I posted a thread about this on Twitter and it's getting kinda big by my standards, so I kinda wanted to talk about it here too, cause this is a fun topic. I'm not really a car girl, that's never been my thing. And I like electric cars, if I get another car I'm thinking of getting a hybrid (not that I'll ever be able to afford one).
But Teslas.... Teslas are terrible. One of my coworkers is renting one, and I don't have a car, so he's ferrying people to and from the hotel. I went back with him last night, and the first thing I noticed were the god awful handles as I tried to enter the car.
I reached for the handle, but it was indented into the car. Pushing on it caused it to push a bit into the car. You're supposed to push in with your thumb, grab the rest of the handle, and open it. But it feels flimsy as shit so I felt terrified pulling on the handle, also my thumbs are legit mishapen. So basically what I had to do instead was push on it enough so that the door kinda popped open barely, then I grabbed at the corner of the door like the Goblin I am and pried it open.
I also love how like, you'd need to open this with your non-dominant hand depending on what side of the car you're on. You left handed? Better only get in on the left side, mother fucker.
So I finally get in, and I'm immediately like "I can't believe tech bros re-invented handles and made me a thousand times worse wait I can believe that", as the driver talked about how his least favorite part of Teslas is that everything is on a touch screen, and they change around the layout every six months or so, like they're Facebook or some shit. So you have to re-learn where everything is, while driving at speeds fast enough to kill you.
Also he said he's used the self drive feature three times, and turned it off after five minutes, because it feels terrifying and dangerous. Which it is.
So I managed to make it back to the hotel without the car spontaneously combusting, which is good. But then I couldn't leave the car. Teslas have no internal handles, instead they have a button which just looks like a window scroll down button. I tried pressing it and it DIDN'T EVEN WORK AT FIRST. It worked on the second try. I had legit actual trouble just leaving this car.
I don't see how any of these designs could ever backfire. But hey don't worry, even if you can't get the button to work, Teslas have a mechanical override for the doors. But every model of Tesla has a different way to access the override, and none of them are easily apparent. Neat!
By the way, did you hear about the Cybertruck? And how it has super strong glass, but when they tried to show it off it broke?
Apparently they've fixed that problem, and now they have like, bullet proof glass. I don't see how this could ever backfire.
The thing is, I get it. I get why all of these design choices are being made. Tesla isn't just a car company, they're a luxury car company. They're selling you an ideas much as an actual product, and that idea is THE FUTURE. And to nail home that idea of a fantasy future, we need to remove old outdated features that feel fundamental to a car, but that we can replace with shiny new HIGH TECH SHIT!
Except that stuff is integral to a car functioning, and whenever the safety heads at Tesla told Elon Musk these changes would kill people, they prolly just got fired instead.
But hey, at least my car is cool, as it spontaneously bursts into flames, I can't break open the windows to escape, the doors won't open, I can't solve a fucking escape room to figure out where the automatic override is, and the car's auto-drive feature has decided that the pedestrians running from my flaming deathtrap are actually just moving parking spaces. It's cool though! I'm the talk of the golf range!
Y'all. This is not the future I was promised. And I don't wanna be that asshole, who's like "LOOK WHAT THEY'VE TAKEN FROM YOU", but god damn. I miss analog things.
I miss tactile, analog things. I miss buttons. I miss switches. I miss the little spinny doohicky for windows. I want to live in the future promised to me by 80s anime. Instead, I live in a future where every single part of my car is controlled by a single computer, and it will stop functioning that computer ever loses access to a server because, say, the company owner runs the company into the ground cause he spent more money than anyone will ever see in their lives trying to impress some people with Pepe avatars.
I know techbros are the ones guiding where everything's going in tech, but like, didn't these mother fuckers grow up on Aliens, or Gundam, or Ghost in the Shell? Why are they trying to turn everything into the same touchscreen nightmare?
Oh, right.
Capitalism.
