March 8, 2018

The Tesla 3 Blue Screens Every Few Days

Tesla

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Edmunds got hold of a Tesla Model 3 and has driven it for a few thousand miles. They are not thrilled with the build quality:

Body panel gaps are inconsistent, reflecting a lack of attention to detail….After we brought ours home, we discovered it also had a cracked vanity mirror and a broken driver’s seat shell. In our first six weeks, we’ve had to do the equivalent of a Windows PC’s Ctrl-Alt-Del reboot of the all-important touchscreen about a dozen times.

We’ve called a Tesla service center about the problems, but have had difficulty getting an appointment. Drive-ups were not welcome, so our parts were ordered based on photographs alone. Weeks later, we’re still waiting for word and it’s hard to get answers.

The touchscreen controls almost literally everything aside from steering and the foot pedals. If it decides to go belly-up, you have no windshield wipers, no radio, no headlights, no nothing. If it dies every 250 miles, that’s a problem. Elon Musk better get this fixed pronto.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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