[Richbot]

Tesla creeps me out, so keep that in mind when I say the below

They have pushed final QA audit to the dealer/distributor level, which means the customer gets to see how the sausage gets made on rework, which is a new experience for some, and grosses people out, and a huge turnoff for people who are used to BMW-levels of screwed together perfection leaving the factory.

But, I have a lot of enthusiast friends with Model 3's now. Like, dozens. People who know better than to fanboy out just because they have a car. They, almost down to a man, are thrilled with the cars. They track them, autocross them, do all kinds of normal car shit in them and I just polled several of them to get their takes on what has broken and how delivery went beacuse I'm thinking about grabbing one myself. Despite the creepy vibes, IMO Model 3 is the best EV product on the market by a mile, and much like my E90M, I think it hits a sweet spot between performance, practicality, and size/packaging/form factor that might make it the best car on sale at ANY price right now. But it's also a rolling surveillance device, and can take control completely out of the driver's hands, and is subject to the whims of OTA updates, and tat creeps me the F out. So I'm still on the fence.

All of the delivery issues my friends had, and there were many (panel gaps and missing parts, lol no spoiler no problem just ship it!) were resolved. Most of them resolved via housecalls from rolling Tesla service truck techs. One person reported a rattle that had to be fixed at the dealer a couple months in. One person reported a weird HVAC issue. One person with a 2018 had a screen fail.

Nobody else reported any failures. And not one of them has needed to have oil changed, or walnut blasting, or whatever. Drive it, plug it in, repeat.

Like BMW, they have some stinkers. Model X is...well we've all seen one in the wild. Whatever, it does some cool stuff at the expensve of being particularly practical as a big car, but to each his own, the X6M exists, who am I to judge. Model S is 8 years into its model run and finally somewhat reliable, but the early cars were a shit show. My FIL's 2014 85 always has some issue or another, very "used BMW 7-series".

But, the Model 3 is not the Model S and it's not the Model X. They nailed it, and they're only two years into production, with more updates coming (heat pump being a big one). If they can do it again with the Y, which I think is still an open question, they're off to the races.

BMW's weaknesses (slow to market, painstaking testing, converting production lines via ship in a bottle re-vamping at Munich rather than greenfield new plants in the desert) on this front might end up being their strengths. They have one of the best production workforces in the world, Honda being the closest analogue but somehow Honda has never achieved the margins BMW has with Acura. They are the one company I trust to meet or exceed Tesla's value propoition on their own turf, while also offering a product that is much more familiar and ergonomically sensible, and with a gigantic network of dealers who are adept at squeezing a lot of money out of a lease. I hope they nail it too. This monopoly Tesla is starting to develop is not good for anybody. I think if BMW can't catch Tesla, it's because they have such a huge lead that's it not technically feasible to catch them and still have any hope of turning a profit.