Tesla Finally Added A Blind Spot Monitor To The Revised Model 3 And, Like All Tesla Stuff, The Reactions Are Weird Online

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I think if I had to point to one Tesla innovation that’s really changed the industry, it wouldn’t be any specific technological or marketing development, but would rather be the company’s ability to make every little mundane thing they do somehow get people worked up online. And I don’t just mean hardcore Tesla zealots, it’s also the people that interact with the Tesla people, too. There’s always something for everyone to at least get a bit worked up about, even regarding something as innocuous as adding a feature that’s pretty common today. I guess let’s take a look at this, because whatever the hell is going on here, it’s a significant part of car culture, and one day they’ll need things like this for all those documentaries and TED talks or whatever. The feature is a basic blind spot warning light.

You know what these things are: if blind spot monitors were a human, they’d be old enough to vote by now. First introduced by Volvo in 2003, these are sensors that, usually triggered by the activation of the turn signal, check your blind spot with cameras or sensors, and if it detects an object in there – usually another car, but I’m sure a yak or something would activate it as well – it warns you, usually with a small light by the side mirror, where you should be looking anyway.

Here’s a video of one of Volvo’s systems from about a decade ago:

You get it. Of course you do. These are great features, but hardly pants-wettingly novel today. It’s been known for a few months now that Tesla’s refresh of their bestselling Model 3, code-named Highland, would include this feature. Hell, it’s even in the owner’s manual, which has been available online for months:

Blinspot Ownersman

So, the tech isn’t innovative, really, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to have, certainly. It’s great! On pretty much any other car that introduced a feature like this, this would be in the middle of a list of improvements in some press release and would probably be copy/pasted into some articles about the refreshed car, and we’d all read it and note it and nod sagely and turn to our valets and say, yes, Clamothrace, that’s a worthwhile addition, but if he wanted out of his time-out kennel then it’s still too bad, he has 45 more minutes in the box, and he knows why.

But this isn’t just any car! It’s Tesla, so we get tweets like these:

And some managed to get a surprising number of responses and engagement:

Okay, a few things: first, why is that light so tiny? Is that just one lone little bare LED that doesn’t even light up some plastic lens? And the text of the tweet does at least feel like this person is a bit wowed, even if they don’t come out and just say it: “Blind spot indicator in action in the Model 3 highland! When you put on the turn signal it will blink if there’s a car in the way” and that does sound like someone both excited and assuming this is a new feature in the world, based on the little explanation.

Again, maybe that wasn’t the intent, but the people that like to tweak Tesla people sure took it that way:

 

 

Again, Alex is a friend and someone I respect and he’s not wrong! This tech has been around a while. So why are we making a big deal out of it? Because someone else made a big deal about it, and now others make a big deal out of the big deal that was made. It’s like an ouroboros of annoying trivial bullshit, and here we are! Because this is Tesla, and I get sucked in, too, because culturally, this shit is weird.

A feature addition like this should barely make any kind of waves at all. Twitter or X wasn’t around when Volvo first released the feature, but if it was, would the introduction of this be met with anything other than people saying “hey that’s cool” and “that’s a nice safety innovation?” And then everyone would shake hands and get a snack and go to sleep.

But that’s not the world we live in now! Now we live in this weird-ass world where Tesla people talk about a new feature and it seems like they’re being weird and blind to the rest of the world until they get called out about it by other people and then you start to think, wait, maybe this is too far? and then later there’s some other unhinged Tesla shit and the cycle begins anew.

There’s something bigger going on here. I’m going to keep documenting and talking about it until I wrap my head around just what that is, or, more likely, my head gets wrapped around something else by a mob of annoyed readers.

Either way, you win? Kinda!

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104 thoughts on “Tesla Finally Added A Blind Spot Monitor To The Revised Model 3 And, Like All Tesla Stuff, The Reactions Are Weird Online”

  1. Never underestimate the power of the hype train. Tesla influencers Tech reporters know that any post breathlessly exalting Tesla for their innovation is going to breed tons of engagement. The Tesla owners/fans/investors/hivemind are insatiable for anything that confirms their bias and feeds the hype. And, for a lot of these folks, this is the first time they ever really paid attention to a car so even mundane things seem novel.

    Tesla could claim innovation points for pretty much anything at this point and be greeted with auto-generated accolades from bots, fans, and influencers.

  3. And Volvo wasn’t even remotely first.

    They were the ones that normalized BLIS, during the Ford era (so Ford wanted to keep it for themselves.) There’s a reason the Wikipedia article on BLIS is full of “citation needed.”

    Because George Platzer only invented the optical method in 1995, and Volvo only popularized BLIS. Fun fact: you don’t need to use an optical method to detect cross-traffic, but it does tend to be fairly reliable.

    Which Mitsubishi did in 1992. Remember them? Back when they used to be bleeding edge of the bleeding edge? The 1990 Diamante had automatic distance-keeping cruise control; “Preview Distance Control.” Completely autonomous – you could tell it to just follow the car in front.
    Since that put it ahead of the flagship, the 1992 Mitsubishi Debonair (only sold in Japan) refresh offered at the top tier, not only the autonomous distance-keeping cruise control now using a Lidar system, but also a lane-keeping warning which included blind-spot alerting.

    Finding one of these Debonairs is no small task though. Expensive and rare does not begin to describe. These things were intended to fight the Nissan Cedric and Toyota Crown. Original list was ¥6M to ¥7M, making them more expensive than a Toyota Century! (Non-limousine was ¥5.3M to ¥6.2M.)
    Based on what little information I have been able to find, I’d estimate somewhere less than 2,000 cars were equipped with both PDC and lane-keeping from ’92-’99. (As far as I have been able to find, it was only ever available on Exceed C and Executive III.)
    If you can find one available these days, typical prices on Executive II’s (which have PDC) are sub-$6k. And that’s including port-to-door.

    1. I love Debonairs. They seem to have been almost exclusively built for Mitsubishi executives, although I am sure they were happy to sell one to anyone.

      1. They actually sold MANY Debonairs to managers and salarymen, as they offered a range of trim levels. Just very, very few of the top trim ones. And most get destroyed rather than sold. However, final generation Executive I’s and II’s do pop up fairly regularly.

    2. The bubble bursting really wrecked Mitsubishi more than anyone else, didn’t it? They were doing wild, far into the future stuff and then collapsed into… Whatever they are now.

      1. It’s complicated. Because MMC was previously part of the Mitsubishi Group zaibatsu and a division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as part of the post-WWII keiretsu. Which meant that they had extreme exposure to the asset bubble burst. People think that it became ‘independent’ in 1970, but not at all. It was simply necessary in order to permit Chrysler to buy a 15% stake. Functionally and financially, it remained part of the keiretsu.

        In 1988, Mitsubishi Motors went public, but MHI retained a 25% ownership, and Chrysler agreed to buy 20%, which let Mitsubishi do something other companies hadn’t – they paid off most of their debts. They went into the asset collapse with very little liability, and a surprise super-hit in the Pajero.
        In ’92-’93, they were even plotting to execute a hostile purchase of Honda. Their financial position was that strong. Honda had to cancel numerous cars and programs (including F1) to stave off a Mitsubishi takeover. At the same time, Mitsubishi doubled down on SUVs and 4×4’s, which meant printing money. During this period, MHI sold much of their stake (profit-taking) and Chrysler sold their equity in DSM to Mitsubishi.

        But what really killed Mitsubishi wasn’t the bubble.
        Years of collapse in the SE Asian markets in which they had heavily invested destroyed them financially. Plants in Thailand were literally abandoned overnight due to a currency crash. 1997 saw record-shattering losses that dropped their share price more than 50% overnight.
        In the middle of this, they were investing heavily – but poorly – in North America. In order to increase volume and achieve their goal of being the number 3 selling brand in the US, they just kept lowering lending standards. Even before 0-0-0, Mitsubishi was already writing tens of thousands of sub-subprime loans.
        Then in 2001, there was a scandal where they were forced to admit they had systematically hidden manufacturing defects for decades to avoid recalls in Japan. Many of them relatively small or minor. But the amount of face lost in it utterly destroyed a reputation they had spent over 40 years building in just 30 minutes.
        Which is what led to the disastrous 0-0-0 plan in 2003, which led to a ¥540B emergency rescue by a partnership of Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

  4. “Tesla has always had blind spot monitoring, it was on the center screen”

    Tesla could black out the windshield and its fans would say “You can just look at the center screen.”

    1. while this is certainly true, many users know that some feature swap happens, the thing is that most of the time Apple take these and makes them reliable or enhances them further. I say this being a former Android fan boy and current apple user.

  6. Maybe it’s this way on other cars, too–I haven’t paid that much attention to blind spot monitoring systems–but I do give them credit for putting it inside the car while still close to the mirror. For visibility, it takes lighting and weather conditions out of the equation.

    1. Nissan does this (at least the Kicks I had as a rental). I didn’t think much of it, but if your mirror is covered with snow or slush, or the mirror is being struck by headlights behind you, it does seem to make sense to put the indicator on the inside.

  8. Whew, a blue check AND an NFT avatar.

    I’ll take “dudes at the bar who convince you that yeah, now’s a good time to go to the bathroom” for $200, Trebek.

      1. Who is @jimmy42432325235 with a sexy lady avatar @-ing me about crypto scams?

        Softballs, Trebek. Softballs.

        (I know they have a new host, but it will always be Trebek’s show, dammit.)

  9. I am getting a new car. The old one is 10 years old with 250.000 km on the clock. It is generally not worn down, but just getting to a point where reliability could become an issue and that is not for me.

    I do not like the look of the Tesla Model 3 and its fat twin is even worse.

    I really do not like the attitude of Tesla drivers, in traffic or online. As far as I am concerned, they all migrated from BMW 3 series cars.

    I find it really hard to identify my self as a Tesla driver, being an actual, brown, manual diesel station wagon driver.

    My only problem is the spreadsheet that tells me, without any doubt, that buying any other EV that covers my needs, would be a stupid decision.

    It is that far ahead of any competition.

    It will be white and I just have to figure out where I can get me some steel rims for it.

    1. What if you got a custom wrap that made the Model 3 look like a brown station wagon? Then some stick on decals for the back that indicate it’s a diesel? License plate could read “STNWGN.”

    2. I think one of the problems with going strictly on paper is that it might not be the same thing in reality. There are sometimes aspects of a car which take down the experience no matter what the spreadsheet says.

      I’m referring to the asinine turn signals. I could not live with the capacitive button turn signals. I’d be angry every time I got in there. Though the pre-update version is likely fine? I don’t fit in it surprisingly so I couldn’t tell you.

      2. All the data in my spreadsheet are real life data.
        Even worse, all model 3 data were just improved, the rest, not so much.
        Yes, the missing indicator stalk is problematic

        1. What I’m saying is that pure data doesn’t tell you everything. The two problems Tesla has are build quality and ergonomics, and those are things you can’t plug into a spreadsheet – and ergonomics could make a statistically great car unlivable.

    3. Can you wait a year and a half? If so, a lot of other EV’s will have the NACS charging port and access to the supercharger network. That’s assuming you’re in the USA.

      I think once nearly all EV’s (even Toyota signed up) have access to that kind of charging network, it might tip the balance on your spreadsheet.

      Oh, and the Koreans are bring down the price of the 2024 Ioniq 6 (up to $4k off depending on the model – yes it’s not pretty from all angles…) to be somewhat competitive with the Model 3.

      1. Charging infrastructure is really not an issue (for me) here in Europe.
        I can add 30 miles / hour when charging at home and all major roads have chargers for every 45 miles (mandatory regulations that nearly all countries live up to)

        But as you mention, Kia/Huyndai are currently to expensive, better in some ways, but more expensive, and you can always reverse the 6 in when you park it (as you should do for many other reasons :-).

        1. Today we are buying (leasing) a Lexus RZ, (also not pretty) which was the last thing I thought I’d do as it is not a great EV (awesome car though – minus the lack of a glovebox). It will parallel park by itself, or park in a parking space, you can pick whether to nose in or reverse in.
          It was somewhat eerie when the car turns the steering wheel faster than I could, and parks perfected centered in the lines. I was impressed with it.

          Why buy a Lexus RZ? HUGE rebate this month, $15k off, plus my wife works at a Lexus dealership so there is even more money off. Our car payment raises and the insurance goes up $60 total for both however, It’ll save us over $170 a month on gas and she has a short commute too.

  10. As a Tesla owner myself… I’m in daily disbelief by the number of innocent/ordinary posts/questions that get absolutely shredded on Facebook groups with a bizarre level of padantia. The owners are truly the worst part of Tesla ownership, because one day you’ll have an issue and you’ll be forced to interact with these ass-hats in the forums. Someone will ask “How do I update firmware on my Tesla M3” and 30 people will jump in criticizing the use of M3, because thats reserved for BMW.. and the question asker must be some lazy ass who doesn’t deserve help because he failed to type out “Model 3”. That was a legit scenario from last week. Meanwhile side conversations persist, devolving into name calling without fail (not involving OP), and its clear no one had any intention of answering anything from the get-go. Every post is a pissing match, no matter how many PSI you’re unsure you need in your tires for best mileage.

    Jeep groups are the next worst, mostly consisting of 20-sentance run-on posts in all caps, zero punctuation/paragraph breaks, phonetic spelling, for sale posts lacking any info, and folks who are in serious need of anger management, a divorce/custody/DUI lawyer, and a pack of smokes.

    Lucky me, I’m a member of both groups. GOBBLES

        1. gooOgle tell me where is APPLLLY BEAS HALFF PRISE APSPS

          Sincrely,
          George

          -“work is the mans way of showing gods plan to not be a commy” – G. Washington

    2. Jeep groups are the next worst, mostly consisting of 20-sentance run-on posts in all caps, zero punctuation/paragraph breaks, phonetic spelling, for sale posts lacking any info, and folks who are in serious need of anger management, a divorce/custody/DUI lawyer, and a pack of smokes.

      LMFAO yeah, it’s either that or the most knowledgeable guy, there’s no in-between. Angry Guy asks how to run 37s on stock axles to soothe his ego, Knowledgeable Guy tells him not to do that, and then six months later Angry Guy wants to know why his front axle is bent and “if he can just straighten it at his buddy’s shop”

        2. The type of person that’s quick to anger, hates reading, and is looking for a fight is Facebook’s #1 demographic. Forums are much better, the folks who stayed aren’t looking for dopamine hits (posts take 2-3 days to get a response), and appreciate well organized information instead of a stream of consciousness flood of shit scrolling.

          1. I wish I could say that’s my experience, but I don’t have Facebook, so I’m speaking from both the forums and the in-person groups. The Colorado front range is full of idiots in Jeeps who want the image but not the capability, so it’s all angry Jeep grills, way too many light bars, and jokes about crawling over EVs in their Jeeps that will never see offroading more than light road gravel in a road construction zone.

            My most annoying story was getting harassed on a trail by another Jeep owner who said there was no way I had done half of the trail in my mostly stock Rubicon, as he was struggling on 37s and therefore I was lying about it WHILE MEETING HIM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TRAIL. It was a surreal experience, like he thought I had my Jeep helicoptered into the middle of nowhere just to show him up, but all I said was “Big tires make up for bad drivers, and we can tell which of us is what.” Granted, I was being a jerk by saying that, but I justified it by noting he was being a dick to a total stranger first.

            1. What I’ve noticed is that people blow way too much cash on running big tires and get their feelings hurt when a rig on 31s-33s does the same trail. That guy probably had a bit of a crisis seeing your rig on a trail he thought justified is overzealous Jeep.

              1. This was certainly part of it. It’s a lot easier to buy a lift and large tires than to learn how to pick the right line and understand when the throttle is your friend or your enemy.

    3. You have made me want to join a bunch of Tesla groups and purposefully post seemingly mundane questions with intentional abbreviations and other errors just to watch the melt down.

      1. Its great fun, I’ve been trolling for weeks but finally got kicked out the first time I mentioned how toxic the group was. Mods let all the insults go but couldn’t handle self reflection. DO IT!

  11. In my day you had to glance over your shoulder and use your peripheral vision for a split second to avoid blind spot accidents.
    What a bunch of cavemen we were…

    1. I mean, speaking for me, I bought little convex mirrors to attach to the mirrors on my 2012 Prius v…maybe a day after waking up on the wrong side of the bed with neck pain bad enough to go an urgent care for a muscle relaxant. I’m lucky there’s no highway driving or similar merging between me and there, because I could barely turn my neck without a sharp pain.

      They haven’t failed me yet and I feel a hell of a lot better not having to worry about turning my neck too fast.

      I wish those convex mirrors were standard on all cars, not just pickups and the like. But I guess big mirrors are hell on aerodynamics. Bummer.

  12. All of my rigs–all the way back to the Ford Falcon Supervan–have had Blind Spot Monitors. They were just implemented differently. For instance, a car hiding in your blind spot as you were changing lanes would be signaled by a sound like the frantic honking of a car horn, some screamed profanity and a sound like sheet metal being deformed. It worked perfectly!

  13. Fwiw the same kind of behavior happens with Apple too.

    The cult of personality and reality distortion field with Jobs and Musk is strikingly similar.

    Their last names have 4 letters, only one vowel, and an S. Coincidence? That’s what they want you to believe.

    1. That gets in the way, same mentality as modernist starchitects who see the functional needs of their clients as annoying white noise that’s just trying to distract them from their real goal of building giant semi-habitable sculptures, and anyone who complains about leaky roofs, experimental building materials decomposing, or the lack of closets is just an uncultured charlatan who doesn’t appreciate genius

      2. I was doing the rounds at a parade of homes a few years ago and just for kicks I walked through some seven figure houses. In one of them the builder was standing there complaining to someone about how no one wanted a really daring house in this city. It was so arrogant and condescending that even if I had the kind of money to build a place like that I wouldn’t have worked with him. Then again, if I had that kind of money maybe I’d be that arrogant and condescending too.

    1. One area of the car that’s really underutilized is the steering wheel. You could so so much with it, like flashing lights like a hula hoop as a blind spot monitor, haptic feedback (though I understand that’s in use in some cars), temperature indicators of some kind (e g. If the engine is overheating, the steering wheel temperature could rise to 150 degrees, or when a tire’s pressure is low, the steering wheel could get squishy).

    2. Our Audi’s do this. The BSM stays active after you turn the car off, and the ambient LED in the door will turn red if someone is approaching from the rear, so you don’t open a door into a cyclist or another car.

  16. My little Honda Fit has a camera on the passenger side mirror. They call(ed) it LaneWatch. I absolutely love it, and, of course, they discontinued it for these stupid lights/beeps.

    1. I think part of the issue was that it was only on the one side, while the driver’s side made do with the expanded view mirror, so it felt “uneven.” In a different time it would have worked for both sides, if there were a display that wasn’t in the center dash as with LaneWatch…which is today when any number Hyundai/Kia products even offer Blind Spot View monitor that does the same thing with cameras on both sides but displays it in the digital instrument cluster. And still has BSM too. So maybe it’ll pop back up at some point, who knows.

      LaneWatch was also said to be cheaper in comparison to radar-based BSM, but I’m guessing the cost evened out as more radar based systems went into new models. At the same time Honda had LaneWatch, Nissan had camera-based BSM detection in a number of models rather than radar-based, which could make rain give false readings.

    1. Yeah, but Teslas have a nozzle on the cowl that sprays washer fluid to clean the windshield so you don’t have to stop and squeegee it yourself – how many other cars can offer that? Elon’s living in 2033, everyone else is stuck in 2023.

  18. To add, Tesla had blind spot monitoring on the car already, it was on the center screen. If they took the simple light from Volvo then great, it’s a simple implementation that makes the quality of life better for the operator.

  19. I guess this is the flip side of the massive freak out on Tesla Stan Twitter after some guy showed his aftermarket button panel to shortcut the touch screen.

  20. I am so glad I didn’t buy a Tesla. I won’t bother with the myriad reasons, as any three you could guess would be on the list. However, numbers one and two will always be Elon Musk and Teslarati.

  21. You are projecting a lot of emotion into Brandon’s tweet. He just said it flashes and you make it sound like he is discovering a new planet. Its a pretty monotone delivery about the flashing LED.

    Even if he was excited its not possible for him to be excited that Tesla added this to the car because how dare he like the car? Tesla owners can be happy of existing tech added to the cars. I am excited they finally are adding ventilated seats to the Model 3. Sure, I have them in both of my Dodge Chargers, but I missed them in my current model 3 so I am happy they are adding them just like this simple indicator makes the car that much better.

    1. I think it is because the blind spot warning is standard in so many cars it feels weird to hear such a basic feature described. The exclamation point in the tweet also suggests at least some excitement. It is nice to see it added, though.

      That said, I agree with you that the ventilated seats are a nice add. The subtraction of the turn signal stalk isn’t great, but I’m definitely not going to criticize the idea of adding features.

      1. They had blind spot monitoring already; it was on the center screen which a lot of owners complained about in forums. The visualization would show you and when you hit your indicator it showed the cameras for the blind spot. The exclamation is because it was a long-wanted feature, like the ventilated seats.

        I agree the removal of the stalks seems bad, but I want to experience it. I am not against change in general, but we’ll see if its as bad as everyone seems to play it up. I think it was Motortrend said it’s not a big deal. I find that most things that the internet gets mad at Tesla over are not really an issue when you drive the car.

        1. Ah, then the basic description of what blind spot monitoring is seems even stranger, but this move still seems good. Better to have the lights where you should be looking.

          I’m not against change, but I am against change for the worse. Something being less of a problem than expected is not the same as an improvement.

          On the plus side, if I were to run across a great deal on a Tesla, I’ve seen a couple of control panel additions that look like they could make things usable for me (and one or two that do not look like they would work out). Turn signal stalk will likely be harder to add, but someone will likely find a way.

          Also, I have this problem with more than just Tesla, for the record. I also hate the Volvos that use the screen for everything. I tried to see if I could live with it, but it’s a no-go.

    2. He did project a bit, but then he pointed out the absurdity of the responses to the tweet (and social media snowballing responses in general). To me, the article was a commentary on the fact that (very online) people overreact and over-respond to innocuous comments.

  22. Probably took them this long to add it because it took this long to get internal approval to add a part (Musk hates adding parts) and make Tesla Vision work reliably enough in place of radar

    Back when Tesla switched from MobileEye AP1 to Tesla Vision AP2, the cars lost auto wipers because they wanted to use a neural net + cameras to “see” if it was raining. Took them a year to sort out because when they first trained the computer on footage, they accidentally trained it to think the wiper moving across the camera was rain

    source: friend who worked at Tesla

    1. “they accidentally trained it to think the wiper moving across the camera was rain”

      Unintended training like this is actually pretty common in machine learning applications (note I don’t use “AI” here).

      1. I imagine using cameras meant to look far down the road to watch for occlusion on the windshield + training an NN to detect rain is an incredibly difficult problem as well

        It would’ve been a lot easier to just include a traditional rain sensor with the camera suite because rain sensors are just LEDs bouncing IR off the inside of the windshield into a photodetector

      2. Yeah, there was a story a few years back about training robots to stack and move boxes between two warehouses. The robots had no way to tell if it was raining, but they would stop them from going to the other warehouse if it was raining. It only took one or two rainy days for the robots to decide to just stack and move within one warehouse, which was not the goal.
        You have to be very aware of the data you are providing, both intentional and unintentional.

      3. note I don’t use “AI” here

        Careful, you’ll upset the marketing department. AI is hot. ML is something normies think should be followed by a B. 😉

  23. First let me say this: I know exactly one Tesla owner, so my sample size is, to be charitable, limited. That said, all the Tesla owners I know seem to be people who bought one because it’s trendy, relatively expensive (so modestly exclusive), and great for virtue signaling.

    They aren’t really car people beyond the fact that they want to be seen in the “it” car. In this respect, they aren’t so different from all the private school moms (and it’s always a mom) who tooled around in G-Wagons a few years back.

    There’s nothing wrong with this at all; however, they generally don’t know much about automotive technology – what’s new, innovative, revolutionary, etc. – they just assume that their trendy, expensive ride must be the cutting edge, because of course.

    They don’t take kindly to hearing a neat feature they just discovered has been regularly available for decades on “lesser” cars. This just pisses them off because now they have to start looking for the next “it” car. Their usual retort is to bombard, at high volume, anyone in hearing distance with a litany of claimed attributes, because louder wins right?

    Anyway, that’s what the results of my extensive Tesla owner survey show. There is a +/- error of 1.

    2. Hi, I’m a Tesla Model Y owner, nice to meet you.

      I bought mine because it was relatively INexpensive, considerably cheaper than the Chrysler Pacifica PHEV that was our other finalist. It will be cheaper to run, and probably cheaper to maintain. Unless I get in a fender bender, in which case I’m screwed.

      I’m a car person (hence, at this site and posting comments). Another reason we liked the Tesla over the Pacifica… it goes freaking fast. Not that I do that very much, but if I want to, it can, and none of the fuel efficient 6-7 passenger cars I was looking at even came close.

      We joke with the other parents at my kids’ school during drop off about what D-bags we look like in our Teslas. So I guess if they are trendy, it isn’t in a good way. But who cares, see points 1 and 2 above.

      Most of the features are annoying, I don’t use them and don’t know how, and will probably never bother to learn. It beeps at my a lot and I can’t shut off the beeping. It is kind of annoying. But who cares, see points 1 and 2 above.

      As far as virtue signaling… I think the only people who complain about virtue signaling (present company hopefully accepted) are the ones who are complaining about it while wearing gold crosses on chains and American flag lapel pins and driving around with MAGA bumper stickers. Everybody virtue signals, its only a bad word when progressives do it.

      Also, I think Elon is a POS, I deleted my twitter account after he bought it and he was the main thing that held us back from the purchase even though it was clearly the best choice of car for us. I just tell myself that the CEOs of most other car companies are probably just as awful, they’re just quieter about it.

      Most Tesla owners are probably a lot like me. OK, at least Model Y and Model 3 owners…

      1. That’s all good, but I feel like you missed the satire. My point, which I obviously did not get across, was that too often non Teslan opinions of Tesla owners are based upon nothing (hence my survey sample size of one) or dislike of Mr. Musk and are therefore wildly inaccurate, I hoped to demonstrate this by the silly conclusions I drew in my “argument.” These are not my actual beliefs with regard to Tesla owners.

        Be well, fellow Autopian, and long may your Tesla run.

      2. Decorum matters.

        The fact you don’t know immediately if they’re garbage humans is important. Especially when you multiply that discretion across society at large.

      3. Also a Model Y owner. We bought it after cross-shopping the then-new Highlander in summer of 2020. It came down to many of the same things you mentioned and having a similar mindset. It’s been a great car for over three years and 60k+ miles. It’s not perfect, and didn’t expect that, but even looking back I don’t know what car we would have bought instead of this. When we got it we were the only ones dropping off kids at school in a Tesla (!), how exotic. Now there are a dozen, at least. I usually only encounter the real d-bag owners at a supercharger, and even then they’re easy to identify and avoid.

      4. Man….8 second 0-60 too slow? “0-60specs.com” showing under 10 seconds even going back to the 2004 model.

        Meanwhile my previous 1997 Ford Econoline van and my current 2012 Prius v are both in the 10-11 second range and I’d say that’s all I need.

      5. I think this is a good rule of thumb:

        Tesla owner with a normal license plate?
        Very good chance of being a normal person.

        Tesla owner with a personalized license plate?
        Danger! Danger! Do not approach!

  24. Man, I wonder what Tesla will come out with next – maybe they’ll fix it so you can lock all the doors by pushing one little button on the driver’s door card, or come out with a radio that will automatically seek the next strong signal, or, what about high beams that dim themselves when another car approaches? Possibilities are endless

    1. Wait serious question: do Teslas seriously do none of those things?? I’ve never seriously looked at one or spent any time in one so I’m pretty naive, but assumed they had most “basic” features that have standard on higher end cars since the 80s…

  25. This is perilously close to what I used to call a “Twitter reacts” story. Using Twitter as a measure of the cultural zeitgeist is flawed because it amplifies opinions and arguments unevenly. I find its use in journalism especially abhorrent as you can cherry pick posts that posit essentially any side of an argument as the overwhelming response to something. e.g you could have some guy post “oranges suck”, and he might get ten posts agreeing with him, then a journalist grabs those and writes the headline “Internet agrees that oranges suck”. Now replace that example with something political or partisan and you have a problem.

    I bet the vast majority of car people are still reacting with an indifferent shrug at this news, but the ten or so people loudly talking about it on Twitter are sucking up all the oxygen. So why are we amplifying that?

    1. I think Jason was really trying to provide commentary on the exact phenomenon your noticing. Why does Tesla seem to generate so many “Twitter reacts” stories when other car makers press releases rarely draw such attention.

      1. That’s a reasonable argument, and I will give Jason credit that he’s put in a lot more effort than most people who write these stories, actually providing his own opinion and commentary. It’s why I enjoy coming to this site. However, my argument stands that we shouldn’t be discussing how people react to something on social media at all.

        It’s a pointless exercise because the way social media works is it amplifies bias so it will never provide any useful insight apart from “gee, some people sure are crazy”. I could achieve the same effect by walking up to the bloke who used to wander up and down the station platform near my work muttering to himself about aliens and the government and asking him what he thinks of Tesla’s new blind spot monitoring system.

      2. It’s because Tesla has a very devoted fanbase and an entire deeply devoted subculture, complete with “analysts,” influencers, evangelists, fans, etc.

        Since Tesla doesn’t do press releases on small stuff, fans who are hungry for information look to Tesla content creators, who want to monetize it and make any little thing seem like a super huge deal

        Many of these Tesla fans aren’t car enthusiasts and therefore don’t know much or pay much attention to other cars or what’s going on in the rest of the industry. It’s also fairly likely that for many Tesla fans, it’s the nicest car they’ve ever driven because they’re coming from cars you get when you don’t care about cars

        All of that combined means that stuff like this looks like it gets turned into a huge deal

        I tend to start by asking “What are other car companies doing, Why is Tesla doing it this way, and if there’s a difference, why is it so?” and end up learning a lot about weird little niche engineering things and product planning because of it

    2. The blind-spot-monitor-light takes do read like an inane, hyperfocused forum argument. Remember forums? Where we’d all argue that pink taillight lenses would be the death of the Evo, or that Porsche sold out when it added “PORSCHE” back to its rear badging? (I am not immune to Forum Brain. I may have engaged in the haterade when they changed the badging up on PARSH, MY BELOVED.)

      That said, it does seem weird to continuously highlight the 2006-BBS-ass takes of Extremely Online Guys, as funny as they may be.

      (I guess Twitter really has completed its devolution into becoming the Tesla forum now, complete with users who say some genuinely appalling things on the OT/Politics board! But I digress.)

      I’d imagine that most Tesla owners who just wanted a fun-to-drive EV reacted to this news with a shrug and maybe the word “neat.”

      1. I’ve found myself returning to a small handful of forums, especially after deleting my Reddit account with the API price change. Back to PriusChat.com, rather than r/Prius.

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