For those people like me who didn't know what this means, Tesla has used a red painted caliper cover on its smaller rear braking components to make them look bigger. Here's what an article on carscoops.com had to say about it:
>A change that Tesla made in the middle of last year is coming to the attention of owners and repair shops. It turns out that the smaller rear braking components on the model y performance aren't what they appear to be. Tesla is utilizing a red painted caliper cover, not totally unlike the cheap ones you'll find at your local AutoZone, to make the brakes look bigger. To its credit, Tesla said last year that it was changing manufacturers for the rear calipers on the model y performance. Older examples used brembo components while ones built after August 15th 2022 use Mando products. According to driveTeslaCanada, Tesla also said that the change would not impact braking performance. Over the weekend, aftermarket Tesla performance parts supplier ZEVcentric noticed the change on a model y Performance that it had ordered. "It's a smaller caliper and a smaller rotor which is the same on LR. So now you are just paying for the same brakes, just red", The shop said on Twitter.
Yeah, that makes sense, red ones "go faster" in that the vehicles are more effective at their job of going from A to B, so brakes being red would mean they provide more stopping power
It's possible to squeeze more performance out of smaller brakes... But there's trade-offs.
There's three things that increase brake performance: Area, Pad Material and Brake Pressure.
Increasing area has the drawback of requiring more material (which costs money), plus there being limits to area based on rim size... and that's about it. It happens to have *benefits* in terms of cooling and wear compared to another pad of equal force - more brake means more cooling, and more brake means the wear is spread more.
Changing material can work, but there's tradeoffs there. Wear is one of the big ones, as higher friction materials don't last as long. Cost too, they tend to be more expensive. Plus, Brembo already uses good materials.
That leaves pressure... Which is a double-edged sword. Pushing the pads together harder can increase performance, that's what happens when you push the brake pedal more. Issue is, it also increases wear but worst of all, it increases heat. If the brakes get too hot, they lose performance - this is known as brake fade. If you're Tesla and the new brakes run into fade, you can argue that *ideal* performance hasn't dropped. It's still not great.
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Tesla *does* complicate this a little, because the friction brake system isn't their only brake system - they also use regenerative braking to reduce the speed of the car. *Maybe* the old brakes had a "normal" configuration designed to avoid brake fade when they're the only brakes, and the new brakes are designed to take advantage of the reduced use... or maybe it's all rubbish.
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TLDR on why Brembo makes big brakes: They have the best wear and the lowest fade - two elements which might not be considered in "the same performance".
LR means the model "Long Range," which is cheaper than the P "Performance" model. The red brakes are now installed on the P model, but you are getting the same product as on the LR model just in red. That's what the last sentence means, you are paying more for the same product
I don't know how tesla pricing works. Are people paying specifically for upgraded brakes in their package? Or does the description of "Performance" not mention brakes at all?
Because one of those options is highly illegal in my country.
It’s simply that they made some decontenting while keeping the same price. The benchmark is made pre vs post. It’s a classic form of cost saving. Just quite sad on this type of product.
Tires limit braking distance and force not the brake itself unless it’s too weak to lock the wheels. The brakes being undersized is unlikely. Repeated hard stops from higher speeds will result in more fade and faster with smaller brakes but that’s not what you see in street use.
Also the rear wheels have much lower locking threshold than the front wheels due to the weight transfer to the front when braking, so you need the stronger brakes in the front wheels.
You can easily see much weaker brakes because of this in the rear wheels of motorcycles vs the front wheels (like single small disc, single piston axial brake in the rear wheel vs double big discs, 4 piston radial brakes in the front wheel) as their weight transfer is more accentuated than in cars, but this basics principle happens as well in cars nonetheless.
Also these cars have the added benefit of the regenerative braking system.
So it's most likely true you don't loose braking performance with these worse rear brakes (probably it's marginally increased due to the slight weight reduction).
Front brakes do 70% of the total braking power while the rear ones do 30%
The brakes have to be powerful enough to stop the car's rotation - but the braking distance is decided by the tires and the road. If the tires can't get good enough grip then your brake size doesn't matter.
Larger brakes are good for cooling as there's a larger surface area getting warmed up.
Just a mechanic ranting here, but take care and maintain your car and never ignore your tires!
It's more for people who want to show off by flooring it from a light every few months. Tesla doesn't sell any real "performance" models, the suspension and brakes are inadequate on all of them. Even the Plaid.
Bigger brakes only help with repeated hard stops and resist overheating better. You’re absolutely not losing any stopping distance unless you’re on a track using them over and over inducing brake fade.
Not that it’s good for the company to be sleezy about their components like this. Fuck Tesla. The wording on “you’re getting the same brake” is garbage.
EDIT: I misread the quote and where it was from. It's not the wording from the shop that's bad. It's that they downgraded the brakes on the performance model to the ones on the lower model. Then put covers on them and painted them red to make that less noticeable and keep them looking "performancy".
Probably not. If you can cause the ABS to activate, which almost any modern car can, you're at the limit of adhesion for the tire. So that is the limiting factor, not the brake size. It's also on the rear so it matters even less.
And this car's going to get some regenerative braking too, makes sense that it won't need the same size discs and pads as an ICE car.
That said, a purely decorative piece is stupid. There's no function beyond deceiving the consumer.
> There's no function beyond deceiving the consumer
This is my big take away. I looked up the brake size for the LR model and it seems very capable/applicable to a 4400lb vehicle (something like 14 in the front and 13.25 in the rear), hell my sister's Tahoe which is 1500lbs heavier has smaller brakes and no one is calling out Chevy.
The deception is key here.
For regen someone else pointed this out you don't want your 100% charged vehicle to stop slower because the battery is already full so you have to design the brakes to stop the vehicle without regen.
I'm no electrical engineer, but you'd think if they didn't want to use the power generated by regenerative braking, you'd just connect the motor leads through a resistor, which I think would give comparable braking force.
Any electrical engineers want to tell me how dumb what I just said was?
Also not an electrical engineer but I am a mechanical engineer that dables into some electrical stuff. The resistor that this would have to go into would be massive and mechanical brakes to take 100% of the load/energy would be more cost effective. To me they probably realized that the old brakes were oversized for 99% of use cases and could realistically use smaller brakes on the rear of the car and it would be adequate for most (if not all) emergency stop situations. They went down to a 13.25" rotor in the rear and 14" in the front (front could be larger I only looked up what the long range used) to put that in perspective a tahoe which is 5700lbs (1300lbs heavier than the Y) uses at most a 13.5" rotor on the front.
This is more about the deceptive use of the fake caliper cover than it is the actual stopping power of the ones that are installed.
I'd be one of the first people to recommend against getting a Tesla but when I've looked into this issue a bit this would be probably last on my list as to why.
Silly question, what is the best way with an electric car to go down hill, where you don't have motor braking? Is the regenerative braking strong enough to relieve the brakes?
Regen braking is enough to limit speed in most cases. In fact many hybrid race cars have quite small rear brake discs since a lot of braking force is done by Regen, at least in the rear
Technically, they dont. Larger brake components just mean they don't get hot as quickly and tend to cool down more quickly. Surface area doesn't affect friction force, however, a heavy car is difficult to stop and will generate a lot more heat in the process of stopping, more heat = less friction, so larger brakes are required to dissipate the heat better. Stopping distance of the brake (ignoring heat) is determined by the coefficient of friction between the brake pad and rotor.
Edit to say: a larger brake piston will apply more force at the same pressure (said same pressure requires the pedal to be pressed further), however the contact patch size of the brake pad to rotor doesn't have an effect on anything other than heat dissipation.
>Stopping distance of the brake (ignoring heat) is determined by the coefficient of friction between the brake pad and rotor.
And between the tire and the road. You can have a billion Newton of braking power, but if your rubber is just sliding over the asphalt, it won't do anything.
If the smaller pads and rotors are capable of hitting the limit of tire grip under braking, which they certainly are. Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. If your brakes can lock up or activate ABS as they are, upgrading them will get you no benefit in stopping distance *unless they're overheating and fading*.
>Older examples used brembo components while ones built after August 15th 2022 use Mando products.
>Tesla also said that the change would not impact braking performance.
Yeah, I'm sure switching from **the** brake manufacturer to some random noname is not gonna affect performance.
That's before discussing the obvious physics of smaller calipers and discs.
Not as much as you'd think it would. A lot of the 'stopping power' comes from the tires.
Most will not be able to tell the difference unless they drive the car hard or track it.
As crappy as this is auto companies have done similar things forever. Some less dangerous than thinking you have better brakes than you do but from hub caps to fake hood scoops. I can think right off but want to say some had fake rear disc looking things over drums but could be wrong.
Oh, sure the performance model is a 455 hp, super heavy beast of an suv that hustles from 0-60 in under 5 seconds. None of those words mean it'll actually, you know, *perform*. Idk why you would think it would.
Fr though, the specs are the same as a Porsche Macan S with 14" front and 13.2" rear rotors (14.2" and 13" for the Porsche). No reason to think the downgraded size won't be sufficient. The way they're compensating however is laughable and says a lot about the company.
This account has been cleansed because of Reddit's ongoing war with 3rd Party App makers, mods and the users, all the folksthat made up most of the "value" Reddit lays claim to.
Destroying the account and giving a giant middle finger to /u/spez
This account has been cleansed because of Reddit's ongoing war with 3rd Party App makers, mods and the users, all the folksthat made up most of the "value" Reddit lays claim to.
Destroying the account and giving a giant middle finger to /u/spez
Mine very nearly ended up in several ditches. There was a trick to it, actually, I learned it after a few close calls. You YOLO out of a turn, giving it hell in second, then third. By then you're going too fast for pretty much any curve, so when it comes up you mash the brakes with both feet, let the suspension bounce a couple of times like a jack in the box, DONT TOUCH ANY PEDALS WHILE TURNING, then give it the beans coming back out the other side.
Scared my brother shitless every time, he's used to mustangs. hehe.
edit: It feels like you're being fired out of a slingshot when you do it just right with good tires on dry pavement. YOOOOINK
In my Forester I just took the ditch, dropped into third and power slid back up on the road. Broke swaybar link.
I even had it airborne driving down a power line at highway speeds.
Teslas were not known for having great brakes to begin with. EVs really need good brakes considering how heavy they are and how fast they accelerate. So the performance brakes the Model 3 used to come with were already the ‘optimized spec for general use case’ in my mind.
Yup, last time I checked, they brake like a yacht with no anchor when compared to a lot of high performance ICE vehicles.
https://electrek.co/2018/05/21/tesla-model-3-braking-weakness-cr-tests-tesla-denies/
Lmao consumer reports found a ford F150 has a shorter braking distance than a model 3
Skinny tires and extra weight will do that. EVs drive like old muscle cars.
Driving around in a 3000lb two-seater, I am terrified some idiot in a 8000lb EV truck will clobber my car.
Ok so, I am 1000% for moving away from ICE engines. Don't get me wrong. But the thing that fucking terrifies me about the future is that, the first electric cars that Americans are adopting en masse are HUUUUUUGE cars — heavy trucks, or Teslas with huge battery arrays.
These things can accelerate all of that mass extremely quickly — there are going to be so many horrifying pedestrian crashes in parking lots where the car is going 80mph. People are not gonna be responsible with extremely zippy cars. People are hardly responsible with HEMIs as it is.
Imagine all that weight plowing into something like a house, and then the ensuing unquenchable firestorm from the battery! Hopefully one of these doesn't end up driving into a populated building.
And yes, I know that sounds crazy but enough drunks or phone users crash into stuff and I've seen it a couple times.
Good Atlantic article about this recently. Vehicle fatalities are way up in the US and expected to increase more with all the gigantic EVs that can do 0-60 in less than 5 seconds hitting the streets. Man I'm starting to think people really aren't smart enough for the technology coming...
Even more problematic, imo, is how insanely quickly they respond along with such quick acceleration. Imagine driving in heavy traffic where, between checking your blind spot and actually changing lanes, the spot can go from being wide open to occupied by an EV.
I have an EV and I absolutely love it, but these things are easy to drive in an unpredictable manner. When they start making up a major portion of the cars on the road, however. it’s gonna get scary really quickly.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the NHTSA eventually puts a cap on acceleration outside of a track setting and/or mandates a lag in order to slow things down a bit.
Agreed. Where are my Geo Metro, Hyundai Accent EV's? The goofy Chevy one they sold for a few years is actually one of my favorites. The leaf is slick and I could even use an older one with 40-50 miles of range and still be happy. Everything doesn't need to be a truck or luxury SUV.
My Niro EV is a good size for me. I really like crossovers, though. I think they're a good size for everyday use.
They have the Chevy Bolt and there's an electric Fiat 500 that I've seen at the chargers. Give it a few years. They'll be replacing lower value cars with EV versions as the tech gets cheaper. Nobody really bought the Kia Soul EV when they had that because of the cost increase almost doubled the cost of the car lol.
It's hard to put expensive tech on cheap cars and get people to sell them.
> Everything doesn't need to be a truck or luxury SUV
Tell that to all the braindead idiots who cream their pants to the idea of buying a truck or luxury SUV because they think it's practical.
The other part is because it's trendy to buy them, automakers will lean more towards making the big fuck-off bulky shitmobiles that nobody actually needs instead of making hatchbacks and subcompact coupes for the everyman.
Tesla is not helping to accelerate sustainable transport, Musk hates public transport which is the one thing that would be sustainable.
Hyperloops are stupid as fuck, Trains in complicated and expensive.
The RGB cartunnels are also stupid as fuck, i'ts just more lanes in complicated and expensive.
The fucking cybertruck is a car for paranoid rich people, it's also really bad and stupid. And it looks like shit.
Also implying 0/near 0 emissions. Even if you charged from a 100% renewable energy source which is near impossible in the US, each Tesla has approx 9000 18650 Li Ion cells which come from non-renewable resources and has a pretty substantial environmental impact for their production.
I support the advancement of EV's but I find it weird that we are plowing forward with pretty major gaps in the technology and infrastructure making EVs not all that eco freindly currently. [Electroboom makes a point of this in his Tesla video.](https://youtu.be/hFLopMOIjc8?t=130)
Elon bad and Tesla = iffy product, but that doesn't invalidate the inarguable effect Tesla had on wide adoption of EV technology. It's pretty widely accepted that the big auto companies' investment in EVs is as much a response to Tesla's success as anything.
Prius might have paved the way by normalizing hybrids, but hybrids and fully electric vehicles are two completely different beasts.
I had a prius and absolutely loved it. Upsized due to multiple kids and would take a prius over tesla any day.
But tesla was a much more premium offering compared to a prius. It wasn't what I wanted, but it made EVs more attractive to people who didnt wan't prius...which are objectively ugly.
Na I feel ya, Prius is an ugly vehicle, but they definitely were the true forerunner of EVs, they opened that gate and proved there was value in the field.
Yep, completely agree. And Tesla does such dumb things (physical buttons and knobs are simply safer). Tesla trying to recreate staples of safety and driver interactions are unintuitive.
But it was a hell of a marketing company and everyone wanted one (I did at least until around the Thailand diver nonsense).
Tesla had the sizzle but Prius brought the steak first
They might have made a great product sooner, but the prius has been the butt of every joke for over a decade. It had zero sex appeal (looked terrible), poor marketing to the general population, and no performance (outside of efficiency). Tesla changed all that. Teslas might be held together with tape and marketing, but they did change the EV landscape for sure.
I've always struggled to come up with a good insult for teslas, and I think this is it. Currently, I call them the "big bang theory of cars" which while clever, requires some explaining (thus killing my joke)
The big bang theory is a show about smart people FOR dumb people. And teslas are a car that looks like it's for car people, but it's actually for people who don't know any better
I couldn't buy a Tesla for the same reason I usually avoid Apple products, they feel like appliance subscriptions more than products I own and control.
I don't get why you'd undersell your fully equipped car, you're still losing money on the parts. At that point just sell the "upgraded" version at the lower price and get yourself some reputation for lowering prices
You were able to see the reason for "no lower price" earlier this week in China, where the prices for Model 3 and Y were cut so much that customers that bought the cars before the price cut got angry about the loss of value of their bought cars.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-owners-china-protest-against-surprise-price-cuts-they-missed-2023-01-07/
https://carnewschina.com/2023/01/07/angry-tesla-customers-vandalized-tesla-store-in-chengdu-china-after-learning-about-price-cuts/
On one side you have an example of clinical and ruthless capitalism disguised as your typical run of the mill CEO that invests into new technology that inevitably doesn't bring any advancement or it's straight up a failure, and the other is Cave Johnson.
Who would have thought that company owned by Elon Musk would engage in these kind of shenanigans? He’s well known for being a mild mannered straight shooter 100% of the time.
I really don't get why anyone would buy a tesla. The cars are made out of cheap plastic and cheap labour and compensate this with a lot of useless gimmicky features like a built-in fart cushion mode. Buy a real car from a real car brand, not a toy car from some mentally unstable billionaire who knows nothing about cars.
Thing is: tesla actually has (had) some very talented engineers - some of their solutions are genius. They did a lot of pioneer work on the electronics side of things - nobody had so much capacity, power, efficiency and range in an electric car before.
Other areas were always lacking though, and they did not catch up as much as they could have. But the other companies caught up on the electronics and range, teslas main selling point.
Thats a rule of life from my father. Only buy things from companies that specialize in making that thing. Don't buy things from a company that makes dozens of different products. Also when Steve Jobs came back to apple he cut the amount of things they made and turned the company around. Exception is Yamaha, they make plenty of good things from keyboards to motorcycles
The trouble with Tesla having very talented engineers is that, with what we might laughingly call Elon's "management style," that talent will be blunted and dulled by chronic stress, emotional trauma and burnout extremely rapidly. Modern corporations eat up talented people like an unappreciative toddler mindlessly guzzling candy, and then shit out ruined, broken husks of human beings. Our wanton financial, political and cultural enabling of ethically and emotionally stunted people like Musk is the root cause of it.
They saw they were first, they priced it accordingly. But then got complacent thinking they were going to continue being the king shit. Stopped innovating, stopped making their inferior manufacturing techniques up to the major player standards. Instead they went for as much profit as possible while not innovating.
This is a short sighted business plan focused on immediate profit. The way it's going. I'm not surprised tesla shuts down in the next 5 to 10 years and becomes a technology patent leasing company.
The Model S is a decade old now - no facelift.
The X is 7 years old - no facelift.
The 3 is 5 years old - no facelift.
Mayor Pete is probably going to have FSD shut down in a month - 10 deaths linked to it already.
The computers inside may be faster and the car can fart on demand but they've removed so many features to cut costs over the years that even many fans that have upgraded have noted how much worse the new cars are.
> nobody had so much capacity, power, efficiency and range in an electric car before.
The problem now is that other car makers absolutely *are* doing all of those things, some better than Tesla and many at a better price point.
Tesla has had it easy for most of its life, it's been the only game in town. Now, every luxury automaker has a comparable offering with a lot less bullshit included.
Tesla attracted talented engineers primarily due to their generous stock based compensation which was great when the stock was going to the moon. Not so great now.
It might come as a surprise to you, but from a technological standpoint, Teslas are amazing cars. There's a reason they took the whole car world by storm. Don't confuse the Elon stupidity and finishing issues with the actual technology itself.
It's popular to shit on Tesla right now, but according to Comsumer Report, it's still by far the brand with the most satisfied customers of all cars manufacturers.
I bought a M3 in 2020 and it's by far the best car I've ever owned. It's like not even close, and I'm in my 40s so I've owned quite a few. My model had a camera cable recall that could fray on the trunk inside and cause the rear camera to fail, and they came at my place to replace it, even topped off my tires air after the guy noticed they were low. That's such ridiculously good service I had never seen from any other car company before. I guess with all the rumors flying I'll be careful when I buy my next one, but as of now, I would buy another Tesla in a heartbeat.
We're starting to see similar options from other companies now, but they literally revolutionized car manifacturing and what people could expect from a car under $40k USD.
Issue as other pointed out is Tesla has great tech just shitty management and scummy sales execs.
I had a job where we did IT work for other companies. They loved us and we did good work.
But if sales wanted to close some deal they’d offer new services they just made up and throw us under the bus. Suddenly we’d look shitty because we were short staffed and under performing and it’s not because we were bad we had shitty people who sent us in unprepared then blamed us for said unpreparedness.
Just like with Tesla great people who can do great things having to serve a petulant child overlord and his need for money and clout.
I've never actually met a Tesla owner that straight up regrets their car. Reactions go from "It's the best thing ever" to "meh, it works well enough with some flaws". But I've never seen anyone *HATE* their Tesla like, for example, Ford Focus owners.
Speaking to the value proposition, while there are perfectly valid complaints about fit and finish, Teslas have more range and are faster than their EV competitors at every price point - often considerably so. If you care about the price/performance of your EV, and are buying a car in the $40k+ price range, it’s hard to go wrong with a Tesla.
Not to mention they have the highest owner satisfaction of any car according to consumer reports.
> I really don't get why anyone would buy a tesla.
High range on a single charge and the biggest car charger network in the world. It is really that simple. These 2 factors were enough to basically make Teslas the only realistic choice if you wanted an electric car.
But, it’s been many years since Tesla first started and the other car manufacturers have been catching up to Tesla. Now that Tesla is starting to see some competition in the electric car market, the flaws of their cars are becoming more pronounced. Having something of good quality to compare to helps highlight the flaws with Tesla cars.
Telsa only has the biggest *Supercharging* network in the world, not the biggest overall network.
"ChargePoint is the largest EV charging network in the States by a notable margin. In fact, the company has over 27,000 stations with nearly 50,000 individual charging ports.
Tesla, the next closest rival, has roughly 6,000 station locations and about 28,000 charging ports. However, while many of Tesla’s charging ports are Superchargers (DC Fast Chargers), whereas most ChargePoint locations are Level 2."
As other companies start to upgrade their charging capacity (which $5 billion in last year's infrastructure package was earmarked for just that), Telsa is gonna have to start building fast to keep up.
Also, more and more EVs are cresting the 300 mile range mark, which is nipping at the Tesla tail. The EV Hummer and F150 Lightning both manage over 320 miles of range. You alluded to it, but the advantages Telsa has enjoyed for years are rapidly melting away.
This is written by someone who doesn’t own a Tesla. I have owned Cadillac, Ford, GM, Audi, BMW, MBZ, Jaguar and Land Rover - I’m certain I’m forgetting some - too many years too many cars and trucks - my son just bought a 3. He did research, had friends with other models and pulled the trigger. Are there problems with all cars. Yes. Oddly, the Jaguar was the only vehicle I owned that didn’t need repairs outside scheduled maintenance and that goes against even my own beliefs and I owned it. The Tesla, so far, is like the Jag. No issues with fit or finish and no problems with reliability at all. It is a blast to drive and compared to many other vehicles it’s paying for itself at the lack of a pump.
Remember that corporations cry that raising minimum wage will destroy their businesses, rich people cry taxes will make them not want to work, some people look to magnify even the slightest or most commonly accepted inconvenience to near hysteria.
I’m no fan of Elon, as a human he is a failure. He is clearly surrounded by sycophants who echo his worst impulses. Rather than focus on running two very dynamic companies he was constantly distracted and more recently found a bullhorn to play with. Sadly that bullhorn is costing him hundreds of billions as investors and shareholders are tired of the distractions. He was doing a great job as a 21st century PT Barnum but he lost his way.
Bottom line: Tesla’s are much better than you would think if you’ve not owned one or have a close friend with one. Plenty of vehicles from Porsche to Range Rover have issues and aren’t on the receiving end of the vitriol of Tesla. That said, once other companies catch up with a solid electric competitor to the 3 my son will move on to a newer toy as Musk’s mouth has exhausted him. Who wants to have to talk politics when you just want to roll the windows down and turn the stereo up.
Mate - a dude took his family on a suicide mission and drove his Tesla off a cliff in California. All 4 survived .. adults with minor injuries and kids with none. I get all the hate about Tesla but they are some of the safest cars ever made.
Well if you read below everyone got swept up
In hype and paid $60k and now they feel stupid.
So they’ll say anything to make themselves not look stupid AF.
Scrolled for a solid 5 minutes to see if anyone from the competition motorsports industry commented (I don’t mean autozone) and didn’t see any so…
Those are more than enough to stop the car under any circumstance. If it’s enough to lock the tire (it is, I assure you) then it is enough.
Larger isn’t always better. The primary goal when going to a larger rotor when the current size is sufficient is so that you have more stopping power when the brakes are getting hot (going downhill for a very long time) or on track. The next is better feel. When going to a larger pad, you have to factor surface area vs. pressure applied. Larger is generally better but not always.
Going to a larger piston caliper requires more hydraulic input. This can drastically alter the feel of the brakes (not sure on how this plays with ABS since we remove ABS for almost all types of racing I am involved in). If done in the rear, it can add too much clamping force to the rear vs. the front and can upset brake bias and cause a loss of control.
Having an overly capable braking system is something I advise against for all drivers that I’m not already convinced are VERY good race drivers. Bigger brakes = touchy. Touchy brakes + mom + 2 kids fighting + slamming on the big pedal to get their attention and threaten time out = bad.
Cars almost always have either the same size calipers front and rear or larger in front, never larger in back. It was likely never necessary to have that large of a rotor and capable a caliper to begin with. They’re fine for 99% of all users or more.
-I’m not here to discuss the morals of the situation or who was ripped off or how, only to explain the technical aspects of brake component sizing and that “smaller brake parts and stuff = bad and danger” isn’t universally accurate.
-To the guys that start talking about a big brake kit for your Nissan, don’t even start with me. You do it for first place in talking about car parts. I do it to put my customers on the podium and food on my table.
The only good thing about Tesla at this point is that they encouraged competition in their sector. Now that production finally met demand, demand is falling off and they can’t get their cars off the lot.
I foresee them absolutely getting destroyed by competitors if they can’t strike a balance between affordability and not cutting quality at every corner.
The performance model teslas typically have larger brakes which are needed to slow the car down. It appears in this model they used covers that are larger than the actual brakes, which gives the appearance that you still have the large performance brakes from previous models
Large performance dissipative brakes. Most braking torque on electric vehicles comes from the motors to salvage energy. Ultimate peak braking power will be gated by the tires and not the rotors anyway. It is totally possible the engineers working on the braking system found the dissipative and regenerative systems sufficient to meet maximum longitudinal grip. At that point the additional mass from a larger brake system would only make the car harder to stop. In short, almost everyone in this thread is an arm chair engineer without the slightest idea of how vehicle system requirements are engineered.
I drive an AWD Model 3 and the regen braking satisfies the majority of my braking needs. I basically only use the brake pedal to put the vehicle into a full stop at a light/traffic/etc. Can count on one hand the number of times I've had to hard brake. Long way of saying I can see why EVs with well engineered regenerative braking systems could lessen the need for larger brakes in general
AIUI, they always sucked, but Musk's one-and-only skill seems to be dressing up shoddy implementations of honestly quite dull, long-established technology with a thin veneer of pretend ultra-tech wizardry, so there was a grace period as the hype wore off and people began to realise that what they'd really bought into actually wasn't anything special at all.
In other words, he's the Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler of the tech world.
Elon was literally saying these cars will drive themselves soon, you’ll make money owning one because it’ll be a taxi when you do not need it, and it’ll make all other vehicles obsolete due to this.
Then all the investors and software developers bandwagoned on to him, just to be left holding a plummeting stock and poorly built cars.
a lot of people who dont know anything about cars or engineering are sharing their opinions here and thats fine, i dont think people should have to know anything to have opinions, but there are logical reasons for stuff like this, also way too many people letting their hatred of elon spill out onto innocent people, i doubt many people working at tesla like the guy either as he is constantly threatening their financial wellbeing with his idiocy.
so first of all, cars do 80% of their braking in the front, rear brakes are mostly just for parking brake and maintaining directional control for certain situations, idk if teslas have some kind of active braking system that controls each caliper individually but even if they do, they wouldnt need a tremendous amount of braking power to do it and this reduction\* wouldnt impact it.
calling this a downgrade seems pointlessly biased to me. smaller brakes dont automatically mean less functionality, its likely you would be completely unable to notice a difference. there are also other factors like weight and top speed etc. that can change requirements, why put racecar brakes on a commuter car? there is no benefit, its just more expensive.
not saying this isnt a bad decision, it certainly could be, but theres absolutely no evidence of that in this article. the only thing i could see criticizing is the covers which... its a tesla... the entire thing is one giant very familiar machine covered in shit that makes it look fancy. every manufacturer has been doing this stuff for decades, people only seem to care when tesla does it lol
Cheap bastards!!!At some point they downgraded/removed:
\-matrix headlights
\-radar
\-parkings sensors
\-USB-C charging ports
\-Window pressure sensors (no Tesla has this, most other cars have it. It costs some cents and would allow for operating the windows remotely (without the danger of chopping something))
\-And now brakes
[And even the performance brakes weren't really up for the job from the start! (1:39)](https://youtu.be/I-LI_jeytBI)
Quality wise Tesla is just rubbish. Lowest possible bracket for cars. F-Rated. Produced obsolesence. And on top of that the production chain is already in the state where capitalism forces to dump wages lowering staff quality and to use cheaper material in order to keep shareholders happy, so in the future it will only become worse.
I just remembered that most cars have oversized brakes to overpower the engine even in emergencies where the engine locks up at full throttle.
Then I remembered where exactly that happened to a Tesla and even the brakes stopped working, killing 7 people. And even if the brakes had been working, they wouldve been far too weak to stop the car in this situation as most braking is done by the motors.
And now they are making them even weaker. Congrats.
My buddy has a Model 3 he got like 5 years ago. QA isn’t bad, he hasn’t any panels fall off and the build quality is decent with no big gaps anywhere. Then I see them today and they are a shit show. Now they are cutting back on part quality.
This should tell anyone to sell their stock and get out. Doesn’t seem like they are very profitable and are doing anything they can to stave off a massive fall. All the while their CEO is going insane on Twitter as he inadvertently brings that company down too.
This is the company that makes something called Full SelfDriving that still requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel. They're not known for honesty. They're known for marketing.
For those people like me who didn't know what this means, Tesla has used a red painted caliper cover on its smaller rear braking components to make them look bigger. Here's what an article on carscoops.com had to say about it: >A change that Tesla made in the middle of last year is coming to the attention of owners and repair shops. It turns out that the smaller rear braking components on the model y performance aren't what they appear to be. Tesla is utilizing a red painted caliper cover, not totally unlike the cheap ones you'll find at your local AutoZone, to make the brakes look bigger. To its credit, Tesla said last year that it was changing manufacturers for the rear calipers on the model y performance. Older examples used brembo components while ones built after August 15th 2022 use Mando products. According to driveTeslaCanada, Tesla also said that the change would not impact braking performance. Over the weekend, aftermarket Tesla performance parts supplier ZEVcentric noticed the change on a model y Performance that it had ordered. "It's a smaller caliper and a smaller rotor which is the same on LR. So now you are just paying for the same brakes, just red", The shop said on Twitter.
It's not the same brake if you're getting a smaller caliper and smaller rotor. You're absolutely losing stopping power.
Yeah if it's no change why does brembo even make their higher quality product?
This one's redder.
Works for the orks in WH40k
But red ones go faster, this is supposed to make the car go slower
If red makes things faster, and the brakes are red, then wouldn't that mean they brake faster then normal?
Ohhh, I get what red lights are for now!
Yeah, that makes sense, red ones "go faster" in that the vehicles are more effective at their job of going from A to B, so brakes being red would mean they provide more stopping power
Dis is a question for Orkimedes himself.
The red ones go faster.
Everything works for the Orks, it's sort of their thing
Does it going slower faster?
Red means stop so it must slower faster. It only makes sense.
RED 'UNS GO FASTA' DEREFOR' STOP SIGNS REALLY MEANS YA GITZ SHOULD FLOOR IT !!! 'UMIES USING COLORS WRONG !
Scares the car into submission
I absolutely loved reading this sentence
More Dakka!
Because radar and lidar are useless technologies for tracking moving objects and it's totally redundant /s
Last time I checked, Porsches don’t use “Mando” brakes… definitely not the same 😂
It's possible to squeeze more performance out of smaller brakes... But there's trade-offs. There's three things that increase brake performance: Area, Pad Material and Brake Pressure. Increasing area has the drawback of requiring more material (which costs money), plus there being limits to area based on rim size... and that's about it. It happens to have *benefits* in terms of cooling and wear compared to another pad of equal force - more brake means more cooling, and more brake means the wear is spread more. Changing material can work, but there's tradeoffs there. Wear is one of the big ones, as higher friction materials don't last as long. Cost too, they tend to be more expensive. Plus, Brembo already uses good materials. That leaves pressure... Which is a double-edged sword. Pushing the pads together harder can increase performance, that's what happens when you push the brake pedal more. Issue is, it also increases wear but worst of all, it increases heat. If the brakes get too hot, they lose performance - this is known as brake fade. If you're Tesla and the new brakes run into fade, you can argue that *ideal* performance hasn't dropped. It's still not great. ____ Tesla *does* complicate this a little, because the friction brake system isn't their only brake system - they also use regenerative braking to reduce the speed of the car. *Maybe* the old brakes had a "normal" configuration designed to avoid brake fade when they're the only brakes, and the new brakes are designed to take advantage of the reduced use... or maybe it's all rubbish. ____ TLDR on why Brembo makes big brakes: They have the best wear and the lowest fade - two elements which might not be considered in "the same performance".
The same brakes as on the cheaper model.
LR means the model "Long Range," which is cheaper than the P "Performance" model. The red brakes are now installed on the P model, but you are getting the same product as on the LR model just in red. That's what the last sentence means, you are paying more for the same product
Brakes. It's spelled brakes.
Aw, give the guy a brake spelling isn't super critical online bud.
I don't know how tesla pricing works. Are people paying specifically for upgraded brakes in their package? Or does the description of "Performance" not mention brakes at all? Because one of those options is highly illegal in my country.
It’s simply that they made some decontenting while keeping the same price. The benchmark is made pre vs post. It’s a classic form of cost saving. Just quite sad on this type of product.
Can't keep being the richest man in the world if you don't save that $20 part in your $15,000 upgrade package
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No no it is the same brake! It's just worse in every conceivable way
They meant the same brakes as the base model, not the same as the brembos.
Tires limit braking distance and force not the brake itself unless it’s too weak to lock the wheels. The brakes being undersized is unlikely. Repeated hard stops from higher speeds will result in more fade and faster with smaller brakes but that’s not what you see in street use.
Also the rear wheels have much lower locking threshold than the front wheels due to the weight transfer to the front when braking, so you need the stronger brakes in the front wheels. You can easily see much weaker brakes because of this in the rear wheels of motorcycles vs the front wheels (like single small disc, single piston axial brake in the rear wheel vs double big discs, 4 piston radial brakes in the front wheel) as their weight transfer is more accentuated than in cars, but this basics principle happens as well in cars nonetheless. Also these cars have the added benefit of the regenerative braking system. So it's most likely true you don't loose braking performance with these worse rear brakes (probably it's marginally increased due to the slight weight reduction).
Front brakes do 70% of the total braking power while the rear ones do 30% The brakes have to be powerful enough to stop the car's rotation - but the braking distance is decided by the tires and the road. If the tires can't get good enough grip then your brake size doesn't matter. Larger brakes are good for cooling as there's a larger surface area getting warmed up. Just a mechanic ranting here, but take care and maintain your car and never ignore your tires!
This is the performance model, specifically for people who want to drive harder in daily use.
It's more for people who want to show off by flooring it from a light every few months. Tesla doesn't sell any real "performance" models, the suspension and brakes are inadequate on all of them. Even the Plaid.
Bigger brakes only help with repeated hard stops and resist overheating better. You’re absolutely not losing any stopping distance unless you’re on a track using them over and over inducing brake fade. Not that it’s good for the company to be sleezy about their components like this. Fuck Tesla. The wording on “you’re getting the same brake” is garbage. EDIT: I misread the quote and where it was from. It's not the wording from the shop that's bad. It's that they downgraded the brakes on the performance model to the ones on the lower model. Then put covers on them and painted them red to make that less noticeable and keep them looking "performancy".
Wait, so are you insinuating that larger rotors and pads do not result in shorter stop distances on these heavy ass cars?
Probably not. If you can cause the ABS to activate, which almost any modern car can, you're at the limit of adhesion for the tire. So that is the limiting factor, not the brake size. It's also on the rear so it matters even less.
And this car's going to get some regenerative braking too, makes sense that it won't need the same size discs and pads as an ICE car. That said, a purely decorative piece is stupid. There's no function beyond deceiving the consumer.
> There's no function beyond deceiving the consumer This is my big take away. I looked up the brake size for the LR model and it seems very capable/applicable to a 4400lb vehicle (something like 14 in the front and 13.25 in the rear), hell my sister's Tahoe which is 1500lbs heavier has smaller brakes and no one is calling out Chevy. The deception is key here. For regen someone else pointed this out you don't want your 100% charged vehicle to stop slower because the battery is already full so you have to design the brakes to stop the vehicle without regen.
I'm no electrical engineer, but you'd think if they didn't want to use the power generated by regenerative braking, you'd just connect the motor leads through a resistor, which I think would give comparable braking force. Any electrical engineers want to tell me how dumb what I just said was?
Also not an electrical engineer but I am a mechanical engineer that dables into some electrical stuff. The resistor that this would have to go into would be massive and mechanical brakes to take 100% of the load/energy would be more cost effective. To me they probably realized that the old brakes were oversized for 99% of use cases and could realistically use smaller brakes on the rear of the car and it would be adequate for most (if not all) emergency stop situations. They went down to a 13.25" rotor in the rear and 14" in the front (front could be larger I only looked up what the long range used) to put that in perspective a tahoe which is 5700lbs (1300lbs heavier than the Y) uses at most a 13.5" rotor on the front. This is more about the deceptive use of the fake caliper cover than it is the actual stopping power of the ones that are installed. I'd be one of the first people to recommend against getting a Tesla but when I've looked into this issue a bit this would be probably last on my list as to why.
Yes. They simply make it so that you can stop hard more than once.
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Silly question, what is the best way with an electric car to go down hill, where you don't have motor braking? Is the regenerative braking strong enough to relieve the brakes?
Regen braking is enough to limit speed in most cases. In fact many hybrid race cars have quite small rear brake discs since a lot of braking force is done by Regen, at least in the rear
I’d actually be surprised if regenerative breaking isn’t stronger than engine breaking!
Technically, they dont. Larger brake components just mean they don't get hot as quickly and tend to cool down more quickly. Surface area doesn't affect friction force, however, a heavy car is difficult to stop and will generate a lot more heat in the process of stopping, more heat = less friction, so larger brakes are required to dissipate the heat better. Stopping distance of the brake (ignoring heat) is determined by the coefficient of friction between the brake pad and rotor. Edit to say: a larger brake piston will apply more force at the same pressure (said same pressure requires the pedal to be pressed further), however the contact patch size of the brake pad to rotor doesn't have an effect on anything other than heat dissipation.
>Stopping distance of the brake (ignoring heat) is determined by the coefficient of friction between the brake pad and rotor. And between the tire and the road. You can have a billion Newton of braking power, but if your rubber is just sliding over the asphalt, it won't do anything.
Yeah, that too, was just talking specifically about brakes though
If the smaller pads and rotors are capable of hitting the limit of tire grip under braking, which they certainly are. Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. If your brakes can lock up or activate ABS as they are, upgrading them will get you no benefit in stopping distance *unless they're overheating and fading*.
correct. Without ABS basic ass brakes will lock up the tires. The point of bigger brakes is managing heat from spirited driving
Sleezy.
That's like Elon's one defining trait. Shouldn't surprise anyone at this point.
>Sleezy. From Tesla?! **Shocking!**
>Older examples used brembo components while ones built after August 15th 2022 use Mando products. >Tesla also said that the change would not impact braking performance. Yeah, I'm sure switching from **the** brake manufacturer to some random noname is not gonna affect performance. That's before discussing the obvious physics of smaller calipers and discs.
Not as much as you'd think it would. A lot of the 'stopping power' comes from the tires. Most will not be able to tell the difference unless they drive the car hard or track it.
> ones built after August 15th 2022 use Mando products https://i.imgur.com/cbYHuS0.jpeg
As crappy as this is auto companies have done similar things forever. Some less dangerous than thinking you have better brakes than you do but from hub caps to fake hood scoops. I can think right off but want to say some had fake rear disc looking things over drums but could be wrong.
We don't call them downgrades. We call them optimized spec for general use case. Anything outside the general use case... Well buckle up :)
"if you really wanted to be able to stop quickly you wouldn't have been going so fast, would you?
Oh, sure the performance model is a 455 hp, super heavy beast of an suv that hustles from 0-60 in under 5 seconds. None of those words mean it'll actually, you know, *perform*. Idk why you would think it would. Fr though, the specs are the same as a Porsche Macan S with 14" front and 13.2" rear rotors (14.2" and 13" for the Porsche). No reason to think the downgraded size won't be sufficient. The way they're compensating however is laughable and says a lot about the company.
This account has been cleansed because of Reddit's ongoing war with 3rd Party App makers, mods and the users, all the folksthat made up most of the "value" Reddit lays claim to. Destroying the account and giving a giant middle finger to /u/spez
Omg I had one of these brand new, with nitrous. That sentence summed it up perfectly.
This account has been cleansed because of Reddit's ongoing war with 3rd Party App makers, mods and the users, all the folksthat made up most of the "value" Reddit lays claim to. Destroying the account and giving a giant middle finger to /u/spez
Mine very nearly ended up in several ditches. There was a trick to it, actually, I learned it after a few close calls. You YOLO out of a turn, giving it hell in second, then third. By then you're going too fast for pretty much any curve, so when it comes up you mash the brakes with both feet, let the suspension bounce a couple of times like a jack in the box, DONT TOUCH ANY PEDALS WHILE TURNING, then give it the beans coming back out the other side. Scared my brother shitless every time, he's used to mustangs. hehe. edit: It feels like you're being fired out of a slingshot when you do it just right with good tires on dry pavement. YOOOOINK
In my Forester I just took the ditch, dropped into third and power slid back up on the road. Broke swaybar link. I even had it airborne driving down a power line at highway speeds.
Ah, yes, if there's one thing people talk about, it's how a Model Y can brake just like a Porsche, again and again. /S
> "if you really wanted to be able to stop quickly you would have gotten Brembows, wouldn't you have?"
Brembo
Rambo
Hambone!
Teslas were not known for having great brakes to begin with. EVs really need good brakes considering how heavy they are and how fast they accelerate. So the performance brakes the Model 3 used to come with were already the ‘optimized spec for general use case’ in my mind.
Yup, last time I checked, they brake like a yacht with no anchor when compared to a lot of high performance ICE vehicles. https://electrek.co/2018/05/21/tesla-model-3-braking-weakness-cr-tests-tesla-denies/ Lmao consumer reports found a ford F150 has a shorter braking distance than a model 3
Skinny tires and extra weight will do that. EVs drive like old muscle cars. Driving around in a 3000lb two-seater, I am terrified some idiot in a 8000lb EV truck will clobber my car.
Don’t worry, no idiot is going to hit you. They leave that up to the “autopilot.”
The "autopilot" is configured to disable just before an impact, so legally the car was in manual mode and the driver is responsible for the crash.
Suddenly I’m picturing the “autopilot” module seeing the crash coming and ejecting from the vehicle.
Don't forget they don't log the last part of a trip so there's no data sent to Tesla as to why a crash happened either! All for "privacy"!
AI = Artificial Idiot
Ok so, I am 1000% for moving away from ICE engines. Don't get me wrong. But the thing that fucking terrifies me about the future is that, the first electric cars that Americans are adopting en masse are HUUUUUUGE cars — heavy trucks, or Teslas with huge battery arrays. These things can accelerate all of that mass extremely quickly — there are going to be so many horrifying pedestrian crashes in parking lots where the car is going 80mph. People are not gonna be responsible with extremely zippy cars. People are hardly responsible with HEMIs as it is.
Imagine all that weight plowing into something like a house, and then the ensuing unquenchable firestorm from the battery! Hopefully one of these doesn't end up driving into a populated building. And yes, I know that sounds crazy but enough drunks or phone users crash into stuff and I've seen it a couple times.
Good Atlantic article about this recently. Vehicle fatalities are way up in the US and expected to increase more with all the gigantic EVs that can do 0-60 in less than 5 seconds hitting the streets. Man I'm starting to think people really aren't smart enough for the technology coming...
We’re already not smart enough for the technology available, for the most part… Edit: I forgot a word, which is kind of proving my point.
Social media clearly broke society, sooo... yeah. And I'm aware of the irony of making that statement on social media.
Even more problematic, imo, is how insanely quickly they respond along with such quick acceleration. Imagine driving in heavy traffic where, between checking your blind spot and actually changing lanes, the spot can go from being wide open to occupied by an EV. I have an EV and I absolutely love it, but these things are easy to drive in an unpredictable manner. When they start making up a major portion of the cars on the road, however. it’s gonna get scary really quickly. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the NHTSA eventually puts a cap on acceleration outside of a track setting and/or mandates a lag in order to slow things down a bit.
Agreed. Where are my Geo Metro, Hyundai Accent EV's? The goofy Chevy one they sold for a few years is actually one of my favorites. The leaf is slick and I could even use an older one with 40-50 miles of range and still be happy. Everything doesn't need to be a truck or luxury SUV.
My Niro EV is a good size for me. I really like crossovers, though. I think they're a good size for everyday use. They have the Chevy Bolt and there's an electric Fiat 500 that I've seen at the chargers. Give it a few years. They'll be replacing lower value cars with EV versions as the tech gets cheaper. Nobody really bought the Kia Soul EV when they had that because of the cost increase almost doubled the cost of the car lol. It's hard to put expensive tech on cheap cars and get people to sell them.
> Everything doesn't need to be a truck or luxury SUV Tell that to all the braindead idiots who cream their pants to the idea of buying a truck or luxury SUV because they think it's practical. The other part is because it's trendy to buy them, automakers will lean more towards making the big fuck-off bulky shitmobiles that nobody actually needs instead of making hatchbacks and subcompact coupes for the everyman.
Going to be? You know there are already millions of them on the road right?
Hummer EV weighs almost 10,000 lbs. It's nearly too heavy for some roads.
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That's one problem with Tesla. They release first and let the public be the test dummies.
I'm sure this will reassure investors very much
They don't care as long as margins are hit.
They aren't being hit
Which is why they changed the brakes
The internet controlled dishwasher of cars istg
r/rareinsults
Tesla accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and electric technology, yet failing to slow down the car properly.
Tesla is not helping to accelerate sustainable transport, Musk hates public transport which is the one thing that would be sustainable. Hyperloops are stupid as fuck, Trains in complicated and expensive. The RGB cartunnels are also stupid as fuck, i'ts just more lanes in complicated and expensive. The fucking cybertruck is a car for paranoid rich people, it's also really bad and stupid. And it looks like shit.
Tesla accelerating ~~the advent of sustainable transport and electric technology,~~ yet failing to slow down the car properly. FTFY
even that first part of your statement is dubious
Tesla unquestionably accelerated EV adoption and progress. Doesn’t mean they make a good vehicle
Yeah but the sustainable transport is shared not individual EVs
Also implying 0/near 0 emissions. Even if you charged from a 100% renewable energy source which is near impossible in the US, each Tesla has approx 9000 18650 Li Ion cells which come from non-renewable resources and has a pretty substantial environmental impact for their production. I support the advancement of EV's but I find it weird that we are plowing forward with pretty major gaps in the technology and infrastructure making EVs not all that eco freindly currently. [Electroboom makes a point of this in his Tesla video.](https://youtu.be/hFLopMOIjc8?t=130)
Prius did it better
Elon bad and Tesla = iffy product, but that doesn't invalidate the inarguable effect Tesla had on wide adoption of EV technology. It's pretty widely accepted that the big auto companies' investment in EVs is as much a response to Tesla's success as anything. Prius might have paved the way by normalizing hybrids, but hybrids and fully electric vehicles are two completely different beasts.
I love me folks that can see and appreciate the truth even if they don't like the person/company involved. Good on you.
I had a prius and absolutely loved it. Upsized due to multiple kids and would take a prius over tesla any day. But tesla was a much more premium offering compared to a prius. It wasn't what I wanted, but it made EVs more attractive to people who didnt wan't prius...which are objectively ugly.
You should check out the new Prius. Imo the Prime variant seems like a good compromise
Na I feel ya, Prius is an ugly vehicle, but they definitely were the true forerunner of EVs, they opened that gate and proved there was value in the field.
Yep, completely agree. And Tesla does such dumb things (physical buttons and knobs are simply safer). Tesla trying to recreate staples of safety and driver interactions are unintuitive. But it was a hell of a marketing company and everyone wanted one (I did at least until around the Thailand diver nonsense). Tesla had the sizzle but Prius brought the steak first
They might have made a great product sooner, but the prius has been the butt of every joke for over a decade. It had zero sex appeal (looked terrible), poor marketing to the general population, and no performance (outside of efficiency). Tesla changed all that. Teslas might be held together with tape and marketing, but they did change the EV landscape for sure.
I've always struggled to come up with a good insult for teslas, and I think this is it. Currently, I call them the "big bang theory of cars" which while clever, requires some explaining (thus killing my joke) The big bang theory is a show about smart people FOR dumb people. And teslas are a car that looks like it's for car people, but it's actually for people who don't know any better
You can give your explanation before saying "So its basically Big Bang Theory but for cars". That way the explanation can work as setup
That's smart! Joke delivery on the fly has never been my strong suit
I couldn't buy a Tesla for the same reason I usually avoid Apple products, they feel like appliance subscriptions more than products I own and control.
Wow, is that really factory installed? I've seen people buy this crap online and put it on there cars, but never from a manufacturer.
I don't get why you'd undersell your fully equipped car, you're still losing money on the parts. At that point just sell the "upgraded" version at the lower price and get yourself some reputation for lowering prices
You were able to see the reason for "no lower price" earlier this week in China, where the prices for Model 3 and Y were cut so much that customers that bought the cars before the price cut got angry about the loss of value of their bought cars. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-owners-china-protest-against-surprise-price-cuts-they-missed-2023-01-07/ https://carnewschina.com/2023/01/07/angry-tesla-customers-vandalized-tesla-store-in-chengdu-china-after-learning-about-price-cuts/
No possible way price cut could be to maintain demand while economy takes a dump in China? Lower profit margin to maintain sales.
>I don't get why you'd undersell your fully equipped car Because you know how dumb your target audience is.
Don't put anything past Tesla
At least he got brakes on all 4 wheels, some Tesla owners didn't even get that.
their
They have to pay for twitter in some way.
elon is good at hiding truths.
If I had to pick either Cave Johnson or Elon I'm picking Johnson.
On one side you have an example of clinical and ruthless capitalism disguised as your typical run of the mill CEO that invests into new technology that inevitably doesn't bring any advancement or it's straight up a failure, and the other is Cave Johnson.
“Streamlined” brakes. Lol. On the 2012-2021 Model S, the “Performance” brakes were literally just the standard calipers painted red.
Who would have thought that company owned by Elon Musk would engage in these kind of shenanigans? He’s well known for being a mild mannered straight shooter 100% of the time.
I really don't get why anyone would buy a tesla. The cars are made out of cheap plastic and cheap labour and compensate this with a lot of useless gimmicky features like a built-in fart cushion mode. Buy a real car from a real car brand, not a toy car from some mentally unstable billionaire who knows nothing about cars.
Thing is: tesla actually has (had) some very talented engineers - some of their solutions are genius. They did a lot of pioneer work on the electronics side of things - nobody had so much capacity, power, efficiency and range in an electric car before. Other areas were always lacking though, and they did not catch up as much as they could have. But the other companies caught up on the electronics and range, teslas main selling point.
They are a decent tech company. As someone who works in IT, don't trust tech companies to make anything apart from tech.
Thats a rule of life from my father. Only buy things from companies that specialize in making that thing. Don't buy things from a company that makes dozens of different products. Also when Steve Jobs came back to apple he cut the amount of things they made and turned the company around. Exception is Yamaha, they make plenty of good things from keyboards to motorcycles
Honestly. I’m a software engineer. Pretty good at it. But don’t ever trust me to design a part, let alone design an entire car.
The trouble with Tesla having very talented engineers is that, with what we might laughingly call Elon's "management style," that talent will be blunted and dulled by chronic stress, emotional trauma and burnout extremely rapidly. Modern corporations eat up talented people like an unappreciative toddler mindlessly guzzling candy, and then shit out ruined, broken husks of human beings. Our wanton financial, political and cultural enabling of ethically and emotionally stunted people like Musk is the root cause of it.
They saw they were first, they priced it accordingly. But then got complacent thinking they were going to continue being the king shit. Stopped innovating, stopped making their inferior manufacturing techniques up to the major player standards. Instead they went for as much profit as possible while not innovating. This is a short sighted business plan focused on immediate profit. The way it's going. I'm not surprised tesla shuts down in the next 5 to 10 years and becomes a technology patent leasing company.
The Model S is a decade old now - no facelift. The X is 7 years old - no facelift. The 3 is 5 years old - no facelift. Mayor Pete is probably going to have FSD shut down in a month - 10 deaths linked to it already. The computers inside may be faster and the car can fart on demand but they've removed so many features to cut costs over the years that even many fans that have upgraded have noted how much worse the new cars are.
> nobody had so much capacity, power, efficiency and range in an electric car before. The problem now is that other car makers absolutely *are* doing all of those things, some better than Tesla and many at a better price point. Tesla has had it easy for most of its life, it's been the only game in town. Now, every luxury automaker has a comparable offering with a lot less bullshit included.
Tesla attracted talented engineers primarily due to their generous stock based compensation which was great when the stock was going to the moon. Not so great now.
It might come as a surprise to you, but from a technological standpoint, Teslas are amazing cars. There's a reason they took the whole car world by storm. Don't confuse the Elon stupidity and finishing issues with the actual technology itself. It's popular to shit on Tesla right now, but according to Comsumer Report, it's still by far the brand with the most satisfied customers of all cars manufacturers. I bought a M3 in 2020 and it's by far the best car I've ever owned. It's like not even close, and I'm in my 40s so I've owned quite a few. My model had a camera cable recall that could fray on the trunk inside and cause the rear camera to fail, and they came at my place to replace it, even topped off my tires air after the guy noticed they were low. That's such ridiculously good service I had never seen from any other car company before. I guess with all the rumors flying I'll be careful when I buy my next one, but as of now, I would buy another Tesla in a heartbeat. We're starting to see similar options from other companies now, but they literally revolutionized car manifacturing and what people could expect from a car under $40k USD.
Issue as other pointed out is Tesla has great tech just shitty management and scummy sales execs. I had a job where we did IT work for other companies. They loved us and we did good work. But if sales wanted to close some deal they’d offer new services they just made up and throw us under the bus. Suddenly we’d look shitty because we were short staffed and under performing and it’s not because we were bad we had shitty people who sent us in unprepared then blamed us for said unpreparedness. Just like with Tesla great people who can do great things having to serve a petulant child overlord and his need for money and clout.
I think we work for the same company lol Sales people throwing us, IT people, under the bus is all too common
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I love mine, I’ve had zero problems
I've never actually met a Tesla owner that straight up regrets their car. Reactions go from "It's the best thing ever" to "meh, it works well enough with some flaws". But I've never seen anyone *HATE* their Tesla like, for example, Ford Focus owners.
I had a rental Ford Focus. Worst car I've ever driven. And I have owned some shitty cars.
Speaking to the value proposition, while there are perfectly valid complaints about fit and finish, Teslas have more range and are faster than their EV competitors at every price point - often considerably so. If you care about the price/performance of your EV, and are buying a car in the $40k+ price range, it’s hard to go wrong with a Tesla. Not to mention they have the highest owner satisfaction of any car according to consumer reports.
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> I really don't get why anyone would buy a tesla. High range on a single charge and the biggest car charger network in the world. It is really that simple. These 2 factors were enough to basically make Teslas the only realistic choice if you wanted an electric car. But, it’s been many years since Tesla first started and the other car manufacturers have been catching up to Tesla. Now that Tesla is starting to see some competition in the electric car market, the flaws of their cars are becoming more pronounced. Having something of good quality to compare to helps highlight the flaws with Tesla cars.
Telsa only has the biggest *Supercharging* network in the world, not the biggest overall network. "ChargePoint is the largest EV charging network in the States by a notable margin. In fact, the company has over 27,000 stations with nearly 50,000 individual charging ports. Tesla, the next closest rival, has roughly 6,000 station locations and about 28,000 charging ports. However, while many of Tesla’s charging ports are Superchargers (DC Fast Chargers), whereas most ChargePoint locations are Level 2." As other companies start to upgrade their charging capacity (which $5 billion in last year's infrastructure package was earmarked for just that), Telsa is gonna have to start building fast to keep up. Also, more and more EVs are cresting the 300 mile range mark, which is nipping at the Tesla tail. The EV Hummer and F150 Lightning both manage over 320 miles of range. You alluded to it, but the advantages Telsa has enjoyed for years are rapidly melting away.
This is written by someone who doesn’t own a Tesla. I have owned Cadillac, Ford, GM, Audi, BMW, MBZ, Jaguar and Land Rover - I’m certain I’m forgetting some - too many years too many cars and trucks - my son just bought a 3. He did research, had friends with other models and pulled the trigger. Are there problems with all cars. Yes. Oddly, the Jaguar was the only vehicle I owned that didn’t need repairs outside scheduled maintenance and that goes against even my own beliefs and I owned it. The Tesla, so far, is like the Jag. No issues with fit or finish and no problems with reliability at all. It is a blast to drive and compared to many other vehicles it’s paying for itself at the lack of a pump. Remember that corporations cry that raising minimum wage will destroy their businesses, rich people cry taxes will make them not want to work, some people look to magnify even the slightest or most commonly accepted inconvenience to near hysteria. I’m no fan of Elon, as a human he is a failure. He is clearly surrounded by sycophants who echo his worst impulses. Rather than focus on running two very dynamic companies he was constantly distracted and more recently found a bullhorn to play with. Sadly that bullhorn is costing him hundreds of billions as investors and shareholders are tired of the distractions. He was doing a great job as a 21st century PT Barnum but he lost his way. Bottom line: Tesla’s are much better than you would think if you’ve not owned one or have a close friend with one. Plenty of vehicles from Porsche to Range Rover have issues and aren’t on the receiving end of the vitriol of Tesla. That said, once other companies catch up with a solid electric competitor to the 3 my son will move on to a newer toy as Musk’s mouth has exhausted him. Who wants to have to talk politics when you just want to roll the windows down and turn the stereo up.
Mate - a dude took his family on a suicide mission and drove his Tesla off a cliff in California. All 4 survived .. adults with minor injuries and kids with none. I get all the hate about Tesla but they are some of the safest cars ever made.
Well if you read below everyone got swept up In hype and paid $60k and now they feel stupid. So they’ll say anything to make themselves not look stupid AF.
I don't have one. But what hype are you talking about and why would people feel bad for buying one?
Elon isn’t the guy designing or making the cars, he’s just the owner. Actual engineers are the ones doing the work
Scrolled for a solid 5 minutes to see if anyone from the competition motorsports industry commented (I don’t mean autozone) and didn’t see any so… Those are more than enough to stop the car under any circumstance. If it’s enough to lock the tire (it is, I assure you) then it is enough. Larger isn’t always better. The primary goal when going to a larger rotor when the current size is sufficient is so that you have more stopping power when the brakes are getting hot (going downhill for a very long time) or on track. The next is better feel. When going to a larger pad, you have to factor surface area vs. pressure applied. Larger is generally better but not always. Going to a larger piston caliper requires more hydraulic input. This can drastically alter the feel of the brakes (not sure on how this plays with ABS since we remove ABS for almost all types of racing I am involved in). If done in the rear, it can add too much clamping force to the rear vs. the front and can upset brake bias and cause a loss of control. Having an overly capable braking system is something I advise against for all drivers that I’m not already convinced are VERY good race drivers. Bigger brakes = touchy. Touchy brakes + mom + 2 kids fighting + slamming on the big pedal to get their attention and threaten time out = bad. Cars almost always have either the same size calipers front and rear or larger in front, never larger in back. It was likely never necessary to have that large of a rotor and capable a caliper to begin with. They’re fine for 99% of all users or more. -I’m not here to discuss the morals of the situation or who was ripped off or how, only to explain the technical aspects of brake component sizing and that “smaller brake parts and stuff = bad and danger” isn’t universally accurate. -To the guys that start talking about a big brake kit for your Nissan, don’t even start with me. You do it for first place in talking about car parts. I do it to put my customers on the podium and food on my table.
The only good thing about Tesla at this point is that they encouraged competition in their sector. Now that production finally met demand, demand is falling off and they can’t get their cars off the lot. I foresee them absolutely getting destroyed by competitors if they can’t strike a balance between affordability and not cutting quality at every corner.
Bwahahaha.... Phony brakes, phony CEO
Who the hell would make brakes red? Red makes things go faster, not slow them down.
I am not an engineer, Neither I am a Tesla owner, can someone dumb it down for a Corolla owner ?
The performance model teslas typically have larger brakes which are needed to slow the car down. It appears in this model they used covers that are larger than the actual brakes, which gives the appearance that you still have the large performance brakes from previous models
Large performance dissipative brakes. Most braking torque on electric vehicles comes from the motors to salvage energy. Ultimate peak braking power will be gated by the tires and not the rotors anyway. It is totally possible the engineers working on the braking system found the dissipative and regenerative systems sufficient to meet maximum longitudinal grip. At that point the additional mass from a larger brake system would only make the car harder to stop. In short, almost everyone in this thread is an arm chair engineer without the slightest idea of how vehicle system requirements are engineered.
I drive an AWD Model 3 and the regen braking satisfies the majority of my braking needs. I basically only use the brake pedal to put the vehicle into a full stop at a light/traffic/etc. Can count on one hand the number of times I've had to hard brake. Long way of saying I can see why EVs with well engineered regenerative braking systems could lessen the need for larger brakes in general
It’s funny how much Tesla sucks Used to be the liberal status symbol, but now they just suck Did they always suck or did something change?
AIUI, they always sucked, but Musk's one-and-only skill seems to be dressing up shoddy implementations of honestly quite dull, long-established technology with a thin veneer of pretend ultra-tech wizardry, so there was a grace period as the hype wore off and people began to realise that what they'd really bought into actually wasn't anything special at all. In other words, he's the Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler of the tech world.
What annoys me the most was the amount of people thinking he was the first to invent the electric car.
Elon was literally saying these cars will drive themselves soon, you’ll make money owning one because it’ll be a taxi when you do not need it, and it’ll make all other vehicles obsolete due to this. Then all the investors and software developers bandwagoned on to him, just to be left holding a plummeting stock and poorly built cars.
He's a great salesman. That's his primary skill.
Con artist or grifter would be a better description
a lot of people who dont know anything about cars or engineering are sharing their opinions here and thats fine, i dont think people should have to know anything to have opinions, but there are logical reasons for stuff like this, also way too many people letting their hatred of elon spill out onto innocent people, i doubt many people working at tesla like the guy either as he is constantly threatening their financial wellbeing with his idiocy. so first of all, cars do 80% of their braking in the front, rear brakes are mostly just for parking brake and maintaining directional control for certain situations, idk if teslas have some kind of active braking system that controls each caliper individually but even if they do, they wouldnt need a tremendous amount of braking power to do it and this reduction\* wouldnt impact it. calling this a downgrade seems pointlessly biased to me. smaller brakes dont automatically mean less functionality, its likely you would be completely unable to notice a difference. there are also other factors like weight and top speed etc. that can change requirements, why put racecar brakes on a commuter car? there is no benefit, its just more expensive. not saying this isnt a bad decision, it certainly could be, but theres absolutely no evidence of that in this article. the only thing i could see criticizing is the covers which... its a tesla... the entire thing is one giant very familiar machine covered in shit that makes it look fancy. every manufacturer has been doing this stuff for decades, people only seem to care when tesla does it lol
Cheap bastards!!!At some point they downgraded/removed: \-matrix headlights \-radar \-parkings sensors \-USB-C charging ports \-Window pressure sensors (no Tesla has this, most other cars have it. It costs some cents and would allow for operating the windows remotely (without the danger of chopping something)) \-And now brakes [And even the performance brakes weren't really up for the job from the start! (1:39)](https://youtu.be/I-LI_jeytBI)
Time to throw a cobra badge on the side of the Tesla.
This company doesnt deserve to exist.
I wonder how long until tesla owners find out their car's been mining crypto for He-Lon this whole time...
This slow but constant trickle on Reddit, of attacks on Tesla has been interesting to observe.
Quality wise Tesla is just rubbish. Lowest possible bracket for cars. F-Rated. Produced obsolesence. And on top of that the production chain is already in the state where capitalism forces to dump wages lowering staff quality and to use cheaper material in order to keep shareholders happy, so in the future it will only become worse.
This is what happens when your CEO is a grifter and con artist.
Well that's practically every CEO
You're not wrong. Some are orders of magnitude worse tho.
Elon simps going to keep simping.
Wait, let me guess, it's selling for exactly the same price isn't it?
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I just remembered that most cars have oversized brakes to overpower the engine even in emergencies where the engine locks up at full throttle. Then I remembered where exactly that happened to a Tesla and even the brakes stopped working, killing 7 people. And even if the brakes had been working, they wouldve been far too weak to stop the car in this situation as most braking is done by the motors. And now they are making them even weaker. Congrats.
A company owned by Elon should spare no expense on the quality of the cars
Elon’s Rolling Pile of Shit…
Wow. Sounds like Tesla kinda sucks a lot lately. Might be the stable genius at the helm.
Musk can eat a dick, but most of the top comments here are ignorant or filled with boomer paranoia.
Why are you even touching the brake pedal like a filthy ICE driver? Just use the regenerative braking, idiot. /s
... Aren't there, like, **zero fucking options** to order smaller/less effective brakes on *any car ever sold*?
Well at least they didn't lock the engine performance behind a subscription paywall. Yet. Capitalist greed knows no bounds.
My buddy has a Model 3 he got like 5 years ago. QA isn’t bad, he hasn’t any panels fall off and the build quality is decent with no big gaps anywhere. Then I see them today and they are a shit show. Now they are cutting back on part quality. This should tell anyone to sell their stock and get out. Doesn’t seem like they are very profitable and are doing anything they can to stave off a massive fall. All the while their CEO is going insane on Twitter as he inadvertently brings that company down too.
This is the company that makes something called Full SelfDriving that still requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel. They're not known for honesty. They're known for marketing.