Buyers Are Avoiding Teslas Because Elon Musk Has Become So Toxic
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Remember when he removed the Disney+ app from Teslas because he was angry over twitter ads? That kind of unreliable behaviour might have something to do with it.
I had no idea he did that but I’m also not surprised. That’s so funny.
It is hilarious, but it's also very seriously something that would make most people reconsider their choice of vehicle.
Oh absolutely. Though with all the EVs on the market right now, Tesla isn’t a good choice, Elon or no. There are better EVs out there.
I think that this is the part that people miss. When it was new and unique, they had the market cornered. Now the big automakers have caught up and they have far more experience with this.
yeah, for a while they were the only option if you wanted an EV with >80 mile range, but there are other options today
Tesla's no-dealerships, no-hassle purchasing experience is more like ordering something from Amazon instead of the usual, infuriating slog of trying to purchase a new car. Its strictly superior to the legacy car companies, and so are Tesla's batteries.
But the entire rest of the vehicle isn't the best anymore. The CEO's loud, public support for fascism is just one more nail in the coffin for a brand that was already past its prime.
You can buy a car from Carvana for the listed price and they'll deliver it to your home now. One less reason to buy Tesla.
Yeah and while the dealer network of major brands can be scummy, it also comes with pretty good parts networks, which Tesla still seems to lack, or actively impede.
We bought a Tesla nearly six years ago and this was why. He wasn’t quite such an obvious raging asshole at the time, but also we were hoping to signal with our wallet that we wanted manufacturers to step up EV production. Which they did. I’m happy with my car but if I had to replace it, I’d look at other options. Although I feel like my M3 is the only smallish car option on the market right now; everything is a freaking crossover and that’s not what I want to drive all the time.
Fortunately with all the adapters and such, you shouldn't have to put in a new charger.
A silver lining. I do like the plug.
Yeah. There's a lot of products I use and buy where I really don't like the owners or CEOs. I try to avoid what I can where I can, but some are so ubiquitous or monopolistic it's quite tough. But this would get a hard pass from me, even if Teslas were far and away the best EV options.
If I can't be sure the company's policies aren't going to be directly influenced by the fascist man-child CEO then I'm going to stay far away from the products. I have enough to worry about with corporate policies making stupid decisions for profit without watching an idiot throw tens of billions into an incinerator because of pride.
Link for the curious: Tesla removes Disney+ from vehicles amid Elon Musk’s Twitter beef with Bob Iger (Electred.co)
That was such a dumb move, not just because it was petty in and of itself, but because it means you now can't separate Musk's drama from his products. His antics will demonstrably spill over into fucking with your car, even after you bought it.
Yep. Maybe he'll remove the functioning of the steer by wire in the cubertruck when he's in an argument with waffle house next time.
Now imagine having all your shit tied up in X, The Everything App!™️* and you make a statement he doesn’t like or agree with one or whatever. Welp, there goes your bank account, social security info, personal medical data, and so on because you are being quarantined for the Woke Mind Virus
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler *which will never actually become A Thing :::
My opinion is that nothing like D+ or Netflix or whatever should be on a central console in the first place. If it is there, there will always be a driver watching it instead of a road and killing someone as a result.
Until FSD is a thing, entertainment should be reserved for passengers.
As far as I know those systems are intended to be used either by second monitor in the back or only if the car is standing still.
When you have your lovely family time in the daily traffic jam. Or when you had to sell your TV and now go into your car to watch. /s
I personally think the idea on itself is stupid. However in China they are a step ahead and have even more of that shit. The point is that in china you won't have much space in your flat in the big cities so you can move into your car because there is more space /s
The price of those cars with that stuff is starting at about 100k€ and only going up.
No normal human being is intented to buy these.
Tell me you've never driven one without telling me.
I did not, and have no plans to as i find the whole idea of touch screen controls in a car infuriating. That goes not for Tesla only, of course.
Tesla would do well to distance themselves from Musk, for a lot of reasons. But it may be too late - the damage to their reputation may already be fatal.
They could definitely bounce back if the board fired him and the new head of the company made changes that actually made the cars better, rather than make the model numbers spell S3XY or have the horn make a fart noise for a premium or make and sell whatever the fuck the
Powell Motors HomerCybertruck is.The problem is that Elons con man routine is the only reason Tesla is so overvalued. I'm sure they are afraid that if they let him go the stock price would readjust to a reasonable market price.
No matter what you think of him, he is brilliant at conning a tech enthusiast's money out of their wallets.
Oh, it's not the only reason, and the other may actually be worse. They sold $1.8 billion of carbon credits to other auto manufacturers last year. Which is pretty much free money to them. And hastens climate change, but, you know, free money.
That just comes with the territory of being wealthy, which he lucked into thanks to Peter Thiel taking a liking to him (probably because he wanted to fuck him). People confused the companies he invested in which happened to be successful despite him, and would probably more successful if he weren't involved- see SpaceX when Shotwell took over day-to-day operations.
Lots of people, otherwise smart people, smell someone with money and say, "I want to go to there" because they think wealth can be transmitted through close contact.
I call it the Biggest Asshole in the Room strategy. Capitalists can be extremely successful by simply being the biggest asshole in the room. Smarter, more talented, better comnected people will cater to the biggest asshole in the room simply because it makes life easier to appease them. See also: Trump, Jobs, Bezos, Gates, anybody on Shark Tank, Ortega, Murdoch, Koch Bros, etc., all masters of the strategy. It's a personality type that aligns perfectly with the free market where inertia and friction generate profit from the work of creation, innovation, and productivity.
Nah this iant true at all. I covered this in another xomment so Im gonna copypasta it here...
Tesla has the following:
Custom AI silicon designed by the designer of Apple's M1 chip. It's designed for training. They are about to scale it massively to create the Dojo supercomputer. They look to be on par with NVidia on performance/$. No small feat, and means they arent reliant on NVidia
They have custom inferrence chips used in all of their cars and their android robot. It gets fantastic performance per watt. My 5 year old car has first-gen inferrence chips and it's still getting better with software... meaning it hasnt reached its potential. The latest chip design is probably much better, but I dont know much about it
They have possibly the best humanoid hands and arms that will work with this AI goodness.
Their walking and navigation is looking to be top notch... We'll see
FSD really is incredible. I drive with it and it improves every year. Just got 12.3 and it's pretty bomb.
Tesla solar is still a thing. The model 3 kinda derailed development a while back and it never really recovered. I think competitors are doing well and Tesla sees better returns on their other projects. Tesla needs to bring down their Solar prices which they just dont seem to be doing. Im guessing they dont want to scale manufacturing yet.
They have some of the largest casting machines on the planet and press out the frames of their cars for far cheaper than their competition can stamp and weld theirs. Stellantis and Toyota are adopting this manufactiring strategy as fast as they can, but they are a year or maybe 2 behind. I suspect Ford, VW and GM are adopting this too.
Tesla factory floors are much more efficient at iterating and improving. Their in-house software for managing workers and workflow development are unique to Tesla. Just look at the efficient packaging of their HVAC system after dozens of iterations every year for a couple years. It's by far the best HVAC in the car world.
They have developed a lithium clay extraction process that vastly reduces chemical waste and water usage. They're still 5 or so years out from implementing this in even a small capacity and clay extraction isnt guaranteed to be superior to spodumene. I expect the efforts they're putting to this will pay off in 15 years.
They own lithium clay rights in Nevada where some of the richest Lithium clay deposits are. I think theyre doing permitting for mining, which will probably take to the end of the decade. Mining's crazy
They offer the best price for grid-scale batteries and are growing that business faster than their cars grew. Hawaii just replaced their last coal peaker plant with Tesla batteries. California and Australia are saving a lot of money with them. The batteries pay for themselves when used to replace peaker plants and stuff to maintain frequency.
They are growing so-called virtual power plants and have been doing extremely well in a few test locations in Texas, Australia and Puerto Rico. I think the UK too?
After funding and working with the inventor of the lithium battery's team they've been getting first looks at new battery chemistry. The thick walls of their 4680 are designed with adding silicon in mind. I suspect theyre testing this out at Kato road production facility.
They've collected a bunch of battery manufacturing patents over the years and their dry-electrode process is providing very good economics. Getting them to scale has been excruciatingly slow, but they're about to triple capacity this year in Texas and I think are starting development of another iteration of their 4680 battery production process at their Kato road facility right now.
They are on track for becoming a top-three battery manufacturer by the end of the decade.
GM and Ford's battery packs are like 5 years behind tesla's. Tesla packs more battery in less volume using less weight with better thermals and ridgidity. Their packs are a lot cheaper to produce too.
Tesla claims they have a ferro magnet motor in development. We'll see. If so, watch out for very cheap electric cars with no rare-earths or cobalt
They just signed deals with BP and an another conglomerate to sell chargers for the other business' charging infrastructure. More volume means cheaper manufacturing for their own charging stations too.
All cars will soon have the NACS plug so everyone will be able to charge at a Tesla station... Which is the largest and most reliable charging network in the world.
Battery prices keep falling. Gas cars are going to have to compete with cheaper electric by the end of the decade. Tesla isnt competing with other electric car makers so much as it's competing with fossil fuels. Electric will win this. The faster the better
Elon has contributed to these only in a "we're gonna fund these wild ideas!" Way. Like Edison. He's smart and avoided bad projects and embraced fast failing to great success... Things are maturing and I dont think there's much value to get from Elon...
Tesla will be fine without Elon. I'd argue better.
The only fear of Elon leaving would be big oil investors buying control and derailing things... I dont think that'll happen though. I think enough investors are in it specifically to eliminate fossil fuel dependency.
The fear of Elon staying is he drags Tesla into his edgelord bullshit and uses it to dick over the world as hard as he and some dictator/billionaire friends can... Which seems more likely
After he derailed the CA bullet train with his hyperloop hyperbole and joked on twitter abould the Bolivian coup, I dont trust his ass one bit.
I think the problem with these claims is that they're all being made by Musk. Who has proven time and time again that he over-promises and under delivers literally every project he associates himself with.
If we actually look at where they are actually making their money it's primarily just in their vehicle sales/leasing. They aren't a silicon valley start up, they are a vehicle manufacturer, and when we analyze them as such, there is no real way to equate them with having 10x the market cap of ford.
I don't know how you could not trust him one bit, yet trust that what he claims Tesla is doing is what Tesla is actually doing. Custom ai chip, dojo super computer, android robot with the best hands.....all of these seem like marketing scams. How does this improve the sale of cars to a significant degree? Seems like he's just like every tech bro in the country scrambling for the new block chain, or VR type marketing gimmick.
They're all fields of study that already have huge companies that have already invested significant amounts of capital and research on. What makes us assume that Tesla is going to be able to profit from these ventures when they haven't even figured out how to make a truck?
I'm not claiming that Tesla is a worthless company, I just don't think they're worth 10x more than the most popular vehicle manufacturer in America.
They need to first fix the myriad of issues that plague the Cybertruck, from its reduced range from its pre-released advertised figures, to its inability to handle cold weather, to its difficulty in off-road terrain, to its stainless steel panels now rusting only months after its release.
None of that matters. I just like riding around town in one of Lara Croft’s breasts.
S3XY
Do they? Or could they just junk them all and move past them like the complete mistake they are?
Don't forget to fix the eyesore and the stupid name.
It's 👏 not 👏 a 👏 truck 👏 it's 👏 a 👏 fugly 👏 car. 👏
WWSJD? Cancel the cybertruck. Clean house.
WWSJD? What Would Super Josh Do?
Steve Jackson, noted TTRPG publisher.
Clearly, he'd create a Generic, Universal, Roleplaying Truck, or GURT.
I only have one question about the Cyber truck. Why haven't I ever seen a rusty DeLorean, especially considering I have seen DeLoreans that lived in KY, GA, MS, AL, and LA
(Louisiana, not the city in California, not to be confused with Canada. Why TF do we reuse so many two-four letter abbreviations?)
The general theory is that they used a cheaper grade of stainless, specifically one that is still magnetic because it makes material handling easier during manufacture, meaning higher iron content, meaning more prone to rust if you don't pay extra for the clear vinyl wrap. People will say the "real" name of the material is "stain less" steel, which is not true -- "stainless steel" is just 1910's marketing wank -- but it is accurate enough as a description.
There's a reason "Stainless Steel" is referred to as CRES (Corrosion Resistant Steel) more commonly in industry.
You won't see rusting DeLoreans because there wasn't very many made and they have always been something special. If you're seeing one, it's been cared for. But find one in a junkyard, they might not have that shine
Jerry, what’s the sticker on this thing?
Maybe. But they're not the only game in town when it comes to electric cars anymore. There are real auto manufacturers with good reputations making them now.
I agree. I was just speaking in the abstract about Tesla in specific and how they could potentially save themselves.
I doubt they will though.
Definitely. Tesla = Musk in my mind and always has been ever since it blew up with promises of a greater tomorrow that never materialized. All it did was up the EV competition, imo.
Yeah there was a time I thought they were enviable. Now it would just be such an embarrassment.
I'm someone who's buying an EV and due to Elon alone, I won't buy a Tesla. I've wanted one for so long but waited for the data to show how well they hold up after years of use and now that the data is out, I'm buying a non-Tesla. Thanks Elon, you moron.
I literally sold mine because I was embarrassed to drive one after Musk called that cave diver a pedophile.
And that was just the tip of the shitberg.
Ugh.. I almost forgot about that. What an insufferable jerk he turned out to be.
I have a datapoint of 1, but I've also heard from my wife that when she's traveling outside the US, so many cab companies and rideshare drivers have started using Teslas that the brand prestige is taking a hit, regardless of quality (which is also low).
Interesting… where I’m from most cabs are Mercedes limousines. I never heard about people thinking less of Mercedes because they are popular with taxi drivers.
Sure, be repelled by the dork, but stay away because of the unsafe lack of tactile dashboard controls.
The fact that they removed the stalks on the steering column so all functions are on the screen is reason enough. Do I really want to slide my finger up/down to change from D to R? I know they have wipers on the steering wheel, as well as turn signals but the changing of gears? Hard pass.
The damage to their design certainly could be reversed though.
Didn't someone have a picture of a Tesla in the wild with a bumper sticker that read something like: "I bought this before I knew Elon was a complete idiot."
I've seen that sticker in person, multiple times.
Also seen a few Teslas that were completely debranded.
Unfortunately, debadging is a pretty common thing in the car community regardless of how well liked the car is
I see it on a lot of BMWs
Option from the factory.
And then you get people who not only have the premium badges but also a license plate that say the cars make or model AND a frame around the plate that also says it lul. I see it all the time in Cali. I want to de badge my car, mostly cause if they want me to advertise for them they should be paying me. It's just that the front and back badges are indented Into the car and I haven't found any replacements I like. I also haven't found any custom maker online, maybe I just need to commission a 3d printer to try something for me.
Lol, my Chevy bolt was debranded when I bought it.
Didn't realize that. Purely anecdotally, I don't recall seeing any debadged cars other than Teslas out on the road, but it's not like I've been looking for them.
Debranded? Nice. I dislike that modern cars are covered in logos and tacky chrome symbols and words. Give me a nice plain car with nothing but paint on the outside.
someone needs to make some car badges that have the same style and size as the T logo to replace them with. maybe a big 'F' for Fucklas or something
Buying that for my neighbor. We're both Jews. Called him out last year and he acknowledged it but they bought the car a while ago.
No shit. My lease on the Model 3 I got in 2020 is up in a few months and the requirements we had for the replacement was "anything but Tesla".
(which turned out to be a VW ID.7)
“No shit” we’re the first words in my head too. Will be buying electric in the summer and the list starts with anything-but-Tesla.
I'm hoping my next car (might be a while, my Prius is only 8 years old and I will continue to drive it until it becomes necessary to replace it) will be an EV or a PHEV, but it will not come from Elon's company.
I had the same hope, then got rear ended and my 12 year old Lancer got written off. My plan had always been to keep it as long as possible, maintain it, and drive it into the ground, but I hadn't banked on someone else doing that for me.
Have a PHEV now, charging infrastructure where I live is pretty asstastic, and I do just enough longer range driving to make a full EV annoying under those circumstances.
Thankfully, I don't need a huge range, so that isn't a big deal to me. I'm in the U.S., in Indiana, in coal country, so yeah, electricity is not clean, but I'm also not under any illusions that me driving an EV or PHEV will help save the planet, either. The savings in gas is a bigger issue to me and I would be happy if I never had to go to a gas station in the middle of winter again.
Savings in gas, oil, transmission maintenance, brake pads adds up nicely. However be prepared to lose some of those savings in higher taxes because you aren't contributing to the roads via gas tax (which is stupid because by and large the ones tearing up the roads are truckers). And of course battery replacement is expensive but I think that's less of a problem than most people expect.
Caveat: I own a Volt, not a full EV, but I've been watching for quite a while.
I don't know that it would even out with taxes, I think I'd still come out ahead, but I'm not sure I admit. Never having to go to a gas station again as long as I live unless I wanted coffee or something would be worth it alone. I absolutely loathe pumping gas. Everything about it. Especially the smell.
I'm not concerned about the battery issue. My Prius is from 2016 and the battery is still in great condition.
I'm stuck at hybrid, as I work from home and live in an apartment complex that has only one level 1 charger for some 300 units near the front office where the property manager parks her stupid Tesla.
I'd go full electric if I had a place to reliably charge it.
I think the biggest hurdle for PHEV and EV adoption is going to be people like you living in apartments. Landlords have no incentive to spend money on chargers. It should be subsidized.
Absolutely. And the real kicker is apartments tend to be the exact demographic that could use a midrange electric vehicle to commute daily with the most.
That might be a while. My parents had one of the first hundred Priuses imported into the US in 2001, and it barely needed maintenance and hit 200,000 miles before my niece totaled it in an minor accident. When they bought it she still needed a car seat.
That's fine with me and great to hear! I have no interest in regularly getting a car upgrade. Every car I have ever owned, I have driven until it was either too expensive to keep driving it or it got totaled in a crash (never something that was my fault, thankfully).
I mean I would love an EV or a PHEV, but not enough to do anything about it unless I have to. If I'm lucky, by the time I need a new car, they'll actually be self-driving and I won't have to worry about that either.
Thirding the no shit
The fuckin irony lmao
Ah yes, typos are famously based on how things are pronounced.
Absolutely correct. 'Were' isn't even a pronoun.
I feel this. I own a OG body style model S. I still have unlimited supercharging. The battery is starting to show its age and i'm sort of starting to look around. The Rivian R3X is my current front runner.
The RX3 looks fantastic and is the car that got be actually thinking about a full EV, and not a hybrid. If it comes in at 45k or so I think it could be a killer car.
Buddy of mine was in market for model S price range. Only because of this moron’s fascist shenanigans, my friend ended up getting BMW iX. Much better vehicle sans the fascism.
Indeed
i am not spending a fucking dime on anything that Elon Musk earns money on
i even deleted my twitter account when he bought it
But, even though Elon is an ass, the way tesla handles repairs on their cars, makes me not want to own one anyway. I wanna just use my local mechanic. Not exclusively teslas own
I think that Elon being an ass trickles down to the way his company does business.
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Shit rolls (and trickles) downhill!
I wanted a Tesla and couldn't afford it. Now I can afford it and I would buy one right now if it weren't for Musk turning into a complete shit bag. (I realize he always was, but he hid it well and I thought he was an awesome dude) Fuck that guy, and fuck every company he's a part of. I'll just wait until conversion parts become cheap enough it's worth playing with.
His vehicles aren't even safe for other Dragons to ride on. Why would I buy from a company who unironically had the below answer for me when I googled from the back seat of one of their cars while Ubering and thought of that news:
Emphasis mine. Still don't know which kind I was on, but an emergency would have not been the ideal 'find out' time. I'll avoid that by not fucking around with purchasing their cars.
as a dragon enthusiast AND and EV enthusiast, I am qualified to support your statement that the Model Y may be unsafe for dragons to mount
I recommend dragons stick with the classics
Dragon? Please explain?
Hoarding money.
So tell me then, when is that 'fine art' sub coming to Yiffit?
Yeah dragons need that exhaust pipe after all
Dragons need tailpipes in order to be dragons fucking cars.
Nahhh dragons fuck cars by rubbing their dicks on them, they don’t use the tailpipe
Source: none of my bad dragon dildos would fit in a tailpipe
How the fuck did that pass road safety tests in the US? That's lethal in any event where you need to leave the vehicle in an emergency. It's essentially always-on child safety locks.
Are there mandatory road safety tests in the US ?
Yes. There's multiple checks for manufacturing cars. The first one that would have caught this is from their design prior to sale: NHTSA: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This would prevent such an obviously dangerous car from ever being sold. So clearly they have dropped the ball off a cliff.
If someone were to alter their car post purchase, it might be caught at yearly state inspections. These all vary by state but generally ensure that cars are road legal and not dangerous. They most often catch broken or illegally altered lights and exhaust.
Don't fix the typo, I'm enjoying the mystery.
Oooh, other billionaires, cause that one billionaire lady died.
Ah, I see.
A while ago, someone posted a photo (I think on Reddit before I left) of a Tesla with a bumper sticker that said something like, "I bought it before we all found out Elon was crazy."
I think that should be encouraged for all people who bought a Tesla before the 'pedo guy' incident. After that, you have no excuse.
My partner reported seeing a similar sticker.
Related: I saw a cybertruck in the real world over the weekend and laughed heartily. I thought about stopping to take a pic, but fuck it.
I appreciate that Teslas helped normalize electric cars, but yeah, I don't trust him enough to drop that kind of money on a product from one of his companies.
What's to say he wouldn't do something recklessly impulsive the moment I buy one that makes it harder to get parts, removes software features, or gets my car keyed by someone who hates his guts?
Said it many times but I still think musk's tesla had a negative impact on EV cars overall.
When the cars were first hitting mainstream markets (rather than being the car your weird uncle buys), automakers were already selling hybrids. I forget if they were plug-ins or not, but stuff like the Prius were ubiquitous to the point it was a joke on The Office.
Then the story became you need a full pure electric vehicle. And the way they marketed the distinction was that the most important thing in the world was a long battery range because coverage of charging grids was shit.
Which gets us to, funny enough, the cybertruck where the range is "okay" without hauling anything, dogshit if you actually USE your truck, and being marketed with a really expensive add-on to get an even bigger battery (and even less cargo space) because RANGE IS GOD!!!
And... that is the problem we see facing all EVs (moreso in the US, but also in Europe and Asia). The idea that you need an EV that will last you all day for a long roadtrip just to buy some groceries. Rather than a focus on improving charging grid infrastructure (which, we are actually seeing even in the land of the free ar-15 with a 12 piece mcnuggets) and fast charging of smaller batteries.
If we had stuck to the hybrid model we would have a lot less emissions over the years AND people would be more understanding of what they actually need to go "full electric". I am a generally strong supporter of electric vehicles (who lives in the ass end of nowhere...) and even I was amazed at the mileage I was getting with some toyota hybrid rental a few months back.
Just because it deeply bothers me. If you think an EV can't be used for a roadtrip, go watch the Technology Connections video where he talks about doing exactly that. The short and skinny of it is that you DO need to put a bit more effort into route planning (and there are great sites for that), but it mostly boils down to stopping for 20-40 minutes to charge up most of the way once or twice a day.
Which sounds bad until you remember you aren't in your early 20s anymore and that sitting in a car for a 36 hour drive is a miserable experience. Stop at a rest stop for some food or a target/walmart for some snacks and a piss break. When you get done, your car is mostly charged up.
And if you ARE in your early 20s and considering an EV: Kid, go spend more money on avocado toast.
Plugins weren't a thing yet iirc, at least not from the large mainstream brands. Prius was just normal hybrid without charging.
Imo it's impossible to say what would have been, in a what if scenario like this. Without Tesla, large battery tech would probably/maybe/possibly be a lot less developed than it is now and we might not have seen plugin hybrids become mainstream just yet. Personally, I do think that Tesla deserves credit for accelerating the development of these technologies, and I drive a hybrid and generally loath Elon Musk :)
That is just it. If we are saying we can't make educated guesses based on situations and trends then we also cannot make any claims that musk's tesla was a net good.
But once we look at the past decade or so: We see hybrids pretty much universally get shit on for "not being worth it" and "a step in the wrong direction". Which... there are merits to those arguments. But they are still better than pure ICE vehicles.
I did not see hybrids universally get shit on. I do know one person with that opinion, but I wouldn't call him universal and I don't put much stock in his opinions anyhow, he had had more weird takes before he spouted that one.
I take a lot of motorcycle trips. I have a 4.5 gallon tank and get around 40-50 MPG depending on how I'm driving. I'm stopping every 3 hours whether I like it or not anyway.
I think that's totally reasonable. I'm just ready for the infrastructure to be there in the places I want to go.
After those safety issues around 2019, I was getting really uncomfortable and lost interest in buying a Tesla. When he went pro-covid, I watched friends getting nervous. When he went anti-union, I watched my tech-bro friends sell their Teslas.
I think if you slap a Trump sticker on there, you're likely to get a pass from the sorts of people who key cars. All it costs is integrity and self-respect.
Anecdotally I agree. Back when all I knew about Tesla was that they made fancy electric cars, I dreamed of the day I'd be able to afford one. Now I'm looking to buy a new car this year and I won't even take a Tesla on a test drive.
My situation was similar a couple of weeks ago. I had to either buy a new car or dump a couple of thousands on my then car (which is still good for at least a decade).
I did test drive a Tesla though as to have a ‘baseline’ for the other contenders. I did buy a different electric car just as planned but I’m glad I did the baseline.
BTW - just a heads up: make sure you check the headroom on the back seats of any EV you fancy. I might have bought a Kia EV6 if I didn’t bump my head in the ceiling in the back - and I’m of average height.
To this day, you can still find conservative media that shits on anyone with electric vehicles, for some reason.
Now Musk opened his mouth and said stupid shit, and the other side doesn't want his cars either. All he's got left are the people who don't care, already bought one, or fall over themselves to kiss his feet.
A lot of the conservative world seems to be conditioned to be anti-EV.
That conditioning cost a lot of money
No doubt, but was it worth it for them?
Whether it was their doing or the natural gullibility of their base, it has worked incredibly well.
I was going to make a comment about “look who they want to make President again,” but they have been denying reality for decades.
Misread doing as dung; this does not affect the comment.
Ronald Reagan was a brilliant man and his wife had some skills of her own.
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I'm just upset I didn't get some of that Nancy action.
The new biden decision to phase out the sales of ICE vehicles and that oil money is pushing for more EV criticism
Because oil money
Yeah, decades of it.
What he's got are NFT tech bros who don't actually know anything about the technology they buy.
I bought my first EV last month. I've been looking forward to making the switch for 10 years. I would have been happy to buy a Tesla back then (not that there were many options). I didn't even consider it as an option now because of Musk.
I am avoiding Tesla because their design philosophy and decisions are gimmicky and don’t not prioritize functionality.
If I am going to spend big money on a car I am going with quality. Not some gimmicky pos where you can’t even open the doors if the battery cuts out. I’ll pass on the touchscreen with wheels.
There is a mechanical lever that you can use if the power is out. Probably it was required by regulators, but it's there.
I'm sure that wasn't the deciding factor anyway.
I'm not sure any manufacturer is producing that car today EV or ICE.
I agree with you 100%, but your example doesn’t work. There IS a mechanical way to open the door. There’s a concealed handle near the window controls.
Still won’t buy one because the quality is shit and Muskrat is a shitbag, but if you’re gonna hate, hate for the right reasons :)
No my example is perfect. And you used the right word to describe it.
CONCEALED.
Ok so maybe the owner knows about it. Not every body who rides or even drives the car is going to be the owner. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances.
You shouldn’t need to be instructed on how to open the fucking door when there is a power failure. It should be intuitive. It’s intuitive in literally #every single car on the road today except for teslas. Oh no. If you are driving in a Tesla you better be briefed ahead of time where the concealed door handle is incase of an emergency and if you don’t happen to know where it is then I guess you’re fucked.
No thanks. I’d rather just buy a car that isn’t designed by brain dead idiots trying to make a buck off a stupid gimmick.
I'm curious as to what you consider "quality". Legitimate question, not being facetious.
I don’t think quality and longevity really exist for EVs yet. The technology is still too new, constantly changing, and the vehicles may disappear as quickly as they appeared. Legacy manufacturers are still mostly talk. If that’s your criteria, I think we’re still in the stage where leasing is better, only keeping vehicles a few years
As someone who owns one, i bought it before i knew how truly awful he was. As a car it's actully been really great, it's s done just over 100,000k with zero issues no rattles, still feels new and I'd be lying if i didn't admit it's the best car I've ever owned. The only maintenance is tyre changes from wear.
What sucks is i hate being seen in it because it makes me look like a Musk fan boy, and I'm understating is when i say i dislike him intensely.
The reality is I probably won't buy another Tesla when i eventually drive this to its grave, purely because of the association with possibly the world's biggest douche.
I live in hope Tesla will jettison him from their company and refocus on just making eclectic cars without him, then i might consider staying with the brand. But if he's there I won't be, and clearly im not alone.
You are not alone. I'm a well paid engineering manager in silicon valley and I'm target demo for Teslas. I'm 90% sure I'll buy an electric car for our family's next car, however I absolutely won't buy a Tesla as long as he's running the company. And I like Teslas. I just dislike Musk more.
Regenerative braking reduces this need pretty significantly though
This reply is consistent with your patently false claim about brake pads on an EV. lol.
100 megameters with no issues? How could Tesla not be #1 in car reliability rankings with that kind of performance? The rankings make it seem pretty average in terms of reliability.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/
That distance corresponds to about 4-8 years of regular driving. It's really not unusual for any model of car to go that long without a major repair. When someone is claiming this is surprisingly good, it makes me think their bar is really low.
And for what they cost, that bar should be REALLY high.
That is also striking to me. Not the 100k example above, there always are outliers, but the situation overall.
It seems electric cars in general and Teslas in particular (given their headstart), having way less physical components that could break, must be considerably more reliable.
But no.
I was talking to a fervent Musk fan. He was explaining how much he loved how much Musk was pissing off liberals and how he was such a good businessman. I asked him if would ever buy a Tesla and he said no. I told him that Musk doesn't sound like a very good businessman.
Maybe lefties boycotting Tesla will cause MAGAs to go electric... Silver lining?
I bought my first electric car in December 2023. I ruled Tesla out because of Elon Musk.
I was also considering buying an electric car and immediately ruled it out because of him. Why should I line his pockets? Also I read a lot of bad coverage on their cars in general. I think people are starting to see through the fog that they are not good cars.
There are plenty of non-Tesla electrics on the market now. And they're much better cars to boot. You might look into one of those.
Unfortunately, some areas have standardized on Tesla charging stations for all electric cars, so you're giving him money no matter what.
All charging stations in the US will about the NACS connector, but it uses the CCS communication standard. They don't pay musk royalties for them as it's now a standard.
Yeah, it's basically the US standard at this point, I know. But at least you don't have to drive his car.
Bought mine back in October. Tesla was permanently off the table, first because of Elon, then second from all of the QA issues, shoddy quality, and months long waits to fix anything needing parts.
I went for a Hyundai Ioniq 6 instead. Absolutely love it.
Hey that's our train of thought! Shopping now and it seems like a great contender.
One thing to keep in mind with ALL EVs when shopping: the advertised mileage is under certain conditions. The estimated mileage shown in your dash is under certain conditions.
The number you really need to keep an eye on is the estimated miles per kW. The Ioniq 6 has a 77.4 kWh battery on the SEL model (minimum model I would recommend), so at highway speed it was estimating me between 2.5-3 miles per kW. So for highway speed, my estimate is about 193-232 miles before empty. I actually calculated it while charging up yesterday and the miles per kW meter was fairly accurate, while the estimated remaining miles lagged behind significantly due to my largely short commute miles.
Your highway mileage will always suck. That’s why you must plan ahead accordingly.
The other thing I recommend…if you are looking now, lease, don’t buy. If you want to buy, wait for 2025 models with NACS plugs.
I cannot understate the impact Tesla has had on charging infrastructure. You will find many more NACS public chargers before finding CCS chargers (that work).
Edit: also, for the Ioniq 6: digital green exterior is the best color imho, but the green shows up best after either paint age or the right lighting. Everyone called my car black when I first bought it.
Same. I'm looking at everything but Tesla. I just couldn't live with myself...
Nice. What'd'ya get?
Went with the Ioniq 5. 5k miles in and I love it.
He's damaging the company's finances in other ways now too.
He sold a bunch of Tesla stock (admittedly his right to do so) to buy Twitter. However, now he's demanding the board give him more stock so he'll have more control back. Uh, Mr. Musk, you HAD the stock and control, but you traded it away to buy a social media platform. No one made you do that. Further, why should the company give you more stock when another social media platform may catch your eye and you sell all your stock again. You just can't be trusted with it after your past behavior with it.
No thank you. No more Tesla control for you Mr. Musk.
How does the board "give" him stock? Isn't all of the stock owned by individuals? The board are a bunch of high-tier investors right?
Not usually. A company can issue stock, but never sell it. This is called "Treasury Stock". Further if the company doesn't have any Treasury Stock, they can choose to issue new rounds of stock diluting the per share value of existing shares. The good reasons to do this is to raise capital needed for new investments by the company. Alternatively the company could issue a "stock split" which creates double amount of shares as a way to intentionally cut the value per share in half (doubling the amount of share in the company).
However, none of these are a good thing to do for an employee (Musk) because they sold too much of their own pile of stock to buy a failing social media company.
Yes to your first question. This is why, when a company issues new stock (that isn't a split) the value of all the shares usually falls by a greater level than just the value issued. For publicly traded companies the leaders of the company have to act in the interests of shareholders. So if they tried to steel away the company by diluting stock, or enriching themselves, they would be in breech of their fiduciary responsibilities. There are legal consequences for that.
For privately held companies (not publicly traded), this is a common trope/scam for small companies. There are far fewer protections for private shareholders.
To be fair, while they didn't "make" him buy Twitter, they did twist his arm pretty good when presenting his options. Either it was a major federal financial crime, or he actually meant it and he was totally gonna follow through with it.
The "they" in your sentence was the SEC, not Tesla Inc.
Why should Tesla Inc be forced to part with more stock given to Mr. Musk to compensate for consequences of Mr. Musk's own actions wholly separate from his duties and responsibilities at Tesla Inc?
You mean he said a bunch of stupid shit that got him an a legal bind? Yeah still his fault.
He thought he could pull a fast one, fucked around and found out.
Then made it Tesla shareholders problem by cashing out tens of billions of Tesla stock.
He wasn't forced to go down the waterslide until he tried to stop halfway down.
He twisted his own arm. I didn't really read the specifics but given the securities fraud he committed that the SEC did not prosecute, this one must have been pretty serious.
I just bought my first EV and he's precisely why I didn't even consider a Tesla when it came down to it. Also it helps that I want buttons on my dash and not all screen. Ended up with a Hyundai Ioniq5, it's boss.
I admit that I have a Tesla. Overall I’ve been happy with it, but there are things that I definitely don’t like either. Unless there are major changes in the next 5-10 years, which I don’t anticipate as long as Musk is running things, then I definitely will not be buying another one.
Some recent developments have also made me wonder how Tesla’s finances are holding up. There was an article recently stating that Elon had issued an edict that new owners could not get their cars unless an employee gave them a test drive to demonstrate the Full Self Driving system. Clearly it’s an attempt by Musk to try to convince new owners to shell out an additional $12k for the feature (or a monthly subscription).
Just the other day I received an unsolicited email from Tesla that I’ve been given a free Full Self Driving trial for the entire month of April, clearly with the same intention in mind.
Personally I won’t try FSD at all and have zero desire to be in a car that uses it. I’ve had enough issues with Autopilot (their terribly named adaptive cruise control) and other things that rely on the cars camera system that I just don’t trust FSD to operate properly. I’ll often get alerts that a camera is blocked/blinded by bright sun, road grime, etc. And the cameras have a hard enough time operating things like the automatic windshield wipers (they can turn on in bright sun on a clear day) and automatic high beams (nothing like blinding oncoming cars at night) that I find it hard to trust them. If the car can’t handle those simple tasks then how can I trust it with more complex ones like FSD?
My next car will probably still be an EV. It just likely won’t be a Tesla. By the time I’m in the market for a new one there should be a lot more good options available.
We’re in exactly the same place. My M3 at least has radar, but I have had an incident with autopilot when it slammed on the breaks thinking a merging truck was coming into my lane (it wasn’t) and I mean it really braked hard. Thankfully it was midday, not rush hour, and no one was behind me for a bit. I didn’t like relinquishing control in the first place, but now I’ve sworn it off and I only use the cruise control without the lane assist, when I use it at all.
How are they allowed to call it that? It's even more egregious than Autopilot. Wherein neither are actually self-driving, just driving assists. That's clearly fraud. Insurance carriers should be denying Teslas coverage as that's a pretty good case to suggest the driver of a Tesla wasn't at fault, or not 100% at fault if the FSD was engaged.
i wish i could buy byd's ev since it's 1/4 the price of a tesla and can do 90% of a tesla; but they're banned in the united states.
If you want FSD check out Comma3
It's copilot not FSD but it's getting better every year.
I love this idea but I'm certain if an insurer ever found out I was using it I would be completely fucked financially.
At fault accidents are at fault.
Doesn't matter if you trusted openpilot, were texting and driving, or fell asleep behind the wheel.
I don't see how insurance would change at all.
If a software is able to work the controls in any capacity you would have to prove it was not responsible for an accident. Accidents which are other people's fault will have to be fought in court if they discover some open source software is able to control the other party's car in any capacity whatsoever. "They were using an untested software and it veered into my right-of-way." IDK. Call your insurer and LMK what they say.
Don't tell them?
This technology takes less than 30 min to install and looks like a dash cam.
Up to you at the end of the day. I'm planning on getting a Comma3 when i get my next car. My current one isn't supported.
On the issue of high beams. Where I live there are now quite a few teslas, and they are the culprit in like 90% of cases when i get blinded at night. Is that due to the particularly irritating colour temp of their headlights, or the automatic high beam is the reason?
Hard to say for sure but my guess would be the high beams.
A friend bought a Tesla that came with a defective rear window from the factory, they found out when opening the door at home. A tech came out and sealed the door shut so the car could be used. It took 10 months before the car was repaired and the door was usable.
Their next purchase was not a Tesla, future purchases will not be a Tesla ever again. Just by the quality of their product.
Regardless, Musk is a douche nozzle.
We're making our last payment on our EV this month, and a few weeks ago I brought up the idea of maybe trading it in for a newer EV, since our current one was starting to show signs of possible battery degradation and it's a Leaf that's stuck with CHAdeMO charging instead of CCS/NACS charging. My husband asked me what car we'd consider replacing it with, and the instant I floated maybe looking at a used Tesla, my husband barked back "Absolutely NOT!" And the thing was, I couldn't find myself disagreeing, either.
I know that my husband and I are far from the only ones who think the same way.
I feel so smug in the fact that I never liked the guy, never bought into the hype...
I don't know what's going to save the human race folks, but it's not going to be a billionaire in a cock measure contest.
I’m another one in this camp. Had a Model 3 for five years and loved the car, but moved internationally and had to sell it. Looking at EVs again of course but uninterested in Tesla because of this guy - that and his staunch refusal to add CarPlay. What kind of a moron refuses to add phone support to a $60,000 car?
I know I have... I'd probably have one right now if it weren't for him.
Out of curiosity- did you end up buying a different brand of EV and if so, what do you think of it?
Not yet, no. Still in the market. Looking at hybrids too. I have transportation for my job taken care of, and I've gotten comfortable not having a car so I haven't been in a rush.
I actually envy your position. I don't live in a populous enough place to live without a car in America and I live outside city limits anyway, so the shitty, very limited bus system we have here doesn't even get near my subdivision (which is massive), let alone my home.
My next car will be an EV or a PHEV (definitely NOT a Tesla). I have a hybrid now and I plan to drive it into the ground before I buy another car. Maybe I will be living somewhere else and won't need it by then though.
I had a Bolt for 3 years. It's a great little car. Only reason I didn't replace it with another Bolt was because I was doing construction at two places (wanted more cargo space) and mostly working from home (not driving enough to justify the EV upcharge). I ended up getting a hybrid Maverick. Bolts are definitely worth looking into when it is time for your old car to make it's way across the oil covered bridge.
I think PHEV is probably going to be my next choice just for emergency "out of charge" reasons if nothing else.
My only issue with PHEV is carrying around the extra weight of two power sources, plus the complexity of running both means more can go wrong and there is more maintenance. EVs are so much easier to maintain. However, I get why people want them. If my truck came in a PHEV I would get it over the hybrid. If my truck came in an EV, I would get that over either; but I'm not getting the F-150 EV because it's the size of my house.
My Prius has been maintenance free aside from standard things like oil changes and replacing filters since 2016.
It's probably the most trouble-free car I've ever had.
My situation isn't ideal, and I basically never go anywhere or do anything as having to ask for a ride every time sucks. I walk a lot more though, which is good. I'm not in the most walkable city/area, but there's enough near me. Plus there are like a million food places of various ethnicities nearby that deliver.
I put a deposit down on a Polestar 3 Performance Launch Edition. Years ago I wanted a Tesla and now you can't pay me to take one.
Have you done a test drive yet? If so, what did you think?
No, I wish I could but there are no local Polestar dealers near me so when it's ready for pickup it, I'll fly to the dealer I chose and will drive it home. Cheaper than paying $1800 CAD to have them ship it ~1000KM.
I did watch several YT vids on people driving a Polestar 3 on a frozen lake in the arctic circle and they seemed very impressed. Mostly due to the air suspension and dual clutch torque vectoring rear differential.
https://youtu.be/00E3tNr70BY?si=tBn6-k-pIXvNd3aP
https://youtu.be/ZuqHmvfDrNw?si=LIdobm05es5r87u4
I was pretty down with Tesla until i listened to the Behind the Bastards episodes on Elon. Now I want nothing to do with him or any of his businesses.
His Twitter is enough for a lot of people. Dude is a middle aged white supremacist. A character that would easily be on the show "the boys". That's how comical it is.
Pedogate is what did it for me. Also, the Te$la schills really turn need me off with their constant BS hype to pump the stock.
I make enough to buy any of his cars.
I just bought an EV and his cars were not considered because he’s a piece of shit.
I guess this is true for me in the sense that his toxic business culture makes me confident that his companies are rushing products and cutting corners wherever they can to that end. Not a quality I like in a vehicle....
I also don't want a dashboard that only has a touchscreen for vital functions and a bunch of Internet bullshit
I wanted a Tesla until the pedo guy incident.
perhaps I have been living under a rock... what's the story?
When someone else managed to rescue trapped young cave divers without using Elons terrible idea that wouldn't have worked. Elon called him a pedo guy. For context, it was in Thailand, so maybe that's just the first thing that comes to mind for Elon if someone visits Thailand.
I could see it just being a shitty stereotype he tossed off, if he didn't follow it up with hiring a fucking private investigator to try to dig up dirt on the guy.
He legit tried to ruin that man's life because he told him his idea was not productive.
I did some light research on the topic, and the guy he called a pedo tried to sue for defamation and lost. Classic US judicial system.
Good.
Saw my first cyber truck today. Looked like a Roblox car. I pointed and laughed, I don’t think the driver was happy.
When can we get a Xiaomi SU7?
I’m one of those. Tesla already had a dubious reputation for quality but I was all-in on the incomparable hideousness of the Cyber Truck (because I’m weird)… but then he turned out to be a bigoted right-wing authoritarian chud and now I won’t touch anything he’s attached to.
Here’s hoping Aptera makes it to market. Honestly, their product will be infinitely more practical than a Cyber Truck, anyway.
Plus 1 on the Aptera! Electric is the future of personal transport, but not in the way it's being implemented. Changing our current ICE cars to electric isn't enough. They are too heavy. The massive batteries require special dedicated charging to charge in a reasonable amount of time. The Aptera is light and doesn't need a huge battery, and doesn't need massive charging current to charge in a reasonable amount of time.
Same I'm a fan of the look of the cyber truck but fuck Elon. It's the car of the future we were promised by all those old movies.
Happened to my brother. Back in the days he kept talking about Tesla cars, how amazing they were. But when he finally was able to buy a new car he decided against Tesla, mainly because he disliked Musk.
Are you my brother? I did exactly that!
We can be brothers
A year ago it was a joke at my (IS) office how much I dislike Musk. Now his dickery is part of the zeitgeist and it is such a weight off my shoulders that I can stop being the only local champion of this cause.
Solar as well… I soooooo wanted their solar tiles, not now though. I don’t want any of my money going to that man.
It sucks when you want a technology to succeed, but despise the person behind it. (or at least collecting the profits)
I think GAF is making solar shingles now.
I never liked Tesla.
The cars never were meant to be for "Joe Average" and "Daily Family Business" but "Toys for Wanna-Be-Social-Warriors".
Too expensive, too little practical use. I would take a Mitsubishi Space Star all day over a Tesla. Even the gasoline version is more ecological friendly in the long run. They go for €7000 in the smallest version and run for DECADES with little repairs and only use 2.5 to 3.5 L/100km and have like five times more storage room than even the largest Tesla.
Tesla? No thanks.
And yes, the Space Star literally has NO computer capabilities at all. It is barely above a 1970th VW beetle. But I tell you something: I fucking don't care. It is a car, it does car things like driving and hauling, it is not an entertainment device. It is cheap, fucking robust, easy to repair, uses little fuel and lives for decades (my aunt drove her Space Star for 35 years and 250000km and it was only scrapped after my aunt died of old age). For computer stuff, navigation, entertainment I have my smart phone which I clip into a holder and have 10 times more usability than any other car computer system I have ever seen.
I see no point in paying ten times more for little gain at all.
Also pretty much any computer integration in cars I have seen are massively overpriced and often abnormal bad. The only one doing the IT stuff right are the French producers like Peugeot and Renault, they include the biggest package in all cars without additional fees and it works pretty well. All cars having the same system is a great bone because you immediately feel at home everywhere. Also they are fair priced, in comparison to a lot of American and German cars.
Btw, I have been working for BMW a lot. Even drove several prototypes for several months as a payment bone. But even when they offered me car for half the price: No thanks. I'd rather invest my money in something lasting like real estate, stocks and such.
Same goes for my family, brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles. I asked them what their expensive cars could to better and it was usually "well, it is a VW, it is a Ford, it is a whatever... and that is great" but when asked what it does BETTER... silence. Some decided to go cheap on cars after thinking about it, others decided they needed a bigger car to compensate something. Well, everyone is his lucks smith.
I had an order for a Tesla solar roof ($50,000ish/and also owned a few grand of TSLA stock. Cancelled the order and sold the stock after he refused to close his factory for Covid and turned all anti-mask. Fuck Elon.
You probably dodged a bullet on the solar roof:
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-solar-roof-panels-cost-energy-nightmare-customer-service-2021-5?op=1
I was looking at a Tesla in 2019, test drove one and was immediately put off by the faux-luxury presentation of everything and how the infotainment screen was the gateway to controlling literally everything on the car. I later found out about some of the other negatives that were not readily apparent when driving the showroom model like the excessive gaps in the body panels and FSD being essentially a scam that will never be fully realized. Musk went completely off the rails politically not too long after that and I couldn't bring myself to ever even consider a Tesla now as long as he heads the company. Maybe someday they'll repair their image when they shed Musk and get QC under control, but I'd sooner buy another PHEV or a competitor's EV than a Tesla of any make or model.
Exactly. I won’t even consider a Tesla until those criteria are met, and even then, it’d be years before I can decide whether they’ve proven they’d changed for the better. As it is, they’re GM to me.
I was moments away from a down payment on pre order on the new 3 series. I forget the exact details of why I didn't. I am grateful that I bailed out on that plan.
might have a little bit to do with quality of teslas (which mostly seems related to musk pushing self driving and the production floor)
Seems like he is smelling his own fart and really enjoying it in the photo
"Ahhhhh, this is what god must be smelling like"
It sounds a lot like a case of "Live by the sword, die by the sword":
In this situation it doesn't really mater what he says about what he's trying to sell (such as the "good car" statement about Teslas) because he will simply not be believed.
See, this is what I thought his scam was too. Everybody rich enough or hippy enough was already trying to buy his cars. So in order to grow, he needed the conservatives. So his starts acting like them and he gets a new market.
The whole accusing the guy in Tailand of being a pedophile doesn't seem to fit that theory.
Your theory does explain some of his being an arsehole, just not all of it, maybe not even most of it.
My GF had a Tesla tow years ago, and she was undecided about renewing her lease. But then Elon took over Twitter and she began to feel embarrassed being seen in it.
Who would have known, alienating your biggest customer base (West Coast Liberals) with crazier and crazier right-wing nonsense would be a bad business decision. You'll have to pry Billybob's cold, dead hands off of his F-150.
Even from a purely financial perspective people are starting to realize that Teslas are a bad purchase. They are notoriously expensive to repair with little to no spare parts support. Even fender benders that would have been considered minor on other vehicles result in totalling the car. Because of this insurance premiums for Teslas are going through the roof. The battery pack also has a limited lifespan and replacements are prohibitively expensive.
Teslas used to keep their value because rarity, demand and Elon's teademark overhype. But their depreciation curve has begun to catch up with reality. As more and more Teslas end up prematurely in the landfill depreciation and insurance costs are going to overshadow fuel savings.
Had Elon Musk ever really cared about saving the planet he would have used his company's resources and energy in reducing the cost of ownership of his vehicles by creating an affordable repair parts supply. But instead he decided to waste it all on the moronic waste that is the cybertruck.
This article just feels like rage bait to me
I'm not sceptical of the premise, because clearly the strong feelings people have towards Elon will turn some people off, but that kind of effect is hard to quantity
As the article, and others, note Tesla sales are down. That could be for any number of reasons and it doesn't make a convincing case that it's because of Elon
Tesla sales have been strong for so long despite Elon's continued crazy behavior that I find it hard to attribute the cause to the effect. Why now? Why not any of the other crazy stuff he's done?
Yeah, every time a stock is down a 100 "analysts" come pouring out of the woodworks and gives a 100 different reasons for why. I find it more likely that the reason Tesla is doing worse is that the EV market is just way more competitive than before (but I don't know, that is my point). Like you say, Elon has been saying polarizing shit the entire time. I don't think common consumers care about that. Something else must have changed.
I bet most don't even know! The average American is probably only dimly aware of the Elon Discourse, if they're aware at all
My parents and Aunt and Uncle aren't super online. I bet they don't know anything about what he posts on Twitter
I've also strongly considered not Tesla cars because of Elon's antics but this article just confirms my biases which is why I have to look harder at it
I don't know if people like me are why the sales are down, but I am absolutely 100% in the camp of never buying a Tesla purely because of Musk. I think the "why now" is because his antics have gone from, "whoa, this guy is nuts!" to "this guy sounds like he is actually a Nazi."
I only have anecdotal evidence but we were super close to buying one in 2020. Test drove and everything. I will never by a tesla and everyone in my circles have the same sentiment. I think the craziest part of the story is that Musk managed to win over an entirely different demographic. Otherwise, it'd be a bloodbath
I was getting an EV for my next car, the model 3 was what i was going to get but after i he did things like taking disney off the car because of his beef, i couldn't trust the company as a whole. I know an car maker was going to be ruled with a republican fist but now he could have a personal beef with and break the cars remotely. I bought a EV6.
I miss when Elon was just a Xoomer dad that would post shit like this:
I wouldn't buy a new tesla even if it was the only option. I would just go and buy used, not like the market isn't flooded with the. .. at least he doesn't see a penny of it.
even if you like Elon, which you shouldn't, they are very poorly made cars, with straight up dangerous UX design on the inside, once safety ratings incorporate infotainement Teslas will plummet in ratings and deservedly so.
Also most Musk fans (including Musk himself) are climate change denialists, so they usually don't care about the environment. Their dream car would be a coal-rolling truck, that also run on human sacrifices, tears of the orphans, dead kittens, and seal puppies clubbed to death.
Yep, was interested back in 2018/2019. Have zero interest in buying one now.
Or hear me out.
Its a car company with poor track record and little IP.
The big car companies produce better more reliable vehicles with even the little things like physical controls being preferred.
Yep, and the quality of quite suspect
I didn’t care one way or the other about the Boer except that he was talking about developing a sub-3 model, which piqued my interest. Then in 2018 he pulled the main character syndrome bullshit with his cobbled-together rescue sub and the “pedo guy” crap, and decided that maybe I’m not that interested, especially as at that time, he was also making a bunch of promises that he clearly had no intention of keeping (aforementioned entry level model, FSD, and so on). Now that I am in a position that I can buy one of his cars, it’s not even on my list, for so many reasons.
His “heel turn” on Twitter was telegraphed a light year away, and while I’m disappointed it’s taken this long, I’m glad he’s finally going to start reaping his blight.
I just hope that Rivian can stay afloat and that their CEO Steve-O is a relatively okay person because that R3 is looking good.
In 2022(?) when he was up to his shit trying not to buy twitter, despite having agreed to buy, space-x employees signed a petition to have him step down for his negative influence. I believe he retaliated by firing people and they filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, but I leave it to someone else to correct me if I’m wrong.
I know that I considered his brand when buying a car after ten years of living a car-free lifestyle. The pan made it impossible to rely upon Uber and I would have bought a Tesla if they weren’t massively backordered. I settled on a hybrid because I could get one much sooner. I’d light myself on fire rather than pay for one of this shitbag’s car today, however.
🎵 Lonnie is a shitbag! 🎶
People are realizing how shitty Tesla is because of Musk's shitty behavior
That is the right thing to do
Always loved and wanted to support electric cars. But my first will never be a Tesla.
I own a Model 3 which I took delivery of back in 2020. As a car it's actually been fine - no major issues, aside from a fault with the AC which was sorted under warranty. It's been cheap to run, cheap to service (basically just tyres and other consumables like wiper blades), build quality seems perfectly fine and overall it's generally pleasant to drive.
The charging network is also fantastic and by far the most reliable one, at least here in the UK. It's now opening up to other makes of vehicles and I regularly see non-Teslas charging there.
Would I buy another one? With their current lineup, probably not. Nothing to do with Elon, douche nozzle though he certainly is. I mean, people still buy VWs (also great cars, used to own one too) and look who founded that company.
No, my issue is with the stupid cost cutting measures with removing critical physical controls from their latest cars. Moving the gear selector to the screen is absurd but at least you are (or should be) stationary when you are swiping the screen to change direction. Removing the indicator stalk however and replacing with buttons on a movable surface seems downright dangerous, especially in EU & UK where there are roundabouts everywhere and you need to be able to indicate while at half lock.
My Tesla is old enough to still have physical controls for all of those things and unless that changes I will not be getting another. I also just don't do enough miles these days to justify a new car, I'll just run this one into the ground.
People are waking up to the obvious fact that what they thought were Tesla-specific features (like the powerful torque and acceleration) are actually features of a battery powered electric motor per se. Saying that to a Tesla-Fan will still get you a “why are you hating” reply. Musk and Trump truly have figured out how to brainwash the dumbest.
Not unlike a certain kind of hurensohn...
get rid of that cunt, improve the quality of your cars and maybe I consider to buy a tesla...
The heavy irony here is the only people who defend Elon cannot afford a Tesla. The people who think he represents them aren’t even his target audience.
I have a 2012 Honda, I'll likely never be able to afford another car. I would love to have Chinese EV options here though.
BYD is in Mexico and selling so we see them on the streets. They are sharp looking cars.
Or the vast majority of people can not afford Teslas. The die hards have bought them already or have died in them already.
I am probably in the market for an electric vehicle for my next car in a few years and I would certainly avoid Tesla.
I don't have huge feelings about Elon but I have the strong suspicion that owning a Tesla makes you look like a neckbeard now.
@OldWoodFrame @Potatos_are_not_friends
He said neckbeard. Ha haaa haa it's true
I had half a mind to buy one after I graduate college. But I don't know if I can right now given the fact it directly benefits Elon.
In my case, it was more of a powerwall (the cars had too many issues already), but yep; not touching anything to do with this reprehensible shitstain. I avoid giving money to such people/companies whenever it's possible.
Yep. Our household owns both a Leaf and a Bolt. Can't stand musk and his cars that don't have an instrument cluster.
Ha, I really like that 😊
It would be a good time for another brand to take advantage of this. I get why people don't want to support this racist weirdo.
I'd say this is anecdotally false. I live in a rural area in the US and I just keep seeing more and more teslas popping up on the road. I wonder if they are showing up at more dealerships now where more consumers have the opportunity the make an uninformed purchase? Not sure.
I feel like anyone who has done surface level research on a tesla would avoid then. I haven't even done that and I know just from seeing articles that I didn't even seek out that they are pretty shitty cars, even if you ignore Elon's existence.
Yes that, but also the increasing Tesla QA issues over the recent years inspire little confidence
Tesla's biggest market is China. Expect Tesla to tank if the US bans Tiktok. China will retalliate against Tesla and Apple.
FAFO
I'd rather buy a BYD on the low end or a Lucid on the high end, with many of far more interesting EVs all across the range. Not to even get to him as a person which is unappealing.
I live in the most Tesla filled city in the world. I'm a fucking dick to them. I'm sorry, but if you're buying into that Nazi's cult and I have the choice of being my usual kind self, or taking the opportunity to go ahead of you, cut you off, etc., I'm going to do the latter.
tesla makes interesting cars, but i wait for the day they stop producing drive units, and start producing wheel drives. Hub motors are definitely the objectively correct solution when it comes to EVs IMO. There are so many more things you can do, and so many more options you're opened up to.
oh and they stop being proprietary garbage, perhaps one day we will get opentesla firmware, as a hack.
Really? I know a couple of people that had one, and the main reason for not buying another is they're the 90s Alfa Romeo of electric cars.
Looks nice but always at the garage.
The charging infrastructure isn't where it should be if people were really serious about EV.
People are avoiding Tesla's?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/
You're a quarter behind. Big drop 2024Q1, but you're right that the story has been growth - just slower growth than Tesla has promised, even with massive price cuts, and now we have a contraction. A lot of people dislike Elon because he's a fucking tool and this has to be a partial factor, we just don't really know how much.
According to CNBC, deliveries have dropped 8.5% compared to Q1 2023. That's awesome! I would love to see their sales continue to plummet.
Its kind of hard to find recent data but if you look at all car companies it's pretty much par
https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/automotive-sales-in-usa-by-month
You may have facts but there are like 10 people here saying they won’t buy a Tesla so…
But the survey and my confirmation bias say that people don't like Teslas anymore...
That’s delivery of vehicles. Aren’t they famously way behind with long wait times? Actual sales figures would be a better gauge.
I don't think this is having a meaningful effect. Tesla'a biggest marketplace is China, and I doubt they care about American politics. It is more likely that China is discouraging people from buying Teslas due to American threats to ban Tiktok.
How about avoid buing car?
I see a lot of anti-musk sentiment but didn't really know why. What happened to piss everyone off? My guess is some autistic ranting on Twitter but that didn't seem enough