I've never been inside a Tesla, I just think they look horrible from the outside. But I don't care about their charging network as it's pathetic around here anyway. Might be handy on a long trip but I hardly ever do that and Gridserve seems to meet my requirements anyway. I don't need my car to treat me like a two-year-old.
Teslas, broadly speaking, look bland IMO and that’s because they design them to have the lowest possible coefficient of drag. Within specific use cases (number of passengers, cargo space etc.) there will be an optimal design and cars will evolve towards it.
My red Model S, I think looks lovely.
I bought mine for the Supercharger network after 4 and a half years of public charging anxiety with my Ioniq. I do long journeys every few weeks, so I appreciate the completely stress free experience. I let the car choose when and where to charge because it knows when and where is optimal.
I don’t know if it is that aspect which seems to you like treating owners as two year olds.
I broadly disagree that systems which make the driving experience easier are coddling the driver.
Automatically preconditioning the battery on the way to a charger?
Telling you (via your phone) when one of the windows is slightly open?
Allowing you to set the speed limit plus or minus your chosen percentage as the default for cruise control?
These all empower the driver IMO.
And since Teslas all have 200+ miles real world range, you don’t need Superchargers every few miles. I use them because they are so much cheaper than Gridserve. But I can always use the rest of the public chargers as well if I choose to.
Teslas are far from perfect, but given £43k and the choice between any car or a Tesla, I’d get the Tesla.
Having said that, IMO, for the money, the MG4 remains the best EV available in the UK. It’s a shame that SAIC haven’t rapidly addressed the issues with the MG4 so that there is less reason to reject it. No car will ever be perfect and something about every car I’ve owned has been annoying. Tesla’s autopilot is dangerous and its auto dimming headlights are outclassed by my wife’s Fiesta’s, for example.
She’s looking around for an EV. You can pick up a two year old Kona with less than 20k miles and around 260m range for less than £20k. There are some good used deals to be had.
I think the MG4 looks way better than the Kona, though. Especially in orange. But the few used ones available are all out of her price range.