Comment by stronglikedan
13 hours ago
I'd imagine the entire EV segment suffered the same decline as people start to realize what a pain in the ass they still are, myself included. I can't wait to get rid of the failed experiment that is my EV and go back to ICE. Only two more years on my lease.
The opposite actually: the market is growing, only Tesla sales are shrinking:
https://electrek.co/2025/09/25/tesla-tsla-down-22-europe-whi...
Tesla is in trouble for exactly the reasons many of us saw coming. Irrespective of Elons political antics, Teslas product offering strategy is very different from the rest of the market. They’re banking on this approach changing the market, my bet is they are wrong. Model 3 and Y are long in the tooth, getting stale.
> Model 3 and Y are long in the tooth, getting stale.
Musk's antics and focus issues (i.e. too many resources focused on Cybertruck) aside: The thing with Tesla is, they operate completely antithetical to the classic car industry.
The classic car industry designs a model series and signs four-ish year contracts with all the suppliers for the expected amount of vehicles to sell, with a few extension clauses to cover for higher than expected demand. During these four years, the "rebrush" is designed, keeping most of the car the same but incorporating learnings during production, newly developed technologies (e.g. improved compute power) and maybe retooling to make production more efficient, and then it's another four-ish years that are used to make the next generation. That business model makes sense when operating with a shit ton of suppliers, so both the manufacturer and the suppliers can plan for the mid term.
Tesla however, just like SpaceX, takes pride in not following this business model. As much as possible is made in-house, which means less vendors to deal with, and that enables continuous improvements and iteration.
The downside is that it makes life so much harder for spare parts because any given part might just have been in production for a few weeks if not days, and for consumers and consumer protection agencies it's orders of magnitude harder to warn about construction defects because there is no such thing as a "generation" any more.
I'm curious what problems make it such a bad experience for you.
I have some reservations about my EV, but on the whole it is better than an ICE vehicle in almost every way and I'll certainly never buy another car that isn't an EV.
Not the OP and driving my EV isn't a terrible experience, but I do find I struggle to drive it smoothly.
I have a really hard time using cruise control in my Genesis EV. I usually use one of the regen breaking modes, and when you disable cruise control, the car will automatically start regen braking unless you have you have the throttle at the perfect position which is near impossible. And that's much more noticeable if you use one of the more heavy regen modes.
So I have to follow this pattern: Disable regen, engage cruise, use cruise, disable cruise, enable regen just to use it for a few minutes. And with the Genesis, every time you change between regen modes the car kind of jerks a bit. I've heard this is not really a problem in Teslas. Of course I could simply not use regenerative braking (a major feature of the car) or I can attempt to change my driving habits and not use cruise control as often. For long drives I much prefer my ICE vehicle specifically because of this.
The other thing may be related more to my driving position. The car is heavy and rides harshly over bumps which causes my foot to accidentally push harder on the throttle for < 1 sec. And because it's an EV which has quick acceleration the car occasionally will accelerate fast after I hit a bump. I've driven a ton of ICE sports cars with hard suspensions and never had this problem. Perhaps I'm just getting old and now have bad reflexes!
I understand the cruise control dance. I do it on both my Tesla and my Lightning. My solution, which works with both of my cars (notably, not a Genesis, therefore this may not work the same!) is just to accelerate slightly, deactivate cruise, drive as normal.
The Lightning would allow me to do it old school, it has a non-one-pedal-drive mode that has similar regen to normal engine braking on an ICE truck. But I prefer OPD so I just do the 'accelerate slightly and deactivate cruise' to get around the sudden slow down if I just turn it off abruptly.
> Perhaps I'm just getting old and now have bad reflexes!
Sounds like just a very aggressive throttle mapping. Not something I personally run into, but as with my earlier comment, this is very much going to be specific to the car. I also tend to drive with my toe at the bottom of the accelerator pedal which steadies my foot quite a bit and makes it less prone to bouncing on a bump.
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I drove a Genesis G80E for a week and I understand where you're coming from. The regen was a bit awkward and I had the same issues. The Mercedes EQE 350 I rented recently did better there.
Tesla has their regen dialed in quite well. I've read Ford's is good as well, but I haven't had a chance to drive one yet.
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Conversely, it would take a catastrophic change in product offerings for me to consider another gas vehicle at this point. I’m not ever willingly giving up the dramatic improvement in convenience and performance that I got with my EVs. I’ll keep them until they rust into pieces if I have to.
I’ve not had that experience. To the contrary, it’s so much more convenient than ICE for our family. Our EV always has a full “tank” every morning.
What’s the problem you’ve been having with yours?
It seems like most buyers are with you, but for me I'm not going back to a daily-driven ICE vehicle unless I have to. I do wonder though if part of the problem is that EVs are priced/sold at a premium, and even often only as luxury vehicles. The Model 3/Y and Model S/X sales split is like 10:1 or even 20:1 afair.
Even with our exorbitant energy prices, I pay about 1/3 for the cost of energy per mile (off-peak). I have to go in for service 3 times less often (and just that is worth a pot of gold to me). I no longer need to detour to gas stations once or twice a week as I can just plug in the car at night. And then EVs are also more enjoyable to drive imo.
Curious. I've talked to a number of EV owners, and that's the first I've heard that. Most sentiment seems to be between meh-alright and never-going-back-to-ICE. I'm curious which part of the experiment failed for you.
Yeah, I have a model Y and don't intend on offer buying a non-EV if reasonable.
What about the EV don’t you like?
Imagine harder lol. Terrible take.