The end of my Tesla era

I am turning in my Tesla X at lease end next week.   It's time to move on, although it's a little bittersweet.

I’ve been a Tesla owner for almost 10 years.  I am on my third Model X. The X has been a great car for us — the range has been perfect for our needs, the cargo space has been great for our trips with our dogs, and it seats six with great ease.  The software experience is head and shoulders above any other car we have owned.  The EV experience was great — I never had to visit a gas station, and no maintenance was required across three vehicles, except for a cracked windshield replacement.

Looking back, I was thrilled when we got our first Model X. An American-made car! Expensive, but the EV experience was so great, and the innovative features were fun — the gull-wing doors were cool, the EV performance was fantastic, the software was excellent, and we would be getting FSD any day now.   The end-to-end ownership experience was unbeatable — from configuration to home delivery, mobile service, charging network, and software updates — no one else comes close, even today.  There were some compromises — the interior finish was nothing special, especially for a $100K+ car.  Fit and finish are not at the $100K car level.  However, because the car worked so well for us, I kept updating it every 3 years or so to the latest model.  

With each update, though, my passion ebbed.  I know there have been numerous small changes in the Model X over the past decade, but at a high level, the car hasn’t seen significant changes or evolution.   The body is the same.  The gull-wing doors are the same, and boy, do they get tiresome over time – we had to fight them to open up fully in wide-open locations constantly.  The interior layout is the same. Where there have been changes, they have been negative — the shift from wheel and stalk controls to the yoke with no stalks has been terrible and feels like it was done solely to save Tesla money, not to improve the driver's experience.  And, of course, FSD never arrived, not that I was excited to use it; however, the continual delay of it became a sad joke.

And so I am sad.  Elon is an incredible industrialist.  He may not have founded Tesla, but he drove it single-mindedly to success.  He has driven SpaceX to success.  I admire what he has accomplished in these tough industries.  However, he has allowed his attention to wander to areas where he has not had the same impact — social media, politics.  His efforts in these areas have arguably had a negative effect on our society.  And every minute he has spent on these endeavors has been a wasted minute.   We needed his brain and energy on cars and rockets.  He has taken his foot off the pedal in cars, and now we are at risk of ceding that entire industry to China.  

We have some really hard industrial problems in this country.  Infrastructure.  Energy.  Transportation.  Space.  Education supporting all of these efforts.  I wish Elon had doubled down on these problems instead of wasting time on social networks and divisive, intractable political messes.

The lack of attention to this car has made my decision to move on way easier than it should have been. Tesla was light years ahead of the competition, and they have failed to maintain that lead.