What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

Tesla puts foot in its mouth: ‘unsupervised self-driving is not solved’, but what about robotaxi?
https://electrek.co/2025/07/24/tesla-foot-mouth-unsupervised-self-driving-not-solved-robotaxi/

Tesla is way behind Waymo in FSD. While Waymo is doing real rides, for real customers. All Tesla has is a few cars in a penis shaped area doing like one ride a day. This is not a serious company.

 

https://www.carscoops.com/2025/07/ev-owners-report-worsening-service-experience-study/
A new study from CDK Global shows rising EV satisfaction, but also longer service times and growing owner frustration

something to consider when buying tesla/rivian/lucid etc

 

I hate dealerships, yet there are some benefits. I love the 15 parts stores and 5 mechanics I have around who can fix whatever I either can't or don't want to. If something goes wonky on my EV I don't want to take it 75 miles to get a tech to look at it. Convenience does have a price.

 

My answer hasn't changed. It's still "a frontal lobe labotomy".

 

"Nobody would buy a petrol car if EVs came first"

I think they all came around the same time with ICE vehicles maybe pre-dating EVs by a few years. Fun fact : first president to ride in an EV was William McKinley. He also was the first to be transported in an EV (an EV ambulance) after being shot.

 

according to everyone in this thread, this needs more lidar

 

Browsing sh**ter, it looks like the tesla nerds have latched onto the lidar vs. camera argument.

 

Lol you don't think that the waymo engineers for a decade didn't think about the idea that cameras could improve over time?

Nah I'll trust a company who's goal is safety, not cheapness, on what is required for autonomous driving.

Tesla has a massive conflict of interest, driven by being cheap.

 

Tesla also have a massive egomaniac who thinks he is right about everything.

Now I want FSD to succeed because my goodness Tesla drivers are some of the worst out there.

 

Also in Tesla news:

Sales down 90% in Quebec
60% in the UK
86% in Sweden
58% in Belgium
27% in France

And, they were found liable and fined $243 million after a jury decided the driver assistance feature was faulty.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-liable-2019-autopilot-crash-death/

 

Deserved, all he has done is ruin Tesla's reputation, alienate half of the company's potential customers, fail to deliver on any promises (FSD, Robotaxi, cybertruck, roadster) and collapse sales for his cars all over the world.

 

"The worst aspects of cars, the worst aspects of trains, and the worst aspects of buses; all in one. Musk is truly a genius."

Don't worry he's pumping ROBOTIC TAXI now.

 

Let's hope FSD 14 is a huge leap in the next month or so. Even if it is, what really matters is if/when the safety monitors are removed in Austin.

 

Autonomous taxis and cars are fine. The issue is that he's been overpromising and underdelivering on that front for so many years that it's just hard to take him seriously at this point. The problem with autonomous vehicles is that getting it 95% right isn't good enough for mass adoption and that last 5% is the hardest part of the whole thing. And the thing is that if you rush the technology and customers have a bad experience, they just stop trusting it. I personally drove my parent's Tesla, put it on FSD and got a phantom breaking incident on a highway a couple of years ago. I know the software is a lot better now but it's just hard to trust it given the fact that a badly timed phantom breaking incident would basically result in a catastrophic accident.

Waymo on the other hand has seemingly managed to build an autonomous taxi product that most people seem pretty bullish on. It only took one bad incident for Cruise to shut down. Tesla gets a much longer leash thanks to its sizeable adoption and the fact that Musk gets a lot of leeway from owners but I dont think he can do that forever. At some point, if we wants the level of adoption that the share price is based on, they have to deliver with the consistency and reliability of Waymo soon.

 

Phantom braking has been an issue with most vehicles that have used lidar/radar/US in their ADAS/ACC, however it has gotten better. This is nothing new.

Waymo's are generally safe for passengers ... mainly because they are not on high speed roads. Waymo's make mistakes all the time. while its tolerable, it will become a real issue at scale.
The current configuration of Waymo's work in dense populations, which is like 5% of the US. If it can not work outside of a strict geofenced area, its just a niche product.
Eventually someone will come out with ride share subscription service and services that are geofenced will not do well against this type of competition.

Cruise is a completely different product.

 

Ya....I am sorry but having a few cars in Austin with a safety driver is not what I was expecting after this many years of hype.
It's probably why they never share any meaningful data.