I'm considering trading for a newer car and stongly considering a Tesla with reliablilty being the main factor over another Mercedes. Thoughts.

 

I don't believe that there are any reports with Tesla ranking above Mercedes for reliability, so if that's the main factor you might be disappointed.

 

Well, eventually I'd want to add a Tesla in my inventory, but reliability is still a concern. They're uni-body, so if you damage one part/side of the car, you will have to replace the entire shell. My friend had a significant bump and was told he had to replace the entire shell just for a small portion of the car. Most autobody shops won't accept this job unless they're certified, which there are only a few out there that are able to order official parts and will charge accordingly.
However, I do like Tesla's internet connection, their interface and frequent updates. Car accelerates better than most cars in the price range and save on gas/oil. With the cameras monitoring your car and many safety features, a Tesla is definitely on my radar in the future.

 

No.I'll wait for the EV market to strengthen. More options and cars with better range. From what I've read and seen, teslas lack luxury and comfort. Cheap finishes and very bland interiors. Service can be an issue.

 

I shopped Tesla Model 3 as well and visited with their body shop to ask about repairs and was told the following:

All modern cars are unibody (except for body-on-frame trucks and SUVs). Like any unibody, if you damage a quarter or front or rear on a Tesla you can section that piece out and repair it. The only time you'd have to replace the shell is if the undercarriage containing the battery packs is damaged...and in that case it's usually a total loss anyway. Any body shop can do body work on a Tesla but they're pretty stinky about honoring warranty claims on cars that were repaired outside authorized repair centers.

For me, the performance is ludicrous but the range is lacking. Also, I think they're sorta ugly and cheap looking...but LOVE the tech.

 

Agree with the above. Having lived with an S and X for a number of months, nothing feels especially special and the tactile feel is cheap. Lots of backend tech and acceleration is great for youtube, but you do feel the weight in the corners. And the "AV" systems most certainly aren't, regardless of how they are marketed.

 

I am imagining myself driving a car that does not make a sound at all. That is a big No No. I am thinking AMG maybe a C43. Also who said that this battery car is more reliable then the ICON
​ "The Best or Nothing". Again each to his own.

 

Some Mercedes fanboys think that...and I'm definitely a fanboy having owned only Mercedes-Benz cars for 40 years, my family for over 50, and several picked up at the factory, etc...but there's nothing iconic anymore about Mercedes reliability like it was before the 90s. There's not a report conducted listing Mercedes-Benz in the top 10 reliability-wise. I buy Mercedes-Benz cars for how they drive and feel and not their reliability. I've had 10 of them so have a little experience. They were not especially reliable, and I am meticulous about my cars. Our Lexus and Toyota Sequoia and Land Cruiser were bullet-proof.

 

I am not sure about before 90s. I am talking 2015 to nowdays I am comparing C63s E63 E55 AMG GT AMG GT 63s and G63s. Call me a fanboy but no way i will compare theses beasts to a battery car or to a Toyota...

 

You said reliable icon so I responded to that. Toyota tops almost every survey and MB is never in the top 10. Are Toyotas boring cars...yes...but I'm responding to reliability.

 

I dunno, my buddy got an S brand new and he said it was not at all worth what he paid, fit and finish sucked, service is a hassle even in SoCal, he doesn't really like it.

Also he said they always make weird clicky sounds inside from all the electronics lol

 

I am not talking surveys and I frankly dont care top 10 or top 100. MB to me is a fine luxury reliable powerful car specially AMG. Yes maybe I am wrong but that is my opinion. MB the Best or Nothing.

 

A few things to keep in mind if/when considering a Tesla:

1. Hope that you never bend it. I have a relative in the auto insurance industry and his experience is that many Tesla owners find themselves waiting months for body/crash parts. There simply aren't any in the supply chain and the manufacturer has no sense of urgency in getting customers' cars back on the road. They got their sale count, you can wait. Meanwhile the insurance companies won't extend your rental replacement coverage just because your car's manufacturer has no repair parts for you.

2. I have a work colleague who drives a Tesla. Our typical "back and forth" about cars goes something like "Want to race? Yeah! OK -- I'll race you from Chicago to Kansas City. Silence from Tesla owner. . .

3. While a Tesla can be blindingly fast off the line, that only works once or twice, then it loses its grunt. Battery overheats and loses some capacity. Gas car doesn't. End of race. Similar issues from a rolling start. They don't have the torque once they're moving.

4. Some people simply can't manage a Tesla. What if you're living in a high-rise of some sort. Where can you charge your Tesla? Even if you can get permission to install a charging station, how much will it cost to run that high-capacity AC line hundreds of feet from the panel to your designated parking space? In my case, my detached garage is about 100 feet from the main house. The cost to run a high-capacity AC line to the garage would be huge. Not worth it to me.

5. Oh, and what about Tesla's range in weather extremes? Turn on the heat or air conditioning, and their range drops like a rock.

If I can't burn up a couple of dead dinosaurs on the way to work, I'm not having fun!

 

Awesome car review. Your 5 points make sense. You should work for Top Gear 👍
I mostly liked the dead dinosaurs part 😁

 

I think it all depends on what you expect from a car and how you plan on using it. EVs make great commuter cars IMO. I've said for a long time that if I had a commute, I would seriously consider getting an EV and keep the AMG for the real driving. I would love if the vast majority who just owns cars to get from A to B switch to EVs, so we enthusiasts can continue to enjoy our V8 AMGs. I feel EVs to a large degree are appliances. Specifically with Tesla, my issue is they have zero pedigree. They are a tech/battery company that happens to make cars. EVs don't' particularly offer a desirable to me driving experience. There is practically zero Involvement from the driver. Just like a video game you step on the throttle and let the car do its thing. They have the instant torque and acceleration going for them, but that largely makes them a one-trick pony. If I want to travel really fast in a quiet electric transport vehicle, I travel to Asia and ride one of their bullet trains. That's what EV driving feels to me. Musk's ultimate goal is to one day replace the driver. Musk nor Tesla understand how to build driver's cars.

I do have to say the first EV that somewhat intrigues me is the Porsche Taycan. It's the first EV built by people who understand how to build driver's cars and from what I've seen and read in reviews so far, they have succeeded to some extent, but the price point is simply ludicrous. Speaking of price, as mentioned above, Tesla's don't feel like the money you paid for them. The ambiance and luxury is just not there. One of my friends and a coworker both have a Model 3. I drove my friend's Model 3 and it largely left me cold. My coworker loves his. I mean the instant torque is nice, and it drives very smooth. My friend's got the RWD and the one thing I would say that tickled my fancy is the throttle response. I'm a sucker for naturally aspirated engines due to their throttle response and ease of modulating how much power you want. I got that feeling with the Model 3. It was very easy to modulate the throttle and get the rear end to oversteer a little bit, but that brings up another point for me. You can't reduce or turn off ESP in a Tesla. You can now to some degree with the new track mode v2 for the Model 3 Performance, but one thing that appeals to me with the Taycan is that like other Porsche's you have control over the driving dynamics and ESP via several driving modes and a 3-stage ESP system. This is what makes cars fun, and that's completely lacking from a Tesla.

Now I do realize that this is the regular C Class forum and not AMG, so some of the things I'm saying come from somebody who owns/drives AMGs and other performance cars. I would say as far as a regular C Class is concerned, we are talking more about commuter cars and grocery getters, so a Tesla would probably be a very good alternative. I think they work best if you can charge at home and the range is more than enough for your daily driving. If you do a lot of road trips, quit frankly EVs are not there. The supercharger network is vast, but personally I don't want my road trips to revolve around getting from charging station to charging station and drive efficiently to make sure I get there. When I do a road trip I go for the journey and I stop where I want to stop, not where I have to stop to juice up. If I need to fuel my car, I'm in an out of the gas station in less than 5 minutes and if I'm hungry I don't just wanna eat at some fast food chain that happens to be next to a charging station. As a foodie, I'm quite particular about where I eat.

 

The Taycan is an awesome car. Where it lets me down is range. Understandably for speed, agreed it is a driver's car. But that two speed rear transmission, just not well executed. I've driven my buddies Tesla Model 3 Performance a few times. It'll blow the doors off most AMGs 0-60, 100-160 AMGs have the win.

 

Check out some of the CarWow vids. If I recall Model 3, as you said, flat out beats all AMGs in a drag race hitting 130+ ...and surprisingly holds them off to about 130 in a roll-on. Mat Watson and Yannimize are a hoot.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUh...31m6TNX2VKVSVA

 

The range issue is vastly overblown and misunderstood. The EPA has two ways of getting cars certified. One is time consuming and expensive and the other one is fast tracked. The time consuming one involves testing the cars in various climates and different times of the year and then calculate a weighted average over all these tests. The fast tracked one only requires the car to be tested in one climate and then correction factors are used to come up with the final number. The Germans (Audi and Porsche) so far have chosen the fast tracked process to get their cars to market faster, whereas Tesla has certified theirs under the time consuming program. The result is in the real world Taycan and e-tron owners regularly report that they exceed the EPA rated range in the summer months and still achieve the rated range in the winter, whereas Tesla owners find that the EPA rated range is rarely if ever achieved and during the winter the range is abysmally below the EPA range. Pick your poison I suppose.

Yes, 0-60 is no contest with the Model 3 Performance, at least the first couple of runs. Then thermal restrictions will eventually kick in and if you keep doing it the battery will soon be empty. There's more to a performance car than 0-60. A big factor is how repeatable is the performance and how far can you drive the car if you actually do push the performance envelope for an extended time. For example you can find lots of YouTube videos from people driving Teslas on the German Autobahn near the top speed and you can see how the Teslas progressively reduce the allowed top speed in order to keep the car from overheating. Personally, I do a lot of grand touring and canyon runs on nice weekends. For example I regularly go for 200+ miles remote canyon runs with my AMG. Pushing it through the twisty roads and getting single digit mpg. Yet I can do these runs on a single tank and make it home. For kicks-and-giggles I played with A Better Routeplanner to see how these runs would look like with a Tesla and the result is that even if I drove those loops at normal speeds, I would have to make a massive detour to stop at a supercharger in order to make it. If I drove it like I drive my AMG, I would end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. No matter how you twist and turn it, energy density is the biggest issue with EVs today. They only really work if driven economically most of the time. Anything else like trying to tow or do any kind of performance driving and you are toast. Just look at how short the Formula E races are compared to Formula 1. Great commuter cars, but not really great performance cars in the grand scheme of things despite their impressive 0-60 times.

Case in point if you wanna see what I'm talking about watch Matt's review of the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. He tests all the cars in the LA canyons, exactly the kind of driving I do with my performance cars. Pay attention to the comment at around 20:30. He used 40% of the total battery in 17 miles! That's the problem with these cars.

 

I agree with many of your points. I'm no Tesla fanboy. For anyone thinking about reliability, we took my wife's SLK out today. 8 years old, no mechanical issues, ~70k miles. Some cosmetic stuff fixed. I dream of a SLS Black.

 

With gas prices dropping like a rock, I personally wouldn't pay a premium for electric right now. Also Tesla range for trips is still very limited and their recharge locations often have long line. Plus in many places, electricity comes from far dirtier sources than a SOTA gasoline engine; coal; oil, and nuke power plants.

 

In addition to what I mentioned above, I would add that EV is not reliable on hills. I live in a country where 60 % of the roads are uphills. Lot of mountains around here. Range of an EV is low specially if you are going up with a load in the car. As matter of fact I never saw one Tesla on the road around here.
​

 

I almost bought a Model 3 Performance.... but, if feels cheap, fit and finish is better on my daughters 20 year old ford fiesta and the car just wasn't fun to drive.... straight line acceleration was awesome...nothing else about the Model 3 was even interesting.

 

they're kind of ugly, and oddly enough, the switch gear is old Mercedes stuff.

 

I don't think the switch gear in the Model 3 is still Mercedes stuff. It is in the Model S and X. Daimler was an early majority investor in Tesla at the time, but later sold its stake. A move that they are most likely regretting right about now.

 

Sorry if I'm reviving an old thread - however, the night that the Tesla pickup truck was introduced I ordered a three-motor and a two-motor version to replace my two R350's. It was a whopping $200 order fee. That said, I do think I will keep my S550 - it has so much the Tesla does not. Additionally, it's nearly impossible to get your Tesla worked on, the wait time is ridiculous here in WA state.