I traded in a 2016 Dodge Charger (RT Hemi) for a Tesla S series. The Charger cost less than one-half the price of a Tesla. I had virtually no problems with this Dodge Charger and its features except it was slower in acceleration than the Tesla. In contrast Tesla is full of bugs and poorly designed missing a lot of simple features. Consider these factors before even considering buying this car:
1. As seen on the news the Tesla has been known to self combust into flames and the doors have been known to not unlock doors after an accident.
2. The Testa was the only luxury car to recently fail a front end crash test
3. The first thing the Dealer tells you is not to fully charge the Tesla because it shortens the battery life They recommend the car be set to charge to only 90%. So instead of a 251 published distance between charges you can only expect 225 miles. This means you need to waste time charging more frequently than advertised.
4. You will not even get 248 between charges. In normal driving my experience shows I get 40% less miles per charge than advertised. So instead of 251 miles between charges I am only actually getting 160 miles which makes charging a real nuisance. Moreover, it means you will be paying a lot more for electricity per mile driven than advertised and long trips will be totally annoying. In my opinion this car is a major con job related to energy consumption and convenience. Perhaps a class action lawsuit is appropriate for their clearly deceptive practices.
5. Even though I paid $2,500 extra for an upgraded interior, the Tesla comes with the cheapest possible floor mat that is not much thicker than a wash cloth and does not properly secure to the floor. As a result the floor mat pushes toward the accelerator forcing the accelerator to speed up or the break to engage. The National Transportation Safety Board should look at this issue and force Tesla to fix the problem. The Dodge Charger (like most cars) had thick floor mats that secured with metal hooks bolted to the car and was never a problem. For a Tesla that touts safety & costing twice as much as a Charger this is a disgrace!
6. The Tesla has a neat feature that scans the road to show you a graphic image of the cars in front of you. The problem is this feature is virtually worthless because you can already see the cars in FRONT of you. The scanner should be aimed at the cars on the side of you in your blind spot. What were the designers thinking when they added this virtually worthless feature that could be a great feature because the Tesla S has major blind spots in its design?
7. The seat belt clip is angled in a bad direction making it difficult to buckle up your seat belt.
8. Tesla has a feature to allow you play songs from a USB drive you plug into the glove box. It’s very difficult to even plug a USB drive into the socket in the glove box. The bigger problem is Tesla has a major bug in its song player that gives you a “file loading error†when you try to play most standard MP3 songs. On the Tesla forum this has been discussed as a major bug that Tesla has not fixed for years. If they can’t fix this relatively simple bug for years, when virtually every other car manufacturer’s USB/Micro SD card has this feature working properly, it make you wonder about other hidden bugs in this overpriced car that Tesla does have the technical ability to fix?? I wonder if my airbags will deploy in an accident??
9. The center console is poorly designed with 2 glove boxes. When you open one glove box the contents spill into a lower glove box into an area the is virtually unreachable. The lids to the consoles hit the content of the glove box when they are opened. The lower glove automatically closes when you touch it trapping your arm in the glove box. In my opinion a total moron designed this center console. If you decide to test drive a Tesla S be sure to fill the upper glove box with something and watch what happens. Then try to reach the front of the lower glove box causing the box to close electrically trapping your arm.
10. The Dodge Charger has a neat feature that provided drink holders that could be heated or cooled to keep coffee hot and drinks cold. How come a “electric†car costing twice as much doesn’t have this useful feature at least as an option?
11. The interior lights on the Tesla are small and virtually worthless.
12. The Dodge Charger and most cars have a feature to allow you to use your remote control (that opens security gates) to be programmed into the car. The Tesla claims it has such a feature to open garage doors but I can’t get this feature to work for security gates.
13. The windows Fog Up when it rains in humid weather and neither the A/C or heater will clear it up. Very poor ventilation system in the Tesla.
14. The Key Fob has no way to attach to a key chain unless you put a string through a tiny opening in the Fob. Again another example of poor design.
15. The Key Fob has a poor transmitter and often will not open the door until several attempts of waiving the key Fob close to the door. In one case looking for something in my pocket I just dropped the key Fob into the glove box next to the seat while driving. Immediately a message popped up on the front panel saying the key Fob was not present and the car would not restart. In other words just the glove box blocked the key fob signal. If I accidentally I left the car with the key FOB in the glove box I would have been totally locked out of the car.
16. There are small cut outs on each side of the rear trunk. If something rolls around the trunk and falls into one of these “black holes†it is virtually impossible to reach it unless you have extremely small arms. I found this out when one of the charging adapters disappeared. I thought I left it attached to a charging station. Luckily I happened to notice these small holes and after contorting her arm my girlfriend was able to blindly find and reach the adapter. Again what moron designed this trunk??
17. I just got a recent confusing message on the Tesla console saying they reprogrammed my car to “reduce its accelerationâ€. Hello – do you want anyone remotely controlling how you car operates without your consent. I bought this car for its acceleration and that’s what Tesla touts as their best feature when demoing the car to you. I understand they made this unauthorized change in memory of a teen died in the car doing 120 mph in Florida. Why is that my problem?
When I tried to email these issues to Tesla’s using their Customer Request form, the site wouldn’t respond (it kept looping with a wait Icon for 3 hours) and their site has no email address, so I could confirm that my email was sent. Is their idea of Customer service?? But it is consistent with their on-going technological ineptness.
The Service Manager at Tesla refused to return my calls after reading the above complaints. Tesla finally responded to these complaints merely saying to review their Frequently Asked Questions, which anyone can see had nothing to do with addressing the above problems.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
I traded in a 2016 Dodge Charger (RT Hemi) for a Tesla S series. The Charger cost less than one-half the price of a Tesla. I had virtually no problems with this Dodge Charger and its features except it was slower in acceleration than the Tesla. In contrast Tesla is full of bugs and poorly designed missing a lot of simple features. Consider these factors before even considering buying this car:
1. As seen on the news the Tesla has been known to self combust into flames and the doors have been known to not unlock doors after an accident.
2. The Testa was the only luxury car to recently fail a front end crash test
3. The first thing the Dealer tells you is not to fully charge the Tesla because it shortens the battery life They recommend the car be set to charge to only 90%. So instead of a 251 published distance between charges you can only expect 225 miles. This means you need to waste time charging more frequently than advertised.
4. You will not even get 248 between charges. In normal driving my experience shows I get 40% less miles per charge than advertised. So instead of 251 miles between charges I am only actually getting 160 miles which makes charging a real nuisance. Moreover, it means you will be paying a lot more for electricity per mile driven than advertised and long trips will be totally annoying. In my opinion this car is a major con job related to energy consumption and convenience. Perhaps a class action lawsuit is appropriate for their clearly deceptive practices.
5. Even though I paid $2,500 extra for an upgraded interior, the Tesla comes with the cheapest possible floor mat that is not much thicker than a wash cloth and does not properly secure to the floor. As a result the floor mat pushes toward the accelerator forcing the accelerator to speed up or the break to engage. The National Transportation Safety Board should look at this issue and force Tesla to fix the problem. The Dodge Charger (like most cars) had thick floor mats that secured with metal hooks bolted to the car and was never a problem. For a Tesla that touts safety & costing twice as much as a Charger this is a disgrace!
6. The Tesla has a neat feature that scans the road to show you a graphic image of the cars in front of you. The problem is this feature is virtually worthless because you can already see the cars in FRONT of you. The scanner should be aimed at the cars on the side of you in your blind spot. What were the designers thinking when they added this virtually worthless feature that could be a great feature because the Tesla S has major blind spots in its design?
7. The seat belt clip is angled in a bad direction making it difficult to buckle up your seat belt.
8. Tesla has a feature to allow you play songs from a USB drive you plug into the glove box. It’s very difficult to even plug a USB drive into the socket in the glove box. The bigger problem is Tesla has a major bug in its song player that gives you a “file loading error†when you try to play most standard MP3 songs. On the Tesla forum this has been discussed as a major bug that Tesla has not fixed for years. If they can’t fix this relatively simple bug for years, when virtually every other car manufacturer’s USB/Micro SD card has this feature working properly, it make you wonder about other hidden bugs in this overpriced car that Tesla does have the technical ability to fix?? I wonder if my airbags will deploy in an accident??
9. The center console is poorly designed with 2 glove boxes. When you open one glove box the contents spill into a lower glove box into an area the is virtually unreachable. The lids to the consoles hit the content of the glove box when they are opened. The lower glove automatically closes when you touch it trapping your arm in the glove box. In my opinion a total moron designed this center console. If you decide to test drive a Tesla S be sure to fill the upper glove box with something and watch what happens. Then try to reach the front of the lower glove box causing the box to close electrically trapping your arm.
10. The Dodge Charger has a neat feature that provided drink holders that could be heated or cooled to keep coffee hot and drinks cold. How come a “electric†car costing twice as much doesn’t have this useful feature at least as an option?
11. The interior lights on the Tesla are small and virtually worthless.
12. The Dodge Charger and most cars have a feature to allow you to use your remote control (that opens security gates) to be programmed into the car. The Tesla claims it has such a feature to open garage doors but I can’t get this feature to work for security gates.
13. The windows Fog Up when it rains in humid weather and neither the A/C or heater will clear it up. Very poor ventilation system in the Tesla.
14. The Key Fob has no way to attach to a key chain unless you put a string through a tiny opening in the Fob. Again another example of poor design.
15. The Key Fob has a poor transmitter and often will not open the door until several attempts of waiving the key Fob close to the door. In one case looking for something in my pocket I just dropped the key Fob into the glove box next to the seat while driving. Immediately a message popped up on the front panel saying the key Fob was not present and the car would not restart. In other words just the glove box blocked the key fob signal. If I accidentally I left the car with the key FOB in the glove box I would have been totally locked out of the car.
16. There are small cut outs on each side of the rear trunk. If something rolls around the trunk and falls into one of these “black holes†it is virtually impossible to reach it unless you have extremely small arms. I found this out when one of the charging adapters disappeared. I thought I left it attached to a charging station. Luckily I happened to notice these small holes and after contorting her arm my girlfriend was able to blindly find and reach the adapter. Again what moron designed this trunk??
17. I just got a recent confusing message on the Tesla console saying they reprogrammed my car to “reduce its accelerationâ€. Hello – do you want anyone remotely controlling how you car operates without your consent. I bought this car for its acceleration and that’s what Tesla touts as their best feature when demoing the car to you. I understand they made this unauthorized change in memory of a teen died in the car doing 120 mph in Florida. Why is that my problem?
When I tried to email these issues to Tesla’s using their Customer Request form, the site wouldn’t respond (it kept looping with a wait Icon for 3 hours) and their site has no email address, so I could confirm that my email was sent. Is their idea of Customer service?? But it is consistent with their on-going technological ineptness.
The Service Manager at Tesla refused to return my calls after reading the above complaints. Tesla finally responded to these complaints merely saying to review their Frequently Asked Questions, which anyone can see had nothing to do with addressing the above problems.
Would you pay $80,000 for this car??
- ronperh, Jupiter, US