Comment by jbm

2 days ago

Everyone is talking about the Cybertruck, but both the 3 and the Y have plenty of engineering problems as well. I believe both cars are listed as below-average reliability by CR.

Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.

I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.

17 comments

jbm

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motionlessveloc  2 days ago

Early Model 3/Ys built in the US were unreliable. The ones built in Shanghai, though, are excellent. Berlin is somewhere in the middle.

FWIW, I'm into my fourth year of (Chinese-built) Model 3 ownership and it's been rock solid, the only services so far were to replace the air filter and wipers.

  • robotresearcher  2 days ago

    Ooh, and tires I hope! Mine eats tires.

    • ryukoposting  1 day ago

      That could be bad alignment or tire pressure. Are the tires cupping, are you getting uneven lateral wear, anything like that?

      Besides that, EVs are just really heavy and weight wears out tires. Just a fact of life.

      1 reply →

  • Waterluvian  2 days ago

    Kind of a silly question but I want to be sure I’m piecing together a fair picture: both of those are five minute tasks you do yourself outside the auto parts store / driveway, right?

    • Rohansi  2 days ago

      Accessing the air filter on the Model 3 isn't great but yes, can do it yourself. Many people just pay someone else to do things like this though.

      3 replies →

    • browningstreet  2 days ago

      Yes. Or roll it into a $80 service charge when you get anything else done at a Tesla service center. Like the air filters.

rpmisms  2 days ago

So many things you just said are wrong. The control arms are 100k mile parts, and you can easily replace them with Unplugged Performance versions for under $1k.

  • plqbfbv  2 days ago

    And I have no idea what kind of driving he's doing to spend 2-3k$/y . I got Front Upper Control Arms replaced under warranty, exactly once, in the lifetime of my 2019 M3 (also Fremont-built). I do a yearly inspection just to catch issues before they have a chance to become really problematic, but for the past 4 years I've always been told that "the car's underside is just perfect, there's nothing wrong with it".

kibwen  2 days ago

> My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.

This is less about EVs vs ICEs and more about Toyota's engineering quality vs Tesla's engineering quality, which is hovering somewhere in the vicinity of Homer Simpson's barbecue pit.

  • jbm  2 days ago

    I should note that I didn't mean to imply it was inherent that EVs were less reliable, but rather, that engineering mattered and Tesla's engineering always had underdeveloped parts.