Back in March when I got the Tesla I was asked if I would do a post about how it was going. Obviously events have meant I have yet to get much driving done, though we did manage to fit in a trip over to Belfast so I do have somethign on which to report.

 

First up, having driven a Leaf for the last two years I am used to the instant torque and crazy accelaration, though the model 3 takes this to a level where I have yet to have the nerve to fully floor it. It is that powerful, mine is the base version so it only has 245 bhp.

 

Handover was in the first week of lockdown, so it was totally touchless. I had to wait outside at a distance, they brought the car out, and then went back inside before I could approach the car and drive away (having paid the night before).

 

Firstly, you'll have heard of issues with build quality. Right now it seems that Tesla haven't a clue about quality control and it is a lottery whether you get one that's perfect or a nightmare. In fairness most of the issues are related to the bodywork and the cars are driveable. It's not like a mechanical failure on an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle.

Mine had:-

1) a scratch across the boot

2) a mis aligned bonnet (frunk)

3) the nose of the car hadn't had dirt removed before they painted it so it needed a new front end

4) driver's door misaligned

5) driver's door window wouldn'tclose properly

6) a rear quarter panel mis aligned

7) and it later emerged there was insufficient coolant in the battery cooling system (more of which below)

 

These were all reported at handover - something you do via the app, and then attach photos. Tesla then allocate a repair appointment. The repair process is actually very slick though it was not great to have so much chance to witness it. Having had 10 Skodas starting with an Estelle and finishing with a 2015 Octavia I have never been accustomed to this level of defects. It was also filthy inside, covered in dust and grime from transit. I put this down to the fact that they were trying to minimise exposure to covid. 

The first appointment available due to COVID was 2 months later. 8 weeks passed and at the end of May they took the car in (touchless again) . They  fixed the door and the window but the rest would have to await parts.

More weeks, and then months, passed and since the defects were by now just cosmetic I didn't chase them.

Last week, at the end of August, the car started whining and buzzing really loudly. It sounded like there were fans running and there was a lot of liquid gurgling sounds. I asked on a Tesla forum and was told off by Tesla fanboys - "all normal", "stop moaning". Basically don't question the sacred Tesla, if there's a fault I was told, the car will tell you via the screen. Except it didn't and there really was a fault.

I logged it with a video. Within 12 hours an engineer phoned, they had connected to the car, run tests and established that the coolant level was very low.  Seriously impressive.  So a service appointment was booked, and I asked about all the other faults. "Faults? We've got no record of any faults?" Turns out they had forgotten totally. The merits of dealing with a new company that is selling cars as fast as it can make them. They then fixed everything within a week. 

 

So this week I have had my car fully repaired, everything looks like it should and they have filled the coolant to the level it shoud have had when it left the factory. 

So what to make of it? Well it is phenomenally efficient. EVs measure economy in miles per kWh (Tesla use Wh per mile but they just have to be different it seems). My leaf was pretty good and in the Summer would get around 4.5 miles per kWh, in the winter 3.8 was normal. So far since March I have been getting around 7 miles per kWh in the tesla. The equivalent in MPG terms is somewhere in excess of 200 MPG - Impressive.

I can't comment on the supercharger network as they are few and far between in Scotand and I have been using the standrad Scottish Government chargers instead. Not all of them though because again Tesla haven't complied 100% with standards because quite a few of the older chargers simpoly do not detect that the car is connected.

Driving it is different from any other car I have driven due to the large central screen, but you quickly get used to it. It's not though as good in many respects as Android Auto which I had in the leaf and the Octavia. Yiou ahve to pay £120 extra per year for data connectivity to use spotify or Tune in, no other apps are available. I used to use waze and pocket casts but those are not available to me. Elon says there's no need. Spotify is available but it si not as good as normal spotify, your music is in an entirely random order, nothing as boring as being in alphabetical order. You can of course use voice commands exceot they don't work anything like as reliably as google's version.One example, today I said "play Radio Scotland" to get the radio retuned. It played something called Hooked on a Feeling by a Swedish folk band. Don't even try asking it to navigate "command not understood". I aksed it to navigate to Drumnadrochit (ok that's a tough one but google can do it) - it thought I was trying to say something about a drunken doorkit and said it didn't understand. 

The excuse given to justify the 15 inch screen instead of buttons is that yuou'r esupposed to use voice commands, but in my experience they work only around 20% of the time. I can turn the heating up and down but pretty much nothing else works.  ANother issue is that the sat nav is, well, pretty random. Not all the time but a heck of a lot of it. I asked it for a route from my house to my parents, around 12 miles. It suggested a 70 mile detour to the other side of Scotland. Like I say, random. When we went to Northern Ireland, the obviosu route is via the M77 and A77 - not for Tesla, It suggested a variety  of B roads. Often re planning the route produces a more sensibke route but the point is if it is doing this on routes I do know how can I trust it when I am in strange territory? Answer is I can't. So i have gone back to mounting my phone in a cradle and  using that as my sat nav.  speaking of phones, like many people I have 2, one for work and a personal phone. In Skoda and Nissan I could connect both to bluetooth at the same time. WHichever one rang it was OK I could answer hands free. In the tech marvel that is the Tesla??  Sorry, only one connection at a time. Baffling. 

Speaking of Northern Ireland, that was somethign of a nightmare. We have done the trip in a leaf without issue, but the leaf uses the much older chademo charge port, rather then the eurpen standard CCS which is in the tesla. For unknown reasons Northern Ireland has only 14 rapid chargers, that's bad, but only half of them have CCS, the other half afre CCS and chademo. To make matters worse many of them are in shop car parks and these are locked shut when the shops close. In a SUnday you can only charge from 1pm to 5pm. More of a criticism of NI than Tesla but coming from Scotland where we have a very pro EV governmen and charging hubs springing up around the country it was a shock to the system.

So how would I sum it up?
It is an amazing car, probably the most advanced car I have ever owned, and yet lacking in every day tech like a sat nav that works or smart phone integration. Telsa want you to use their system and pay £120 per year extra for it. It is also badly let down by the abysmal quality control. Quite how they can send cars out of the factory with dirt underneath the paintwor is beyond me. Taking 5 months to fix it? Well it was cosmetic so didn't stop me using the car but it is hardly ideal.

 

I had been due to buy a VW ID3 but they messed me around no end and couldn't guarantee I would get a car so I jumped ship. Now that the ID3 is arriving I am feelign a touch of regret. The model 3 is bigger than I really need and the VW would probably be a better fit with my needs. And yet 0-60 in 5 seconds is fun when you have a BMW M3 trying to ride your back bumper. 

Bottom line though is that with the SKoda Enyaq coming in December and more models likely in 2021 they are going to face a lot more competition. Even now cars like the e niro have a 7 year warranty and on a  50 kW charger it wil actually charge faster than the Tesla  (don't tell the fanboys but this is true I have seen it with my own eyes).. Actually that last part may change on my car now that Tesla have actually filled it with the collant fluid it should have had from day 1, as I understand it that is used to both warm and cool the battery to keep it at the optimum charnign temperature. 

SO it's a mixed bag, it is impressive, and frustrating. I'm in a £40k+ car where I have to use my phone to navigate and a bluetooth headset to ensure I can answer both phones.  I had to wait 5 months to get the car in a state which it would have been had there been a proper PDI carried out. But the way you can ghet a diagnosis remotely from a Tesla engineer is very impressive. But competition is growing and Tesla won't have it all their own way for long. Polestar 2 is starting to arrive in numbers and VW will be delivering at scale by the end of 2020.

Would I buy another one? On balance, probably not.

 

PS I forgot to add, not only does Spotify cost you an extra £120 a year, the car comes with no spare wheel, no tyre repair kit and you're advised to take out separate recovery as Tesla recovery will only recover you within 50 miles of a Tesla service centre (there's none on Norhtern Ireland and only one in Scotland (ie 33% of the UK land mass)

 

Edited 4 September, 20205 yr by domhnall

Real world insight from a car user, not a tech fan.

Just a thought but do you have much of an accent as that may be having an influence on the voice commands?

Has the lack of a hatch been problematic.

@domhnall thanks for that, just reading on phone while at a charger so will read again later, sorry if there but how many miles has the car done now?

Just now, e-Roottoot said:

@domhnall thanks for that, just reading on phone while at a charger so will read again later, sorry if there but how many miles has the car done now?

just about 3,000

 

7 hours ago, john999boy said:

Just a thought but do you have much of an accent as that may be having an influence on the voice commands?

Has the lack of a hatch been problematic.

 

not anything that ever prevents google understanding me. I was told on an army course that I had "a very strong accent which renders him unintelligible at times". I pointed out to the Colonel interviewing me that his accent was so plummy I struggled to follow him and he shouted "don't be ridiculous man, I don't have an accent I'm English". 🙂  I have an Edinburgh accent and work regularly with colleagues from across the UK as well as Government officials across the UK - no one has ever failed to grasp what I am saying. Going by Tesla forums the voice recognition is an issue right across the UK. The suggested remedy is usually to adopt an American accent which seems to have more success.

THe lack of hatchback really hasn't bean an issue yet. THe boot is Octavia estate sized. I would struggle to load bikes in there but suitcases and bags are fine. 

Edited 4 September, 20205 yr by domhnall

Great real world account of your experience. Indeed they have a real fanboi issue, and it's really hard to avoid on the internet. Honest brand based forums like Briskoda is hard to find. Shocking to hear they've forgotten about your issues!

 

The satnav should work without subscribing to their premium connectivity? I think £120 per year only adds live traffic visualisation (they say it still takes live traffic into account when routing without paying) and streaming services. I've been thinking to use bluetooth for entertainment and the Tesla screen for satnav.

 

I think not having access to supercharger network is your biggest reason feeling indifferent to the car and brand. Down south, it's either single stall chargers in a car park, unreliable ageing Ecotricity chargers or multi-stall Tesla chargers. For me personally, there is no way I'd replace my Skoda and repeat my Leaf long distance driving experiences relying on public charging network.

Thanks for an interesting, honest and non Fanboi review of the M3. Very interesting and not stuff you normally read!

I think BEV owners can be a bit sensitive to criticism of their car, I reviewed our Zoe and posted the film on Speak EV and was met with quite a bit of hostility when I dared criticise the build quality...

 

@domhnall What are the headlights like? Having driven US made cars over there, I found their headlamps pathetic. I know Tesla use LEDs but is the beam any good? I've seen videos but the camera can make it look a lot different from reality. For instance, would you be happy driving from Skye to Inverness in the dark? (just trying for a road we both might know)

1 hour ago, wyx087 said:

Great real world account of your experience. Indeed they have a real fanboi issue, and it's really hard to avoid on the internet. Honest brand based forums like Briskoda is hard to find. Shocking to hear they've forgotten about your issues!

 

The satnav should work without subscribing to their premium connectivity? I think £120 per year only adds live traffic visualisation (they say it still takes live traffic into account when routing without paying) and streaming services. I've been thinking to use bluetooth for entertainment and the Tesla screen for satnav.

 

I think not having access to supercharger network is your biggest reason feeling indifferent to the car and brand. Down south, it's either single stall chargers in a car park, unreliable ageing Ecotricity chargers or multi-stall Tesla chargers. For me personally, there is no way I'd replace my Skoda and repeat my Leaf long distance driving experiences relying on public charging network.

 

ah maybe I didn't explain that well enough...the stanav does work but produces some eye wateringly bizarre routing. 

I have used google maps to force it to replicate the tesla sat nav routing. I asked it for a route from Livingston to South QUeensferry  (the two locations shown on the right of this map), it routed me via Kilmarnock (on the left hand side of this map).

I suspect you may be right about my non use of the Tesla network, it came with 1000 free charging miles, but I have only used 300 of them, but that's due to the scarcity of Tesla chargers here which in turn is down to the excellent availability of the Scottish Government coordinated network). I certianly never had any charging availability issue with either a leaf or a zoe. The leaf issue was that it didn't thermally manage the battery, the zoe was that it was only designed to do 100 miles. The new zoe is a hugely impressive wee car. 

 

43 minutes ago, Luckypants said:

@domhnall What are the headlights like? Having driven US made cars over there, I found their headlamps pathetic. I know Tesla use LEDs but is the beam any good? I've seen videos but the camera can make it look a lot different from reality. For instance, would you be happy driving from Skye to Inverness in the dark? (just trying for a road we both might know)

 

never been to Skye so can't comment on that route and since I only got it in March it's not really been dark very often to test - I tend to be in bed by 10.30 pm 🙂

I think they're on a par with the bi xenons I had in the Octavia though. 

 

Edited 4 September, 20205 yr by domhnall

1 hour ago, FatWolfie said:

Thanks for an interesting, honest and non Fanboi review of the M3. Very interesting and not stuff you normally read!

I think BEV owners can be a bit sensitive to criticism of their car, I reviewed our Zoe and posted the film on Speak EV and was met with quite a bit of hostility when I dared criticise the build quality...

 

 

I think all brands inspire some loyalty, Skoda owners are the same but yeah I have heard Zoe owners are pretty fanatical. A Nissan leaf owning friend criticised a dealer on a zoe page the other day and got totally flamed! 

Tesla seems to be attracting a lot of ex BMW drivers, some vRS too though. It seems a bit Apple-esque like, the same sort of "it has to be an iphone or it's not a real phone" attitude can creep in. 

I'm more nuanced, it is an amazing machine, but it has flaws. I still love to wipe the smile off fast fossil drivers faces though. But I did that in the leaf too ;-)

Sounds like the engineering for the drivetrain in the car is top notch but everything after that is in beta or budget mode.

 

Many of the things you describe would be unacceptable on a £10k car, but on a £40k car pushed with many marketing millions Tesla should be embarrassed to produce a product so poorly finished.

 

They might well struggle now the old manufacturers are bringing their electric game up. They (generally) know how to do QA better than this.

Edited 4 September, 20205 yr by Aspman

Haha, that's a very long winded way of driving that short distance. 

 

May I ask how did you buy the car? lease or PCP or cash? The cosmetic flaws probably won't bother you if you were leasing, I know I wouldn't take my time out to sort out cosmetic or even minor mechanical issues. But if I bought the car outright or plan to, I'd be bugging their customer services every week to get everything fixed. 

14 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

Haha, that's a very long winded way of driving that short distance. 

 

May I ask how did you buy the car? lease or PCP or cash? The cosmetic flaws probably won't bother you if you were leasing, I know I wouldn't take my time out to sort out cosmetic or even minor mechanical issues. But if I bought the car outright or plan to, I'd be bugging their customer services every week to get everything fixed. 

 

cash on 0% loan. 
 

I left it because we were in lock down, wasn't driving anywhere and they were struggling bacause they were shifting so many cars out the door - they were trying to get 50 ish out the door on the day I collected it.

In fairness when I flagged it last week they got it fixed very quickly. And remotely diagnosing the car was  very impressive.  The fact that they hadn't noticed the cr was shipped with insufficient coolant was less impressive. 

25 minutes ago, Aspman said:

Sounds like the engineering for the drivetrain in the car is top notch but everything after that is in beta or budget mode.

 

Many of the things you describe would be unacceptable on a £10k car, but on a £40k car pushed with many marketing millions Tesla should be embarrassed to produce a product so poorly finished.

 

They might well struggle now the old manufacturers are bringing their electric game up. They (generally) know how to do QA better than this.

Beta testing is whatit feels like. They're on a mission  to deliver autonomous driving and the customers are (willing) guinea pigs in many ways. When VAG get their backsides in gear they will give them a real run for their money. I had a pre booking for the ID 3 but had to cancel when they started to say I might not be gauranteed a car despite giving them money a year in advance. They cited Brexit as the reason for price uncertainty and lack of clarity over how many cars they would allocate to the UK. I baled out in Febriary and gave the money to Tesla. Now I'm not sure that was the wrong decision, if I had approached it with more scepticism and not swallowed the hype then I might have been less disappointed. 

It is by far the most expensive car I have ever bought so perhaps I was expecting too much? I dunno. Eagerly awaiting the Enyaq and its stable mates though. I would definitely not go back to petrol or diesel though, no way. 

17 minutes ago, domhnall said:

I would definitely not go back to petrol or diesel though, no way. 

 

I think that's a more salient point. Both you and George are speaking very highly of your experience of daily driving e-cars even at the opposite ends of the hype spectrum.

 

More than that they seem to be practical now. Im putting a charging point in my new build, not because I have ideas on electric but that it seems stupid not to do it while it's easy.

I'm not sure I could give up my fossil fuel additction but maybe the main car could be electric with the fossil for fun.

26 minutes ago, domhnall said:

 And remotely diagnosing the car was  very impressive.  The fact that they hadn't noticed the cr was shipped with insufficient coolant was less impressive. 

 

Why this could not be done pre-delivery is a concern if it is indeed so easy to do. It could even be part of an automated PDI.

Is the coolant level difficult to check under the bonnet? Is it something the customer is allowed to do? 

 

Tesla also have a reputation of withholding repair information. Look up Rich Rebuilds on youtube. 

 

I had a Merc that didn't have a dip stick, it was beyond stupid. It only had a computer readout saying "engine oil OK" or "add 0.5l engine oil" 

7 minutes ago, Aspman said:

I'm putting a charging point in my new build

Maybe check that it's also a high power one?

3 minutes ago, wyx087 said:

I had a Merc that didn't have a dip stick, it was beyond stupid. It only had a computer readout saying "engine oil OK" or "add 0.5l engine oil" 

 

It's been like that for every BMW for a long while. It annoyed me for a long time but I'm used to it now. It does stop you taking the oil measurement at the wrong time (hot cold, run, stopped etc), so it's more accurate, but less convenient

 

Just now, john999boy said:

Maybe check that it's also a high power one?

 

I think it's still a household supply but a big fat cable to carry more amps.

1 hour ago, wyx087 said:

Is the coolant level difficult to check under the bonnet? Is it something the customer is allowed to do? 

 

Tesla also have a reputation of withholding repair information. Look up Rich Rebuilds on youtube. 

 

I had a Merc that didn't have a dip stick, it was beyond stupid. It only had a computer readout saying "engine oil OK" or "add 0.5l engine oil" 

 

no, you can't do anything like that, this is the coolant for the battery, so normally a sealed system that should not need to be topped up. 

1 hour ago, john999boy said:

Maybe check that it's also a high power one?

 

they tend to all be the same but the power will be determined by your supply, 7 kW for single phase 22 for three phase. Other than the zoe though no other cars can currently draw 22. The Tesla can do 11, leaf 6. 

2 hours ago, Aspman said:

 

I think that's a more salient point. Both you and George are speaking very highly of your experience of daily driving e-cars even at the opposite ends of the hype spectrum.

 

More than that they seem to be practical now. Im putting a charging point in my new build, not because I have ideas on electric but that it seems stupid not to do it while it's easy.

I'm not sure I could give up my fossil fuel additction but maybe the main car could be electric with the fossil for fun.

 

Yup, the leaf cost me £28 for roughly 16,000 miles of motoring. The tesla has done nearly 3000 for zero  fuel cost so far. Fossil cars seem so crude, slow and clunky, and you really notice how rough and noisy they sound, and the stench! ugh. It's a bit like how you noticed cigarette smoke more in 2006 after  the ban 

 

Edited 4 September, 20205 yr by domhnall

It's just as easy to get 3ph to a new build as single phase. Future proofing.......