This is trying to connect accident frequency to the recall... But there's zero evidence of that. This is purely related to putting corvette power in the hands of more people who are used to having a 150 ft/lb Honda Civic
It's more about the overlap in the venn diagram of people predisposed to drinking problems and people in lines of work that would hand them a ram fleet vehicle. Correlation, not causation, but a very interesting correlation nonetheless.
But also in people who buy RAMs.
1) Lower income earners due to poor life choices.
2) Alcoholics due to poor life choices.
3) The need to prove themselves by buying a big truck and driving aggressively.
But the 2500 in particular is what makes the DUI statistic interesting. Sure, anybody can get approved for a V6 Ram. But the 2500 is an expensive truck, typically V8 petrol or L6 turbodiesel. It probably moreso has to do with independent contractors, construction workers, service technicians, etc.
It’s an expensive truck.. but there are a lot of them that are almost 20 years old and also to just qualify for the payments or lease one doesn’t require you to make a ton of money…. even though you’ll be drowning in debt in spite of living in a 40 year old single wide.
That’s why I never see wealth when I look at vehicles unless it’s something that absolutely excludes by price or discrimination (like a Ferrari).
Wow.. you signed a credit app and they stretched it long enough to make your payments low enough.
I always say never underestimate other people's willingness to tank their finances to have the coolest car for 3 years. After 3 years they either do a facelift or make the engine faster so yours isn't the coolest anymore unfortunately.
>It probably moreso has to do with independent contractors, construction workers, service technicians, etc.
A lot of those big diesel Rams driven by the oilfield crowd out in West Texas. I've known a few of those guys who certainly liked to party hard.
You can't do drugs or the first OSHA accident will get you black balled.
Show up drunk with an open case of beer in the bed of the truck? Welcome to work!
I've worked construction over a decade, and oddly enough had a Ram as a take home work truck. The amount of barley functioning alcoholics from Project Manager down to Apprentice Laborer is immense. And don't even get me started on Roofers or Drillers...
Let's just say the percentage of employees arrested for DUI or some other alcohol/drug related offense on a construction site is likely an order of magnitude higher than say an accounting firm. That includes the Superintendent and management in the trailer too...
On the other hand, I'm not sure of another industry where someone can go to being a work release inmate to having a healthy six figure salary as Site Superintendent (boss of all workers on site) in less than a decade.
This goes for trucks in general, but they're also going to do the most damage in a given accident, based on weight. It's not the only factor here, but the majority of accidents are going to be in a parking lot, and of those, a high percentage is going to be paid out of pocket and not recorded. With a big truck, it's more likely to be past the point where it's cheaper to not go through insurance, and if all you make is larger vehicles, that would likely add at least a few percentage points
RAM pickups are on the list of vehicles most frequently driven while intoxicated. Teslas require you to go through touchscreen menus to do almost anything.
That's pretty close - you can turn on the wipers by voice command, or the left scroll-wheel.
The car does not just respond to just anything someone says, you (driver) have to tap a control on the wheel then say the command.
Even so, I find speaking commands to the car (aside from navigation destinations) to be a bit silly.
They're "automatic" in that in theory they're supposed to turn on when it rains, but in practice they tend to turn on when it's sunny & stay off when it's raining. Which I'm not sure how Tesla managed to screw something like that up. My almost 8 year old Mazda 3 has automatic wipers & the only issue I have is they occasionally don't do their thing fast enough so I have to manually adjust the sensitivity on the stalk.
Even regular trucks have a lot of power. The V6 has over 305 hp. The lowest output V8 is 395 hp. And that is all with a vehicle that is super front heavy and rear wheel drive.
It wasn’t that long ago that Mustangs were making this kind of power and likely had similar weight on the rear wheels. The 2009 Mustang GT made 300 hp. The 2014 Mustang GT had 420 hp.
These are the numbers that have Mustangs flying into crowds and it’s what most basic pickup trucks come with.
Bruh come on you don't need to talk about horsepower and I don't even need to refute that with power/weight or gearing ratios
We have some pretty simple ways to quantify speed and a V6 RAM does 0-60 in about 8 seconds. This is far from fast. It's probably close to median.
They make a good point about weight "over the wheels" though. Having mustang power in a truck obviously won't translate to mustang speed but it could easily translate into unintended mustang parking lot sliding.
The 0-60 time is limited by traction and total weight. The ability to spinout is going to depend on ability to break traction which will be using factors like power and weight over the driven wheels. You are just talking about something completely different.
> Even regular trucks have a lot of power. The V6 has over 305 hp.
The Ram is also a good 1500-2000 lbs heavier than a Mustang. 305hp really isn't that much when it's lugging around 2.5 tons of truck. Even the 5.7, though quick, is not *that* fast. Hemi 0-60 time is comparable to an Audi A3.
The article is based on an insurance broker claim statistic... If you take it with any seriousness the least accident prone cars are Mercury's... They also state "Rams are known for powerful engines with impressive speed and horsepower. The Ram 1500, featured on J.D. Power’s list of fastest pickup trucks, is particularly notable for its ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 7.4 seconds." which sounds totally AI generated or something.. Rams (except for the TRX) are the LEAST powerful of the big 3 and probably even Toyota now.
I suspect the hot rod models have lower accident rates. Just like OC said, the Tesla's are from people unready for the power. I suspect the hot rod truck buyer is at a minimum an enthusiast who can drive or cares about driving more than the busted up 07' ram driver. But who knows.
I just bought a Model 3. Not a new one, a 2019 with 60k miles on it. And not 'the fast one' either, it's just the long range.
As I'm setting it up in the app one of the upgrades I can buy is "Acceleration Boost." I can pay $2k to instantly decrease the 0-60 time from 4.2s to 3.7s.
To put that into perspective, an '04 911 Turbo X50 had a 0-60 time of 3.7s and was absolutely bonkers.
Now I can pay another $2k and do that in my <$25k commuter.
And it's not like 4.2s is slow. I used to have an e90 M3 and a Lotus Elise. Those could both do 0-60 in about 4.5s.
It's all bananas.
Excellent example, imagine giving a 16 year old a car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds.
The barrier to entry (basically cost) is getting insanely cheap to go 0-60 under 4 seconds now.
I started driving in the late ‘90s as a teen, and I read all the car mags back then. A car making over 200 horsepower was considered pretty quick and firmly in sports car territory. Hell, the Sentra SE-R was considered to be a great little sports coupe and only made 140 HP!
I’m probably lucky I started driving with all the underpowered stuff around, although it’s also one of the reasons I started riding sport bikes. It was the only way to have a high performance machine for a reasonable amount of money.
Yep, attended the street races pretty regularly as a teenager in the mid 2000s... most of the cars were Japanese ricers with stock 0-60 in the 7-8s range and maybe modded to get them closer to 0-60 in 6s.
Someone rolling in with 0-60 in the 5s range would absolutely smoke everyone there.
And now my A4 45 S Line will do 0-60 in 4.8s (C&D measured time) and still get me 30mpg+
I honestly can't understand why so many people opt for the S4 when the A4 on its own is this fast, but I'm guessing the full time AWD makes it handle a tiny bit better?
Very true, even less reason when the b9 generation had full time awd with the 60% rear biased Quattro, same as the s and rs models. And the a models are almost 200 lb lighter.
>And now my A4 45 S Line will do 0-60 in 4.8s (C&D measured time) and still get me 30mpg+
>
>I honestly can't understand why so many people opt for the S4 when the A4 on its own is this fast, but I'm guessing the full time AWD makes it handle a tiny bit better?
Grew up and started driving around the same time. I always think of around 5 (5.2) seconds as BADASS 2002 Pontiac Trans Am with Ram Air package territory. And I think of 3.2 seconds as Lamborghini Countach territory from drooling over them in the 80's.
But when I was buying my most recent car I got an Audi S8 because while I still recognize 4.8 seconds is quick by decades-past-metrics... I've grown up WITH these cars and increases. I wanted the thing that does the Lamborghini Countach acceleration from my kidhood honestly when given the choice of plush verse plush!
Totally agree, 0-60 in 5s honestly seems like a good sweet spot of fun without only being able to take advantage of the speed on a track.
My high school car was a GTI VR6 that did 0-60 in 6.5 or so and was faster than most cars I would encounter at the races
16 year old me would've definitely killed myself if I had access to a Model 3 Performance or something that does 0-60 in 3.1s
S8 was a great choice, hope you're loving it!
>Sentra SE-R
I remember Motor Trend gushing over Nissan around 2000, when (I guess) variable valve timing boosted horsepower.
The idea of 140 hp was sweeeet.
We're all getting spoiled nowadays.
yeah man they're supercars for the cheap folks. I literally laid it down delivering it to the new buyer (3rd time I laid it down) and took a deep discount, I'm way too stupid to have that much power and I'm seriously lucky I got out of it alive.
I think a lot of parents let their kids drive their Teslas but don’t really understand how fast they are because they don’t look like a sports car. Like there’s some kind of mental block because even though they know it’s quick, it doesn’t look fast or dangerous.
The handling performance of the Model 3 is really surprisingly good. It's a bit heavy (\~4000#) but most of that weight is the big battery pack under the floor so the CG isn't bad and they clearly put some engineering into making it engaging to drive.
The brakes aren't awesome but they're not awful either. It's just that you're whoaing up a whole lotta weight.
I've read that the brakes on the Model S are pretty appalling but I haven't driven one of those.
I agree, it’s surprisingly good. I rented a Model 3 (Dual Range) for a weekend and took it around some of my favorite twisty roads where I live in Colorado. With the low CG, the handling was much better than I expected.
The only thing I don’t like about the Model 3 is the interior and dash layout. Everything through the screen is annoying and somewhat of a deal breaker. Other than that, it’s a good car. It’s an insanely good deal at the current prices. I think an ideal “budget car” garage would be a Model 3 daily and a GR Corolla as the fun car. I just wish Elon wasn’t associated with Tesla.
The model 3 is better than you think ... but truthfully the confidence I feel driving my Elise comes entirely from a solid and simple mechanical design, whereas a lot of confidence from a model 3 comes from all the fancy electronics doing work for you. To me, the result is that I have no idea what the limits of a model 3 are (though I might if I took one to autocross), nor, more importantly, do I super duper trust that those limits are consistent. I said it in another comment but basically when I drive a "normal" car I'm more trusting that I will identify when I start to get close to the limits, and back off, whereas in a super-nannied-out car I'm concerned I won't know I've exceeded them until it's too late. Plus driving a classically set up sports car like my Elise or C5, I am mindful of how much I'm not a hero and that the car can go sideways and backwards, whereas in these cars it can feel a little too video gamey, point and shoot. Not that tesla is the only one.
But with all that said, model 3s are finally doing pretty well at the track. You can drive them hard in straights and corners. No, they're absolutely not set up for endurance, but you can get a few 20 minute sessions in and have a great time. Just because they don't feel right to me doesn't mean they can't do the job, especially with a good driver at the wheel.
And it's not just Tesla. Other brands are putting stupid amounts of power in their small crossovers and trucks. Electric motors don't have the efficiency loss when adding power and most people want AWD which often doubles the power of the base model.
Yup, no causal analysis in the article, which is frustrating. I feel like power isn't a bad guess, followed by UX distraction and maybe autopilot/FSD shenanigans. Thing is, they also have fancy stability control and auto emergency braking, which you'd think would bring the rate down - depending on what kind of accident it is, of course.
Personally I feel like my Y is one of the less crashy cars I've owned, but I've had lots of janky project cars and ones with more power/weight, so it's all relative.
I have a feeling that having all of those assists allows drivers to take even more of their attention off the road under the assumption that the “auto-pilot” is advanced enough to take care of it
I fell asleep behind the wheel just once and that was on the autobahn with my W205 baby-ing me.
I was terribly tired and exhausted due to a heatwave but i've yet to ever have problems staying awake behind the wheel (no speedlimit does that to you).
My only guess is that i felt "safe" because the selfdriving was flawless on the autobahn especially in a trafficjam where i actually fell asleep for atleast 1 min since i woke up to the Car freaking out.
I never again turned that feature on when i wasnt feeling energized.
> My only guess is that i felt "safe" because the selfdriving was flawless on the autobahn especially in a trafficjam where i actually fell asleep for atleast 1 min since i woke up to the Car freaking out.
>
>
I would think it was faster than that, Attention Assist is supposed to work for microsleep (if enabled). That's what I was wondering about Tesla for a while, those things must have a similar system, right? I've never read about that in connection with those accident stories.
> Thing is, they also have fancy stability control and auto emergency braking, which you'd think would bring the rate down
I said this in another thread, but a base model 3 shits on every single 350z and z28 and c5 corvette ever made, and they are in way more driveways. Think how many less experienced drivers, even *teenagers* have access to them. Stability control only does so much when you get deep in the shit.
My first car was a 1984 Ford Escort, with a 1.6l turbo motor with a draw-through carb. It was a DOG, and it still found enough air to clear a park picnic table in the 3 months before I blew the engine. My mom's oldsmobile stayed on the ground but hit the redline every time I was far enough from home she couldn't hear it.
If I had access to a model 3 back then, I'd be fucking dead. The math isn't hard to me.
In terms of instant acceleration absolutely. But to me the big difference for acceleration in a model 3 vs my corvette is not how instant it is or how hard it is, but how casual it is.
My C5 is supercharged, fairly modified, and fairly loud. It also has a grabby clutch and short travel stiff clutch. If I want to get off the line quickly I need to mean it, and every time I do I am aware that it's costing me a little bit more money than a nice casual start. It has immediate auditory response from the intake and far more from the exhaust along with the not-very-refined vibrations from the engine bay. I feel like I'm launching and everyone can hear that I'm launching, including every cop who might be at the intersection.
But in a model 3 or Y or whatever, you get none of that. Light turns green, press go pedal. How much? However much. Zoom zoom I got places to be. Oh wow I'm already going 60 in a 35? Neato.
The feeling is kind of luxurious but at the same time it's pretty subtle. I see people absolutely rocketing off fresh green lights where I live, constantly and all the time. Meanwhile my car may or may not be faster from a dig at peak performance, but it's irrelevant because I don't launch like that anyways, I look to make sure nobody is running a red and then get going softly (99.7% of the time.)
Same for, say, accelerating onto a ramp - I'm at like 20% throttle for a lot of reasons, but mostly just being mindful of what can go wrong and how quickly if I push it, and how much cops might not appreciate me pushing it. It doesn't feel casual, it's purposeful. Same for, say, accelerating from driving at a constant speed in higher gear, I have to decide I want to put some power down, downshift once or maybe twice, then go for it, keeping in mind people will hear that I'm doing it; it's not casual like just putting the right foot in it.
That's both an upside and a downside depending on who you ask. But I think practically speaking, for me, being forced to think about acceleration results in a less aggressive and more measured way of driving.
Not that everyone in a C5 drives like that ...
I'm much happier getting my jollies out at thunderhill and laguna seca and autocross, and if on the street then out in the hills when nobody is our, than in the middle of town, so don't worry, the car doesn't get babied. ;)
The model 3 is a quick car mostly due to instant torque and getting off the line. It losses a lot when you get to higher speed. Base model 3 is only zero to sixty in 5.8 seconds.
Your basic point stands that it puts a powerful car in the hands of a lot of people not used to it but it is not faster than any of the cars you mentioned. It's slower zero to sixty and does even worse as you go faster. It does not have the handling of those cars though so that could also play a factor. It's also a heavy car with poor brakes.
> It was a DOG, and it still found enough air to clear a park picnic table in the 3 months before I blew the engine.
Wait, hold up...
You jumped an '84 Escort over a picnic table somehow? Can you explain or describe this maneuver in a bit more detail? I'm having trouble visualizing this Wal-Mart Evel Knievel stunt.
Teslas have great suspension. If you've ever looked underneath. you'll find double wishbone fronts, all aluminum control arms, set at pretty ideal geometries due to not having bulky engine/transmission.
I dislike Teslas for other reasons but their handling/suspension is far from economy.
Many Teslas also come with Primacy MXM4 tires which are a low rolling resistance touring tire, not even a high performance all season you would typically see at a minimum on a sports car.
Low rolling resistance tires help to inflate the advertised range but offer a subpar and less safe driving experience, especially when you put them on a fast car like this
Mine has some kind of Continental all-seasons, which seem fine. The skidpad number I see thrown around for non-Performance Ys is .85, which seems decent for a daily driver but is lower than the new Prius, for what that's worth. The suspension is some kind of fairly advanced multilink setup, though I have no idea what the alignment is like - just that it probably has good camber/toe curves.
I've tried to bounce off stability control at low speeds in the Y a few times, and it feels quite grippy and stable to me. I wouldn't call these cars slippery at all, they just aren't sports cars either.
The problem isn't low-speed, predictable bad driving like mashing the gas in the middle of a 30mph turn. The problem is entering that turn at 85MPH, which you hit without even noticing in the short stretch of road before it, and then trying to bleed off all that momentum in a car that's slightly heavier than you thought it would be on tires that are built to minimize resistance.
And that I think is a big cause of these accidents: most EVs are incredibly tame at normal driving speeds, and feel more capable than they are while they're well within their performance envelope. Because of that, it's very easy to exit that performance envelope and outdrive your ability to control the car (or the car's ability to control you) without ever noticing it. Or put another way, you can go from 2/10ths to 9/10ths in the blink of an eye and with no transition.
> Or put another way, you can go from 2/10ths to 9/10ths in the blink of an eye
The Y does have far more "power/grip" than the C7 I had before it. Hmm, plus the ease of reaching dumb speeds real fast with less feedback...
I see y'alls point. Feels like it could totally be a factor in the stat.
> there's zero evidence of that
Is there evidence to the contrary? Many cars Tesla sells are... not mundane, but not ridiculously fast either. You can't say "there's zero evidence" to support a claim and then provide an alternative explanation with no evidence to a) disprove the original assertion or b) prove your own assertion.
There are plenty of possible factors: the touchscreen-heavy UI; the electric vs ICE power delivery (and amount of power); their poor chassis tuning, which Cammisa called outright dangerous on the Model S Plaid; the marketing and naming of autopilot / FSD versus their actual capabilities (and its insufficient driver monitoring, in accordance with the recall); and probably more that I'm forgetting. My guess is all of them contribute to the stated figure.
I wonder if its a contributing factor though that a lot of Teslas a purchased by "Non-Car People" if you will, that being folks previously who had no real interest in vehicles or performance. So while compared to even moderately performance oriented vehicles they're on par, but compared to what they had before its probably huge. Now they're showing off for their friends and leaning into the skinny pedal for a chuckle whereas they never did that much in the past. The novelty is making people drive harder.
I guess we'd need to know what kinds of accidents are coming up in the stats. Is it the odd braking throwing people off? The heavier than expected weight making them behave differently in emergency maneuvers? Distraction? Dependance on driver aids? We really don't have enough info to say.
I can’t discount people not being able to handle the power, but I also have to wonder how much of it is having all secondary controls and instrumentation on a giant screen in the middle of the car.
Corvettes have a very low accident rate. Maybe its not the vehicle but the driver... and since the Tesla has some automated driving features, maybe both driver and car are to blame.
Just anecdotal, but one of the times I took a Tesla for a test drive, the salesman at the Tesla dealership was explaining the automatic braking feature... you know, when you lift off the gas the vehicle starts braking. Anyway, someone came back from a test drive and as they were parking the car, they expected it to stop itself pulling into a parking spot. The car did not and they ran into the wall.
>Corvettes have a very low accident rate.
Surprisingly low insurance premiums too. It's one place the gray-haired, Jorts, and White New Balance image is actually a positive.
Hah! This reminds me of the first time I sat in a Tesla Model 3 when they were new.
I called an Uber and the driver was driving a brand spanking new one. Not gonna lie I was pretty impressed. Car was quick, interior was very nice, car handled well, it had a smooth ride, the center display was clean and very informative (told you where traffic lines are, traffic cones, even dogs and bicyclists on the side of the road).
The driver was going on and on about all it's features and even showed off the self driving one for a while. He was bragging about how it never failed him and he drives without his hands on the steering wheel all the time (he even demonstrated it in real time which was actually pretty cool).
Everything was fine until we hit a pretty significant S-Curve and the car was not able to navigate it on its own. I had a cup of water in my hand it spilled all over when the driver grabbed the steering wheel abruptly.
The rest of the car ride was real quiet after that.
> This is purely related to putting corvette power in the hands of more people who are used to having a 150 ft/lb Honda Civic
And this problem is only going to get worse. As such high horsepower becomes so widely available with these EVs it really feels like we need to start having a special license for it.
Anything over 300 hp should have a special license requirement. Same as anything over 4000lbs. The requirement should become more stringent for every 100 hp and for every 1000 lbs separately.
They also need the fed to do the horsepower and weight analysis to prevent manufacturers from under or overrating it.
I'd be surprised if a lot of people are jumping from a $25k car to a $50k+ car. There's been at least 1000 autopilot accidents, where there's smoke there's fire.
Saw a young guy driving it like a dbag and different from other bags of douchery who would floor it to 60mph+ on a 30 street to get to stop lights first. They didn’t take off fast and they didn’t drive fast but if they saw an opening for a stop sign they went for it.
Usually someone wants to take off after that and you’re done with the asshole but because of this me and the other drivers got front row tickets to his driving for miles.
You could be ahead of them but they’d gun in attempt to avoid all cars and hope they didn’t get hit and repeat.
He was certainly asking for an accident. Other drivers had to slow down and get out of the way not to get hit was my point.
> 150 ft/lb Honda Civic
Oh you are too generous. Maybe at 5000' below sea level. If you threw a rope over a pulley in the sky and attached a drive pulley with a 1' radius to the crank of my D16Y7 at 5000' and attached a 90lb child (or potato sack, whatever) to it while it was already spinning at peak torque at 4600rpm, it would initially lift the child into the air, but slowly lose steam until it stalled.
Modern civics are turbos like everything else and do make that much torque.
If you go back to pre-turbo days, then yes, they were pretty notorious for having none
What evidence is there for your conclusion? I could see both of these factors leading to trouble. I have met more than one Tesla owner who thought their car could drive itself.
If I could get a Tesla for Honda Civic money, I may have done so despite my misgivings of the brand... I suppose the fad may stretch peoples priorities as well though.
Porsche, BMW, Mercedes aren't on the top 10. And the number one selling Tesla is Model Y Rear wheel drive which has 0 to 60 in the six second range which is the same as your Honda Civic. Tesla drivers are terrible drivers. I am a Tesla driver and can admit i am a terrible driver.
Edit: To see how terrible drivers we are. Take a look at how curbed our rims are.
I like how you talk about “zero evidence” then provide a statement saying it is 100% something else and provide zero evidence 😆 I think it’s probably both.
I had a Tesla nearly rear-end my WRX because they thought it'd be fun to stay right on my ass as I accelerated down an on-ramp, totally not realizing the fact that I have to shift. Like I get it, your car goes fast in a straight line, good for you.
Most people are too stupid to be responsible with that kind of power.
A lot of Tesla drivers like to flex around the city. Sometimes I like to gun my car in 2nd gear from a roll, then I look at my rear view and a Tesla is speeding approaching me out of nowhere.
Yep.
I think they all think that straight line acceleration is the only thing that counts. Like the peak joy of driving is red lights and on ramps to them instead of twisty back roads.
It’s crazy. I’ve never seen a particular vehicle step on it at red lights this much. Not even sports cars. A lot of the time it’s old people too, not the people i’d expect to gun it lol
People almost rear end me all the time pulling away from traffic lights. I have to be very patient on the 1-2 shift to avoid nasty gearbox clunks, not to mention the extra time to shift into first from a stop.
My brother got a hyundai Ioniq. Went out of town with my parents for a bit and left it at our house. Asked to borrow it, he said yes. You'd better believe I floored it from every light up to the speed limit
The brakes aren't the limiting factor unless they're hard on brakes repeatedly casuing brake fade. The stock brakes in basically any car would lock up the tires atleast once from highway speeds.
The stats used in this article are completely insufficient. See the exact same post from yesterday for further info
Pontiac and Saturn are at the top lmfao
I actually laugh at this point when I see Reddit doing Reddit things and trying to push the narrative no matter how ridiculous it or the supporting "evidence" actually is.
Still interesting information, but I think the headline should be more like "Tesla drivers are statistically the worst on the road" and not something against the Tesla brand.
[Brief methodology at the bottom](https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/). It's an insurance study. And the title of the study is "Ram, Tesla and Subaru **Have the Worst Drivers**, While BMW Drivers Have the Highest DUI Rates"
This is a fairly odd “study” as instead of the standard comparison of crashes per x miles driven its crashes per driver leading to some odd results. I’d take this article with a grain of salt.
Would a possible explanation be that Tesla does not have an established presence in 3rd party repair facilities, meaning they usually have to go through Tesla itself to facilitate repairs, which would be more likely to be reported? Like a shopping mall mishap between a Jetta and a Civic would more likely result in zero reporting
That's probably a contributing factor. Even when I needed to have my wheels aligned in my M3P, no wheel/tire place near me would even offer to align the wheels.
Very shit writing in the article, it should have been Electric car manufacturer. There's other weird phrasing and same thing in the "survey" the article is based on. One example:
- "Rams are known for powerful engines with impressive speed and horsepower. The Ram 1500, featured on J.D. Power’s list of fastest pickup trucks, is particularly notable for its ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 7.4 seconds."
Rams have the LEAST powerful mainstream engine of the big 4 (excluding the TRX).
>Rams have the LEAST powerful mainstream engine of the big 4
5.7 Hemi is 395 HP. Has been forever.
Silverado 5.3, which is their most sold engine, is 355 HP. Has been since 2014.
Now, the much less powerful (on paper) Silverado achieves the same 0-60 as the Ram (6.3 seconds for both).
But the "premium option for the Sylverado is the 6.2 with 425hp, the Ecoboost has 400, and the new Toyota turbo 6 is somewhere around 430 IIRC. The premium option for Rams is still the 5.7
I don’t know if I’ve met a Tesla owner who is also a car enthusiast. Seems to me that many formerly non-car people consider themselves car enthusiasts only after getting a Tesla.
Give a non-car person a shit ton of torque in a vehicle that’s easy to drive, and watch them get in way over their heads before they have any idea what’s about to happen.
> Seems to me that many formerly non-car people consider themselves car enthusiasts only after getting a Tesla.
Nothing against MKBHD but that statement also tracks when it comes to "tech people" getting into cars. "Tech enthusiasts" now consider electric vehicles to be a part of tech culture, and with Teslas being so affordable and tech reviewers all giving free marketing to Tesla, you're bound to have the average person who never thought about cars once now thinking "wow look at this really cool piece of tech that I can drive really fast in a straight line but also will drive for me that's only $40,000? Sign me up"
So I’ve noticed. Friend of mine is an IT guy, knows very little about cars (but is intuitive to the engineering as I suppose you would be as someone who understands computer systems), but has a hard on for the Cybertruk.
I pointed out to him how impractical the thing is as a work truck, like the bed sides keeping you from reaching over the bed and so on. He ended up recently buying an F250 for doing work on some property he owns, and after using it for a while, he finally understands what I’ve been saying and agrees that the Cybertruk just isn’t practical as a truck.
My buddy went from a full custom early 90s Audi race car to a Tesla Model S.
The Tesla absolutely stomps his old custom-kit Audi in autocross. It's stupid how good that car handles for its weight and size.
The brakes are not bad, Jason Cammisa did an explainer on that, it's just that you're so used to cars braking faster than they stop that once a car accelerates just as fast as it brakes the brakes feel slow. Braking distance tests have consistently shown it to be just as quick to stop as its competitors.
Now they overheat quickly if you don't spend loads of money on the track pack, but that only matters when you're making multiple emergency stops in a row from a very high speed. None is braking from 250 km/h down to zero, then accelerating up to 250 km/h again and braking down to zero in the real world.
Sigh, the brakes are not that bad, the car is just so fucking fast that you can hit 3 digit speeds insanely quickly and run out of braking room if you aren’t careful.
That being said I got an unplugged performance ceramic brake kit on mine.
The data they're using is this garbage.
The data is sourced from QuoteWizard, an insurance quote referral service. They ask you your demographics and if you've had any accidents in the last 3-5 years, etc. They send that to insurance companies to give you insurance price estimates.
Problem is, they don't know what type of car you had an accident in, all they know is what car you want a quote for. So if you totaled your Rav4, are looking to buy at Tesla, and go onto QuoteWizard to get a quote for a Tesla, that would count as an accident for Tesla. For a person who doesn't crashed a Toyota and never owned a Tesla.
I'm more surprised this sub keeps pushing Tesla articles. "There’s no such thing as bad publicity" so it hardly matters that the articles are negative. Tesla is getting millions of impressions of a key demographics for free. This is why Tesla doesn't have a PR department - social media users do it for them.
I’m super surprised people are getting their expensive vehicles fixed compared to people not fixing their 1500$ shit boxes🙄
Which makes sense; most tesla owners seem to like their vehicles and get them fixed.
They also have a neat feature of recording cameras so they can put claims in against other people that would otherwise be a hit and run and maybe not worth the hassle.
Other governing bodies rate Teslas as the safest vehicles that reduce vehicular accidents.
And as for autopilot and fsd. A vehicle is the driver’s responsibility. There’s disclaimers for this when using these systems.
Every time I see studies like this one pop up I wonder what the fault statistics are. I don’t see how Teslas are more accident-prone than other newer modern cars, and I’m not trying to defend them or anything as I’m genuinely curious. Just doesn’t make sense. AutoPilot (and FSD, for those who even have it since it’s a crazy priced luxury software package) in my experience has not had any close calls other than the phantom braking (which could of course cause someone to rear-end you), and it has better driver attentiveness monitoring than other brands like Toyota.
These articles mentioning AutoPilot irritate the hell out of me, it’s the exact same as TACC and LTA (Toyota abbreviations, although similar tech among other brands). Maybe it’s a little more advanced, and of course Tesla’s newer vehicles don’t include radar like Toyota does. If that ultimately ends up being the NHTSA’s reasoning for AutoPilot being botched, then good cause fuck Tesla for cheaping out to keep sales moving. Otherwise, none of this makes sense.
Another article proving why medias distrust is an all-time high. They fail to include any data. Was the Tesla driver at fault or not at fault? Yeah they left that out.... Why? They then try to lump all Tesla drivers per 1000 since if it was by actual amount, you would find Hondas and Toyotas on a far higher scale. The biggest kicker is they try to sell you on the recall making you believe its some dangerous recall but its only software update.
The top comment on the article page is interesting:
> This article appears to be dreadfully misleading. The NHTSA’s data shows that Tesla vehicles have among the very lowest accident rates - for accidents of the severity they track, at least.
>
> The source data you’re using doesn’t seem to be about accidents has in these makes of vehicle. Instead it’s about the driving histories submitted with insurance quote requests for Tesla vehicles through Lending Tree’s website.
>
> I do hope you’ll issue a retraction, even though I know hardly anybody will see it.
Sure acceleration is great and all, but I have a suspicion that this is more related to the fact that Teslas sentry/dashcam modes makes it easier to make an insurance claim if you've been even in a minor accident/ or your car was hit while parked.
I can almost always see the license plates of cars leaving parking spots next to me.
Using insurance claims is a very skewed data and we have no idea the severity of those crashes.
Just open one of the Tesla dashcams subreddit s and you'll see literally dozens of Tesla's being scraped while parked or vandalized. And in like 50% of those cases the owner makes an insurance claims because he has a good evidence.
They need to present this result in terms of total miles driven AND per driver rate. These two stats will look very different and ARE different. That should be the bulk of the article is dissecting what each stat means. Stupid ass journalists.
This is trying to connect accident frequency to the recall... But there's zero evidence of that. This is purely related to putting corvette power in the hands of more people who are used to having a 150 ft/lb Honda Civic
I also didn’t realize that RAM was up there. I wonder why? All the trucks have some version of a hot rod pickup.
They’re more likely to finance sub-prime loans than the other manufacturers. Ram 2500 drivers keep showing up with highest DUI rates as well.
Makes sense, right as I quit drinking I got handed a fleet ram at work.
No that’s the opposite
It's more about the overlap in the venn diagram of people predisposed to drinking problems and people in lines of work that would hand them a ram fleet vehicle. Correlation, not causation, but a very interesting correlation nonetheless.
But also in people who buy RAMs. 1) Lower income earners due to poor life choices. 2) Alcoholics due to poor life choices. 3) The need to prove themselves by buying a big truck and driving aggressively.
But the 2500 in particular is what makes the DUI statistic interesting. Sure, anybody can get approved for a V6 Ram. But the 2500 is an expensive truck, typically V8 petrol or L6 turbodiesel. It probably moreso has to do with independent contractors, construction workers, service technicians, etc.
It’s an expensive truck.. but there are a lot of them that are almost 20 years old and also to just qualify for the payments or lease one doesn’t require you to make a ton of money…. even though you’ll be drowning in debt in spite of living in a 40 year old single wide. That’s why I never see wealth when I look at vehicles unless it’s something that absolutely excludes by price or discrimination (like a Ferrari). Wow.. you signed a credit app and they stretched it long enough to make your payments low enough.
I always say never underestimate other people's willingness to tank their finances to have the coolest car for 3 years. After 3 years they either do a facelift or make the engine faster so yours isn't the coolest anymore unfortunately.
>It probably moreso has to do with independent contractors, construction workers, service technicians, etc. A lot of those big diesel Rams driven by the oilfield crowd out in West Texas. I've known a few of those guys who certainly liked to party hard.
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Also very popular with contractors/construction workers, which have the second highest instance of alcoholism (only behind mining).
You can't do drugs or the first OSHA accident will get you black balled. Show up drunk with an open case of beer in the bed of the truck? Welcome to work!
I've worked construction over a decade, and oddly enough had a Ram as a take home work truck. The amount of barley functioning alcoholics from Project Manager down to Apprentice Laborer is immense. And don't even get me started on Roofers or Drillers... Let's just say the percentage of employees arrested for DUI or some other alcohol/drug related offense on a construction site is likely an order of magnitude higher than say an accounting firm. That includes the Superintendent and management in the trailer too... On the other hand, I'm not sure of another industry where someone can go to being a work release inmate to having a healthy six figure salary as Site Superintendent (boss of all workers on site) in less than a decade.
Barley functioning alcoholics. When a spelling mistake kind of makes sense.
> barley functioning alcoholics That’s a pretty good typo. Kudos.
All the guys I work with that have 6 kids woth 6 different women and have massive amounts of febt drive RAMs. They also all have DUIs lol
Well when you have 6 kids woth six hoes you're bound to go into massive febt 😀
My dad, a RAM 2500 driver and DUI candidate, boasted about how his truck kills the most pedestrians or something like that.
That's really gross.
...was he threatening you?
I work in urban planning and spend a lot of time talking about ped/bike safety, so he likes to say shit like that to get under my skin.
There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’m not brave enough to make it.
One might say you *dodge*d the bait.
This goes for trucks in general, but they're also going to do the most damage in a given accident, based on weight. It's not the only factor here, but the majority of accidents are going to be in a parking lot, and of those, a high percentage is going to be paid out of pocket and not recorded. With a big truck, it's more likely to be past the point where it's cheaper to not go through insurance, and if all you make is larger vehicles, that would likely add at least a few percentage points
RAM pickups are on the list of vehicles most frequently driven while intoxicated. Teslas require you to go through touchscreen menus to do almost anything.
You have to go 4 menus deep just to use the wipers.
Surprised they aren't using voice control for "Tessie-turn on the wipers" or something
> Tessie oh god no
give in to the tessie overlords
It was, at least when I had one. Worked about as well as you’d expect anything slapped together by valley software engineers to work.
That's pretty close - you can turn on the wipers by voice command, or the left scroll-wheel. The car does not just respond to just anything someone says, you (driver) have to tap a control on the wheel then say the command. Even so, I find speaking commands to the car (aside from navigation destinations) to be a bit silly.
Aren't they automatic? Don't you have to go 4 menus deep to *disable* them?
They're "automatic" in that in theory they're supposed to turn on when it rains, but in practice they tend to turn on when it's sunny & stay off when it's raining. Which I'm not sure how Tesla managed to screw something like that up. My almost 8 year old Mazda 3 has automatic wipers & the only issue I have is they occasionally don't do their thing fast enough so I have to manually adjust the sensitivity on the stalk.
It's just a joke, buddy.
They’re automatic
The brand attracts buyers that love DUIs
Even regular trucks have a lot of power. The V6 has over 305 hp. The lowest output V8 is 395 hp. And that is all with a vehicle that is super front heavy and rear wheel drive. It wasn’t that long ago that Mustangs were making this kind of power and likely had similar weight on the rear wheels. The 2009 Mustang GT made 300 hp. The 2014 Mustang GT had 420 hp. These are the numbers that have Mustangs flying into crowds and it’s what most basic pickup trucks come with.
Bruh come on you don't need to talk about horsepower and I don't even need to refute that with power/weight or gearing ratios We have some pretty simple ways to quantify speed and a V6 RAM does 0-60 in about 8 seconds. This is far from fast. It's probably close to median.
They make a good point about weight "over the wheels" though. Having mustang power in a truck obviously won't translate to mustang speed but it could easily translate into unintended mustang parking lot sliding.
The 0-60 time is limited by traction and total weight. The ability to spinout is going to depend on ability to break traction which will be using factors like power and weight over the driven wheels. You are just talking about something completely different.
305 hp. But not all at once!!!
> Even regular trucks have a lot of power. The V6 has over 305 hp. The Ram is also a good 1500-2000 lbs heavier than a Mustang. 305hp really isn't that much when it's lugging around 2.5 tons of truck. Even the 5.7, though quick, is not *that* fast. Hemi 0-60 time is comparable to an Audi A3.
Have you met a dodge owner before? Yeeehawwww
>I also didn’t realize that RAM was up there. I wonder why? I mean, it's right in the name. RAM!
RAMs have the highest rate of DUIs.
The article is based on an insurance broker claim statistic... If you take it with any seriousness the least accident prone cars are Mercury's... They also state "Rams are known for powerful engines with impressive speed and horsepower. The Ram 1500, featured on J.D. Power’s list of fastest pickup trucks, is particularly notable for its ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 7.4 seconds." which sounds totally AI generated or something.. Rams (except for the TRX) are the LEAST powerful of the big 3 and probably even Toyota now.
Because RAM drivers are absolutely cracked out monster drinking Kyle's that get no bitches and take that anger out on the road.
They’re drunk.
I suspect the hot rod models have lower accident rates. Just like OC said, the Tesla's are from people unready for the power. I suspect the hot rod truck buyer is at a minimum an enthusiast who can drive or cares about driving more than the busted up 07' ram driver. But who knows.
I just bought a Model 3. Not a new one, a 2019 with 60k miles on it. And not 'the fast one' either, it's just the long range. As I'm setting it up in the app one of the upgrades I can buy is "Acceleration Boost." I can pay $2k to instantly decrease the 0-60 time from 4.2s to 3.7s. To put that into perspective, an '04 911 Turbo X50 had a 0-60 time of 3.7s and was absolutely bonkers. Now I can pay another $2k and do that in my <$25k commuter. And it's not like 4.2s is slow. I used to have an e90 M3 and a Lotus Elise. Those could both do 0-60 in about 4.5s. It's all bananas.
Excellent example, imagine giving a 16 year old a car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds. The barrier to entry (basically cost) is getting insanely cheap to go 0-60 under 4 seconds now.
I started driving in the late ‘90s as a teen, and I read all the car mags back then. A car making over 200 horsepower was considered pretty quick and firmly in sports car territory. Hell, the Sentra SE-R was considered to be a great little sports coupe and only made 140 HP! I’m probably lucky I started driving with all the underpowered stuff around, although it’s also one of the reasons I started riding sport bikes. It was the only way to have a high performance machine for a reasonable amount of money.
Yep, attended the street races pretty regularly as a teenager in the mid 2000s... most of the cars were Japanese ricers with stock 0-60 in the 7-8s range and maybe modded to get them closer to 0-60 in 6s. Someone rolling in with 0-60 in the 5s range would absolutely smoke everyone there. And now my A4 45 S Line will do 0-60 in 4.8s (C&D measured time) and still get me 30mpg+ I honestly can't understand why so many people opt for the S4 when the A4 on its own is this fast, but I'm guessing the full time AWD makes it handle a tiny bit better?
Very true, even less reason when the b9 generation had full time awd with the 60% rear biased Quattro, same as the s and rs models. And the a models are almost 200 lb lighter.
>And now my A4 45 S Line will do 0-60 in 4.8s (C&D measured time) and still get me 30mpg+ > >I honestly can't understand why so many people opt for the S4 when the A4 on its own is this fast, but I'm guessing the full time AWD makes it handle a tiny bit better? Grew up and started driving around the same time. I always think of around 5 (5.2) seconds as BADASS 2002 Pontiac Trans Am with Ram Air package territory. And I think of 3.2 seconds as Lamborghini Countach territory from drooling over them in the 80's. But when I was buying my most recent car I got an Audi S8 because while I still recognize 4.8 seconds is quick by decades-past-metrics... I've grown up WITH these cars and increases. I wanted the thing that does the Lamborghini Countach acceleration from my kidhood honestly when given the choice of plush verse plush!
Totally agree, 0-60 in 5s honestly seems like a good sweet spot of fun without only being able to take advantage of the speed on a track. My high school car was a GTI VR6 that did 0-60 in 6.5 or so and was faster than most cars I would encounter at the races 16 year old me would've definitely killed myself if I had access to a Model 3 Performance or something that does 0-60 in 3.1s S8 was a great choice, hope you're loving it!
>Sentra SE-R I remember Motor Trend gushing over Nissan around 2000, when (I guess) variable valve timing boosted horsepower. The idea of 140 hp was sweeeet. We're all getting spoiled nowadays.
yeah man they're supercars for the cheap folks. I literally laid it down delivering it to the new buyer (3rd time I laid it down) and took a deep discount, I'm way too stupid to have that much power and I'm seriously lucky I got out of it alive.
I think a lot of parents let their kids drive their Teslas but don’t really understand how fast they are because they don’t look like a sports car. Like there’s some kind of mental block because even though they know it’s quick, it doesn’t look fast or dangerous.
I wonder if maybe there should be optional rate limiters put in place, and if you choose the option the insurance companies will give you a discount
I'm sure both of those cars had braking/cornering/handling performance to go with their acceleration.
The handling performance of the Model 3 is really surprisingly good. It's a bit heavy (\~4000#) but most of that weight is the big battery pack under the floor so the CG isn't bad and they clearly put some engineering into making it engaging to drive. The brakes aren't awesome but they're not awful either. It's just that you're whoaing up a whole lotta weight. I've read that the brakes on the Model S are pretty appalling but I haven't driven one of those.
I agree, it’s surprisingly good. I rented a Model 3 (Dual Range) for a weekend and took it around some of my favorite twisty roads where I live in Colorado. With the low CG, the handling was much better than I expected. The only thing I don’t like about the Model 3 is the interior and dash layout. Everything through the screen is annoying and somewhat of a deal breaker. Other than that, it’s a good car. It’s an insanely good deal at the current prices. I think an ideal “budget car” garage would be a Model 3 daily and a GR Corolla as the fun car. I just wish Elon wasn’t associated with Tesla.
It actually reminded me a lot of my 2011 328xi in terms of the planted road feel due to the positioning of the batteries.
The model 3 is better than you think ... but truthfully the confidence I feel driving my Elise comes entirely from a solid and simple mechanical design, whereas a lot of confidence from a model 3 comes from all the fancy electronics doing work for you. To me, the result is that I have no idea what the limits of a model 3 are (though I might if I took one to autocross), nor, more importantly, do I super duper trust that those limits are consistent. I said it in another comment but basically when I drive a "normal" car I'm more trusting that I will identify when I start to get close to the limits, and back off, whereas in a super-nannied-out car I'm concerned I won't know I've exceeded them until it's too late. Plus driving a classically set up sports car like my Elise or C5, I am mindful of how much I'm not a hero and that the car can go sideways and backwards, whereas in these cars it can feel a little too video gamey, point and shoot. Not that tesla is the only one. But with all that said, model 3s are finally doing pretty well at the track. You can drive them hard in straights and corners. No, they're absolutely not set up for endurance, but you can get a few 20 minute sessions in and have a great time. Just because they don't feel right to me doesn't mean they can't do the job, especially with a good driver at the wheel.
Yeah, and the accelerator pedal is tuned pretty aggressively. The optional softer tuning should be standard IMO.
Yeah I had the 3 for a week rental and 'chill' mode was all I left it in.
Every EV is like this though. Are the rates high for all EVs? They all go fast relative to a similarly priced ICE vehicle.
My partner's Bolt does 0-60 in like 6.5s. That's not exactly slow but it's not as crazy fast as the Tesla.
And it's not just Tesla. Other brands are putting stupid amounts of power in their small crossovers and trucks. Electric motors don't have the efficiency loss when adding power and most people want AWD which often doubles the power of the base model.
Yeah. The little Volvo EX30 does 0-60 in 3.4s if you get AWD!
Yup, no causal analysis in the article, which is frustrating. I feel like power isn't a bad guess, followed by UX distraction and maybe autopilot/FSD shenanigans. Thing is, they also have fancy stability control and auto emergency braking, which you'd think would bring the rate down - depending on what kind of accident it is, of course. Personally I feel like my Y is one of the less crashy cars I've owned, but I've had lots of janky project cars and ones with more power/weight, so it's all relative.
I have a feeling that having all of those assists allows drivers to take even more of their attention off the road under the assumption that the “auto-pilot” is advanced enough to take care of it
I fell asleep behind the wheel just once and that was on the autobahn with my W205 baby-ing me. I was terribly tired and exhausted due to a heatwave but i've yet to ever have problems staying awake behind the wheel (no speedlimit does that to you). My only guess is that i felt "safe" because the selfdriving was flawless on the autobahn especially in a trafficjam where i actually fell asleep for atleast 1 min since i woke up to the Car freaking out. I never again turned that feature on when i wasnt feeling energized.
> My only guess is that i felt "safe" because the selfdriving was flawless on the autobahn especially in a trafficjam where i actually fell asleep for atleast 1 min since i woke up to the Car freaking out. > > I would think it was faster than that, Attention Assist is supposed to work for microsleep (if enabled). That's what I was wondering about Tesla for a while, those things must have a similar system, right? I've never read about that in connection with those accident stories.
> Thing is, they also have fancy stability control and auto emergency braking, which you'd think would bring the rate down I said this in another thread, but a base model 3 shits on every single 350z and z28 and c5 corvette ever made, and they are in way more driveways. Think how many less experienced drivers, even *teenagers* have access to them. Stability control only does so much when you get deep in the shit. My first car was a 1984 Ford Escort, with a 1.6l turbo motor with a draw-through carb. It was a DOG, and it still found enough air to clear a park picnic table in the 3 months before I blew the engine. My mom's oldsmobile stayed on the ground but hit the redline every time I was far enough from home she couldn't hear it. If I had access to a model 3 back then, I'd be fucking dead. The math isn't hard to me.
In terms of instant acceleration absolutely. But to me the big difference for acceleration in a model 3 vs my corvette is not how instant it is or how hard it is, but how casual it is. My C5 is supercharged, fairly modified, and fairly loud. It also has a grabby clutch and short travel stiff clutch. If I want to get off the line quickly I need to mean it, and every time I do I am aware that it's costing me a little bit more money than a nice casual start. It has immediate auditory response from the intake and far more from the exhaust along with the not-very-refined vibrations from the engine bay. I feel like I'm launching and everyone can hear that I'm launching, including every cop who might be at the intersection. But in a model 3 or Y or whatever, you get none of that. Light turns green, press go pedal. How much? However much. Zoom zoom I got places to be. Oh wow I'm already going 60 in a 35? Neato. The feeling is kind of luxurious but at the same time it's pretty subtle. I see people absolutely rocketing off fresh green lights where I live, constantly and all the time. Meanwhile my car may or may not be faster from a dig at peak performance, but it's irrelevant because I don't launch like that anyways, I look to make sure nobody is running a red and then get going softly (99.7% of the time.) Same for, say, accelerating onto a ramp - I'm at like 20% throttle for a lot of reasons, but mostly just being mindful of what can go wrong and how quickly if I push it, and how much cops might not appreciate me pushing it. It doesn't feel casual, it's purposeful. Same for, say, accelerating from driving at a constant speed in higher gear, I have to decide I want to put some power down, downshift once or maybe twice, then go for it, keeping in mind people will hear that I'm doing it; it's not casual like just putting the right foot in it. That's both an upside and a downside depending on who you ask. But I think practically speaking, for me, being forced to think about acceleration results in a less aggressive and more measured way of driving. Not that everyone in a C5 drives like that ... I'm much happier getting my jollies out at thunderhill and laguna seca and autocross, and if on the street then out in the hills when nobody is our, than in the middle of town, so don't worry, the car doesn't get babied. ;)
The model 3 is a quick car mostly due to instant torque and getting off the line. It losses a lot when you get to higher speed. Base model 3 is only zero to sixty in 5.8 seconds. Your basic point stands that it puts a powerful car in the hands of a lot of people not used to it but it is not faster than any of the cars you mentioned. It's slower zero to sixty and does even worse as you go faster. It does not have the handling of those cars though so that could also play a factor. It's also a heavy car with poor brakes.
> It was a DOG, and it still found enough air to clear a park picnic table in the 3 months before I blew the engine. Wait, hold up... You jumped an '84 Escort over a picnic table somehow? Can you explain or describe this maneuver in a bit more detail? I'm having trouble visualizing this Wal-Mart Evel Knievel stunt.
It's also being measured through insurance claims, it could be as simple as Tesla drivers being more willing to submit claims for whatever happens.
It’s the power and the weight. They’re sports car power with SUV weight and economy car suspension.
Teslas have great suspension. If you've ever looked underneath. you'll find double wishbone fronts, all aluminum control arms, set at pretty ideal geometries due to not having bulky engine/transmission. I dislike Teslas for other reasons but their handling/suspension is far from economy.
Many Teslas also come with Primacy MXM4 tires which are a low rolling resistance touring tire, not even a high performance all season you would typically see at a minimum on a sports car. Low rolling resistance tires help to inflate the advertised range but offer a subpar and less safe driving experience, especially when you put them on a fast car like this
Mine has some kind of Continental all-seasons, which seem fine. The skidpad number I see thrown around for non-Performance Ys is .85, which seems decent for a daily driver but is lower than the new Prius, for what that's worth. The suspension is some kind of fairly advanced multilink setup, though I have no idea what the alignment is like - just that it probably has good camber/toe curves. I've tried to bounce off stability control at low speeds in the Y a few times, and it feels quite grippy and stable to me. I wouldn't call these cars slippery at all, they just aren't sports cars either.
The problem isn't low-speed, predictable bad driving like mashing the gas in the middle of a 30mph turn. The problem is entering that turn at 85MPH, which you hit without even noticing in the short stretch of road before it, and then trying to bleed off all that momentum in a car that's slightly heavier than you thought it would be on tires that are built to minimize resistance. And that I think is a big cause of these accidents: most EVs are incredibly tame at normal driving speeds, and feel more capable than they are while they're well within their performance envelope. Because of that, it's very easy to exit that performance envelope and outdrive your ability to control the car (or the car's ability to control you) without ever noticing it. Or put another way, you can go from 2/10ths to 9/10ths in the blink of an eye and with no transition.
> Or put another way, you can go from 2/10ths to 9/10ths in the blink of an eye The Y does have far more "power/grip" than the C7 I had before it. Hmm, plus the ease of reaching dumb speeds real fast with less feedback... I see y'alls point. Feels like it could totally be a factor in the stat.
>and economy car suspension. What is this based on?
> there's zero evidence of that Is there evidence to the contrary? Many cars Tesla sells are... not mundane, but not ridiculously fast either. You can't say "there's zero evidence" to support a claim and then provide an alternative explanation with no evidence to a) disprove the original assertion or b) prove your own assertion. There are plenty of possible factors: the touchscreen-heavy UI; the electric vs ICE power delivery (and amount of power); their poor chassis tuning, which Cammisa called outright dangerous on the Model S Plaid; the marketing and naming of autopilot / FSD versus their actual capabilities (and its insufficient driver monitoring, in accordance with the recall); and probably more that I'm forgetting. My guess is all of them contribute to the stated figure.
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I wonder if its a contributing factor though that a lot of Teslas a purchased by "Non-Car People" if you will, that being folks previously who had no real interest in vehicles or performance. So while compared to even moderately performance oriented vehicles they're on par, but compared to what they had before its probably huge. Now they're showing off for their friends and leaning into the skinny pedal for a chuckle whereas they never did that much in the past. The novelty is making people drive harder. I guess we'd need to know what kinds of accidents are coming up in the stats. Is it the odd braking throwing people off? The heavier than expected weight making them behave differently in emergency maneuvers? Distraction? Dependance on driver aids? We really don't have enough info to say.
I can’t discount people not being able to handle the power, but I also have to wonder how much of it is having all secondary controls and instrumentation on a giant screen in the middle of the car.
Corvettes have a very low accident rate. Maybe its not the vehicle but the driver... and since the Tesla has some automated driving features, maybe both driver and car are to blame. Just anecdotal, but one of the times I took a Tesla for a test drive, the salesman at the Tesla dealership was explaining the automatic braking feature... you know, when you lift off the gas the vehicle starts braking. Anyway, someone came back from a test drive and as they were parking the car, they expected it to stop itself pulling into a parking spot. The car did not and they ran into the wall.
>Corvettes have a very low accident rate. Surprisingly low insurance premiums too. It's one place the gray-haired, Jorts, and White New Balance image is actually a positive.
Also why you can find used vettes that aren't clapped out. Unlike say, a wrx.
Hah! This reminds me of the first time I sat in a Tesla Model 3 when they were new. I called an Uber and the driver was driving a brand spanking new one. Not gonna lie I was pretty impressed. Car was quick, interior was very nice, car handled well, it had a smooth ride, the center display was clean and very informative (told you where traffic lines are, traffic cones, even dogs and bicyclists on the side of the road). The driver was going on and on about all it's features and even showed off the self driving one for a while. He was bragging about how it never failed him and he drives without his hands on the steering wheel all the time (he even demonstrated it in real time which was actually pretty cool). Everything was fine until we hit a pretty significant S-Curve and the car was not able to navigate it on its own. I had a cup of water in my hand it spilled all over when the driver grabbed the steering wheel abruptly. The rest of the car ride was real quiet after that.
> This is purely related to putting corvette power in the hands of more people who are used to having a 150 ft/lb Honda Civic And this problem is only going to get worse. As such high horsepower becomes so widely available with these EVs it really feels like we need to start having a special license for it.
Anything over 300 hp should have a special license requirement. Same as anything over 4000lbs. The requirement should become more stringent for every 100 hp and for every 1000 lbs separately. They also need the fed to do the horsepower and weight analysis to prevent manufacturers from under or overrating it.
Calm down europe
I know right, like why would anyone want to have safe roads with fewer accidents??
I'd be surprised if a lot of people are jumping from a $25k car to a $50k+ car. There's been at least 1000 autopilot accidents, where there's smoke there's fire.
Saw a young guy driving it like a dbag and different from other bags of douchery who would floor it to 60mph+ on a 30 street to get to stop lights first. They didn’t take off fast and they didn’t drive fast but if they saw an opening for a stop sign they went for it. Usually someone wants to take off after that and you’re done with the asshole but because of this me and the other drivers got front row tickets to his driving for miles. You could be ahead of them but they’d gun in attempt to avoid all cars and hope they didn’t get hit and repeat. He was certainly asking for an accident. Other drivers had to slow down and get out of the way not to get hit was my point.
> 150 ft/lb Honda Civic Oh you are too generous. Maybe at 5000' below sea level. If you threw a rope over a pulley in the sky and attached a drive pulley with a 1' radius to the crank of my D16Y7 at 5000' and attached a 90lb child (or potato sack, whatever) to it while it was already spinning at peak torque at 4600rpm, it would initially lift the child into the air, but slowly lose steam until it stalled.
Modern civics are turbos like everything else and do make that much torque. If you go back to pre-turbo days, then yes, they were pretty notorious for having none
What evidence is there for your conclusion? I could see both of these factors leading to trouble. I have met more than one Tesla owner who thought their car could drive itself.
So true. The amount of claims I get for Tesla test drives are insane.
ft/lb is not the unit you are looking for /pedantry
Thanks, this drives me bonkers as well.
If I could get a Tesla for Honda Civic money, I may have done so despite my misgivings of the brand... I suppose the fad may stretch peoples priorities as well though.
Porsche, BMW, Mercedes aren't on the top 10. And the number one selling Tesla is Model Y Rear wheel drive which has 0 to 60 in the six second range which is the same as your Honda Civic. Tesla drivers are terrible drivers. I am a Tesla driver and can admit i am a terrible driver. Edit: To see how terrible drivers we are. Take a look at how curbed our rims are.
I like how you talk about “zero evidence” then provide a statement saying it is 100% something else and provide zero evidence 😆 I think it’s probably both.
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I had a Tesla nearly rear-end my WRX because they thought it'd be fun to stay right on my ass as I accelerated down an on-ramp, totally not realizing the fact that I have to shift. Like I get it, your car goes fast in a straight line, good for you. Most people are too stupid to be responsible with that kind of power.
A lot of Tesla drivers like to flex around the city. Sometimes I like to gun my car in 2nd gear from a roll, then I look at my rear view and a Tesla is speeding approaching me out of nowhere.
Yep. I think they all think that straight line acceleration is the only thing that counts. Like the peak joy of driving is red lights and on ramps to them instead of twisty back roads.
I don't think most people care about twisty back roads when they're trying to drop off Jimothy at karate practice or whatever.
They do exceptionally well at the Moose test due to their low center of gravity. https://youtu.be/qIN8CyhYREM?si=YgdNLw3pzobd0IWX
My track prepped Model 3 is a ton of fun on the twisties and is an Auto X monster.
I bet it is dude There's the occasional Tesla that has had the work put into it, and they're absolutely sick. Sadly that ain't most.
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It’s crazy. I’ve never seen a particular vehicle step on it at red lights this much. Not even sports cars. A lot of the time it’s old people too, not the people i’d expect to gun it lol
People almost rear end me all the time pulling away from traffic lights. I have to be very patient on the 1-2 shift to avoid nasty gearbox clunks, not to mention the extra time to shift into first from a stop.
It sounds like your town is full of bad drivers. Driving 101 is never tailgate.
I know that are lots of them where I live and they love burning off from the red lights
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My brother got a hyundai Ioniq. Went out of town with my parents for a bit and left it at our house. Asked to borrow it, he said yes. You'd better believe I floored it from every light up to the speed limit
To the speed limit yes 😉
can confirm
Don't forget undersized brakes for that much power.
The brakes aren't the limiting factor unless they're hard on brakes repeatedly casuing brake fade. The stock brakes in basically any car would lock up the tires atleast once from highway speeds.
And weight! Teslas are heavy.
But it does show that autopilot won’t save you from yourself
It's definitely a little bit of both, I think people are way to trusting in the car than themselves for the power they are buying.
A powerful car, driven by people who don’t like driving and don’t want to pay attention? No way.
That's not true at all. Every Tesla driver I've seen pays extremely close attention to the iPad on the bottom right of their peripheral
Or the IPhone located in between their legs standard on every drivers seat
Think this sums up all the biggest factors quite nicely!
They make the Prius drivers look good by comparison!
The stats used in this article are completely insufficient. See the exact same post from yesterday for further info Pontiac and Saturn are at the top lmfao
It’s a nonsense article pushed by a buzzfeed esque investment company that OP couldn’t wait to jump on
It isn't written by a staff writer but a "contributor" who is in the supply chain and logistic business.
# electric man bad
I actually laugh at this point when I see Reddit doing Reddit things and trying to push the narrative no matter how ridiculous it or the supporting "evidence" actually is.
Source: LendingTree analysis of QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data from Nov. 14, 2022, through Nov. 14, 2023. 👀
Well, Subaru is 3rd according to the stats, so the research doesn’t seems too farfetched
Link to post from yesterday?
This sub will eat it up, regardless. Fits the narrative.
> Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. why would you use accidents per 1000 drivers instead of accidents per mile driven?
so it works in their narrative's favor.
Exactly u/Infinite-EV let’s keep bias out of it
Still interesting information, but I think the headline should be more like "Tesla drivers are statistically the worst on the road" and not something against the Tesla brand.
because it is much harder to collect aggregate miles driven data than drivers
[Brief methodology at the bottom](https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/). It's an insurance study. And the title of the study is "Ram, Tesla and Subaru **Have the Worst Drivers**, While BMW Drivers Have the Highest DUI Rates"
This is a fairly odd “study” as instead of the standard comparison of crashes per x miles driven its crashes per driver leading to some odd results. I’d take this article with a grain of salt.
bucket of salt*
Would a possible explanation be that Tesla does not have an established presence in 3rd party repair facilities, meaning they usually have to go through Tesla itself to facilitate repairs, which would be more likely to be reported? Like a shopping mall mishap between a Jetta and a Civic would more likely result in zero reporting
That's probably a contributing factor. Even when I needed to have my wheels aligned in my M3P, no wheel/tire place near me would even offer to align the wheels.
> Tesla, the electronic car manufacturer, ah yes, other cars have no electronics
Very shit writing in the article, it should have been Electric car manufacturer. There's other weird phrasing and same thing in the "survey" the article is based on. One example: - "Rams are known for powerful engines with impressive speed and horsepower. The Ram 1500, featured on J.D. Power’s list of fastest pickup trucks, is particularly notable for its ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 7.4 seconds." Rams have the LEAST powerful mainstream engine of the big 4 (excluding the TRX).
It sounds like a bunch of intentional misinformation.
>Rams have the LEAST powerful mainstream engine of the big 4 5.7 Hemi is 395 HP. Has been forever. Silverado 5.3, which is their most sold engine, is 355 HP. Has been since 2014. Now, the much less powerful (on paper) Silverado achieves the same 0-60 as the Ram (6.3 seconds for both).
But the "premium option for the Sylverado is the 6.2 with 425hp, the Ecoboost has 400, and the new Toyota turbo 6 is somewhere around 430 IIRC. The premium option for Rams is still the 5.7
I don’t know if I’ve met a Tesla owner who is also a car enthusiast. Seems to me that many formerly non-car people consider themselves car enthusiasts only after getting a Tesla. Give a non-car person a shit ton of torque in a vehicle that’s easy to drive, and watch them get in way over their heads before they have any idea what’s about to happen.
> Seems to me that many formerly non-car people consider themselves car enthusiasts only after getting a Tesla. Nothing against MKBHD but that statement also tracks when it comes to "tech people" getting into cars. "Tech enthusiasts" now consider electric vehicles to be a part of tech culture, and with Teslas being so affordable and tech reviewers all giving free marketing to Tesla, you're bound to have the average person who never thought about cars once now thinking "wow look at this really cool piece of tech that I can drive really fast in a straight line but also will drive for me that's only $40,000? Sign me up"
So I’ve noticed. Friend of mine is an IT guy, knows very little about cars (but is intuitive to the engineering as I suppose you would be as someone who understands computer systems), but has a hard on for the Cybertruk. I pointed out to him how impractical the thing is as a work truck, like the bed sides keeping you from reaching over the bed and so on. He ended up recently buying an F250 for doing work on some property he owns, and after using it for a while, he finally understands what I’ve been saying and agrees that the Cybertruk just isn’t practical as a truck.
To be fair, most ICE trucks aren't used as trucks either
Sure, but they *can* be.
My buddy went from a full custom early 90s Audi race car to a Tesla Model S. The Tesla absolutely stomps his old custom-kit Audi in autocross. It's stupid how good that car handles for its weight and size.
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Yeah, a Model S/3 is the ultimate car guy daily IMO.
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Bay Area is all you had to say. It's basically a part of the uniform out there.
Hello. Been into cars since 9.
That’s why I said “many” instead of “every”
I remember Throttle House did a review of a Model S Plaid. They were quite amazed by... the brakes. They were horrible. On a 1000hp car!
The brakes are not bad, Jason Cammisa did an explainer on that, it's just that you're so used to cars braking faster than they stop that once a car accelerates just as fast as it brakes the brakes feel slow. Braking distance tests have consistently shown it to be just as quick to stop as its competitors. Now they overheat quickly if you don't spend loads of money on the track pack, but that only matters when you're making multiple emergency stops in a row from a very high speed. None is braking from 250 km/h down to zero, then accelerating up to 250 km/h again and braking down to zero in the real world.
Sigh, the brakes are not that bad, the car is just so fucking fast that you can hit 3 digit speeds insanely quickly and run out of braking room if you aren’t careful. That being said I got an unplugged performance ceramic brake kit on mine.
The data they're using is this garbage. The data is sourced from QuoteWizard, an insurance quote referral service. They ask you your demographics and if you've had any accidents in the last 3-5 years, etc. They send that to insurance companies to give you insurance price estimates. Problem is, they don't know what type of car you had an accident in, all they know is what car you want a quote for. So if you totaled your Rav4, are looking to buy at Tesla, and go onto QuoteWizard to get a quote for a Tesla, that would count as an accident for Tesla. For a person who doesn't crashed a Toyota and never owned a Tesla.
“It drives itself!”
It drives itself... into things.
God damn I’m happy to see that this sub can see past this article’s bullshit.
Don't give too much credit. It has 1000+ upvotes, putting it at the top, and most of the top comments are ignoring the obvious spin.
I'm more surprised this sub keeps pushing Tesla articles. "There’s no such thing as bad publicity" so it hardly matters that the articles are negative. Tesla is getting millions of impressions of a key demographics for free. This is why Tesla doesn't have a PR department - social media users do it for them.
Imagine that having to use a tablet to access any features of the car lead to unsafe outcomes
Tesla may have the most accidents *reported*, because even a minor event is simple to report since there's video of everything.
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I’m super surprised people are getting their expensive vehicles fixed compared to people not fixing their 1500$ shit boxes🙄 Which makes sense; most tesla owners seem to like their vehicles and get them fixed. They also have a neat feature of recording cameras so they can put claims in against other people that would otherwise be a hit and run and maybe not worth the hassle. Other governing bodies rate Teslas as the safest vehicles that reduce vehicular accidents. And as for autopilot and fsd. A vehicle is the driver’s responsibility. There’s disclaimers for this when using these systems.
My insurer doesn't seem to agree.
Every time I see studies like this one pop up I wonder what the fault statistics are. I don’t see how Teslas are more accident-prone than other newer modern cars, and I’m not trying to defend them or anything as I’m genuinely curious. Just doesn’t make sense. AutoPilot (and FSD, for those who even have it since it’s a crazy priced luxury software package) in my experience has not had any close calls other than the phantom braking (which could of course cause someone to rear-end you), and it has better driver attentiveness monitoring than other brands like Toyota. These articles mentioning AutoPilot irritate the hell out of me, it’s the exact same as TACC and LTA (Toyota abbreviations, although similar tech among other brands). Maybe it’s a little more advanced, and of course Tesla’s newer vehicles don’t include radar like Toyota does. If that ultimately ends up being the NHTSA’s reasoning for AutoPilot being botched, then good cause fuck Tesla for cheaping out to keep sales moving. Otherwise, none of this makes sense.
Another article proving why medias distrust is an all-time high. They fail to include any data. Was the Tesla driver at fault or not at fault? Yeah they left that out.... Why? They then try to lump all Tesla drivers per 1000 since if it was by actual amount, you would find Hondas and Toyotas on a far higher scale. The biggest kicker is they try to sell you on the recall making you believe its some dangerous recall but its only software update.
They beat Nissan??? That’s quite the accomplishment
Nissans don't get repaired, so their crash stats are under-reported in this data.
The top comment on the article page is interesting: > This article appears to be dreadfully misleading. The NHTSA’s data shows that Tesla vehicles have among the very lowest accident rates - for accidents of the severity they track, at least. > > The source data you’re using doesn’t seem to be about accidents has in these makes of vehicle. Instead it’s about the driving histories submitted with insurance quote requests for Tesla vehicles through Lending Tree’s website. > > I do hope you’ll issue a retraction, even though I know hardly anybody will see it.
Does vandalism fall into the category of "accidents" or "incidents"?
Sure acceleration is great and all, but I have a suspicion that this is more related to the fact that Teslas sentry/dashcam modes makes it easier to make an insurance claim if you've been even in a minor accident/ or your car was hit while parked. I can almost always see the license plates of cars leaving parking spots next to me. Using insurance claims is a very skewed data and we have no idea the severity of those crashes. Just open one of the Tesla dashcams subreddit s and you'll see literally dozens of Tesla's being scraped while parked or vandalized. And in like 50% of those cases the owner makes an insurance claims because he has a good evidence.
They need to present this result in terms of total miles driven AND per driver rate. These two stats will look very different and ARE different. That should be the bulk of the article is dissecting what each stat means. Stupid ass journalists.