[ultrarunner]

My brother bought a Tesla recently. They dicked him around with delivery, and he had to pay a ton to get charging infrastructure installed at his house, but it's fast so he's happy. On a recent visit, he finally showed me the car, and it was hilarious how janky the final product is. Everything seems cobbled together-- a good example is that there's apparently two separate voice assistants (plus his phone) and none of them can talk to each other, so commands like "turn on the defrost" are responded to with "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

Controls as simple as the door handles are unintuitive, with the handle apparently being the emergency release that doesn't lower the window (for who knows why). You have to brief your passengers on egress like it's an airplane.

EVs might be a solved problem, but Tesla is still fighting their own additional layer of complexity that they added on top. The added subscription nonsense makes him look like a fool for having bought in, something I am definitely even more reluctant to do now that I've seen it play out.

[pavel_lishin]

> Controls as simple as the door handles are unintuitive, with the handle apparently being the emergency release that doesn't lower the window (for who knows why). You have to brief your passengers on egress like it's an airplane.

I caught a ride with a friend in a Tesla, and when we stopped I opened the door - like a human being operating a century-old piece of technology - and he looked at me like I was crazy, and told me not to do that.

Truly, a bonkers decision.

[keeda]

Yeah, it apparently damages the weatherstripping (and maybe the window and other things) and is meant to be used only in an emergency /facepalm. Which is probably why your friend was alarmed.

I didn't care, I still tested it out the day I picked up mine to see where the manual handle is and make sure it works, because just a couple days earlier two people had gotten trapped in a burning Tesla, were unable to figure out the mechanism, and died.

[Analemma_]

I have a 2022 Model 3, and the hilariously tragic part is that the voice assistant was great and basically never gave me any problems until they shoved Grok into it, whereupon it broke completely. I never use it anymore, they effectively removed a feature from my car.

[amluto]

Whoa, did Tesla pull an Apple? Siri used to work okay on the iPhone, but once it got LLMed it frequently sits there indefinitely while failing to make any progress on even the simplest commands.

[FeloniousHam]

Counterpoint: I like my Tesla, and I find the AI assistant diverting and useful. I have very little doubt the functionality of the limited on-board voice assistant will be merged into Grok (it's literally on the coming features).

Whether you like this or not, who cares? The pace of improvement in Tesla software compared to any other manufacturer is astonishing, and astonishingly good.

I have no love for the CEO, but my Model Y is a very interesting (and intuitive) car.

[secabeen]

I have an older X, and I'm kind of happy that the AP and Infotainment hardware in it is largely deprecated, and they are unlikely to be able to shove Grok crap into it. It will stay largely the same for the life of the car.

[jgillette]

Do a quick press of the voice button and the old voice control activate; if you hold it down or press too long, it uses the grok AI which can't do anything (and I never use).

[array_key_first]

This is part of the reason why I believe cars should delegate as much software functionality to your phone as possible. Phones have good voice assistants and they will get better, same with GPS and music. Just let the phone do it. Plus, when the software is out of support you don't have to buy a new car.