Here Are All the Reasons You SHOULD and SHOULD NOT Buy a Tesla Model S

I've had my Tesla Model S for 1 year (19k miles).

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Should NOT:

1) You're driving a car that's still in beta. The software makes the car, and the software is still a work in progress.

I bought the car for full self driving (FSD) and paid $10k for it. It still doesn't work well. 

If it works as intended, it's convenient, if it doesn't, you die.

No matter how many times I drive the same route, it will bug out at certain spots. I only use FSD on 8% of my mileage.

Just because it records billions of data points doesn't mean that all cars are pulling from all of that data at all times. 

You'd think the same roundabout every day wouldn't keep tripping it up!

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2) Real world range is significantly less than advertised. My car is rated for 390 miles and can get to 290 if I run it down to 2%.

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3) If you don't like taking your time on road trips, charging is a major pain and time suck. It adds 20-30% more time.

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4) The kWh supercharging fees are 2-4x local averages. Is it still cheaper than gas? Yes. But it is still very marked-up electricity.

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5) If your insurance is through Tesla, the software bugs can cause you to pay more, through no fault of your own.

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For instance my forward collision warning is frequently triggered for no reason, dropping my safety score and thus increasing my premium. 

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"Aggressive turning" =  turning at a very conservative speed.

Work the night shift? You'll pay through the nose for insurance, simply for driving late. 

Coming home from a movie that ended at 11? Same.

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6) The car's pricing is also a living, breathing A/B test, and you're the test subject. 

I paid $114k for my car a year+ ago. Today it would cost $94k for the same trim. Not my best investment decision *cringes.* I placed the order in Nov '21 and received it 10 months later.

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7) The tires wear out super fast and are extremely expensive to replace. But man they look good don't they? At 20k mine are showing serious wear, and I have a 98 safety score!

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8) Occasionally inconvenient bluetooth bugs. The handles or charging port won't open at times. Summon is a complete fail, and 70% of the features are party tricky.

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9) Perverse incentives. What do I mean? If you put the car in FSD and check your phone, it will beep at you to get off your phone, and threaten to deactivate. Ok, fair.

But if you look at your phone while not in FSD, it won't beep at you at all, as the interior camera isn't even watching you. 

Ideally, you never look at your phone in any car, ever. 

But what's the point of literally advertising

FULL

SELF

DRIVING

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if you have to pay even more attention when it's activated than when it's not?

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SHOULD:

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1) It is so, so fun to drive. It's just so smooth, with automatically adjusting air suspension, dead silence and lightning fast speed. When the slower model goes 0-60 in 2.3 seconds, it's something special to experience.

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2) It looks amazing, inside and out. I hear complaints that the interior trim doesn't stack up to European cars, but this was the first nice car I've owned, so I'm happy. 

I'm not a car fan, I'm a tech fan.

The all glass roof comes standard and is a beautiful touch on country drives at night.

The sound system is top notch.

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3) The white interior is gorgeous has held up perfectly, even after taking all 4 kids to school every morning! I wish I could say we never eat in it, but...

Do I know or care what vegan leather is? No. It looks cool.

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4) The convenience features and non-buggy tech are incredible and hard to live without.

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5) The yoke steering wheel is a breeze to use and took no getting used to at all.

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6) The screen is massive, has a highly responsive touch display and can tilt from left to right.

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7) It's very spacious inside. Front, back and trunk. No issues fitting 5 adults with gear in the back.

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8) Zero service issues (so far), ever. No maintenance or issues of any kind, aside from aforementioned software bugs and tires. Regenerative braking is a nice perk (once you get over the nausea).

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All in all, I regret buying it when I did (price cuts and all), but I don't regret buying it. I just wish full self driving was as far along as advertised.

If you don't go on road trips or care about FSD, it is almost the perfect car. Once FSD is smooth it will be even better.

Keep in mind, I've been a Tesla fanboi and shareholder for nearly a decade, and went into this experience with a positive bias, but have been let down in a lot of areas, namely FSD. 

You can maybe tell that positive bias is still affecting my takeaway in this review.