Why I sold my Tesla Model 3

Let the controversy begin - I had my Tesla Model 3 for all of 3 days before I decided it was not the car for me, and sold it on Trademe. It caused nationwide controversy, had two Stuff articles written on it, one saying I was profiting from the government rebate scheme, and another on how I pocketed taxpayer money once the car sold. The comments section was mostly nice though - with people proud and political about my entrepreneurship. The truth is though, I sold my Model 3 for two reasons, and two reasons alone - the financials didn't stack up, and I genuinely didn't like the car. Luckily the eventual buyers of the car loved it, and we stay in touch (and who knows, maybe I'll love the Model Y!)

There’s a lot of good and bad with the Model 3, and I fully acknowledge the car is continuously evolving. Hopefully this post provides you with some guidance about what’s not discussed in the sales pitch or hype that is Tesla.

For my international readers - this is a New Zealand Tesla Model 3, Rear Wheel Drive, manufactured by the Shanghai Gigafactory January 2022 and delivered March 2022.

The Good

It's important to acknowledge Telsa has changed our automobile world for good - they have introduced mass produced EVs to the masses, and done so globally in record time, while other car manufacturers have, and continue to drag their feet, resisting the future and instead wanting to milk their combustion engine cash cows. In my opinion there is no higher good Tesla could have done, but back to the car...

• Range: The 491km stated range is reasonably accurate. In real world conditions, it's easy to achieve about 450km range, and in winter you will get about 400km range due to the battery chemistry.

• Low centre of gravity: The battery at the bottom makes the car handle excellent around bends, curves and general driving. It's easily one of the best cars I've driven.

• Space: The car is American at heart, and inside you'll find a spacious interior with plenty of room for people.

• Parking sensors: The car takes the guess-work out of parking with radar parking sensors that tell you down to a cm how you're doing.

• Sentry mode: I wish all cars had this, where the car will continue recording with all its cameras when you're away from the car, so that you can identify vandalism or incidents that take place.

• Built in dash-cam: This is a must-have feature, where the car will automatically record while driving. Once again this gives peace of mind when an incident occurs.

• The app: Fantastic mobile apps that let you lock, pre-heat, and do a bunch of other cool things with the Tesla.

The Bad

Exterior

• No spare tyres or repair kit. There’s nothing in the car whatsoever, so if you get a puncture anywhere you need to call Tesla Roadside assist, which outsources to AA/State and usually has a 2hr waiting time (usually longer on public holidays). If you do decide to get a spare tire, it won’t fit in the boot, and if you somehow squeeze in a space saver, your range will decrease significantly. Many new cars don't have a spare tyre, agreed, but modern cars at this price-point have runflats, or a repair kit included so you can self-salvage to the nearest town.

• Easily damaged windscreen. Because of the car’s aerodynamic profile, the windscreen is easily chipped and regularly gets chips and stones hitting it on newly sealed roads or when behind trucks. A windscreen replacement currently has a 6 week waiting list and costs approximately $2000.

• Sunroof. The sunroof is great to let light in, but it can get quite hot in summer, especially when the air-con isn’t running (aircon decreases range).

• 0 tow rating. Not a big one for most people, but because of the small boot, you wont be able to carry most large objects. Tesla does not permit towing with the car in New Zealand (but does elsewhere), so you have reduced utility from the car. Many people have installed towbars through third party fitters, but it can void the warranty. No trips to Bunnings in this car!

• Recessed door handles. The recessed door handles make sense to reduce the drag co-efficient and improve range. However practically they are hard to use, especially when you already have a phone or bag in your hands. You need several fingers to push in, then pull out. It's also not very accessible for people missing digits.

• Rear door windows. They don’t wind down flush with the car, which means there’s this awkward sill for rear passengers when they are trying to rest on the window, or just look outside. Other cars have this problem too, but it's an annoying one for rear passengers.

• Small rear boot. The rear boot is an awkward shape with it being low, narrow, and with a lip. It makes loading difficult. There’s also a hidden compartment where not much fits in.

• No boot kick. Most modern cars (even Ford Kugas) have this feature where you can kick the boot and if your key is nearby, it will open. Great when your hands are full. In the Tesla, there’s no such thing and you must remotely open from the app or directly.

• Front Boot can only be opened from the app or in the car. This means if both of your hands are full walking to the car, you can’t easily open the front boot. The front boot also does not close automatically, and feels like you’re closing a normal bonnet.

• Dual child lock. Both doors can be child locked or none at all, you can’t specify which door, which is annoying if as a parent you want to sit in the back with your child.

• Soft Paint. To save on weight, Tesla has used softer paint on the outside, meaning the car paint is easily chipped or scratched. This happened to my car on delivery, though Shanghai builds seem to have better paint than pre-2020 Fremont cars.

Interior

• Glovebox: The glovebox can only be opened using the screen. This is very annoying when you need to access something when driving (e.g. grabbing an access card entering the work carpark).

• Cupholders are fixed size and not adjustable. This is a minor one but because the car has quite large american sized cup holders, it's easy for smaller cups to roll around and spill your drinks inside the car.

• Front Centre console is very deep, making it impractical to store items in it. You need to buy a third party storage tray to make it usable.

• The Back Centre Console has high resistance and no spring, so it is hard to open it while driving to take stuff out (such as sunglasses, tissues, etc).

• No Sunglasses Storage there is nowhere to store sunglasses, coins or masks easily unlike other cars. This sounds like a minor issue but becomes quite the struggle daily, especially when there’s no open tray in the car.

• No open tray, there is nowhere to store frequently used items directly in the car for quick access.

• Flimsy sun-shade is magnetic and is easily detached and moves around, meaning it does not remain well fixed when you go over speed-bumps or other things.

• No grab handles makes it harder for elderly or mobility constrained people to easily get in and out of the car.

• The low ride height makes entering and exiting the car difficult compared to a SUV.

• No footwell lights. This one annoys me a lot. There are footwell lights installed and ready to work, but if you get the partial interior, Tesla has disabled them with a software update. I am a Product Manager by trade, I understand the need for product segmentation and pricing, but this shouldn't translate directly into hardware. Just enable the lights, it doesn't cost Tesla anything!

• Side mirrors cannot be adjusted while driving which means it's hard to figure out where the blindspots are, or modify on the fly for different road conditions.

• No heads up display and the speedometer is on the left side, making it difficult to be situationally aware of your speed, especially in areas of speed-cameras. Tesla's reasoning for this is eventually they want to have self-driving cars, but until that feature arrives in 2030 (Tesla years), I would like to be able to see my speeds, especially in low speed, high enforcement areas such as the city.

• Vegan Leather is actually just synthetic plastic with marketing, making the seats less ventilated and stuffy during long trips.

• The audio bells. The chimes are so loud and frequent taht Tesla created "Joe mode" to reduce the noise of it for people that asked. There are no less than 12 audible chimes that take place for anything you do that fall outside Tesla's ideal driver. For example:

  1. 1. 1. Putting the car into drive without securing seatbelt (don't have to actually start moving like other cars)

        2. Either trunk open when car is in drive.

        3. Reversing - automatic chime.

        4. Trying to park - chime even if nothing nearby.

        5. Exceed speed limit - chime.

        6. Cruise control on - chime.

        7. Cruise control issues - chime.

        8. Boot opened when parked - chime.

Infotainment / Controls

• No Android or Apple Carplay: This is fine for the most part, but there’s no syncing with other apps such as WhatsApp, app notifications, and other content that’s available., This means when your friends message you or you get a Teams message, you can’t just view the Notifications like on other platforms, but must actually check your phone.

• Maps Localisation: Say something like Westfield, and it will give you results in other countries like Sydney too. The car thinks its smart enough to drive itself (more on that later), but not enough to understand it can’t cross the pacific ocean.

• Map Navigation is spotty and takes you on weird routes that Apple and Google Maps don’t typically do.

• Air conditioning is controlled in the screen, the lack of physical buttons makes it hard to tactically change temperature and fan settings. The counter-argument to this is how often do you change the settings? Quite a lot actually - windscreen defrosting, warming up the car after a cold walk outside, the human body is relative.

• Car radar is shown with moving objects, which is very distracting while driving, as its constant movement on the side of the car.

• Spotify is Tesla’s own version, which is terrible, and doesn’t let you save up certain playlists, etc.

• Dashcam can be turned on by default, but you cannot view footage easily within the car.

• Sentry mode is a great feature, but if there are several events, you can't fast forward to the scene, you must watch the whole footage in standard time. If you're away for more than 10 minutes, this becomes a fruitless, time consuming excercise.

• Toybox. A great little easter egg, but this is not the piece of software I'd prioritise.

• Scroller buttons on the steering wheel are nice, but because they’re contextual, each driver must learn it, meaning it takes time to build muscle memory.

• Audio volume can be controlled for the music, but changing the volume doesn’t change navigation noise, so if you mute while talking to people inside, the navigation noises still come through.

Driving

• Gear stick on the right side. In the Model 3, the controls to change gears (D, P, R, N), is a lever on the right hand side of the car. In all Japanese cars, this lever is the indicator lever. The danger this poses to drivers coming from Japanese cars with decades of muscle memory is obvious - at low speeds, a driver can accidentally use the levers thinking they're indicating and accelerate, when they could actually push the car into reverse, and accelerate fast into an object.

• Large turning circle. The Model 3 has a 5.9m turning circle. Given most Auckland roads have a 6-7m width, you will be required to conduct a 3 point turn to U-Turn in almost all conditions.

• Low ride height makes it difficult to see the road ahead. The car is lower than most other sedan cars.

• Large A Pillar makes it hard to see blind spots, especially since the car does not have blind spot detection.

• No blind spot detection. This one caught me by surprise - most cars since 2010 have a little light in each side mirror that warns you of objects in your blindspot. The Tesla does not have this feature, meaning you must rely on your screen, and manually check each time.

• Blind Spot Camera. The Model 3 does display the respective side of the car when you indicate, however, this is shown on the screen, so if you are indicating right, you must both look over your right shoulder AND look left at the screen, creating quite the head-tilt. Some car manufacturers (such as Kia) actually just show it on the speedometer.

• Rims stick out slightly and is low, meaning it’s easy to kerb the car.

• No rear cross traffic alert when reversing out with the Tesla. Again this is quite a problem as the car is wide, short, and has large pillars. This makes it difficult to reverse out of carparks and into traffic.

• Auto-wipers - turning on randomly when there’s a single drop of water, but failing to operate fast enough when there’s a downpour. To make things worse, the wipers can only be activated once with the stick, or set controlled through the screen. Yes during a heavy downpour on the motorway, you have to use the screen to activate your wipers.

• Auto High Beams are quite blinding, but also come on when there’s traffic and dont come on when you actually need them. Again to control these, you have to use the screen and go to the light settings. In most cars you can just push the left-side driver stick and it’ll remain in high beam. Not on the Tesla where you can only flash with it.

• No Cruise Control: The car has full driver operations, or autopilot (Level 2 assistance). It does not feature basic speed-set cruise control.

A special note on Autopilot

Auto-pilot has to be one of the best marketing terms invented in the history of car manufacturing, it’s also the most over-rated pitch I’ve ever seen. Make no mistake - Autopilot is no different to the Level 2 assistance systems found on all modern vehicles. When auto-pilot was used, I noticed the following behaviours:

• The car hugs the lane markings, typically the left hand side, rather than centering itself. This is a problem because if you're in the right most lane, the driver in the left lane will get quite close to you, and creates an unnecessary reduction in space.

• Auto-pilot will cut-off and hand back control. I am also an aviation consultant (see rest of bio). One of my research areas is the relationship between man and machine. In aviation, an emerging concern is the dependence on auto-pilot (the real kind) systems by pilots, and the dangers when pilots lose situational awareness and are handed back control when a system fault occurs (refer to Air France 370 incident). The Model 3 auto-pilot has an uncanny resemblance to this, where the car will suddenly decide it cant pilot anymore, and will hand you back control. The problem is it can be sudden, and a tranquil driver over-relying on autopilot will have seconds or less to react to a potentially dangerous event unfolding. I agree completely that whether its a driver or pilot, they are and should be responsible for maintaining awareness, but the fact is humans are infallible, and our job is to protect the human from making mistakes wherever we can.

• Auto-pilot slows down rapidly. The car will slow down suddenly in response to speed signs, or temporary speed signs, even if the rest of the traffic doesn't. In an ideal world all drivers should obey traffic signs, but it raises the question of what's safer - respecting traffic signs, or maintaining flow in traffic to prevent a rear-end collision from an inattentive driver?

• Auto-steer can’t take high speed corners. It does not slow down for turns, and only commences braking when it realizes what’s happening. More than once the car has entered the oncoming lane. This falls into Type 2 autonomy granted, but the marketing means people may think the car is more capable than it is.

• Overcorrection of errors. When the car accidentally steers itself into an oncoming lane, it jerks itself back into its correct lane, which can be a frightening experience.

• Taking back control. If you attempt to steer the car, the car will jerk for a bit before giving you back control, causing minor fishtailing due to the steering input.

• Autopilot actually consists of two parts: Radar Cruise Control (RCC), and Steering Assist.

  • Radar Cruise Control: Most new cars have this, and it basically follows the car in-front at a safe distance, or at the speed set. There’s nothing special from Tesla here - except its this or nothing. You can't use normal cruise control.

  • Steering assist: Most new cars have this too, where it will stay within an allocated lane and follow the lanes as far as it goes.

• Emergency Braking: The car will provide false warnings about certain cars – for example, if there’s a car on the median turning away, and a car parked, the car will brake itself thinking you’re going to crash, but you know there’s a gap to make it.

In summary, the Model 3 is a groundbreaking car and has certainly dragged the rest of the automobile world into the wonderful world of EVs. However, Tesla in my opinion has a long way to go if it wants to be building safe, practical, and pragmatic cars for the masses.

As for me? I've gone back to my trusty old 2012 Kia Sportage. I am not a fan of it's inefficient petrol engine, but I do like the big tactile temperature knob for when I get cold one minute and hot the next, and the simple no-fuss speed cruise control for the daily motorway commute.