribe.com/p/tesla-is-jerry-rigging-its-cooling-...

That was a temporary thing that happened for like a few weeks a long time ago.

What's wrong with wood and zip ties? I have an expensive high quality 3d printer that uses zip ties.

Unless wood or zip ties are deficient for the applications they are in, they don't count as cutting corners in my book.

I don't think you sound snarky. You do sound stupid, though.