Probably less of a range hit. Tires have a huge effect on efficiency for EVs and I'd imagine most A/T tires are very inefficient.

Not necessarily. It could increase range AND increase down force or it could decrease range and also decrease down force or any other combination depending on the spoiler shape and the car shape.

Road trips in a Tesla are easy, any other EV I don't like the idea either. Maybe I'm an outlier but I would frequently exceed the range of all available plug in hybrids, just my 40mi commute eliminates most of them. Didn't help that they were all more expensive too

Any source for that hybrid reliability claim? They have all the EV drivetrain components AND all the ICE components which makes for way more potential points of failure.

All I can find is that hybrids are 2x more likely than ICE to catch on fire and 139x more likely to catch on fire than EVs.

link

My wife has an Outback so I can direct compare:

Tldr: Subaru is more reliable, Tesla is more advanced but buggy

Tesla feels way more advanced. The lane centering is way smoother and drives much more like a human. It can handle missing or faded lane lines better. Adaptive cruise is much more fluid and smooth. It is better at handling merging cars and it slows down for turns. Teslas "vision" camera based driver assists have way more capability but are also much more buggy and unreliable. (None of this is about FSD which is way more advanced but also way more buggy and unreliable)

Subarus lane centering feels like bowling with the bumpers up. It keeps you in the lane but you just bounce from left to right unless you're actively controlling the steering wheel. It handles merging lanes better but also will just give up and turn off more frequently when the road is abnormal or the road markings go away for too long. The adaptive cruise control feels more precise and it will exactly match the speed of the car in front with a very consistent distance but that also makes it feel more jerky and robotic (in a bad way). I've never had "phantom braking" in the Subaru but it has slammed on the brakes for a plastic bag blowing in front of the car and occasionally triggers the forward collision braking when not slowing down enough for a car turning right or accelerating too quickly to merge into a roundabout behind another car.

Probably, but not being able to charge at all in cold weather and restricting successive fast charging to no more than twice in 24hrs is pretty much a deal breaker (aka no road trips farther than 3x the range, and no road trips in winter)

"For bZ4X AWD, DC Charging will slow down further than other models when the temperature is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and may not be possible when the temperature drops to around -4 degrees Fahrenheit or below."

Source: directly from Toyota

My purchase experience in Bend was good but haven't needed any service so no help there.

The cars themselves do seem to have some issues with our roads (and in general).

Autopilot (aka lane centering) can't handle the way Oregon marks merging lanes and splits for passing zones and it'll weave all over the place trying to stay exactly centered between the lane markings. Don't expect to use FSD at night either, it will not activate outside of a city because we don't have enough light pollution and it thinks the cameras are blocked (because it's too dark).

Adaptive cruise sucks on two lane highways and will very frequently slow down/panic brake for no reason or completely disengage because of a little rolling hill (and there is no basic cruise control). Every single day driving from Redmond to Prineville on 126, adaptive cruise will disengage twice at the exact same spots and now panic brakes over the fresh (dark) pavement for whatever reason.

Auto wipers and wiper controls are garbage but that should be pretty common knowledge by now.

Having said that, Tesla is the only one with adequate charging around here for road trips. The CCS chargers in central Oregon are still very scarce with many being a very slow single stall with no backup options. Definitely do some in depth research before choosing an EV, I wouldn't trade my Model 3 for anything else but it's not for everyone.

I'm assuming this is a joke (like Toyota's BZ4X) but in case others aren't aware... Do not buy the Toyota/Subaru EVs, they're terrible and overpriced

My Tesla has this as an an optional setting. I turned it on for a while because I thought it would be helpful to avoid any tickets but it got incredibly annoying because the car has the wrong speed limit a huge amount of the time. Lasted maybe a week before I got fed up and turned it off. It was just constant dings after every stop sign, stop light, sharp curve, car slowing down to turn, etc that made my speed drop below what it thought the speed limit was.

Tesla seems to use the cameras more to read the signs so if there's a large vehicle blocking a speed limit change it'll just be wrong until it sees another sign. My previous MINI used some sort of speed limit database with its GPS position which was also frequently wrong.

If this passes I'm sure it'll be done incompetently and will be half assed by manufacturers with no way to report or correct speed limits (just like map data on most cars, doubt this will be any better)

Any chance you could measure the pocket width for me? I can't find any measurements online any nobody has it in store locally.

Looking for a small-ish chalk bag or bucket with a pocket big enough for my very large S24 Ultra (6.5" tall)

I can't even use it at night because there's not enough light pollution and it just thinks the cameras are blocked.

I tried FSD for the full free month and gave it every chance because I would love it if my car could handle my boring commute. Compared to a city, my drives are simple but maybe they don't have enough small town/country training data because it was terrible.

Sure, it could technically get me from A to B but if a human driver behaved like FSD I would literally never get in the car with them again. Not every FSD complaint is from someone who just doesn't like Tesla...

• can't handle faded lane markings and insisted on centering itself between two lanes
• can't drive at night because it too dark outside of a city (I guess because Oregon has very low light pollution?)
• repeatedly turned left into the oncoming lane (same spot, every single time)
• cut off cars in small roundabouts
• almost hit a cyclist walking their bike across a roundabout
• TONS of phantom braking and random slowdowns, especially with low sun and literally every day on a recently repaved (very black) road
• speeding through school zones
• constantly getting the wrong speed limits, not understanding speed signs other than numbers (like "end speed zone")
• drifting across double yellow on curves on a two lane country road

I really hope Rivian doesn't pull a Tesla with their promises... The R3x prototype is pretty much perfect

I had similar criteria to you, I ended up saving for a long time and getting a Zerode. Belt drive and gearbox basically requires hosing off every couple of rides and that's mostly just to keep the belt from squeaking. Gearbox requires a 10min oil change once a year and that's it. Not cheap but I'm very happy with it!

Definitely do the lower doors and rocker, they get absolutely blasted by any sort of grit on the roads. Idk if it's Tesla paint or the shape of the car (or probably both) but this car gets a ton more rock chips than anything else I've owned.

I got a precut kit from xpel with ppf on both sides of highlighted edge in the pic below, but the quarter panel PPF doesn't quite wrap over the edge and the highlighted spot has a ton of rock chips after just 15k miles.

https://imgur.com/a/sN7Zz8Z 

I also somehow have a rock chip towards the top of my door and on the top part of the rear quarter panel (slightly up and forward from the charge port area)

Road noise is perceived as louder because there's no loud engine drowning it out.

I don't think you'll get a very good return on the investment for dynamat. People who have gone all out and done sound proofing correctly with dynamat PLUS acoustic foam PLUS heavy rubber layer (MLV) have reported a small improvement.

Dynamat is just for reducing panel resonance which I'm sure Tesla has already done fairly well. Adding more will basically just add weight.

Been thinking about doing this myself! How's the grip with the fuzzy skin?

I think strength is fine even in PLA as long as it's printed in the correct orientation so you aren't pulling perpendicular to the layers. Even better if the screws aren't totally countersunk so they're compressing the layers.

95% of my prints are functional and it's always surprising how strong PLA can be with a decent number of walls and a large nozzle.

1 year with my RWD and no, unless they fix quite a few issues.

• Adaptive cruise. Biggest annoyance by far, literally can't get 20mi to work on a highway without it disengaging (can't handle small rolling hills, disengages in the same two spots, every single day) or phantom braking (a whole number of reasons).

• Wipers. Just give me good manual controls with intermittent mode because clearly vision doesn't work.

• Traction and stability control off (for RWD). My city doesn't get frequent enough snow to justify a huge plow team but it does snow significantly a dozen times a year with pretty deep buildup off the main streets. Slip start is fine until there's a turn or a weird rut or some road camber up a hill and once it starts to slide sideways the car abruptly kills the power and slams on the brakes. Makes it very annoying to drive

• Charging. Not nearly enough chargers around me (Tesla or CCS) and I still have to go miles out of my way to make it to some destinations. The supercharger network was a major factor in my decision to go with Tesla and now with the supercharger team gone and planned stations getting cancelled, it doesn't seem like much of a benefit anymore.

• Elon. I can generally ignore his stupidity online but the erratic decisions at Tesla and his focus on FSD/AI over all their other problems gives me zero confidence in the company going forward.

For cars, bikes, and most other things I'll get a quote from a professional and if the cost of the tools/parts is less than the quote I'll just buy the tools and do it myself.

I'm currently running out of tool storage space but that just means it's almost always cheaper to do it yourself even if you do have to buy tools. Plus those tools can usually be reused again.

Unfortunately, I've also found that most professionals are rushing (since they're on the clock) and generally do a worse job that I would despite my inexperience because I can take my time.

So you just piss off everyone outside of that 5mi radius?

I have to get up at 4am for work. Loud ass bikes and cars 2mi away on the highway that are significantly louder than someone driving by right outside my door are pretty frustrating when I'm trying to sleep. I like good sounding exhausts but shit like this is why I'd vote for a noise regulation without a second thought.

Yes, Munro is a clown and always has been.

Claiming a product is good enough so you should stop developing it is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, for any company. You can always make something better or cheaper and if you don't some other company will come along and do it and take all your customers.

Tesla specifically has tons of issues to fix with supercharging including the 800v cybertruck and interoperability with all the other brands they just opened the network up to.

If it ends up as promised, I'll be trading my model 3 for an R3 (or R3X) as soon as possible

That same over-simplification can be applied to wipers: is it raining? Turn on wipers. Raining harder? Faster wipers. A bright sunny day with not a cloud in the sky? Definitely no wipers. Seems pretty simple but clearly they can't figure it out.

Determining something as critical as which direction the car will go is absolutely not something I'll trust them with if they can't even get wipers correct

Rivian chargers are currently only for Rivian vehicles, so they won't work if you try them.

They currently only have level 2 charging available for all vehicles but have said they'll be opening the fast charger network sometime this year.

There's supposed to be more charging going in on 97 south of Bend at some point in 2024 but no clue when that'll actually happen, here's Oregon's future charging plan: https://www.oregon.gov/odot/climate/Documents/Oregon%20NEVI%20EV%20State%20Plan.pdf

Yes, I've even had service check my cameras because of a separate FSD issue... On my early morning commute on country roads, the car constantly thinks the cameras are blocked because it's too dark out.

It'll beep at me that the cameras are occluded, then beep at me again every time a light source (street light or oncoming car) provides enough light to reset the error (basically every 30-60s). If I disengage FSD it won't let me reengage unless I time it with an oncoming car when the error is temporarily gone.

I've generally tried to let it go just for my curiosity. It repeatedly drives into an oncoming lane at a specific left turn and doesn't even attempt to get onto the correct side of the road for at least the couple of seconds I've let it go (small road, never any oncoming traffic). It's on my daily commute and does it every single time I let it try.

Stop signs are usually multiple short hesitations (creep then stop) which is incredibly confusing to the driver sitting at the crossroad.

I see videos online like AI Drivr on YouTube that look fantastic but definitely not anywhere close to my experience.