“Bought this Tesla before Elon Musk became a huge asshole. Sorry”
wait, Tesla didn’t exist back then
Before he revealed himself to be one
nah, always been one, like I said to what looks like a deleted reply:
If the sticker said “I bought this before Tesla was taken over by a huge asshole”, my response would be different.
As someone who’s not American, and has never followed Musk or anything he’s done before, I bought mine before it was clear to me how much of a fucking psychopath he really is.
It was the only reasonably priced EV here at the time of purchase, but man I actually kind of feel ashamed driving it around now. There are tons of things I love about the car, quite a few things I dislike, but the only thing that actually makes me regret the purchase is that piece of shit. And I’m nowhere wealthy enough to sell it at a loss and go for something else now.
Really hope he’s forced to leave the company someday…
Apparently it goes back a while, I didn’t do anything like this when I was a kid
https://x.com/mikedrucker/status/1691602750415536516
edit:
Damn, even his own dad wouldn’t defend him on that one, moved him to a different school instead:
“He also recalled a time when Elon made a hurtful comment to a schoolmate about his father’s suicide.
The boy pushed Elon down a staircase at school, injuring him so badly he had to be hospitalized.
When he heard what happened, Errol wanted to defend his son.
“But I realised Elon overstepped the mark with this little boy. I had to drop it,” he said.
After that incident, Errol moved Elon to the prestigious Pretoria Boys High School.”
The roadster was released after that happened.
I guess there might be a handful of prototypes around?
Electric cars are still cars, and therefore do fuck-all to fix the real problem of excessive use of land for parking lots, low-density zoning, and lack of walkability.
The only way to have communities that are healthy and sustainable (ecologically, financially, or otherwise) is to fix the zoning code so that folks don’t need to drive in the first place.
Or just reduce the need to drive, for example by encouraging remote work.
Oh man when almost everything was remote my commute was so nice. 12 miles in 15 - 17 minutes instead of almost double that everyday.
Unfortunately I operate a forklift so I have to be there in person but damn was it super nice.
Currently I’m trying to encourage and raise support for more bike infrastructure locally so it’s an actually viable option intead of it’s currently not so viable state.
Convert all the empty offices to apartments. Solves housing supply problems, makes a lot of dense units instead of sprawl, puts them right next to any of the offices that have reopened, and would make the owners of the office buildings happy so they’d hopefully get out of the way of WFH (if they’re doing any lobbying or propaganda or whatnot).
I know it’s too expensive to be worth it, but it’s a perfect thing for governments to give grants for since it has so many benefits.
It’s happening a bit in Canada.
Projects are undervway in Calgary and Halifax; others are being planned or debated in Toronto, London, Ont., and Yellowknife.
From here
one issue is that offices tend to have 1 bathroom per floor, and the internal plumbing to match, and apartments need roughly a bathroom every 4 rooms. That really matters when you have 15 floors and you’re adding inlet and outlets filled with water, it drastically affects the weight and design of the building.
it might be easier, cheaper and safer to demolish and rebuild rather than convert.
Multiple such projects are underway in my Midwestern US city.
That’s a great idea, I hope other communities follow.
That doesn’t fix any of the problems mentioned.
You can have healthy and sustainable communities without high density housing or any of the comforts of urban living. In fact, humans have lived in low density rural communities for thousands of years.
No. Humans have lived in walkable villages and towns built at missing middle densities (hundreds to a few thousand people and markets all within walking distance linked by long distance travel corridors you walked to or what you are calling ‘urban’) with local services and a handful of people living on the outskirts.
Endless suburban seas of <500 people per km^2 were invented for the automobile. The past you are counterfactually claiming exists did not have half an acre of roads, car parks, 4-car garages, set backs and car yards per resident, nor did it have all the services in a central gigantic box building 20 miles away through a sea of identical houses, nor did your rural people demand those in higher density regions provode them with infrastructure for heating, cooling, water and sewerage. Nor did they demolish all the houses around the market just in case they wanted to leave a cart there.
You have a very US-centric perspective on “sustainability”.
There are plenty of sustainable communities all over the world, today as in the past, that consist of 100s to 1000s of people living in low density housing within reach of a small center.
Some of their garages have two cars, some have only a moped, and some have no vehicles at all.
They are generally rural, not suburban. Not all are near big box stores. Those with big box stores existed before the big box stores arrived, and they would continue to exist if the big box stores left.
Their existence does not necessarily depend on support from higher density regions, especially in parts of the world where higher density regions will ignore their requests anyway.
These are the walkable non-suburban communities being talked about. Why are you trying to use examples of the desired outcome as a counter example (and reason to continue destroying said towns)?
I am responding to the suggestion that only high-density communities are sustainable. That’s simply not true. It is possible for people to live sustainably in either low density or high density communities.
Which in turn implies that the problem with suburbs is not necessarily their density, but other factors.
If you take both the population and area of greater houston without the urban core, there is one hectare of suburban wasteland per person.
One person per hectare isn’t the rural settlement in your imagined past, it’s a single family and a few farm hands living on an unusually large and high-labor productivity farm way out of town.
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Establishing maximums on parking lot sizes to be drastically less than the building’s capacity would help
Maximums aren’t necessarily the problem, since developers are incentivized by market forces not to build more parking than necessary.
The problem is parking minimums, which are based on numbers pulled out of somebody’s ass 80 years ago and (to the extent they correlated with anything at all) tend to be closer to the maximum that could ever conceivably be needed (think “Black Friday at a shopping center”) more than anything else!
I mean we need lobbiests to switch those mins to maz
We are the lobbyists. For example, my city is currently doing this, so it’s up to people like me to show up at the meetings and demand changes like that. You can do the same in your city or county by talking to your local political rep, even when they aren’t doing a wholesale rewrite like they are here.
I remember when Teslas used to be cool.
Now I see them all the time, and they might as well swap the badge for one that says “cunt”, it would be less embarrassing.
Buy a Tesla because you’re trying to help the environment and it was regarded as the best EV at the time
Tesla starts making their products shittier
Tesla lied about range
Tesla CEO loses his mind, buys a social media company, drives it into the ground
Someone on the internet says you’re a cunt because you own a Tesla
I relate to this comment and I hate it.
Tesla drivers were the new BMW douchebags on the road well before he bought Twitter. I got buzzed by in a parking lot the other day by someone doing at least 30, so close it felt like a huge gust of wind. Turned to see a teslas within a foot of me. Jackass drivers in near silent cars in parking lots are a great combo. If the sensors and self driving worked for shit it would of never let them get that close to me.
Man people in here like you legitimately sound crazy. Buying one of the best EVs makes someone a cunt? I hate Elon musk just as much as anyone but he didn’t create Tesla, engineer any of them, or build any of them… Y’all are too negative.
Poor manufacture quality and you have to subscribe to use car features it already has. Good thing you can hack them.
Data point of one, but I bought the cheapest Model 3 model back in 2020, added FSD (was $6k at the time I think) and have had no issue with mine. FSD is not ‘full self driving’, but I’ve been using it continuously since the update a few months ago.
I despise car culture, and it is the least car like car that I could buy. It does most of the driving, it is safer than most, it has no ongoing emissions, and per mile is cheaper than a gas car.
I don’t think Teslas are one of the best, certainly not anymore.
Efficiency, battery price for the cost, power, and charge time/long distance speed are measurably objectively in the top tier (although not uniquely so or not the singular best).
Not worth it for the shoddy construction, abusive customer-exploitative remote control that means you never own it, false advertising, and cultural association (also not uniquely so).
I remember a time when the Prius was head turning. It was the first “real” car to be a hybrid. That was interesting.
I would say that the Prius was never cool though.
All those “Nice Prius” bumper stickers were pretty funny though.
The mpg of those things is no joke
I got upgraded to one when I rented a car a few years ago, it was actually really nice. Although I’m someone who is used to driving clunkers (the local AAA tow truck drivers all knew my family, lol) and the engine shutting off at the light always freaked me out.
I saw a nice looking sedan roll past me one evening and when I saw it was a new Prius I knew I was officially getting old.
Extra frustrating because even though Musk is associated wholesale with Tesla, he is not actually a founder.
Yet another example of the rich running shit into the ground with poor decisions.
As much as I think musk is an asshole he did put his money where his mouth is in Tesla which notably almost went bankrupt twice. The reality is that Elon distaste matters orders of magnitude less to buyers than value. I mean people hate Walmart and yet they make a ton of money. Other manufacturers cannot make profitable cars at the price point Tesla is offering. Tesla is going to end up the largest car manufacturer in the world. On Twitter yeah he is running it into the ground arguably on purpose but on Tesla and space x he is doing pretty good. I don’t understand what people taking this angle think the founder would have done better. The founder would have just gone bankrupt with Tesla or sold to someone else.
I would also add that people don’t deal with Elon when buying a Tesla, but they do have to deal with shitty dealers when buying another brand.
Most people are just going to buy the car that is the best value with the least effort.
I mean people hate Walmart and yet they make a ton of money.
The difference to Walmart is that there are alternatives, especially these days, to Tesla. Walmart on the other hand is known to push out smaller retailers in the town they settle into. The option for people can be really slim regardless if you like them or not.
Not to mention you have to consider demographics. Walmart is a value brand. When it edges out the local businesses, they get de-facto monopoly. There’s no where else to go if you can’t shop the higher retailers. Tesla had first-mover advantage with the flashy claims and making an EV not look like a Dustbuster. They ran out the goodwill and runway and they will get eaten alive by the seasoned manufacturers. They will have their segment of the market but you’ll more likely see the same brands convert people from petrol to EV or H2 if white hydrogen is actually a thing.
From what i know tesla was first really profitable from cars (not investors) in 2020 and elon gave himself a bonus with like 50x value from all the profits (my source is the youtuber thunderf00t).
And if i heard it correctly tesla cars are overpriced compared to the competitors and none is on place one when it comes to the stats.But to simply buy a tesla is as easy as simply buying the most advertised bs like nestle products.
And to the spaceX thing: they get their money mostly from having launch platforms and overpricing it there, the malket there only could be dominated because of investor money. (no source)
The satelite internet drains more money (with US GOV tax funds, no source) than it generates value outside of specific use cases. (partially thunderf00t)Another thing (i dont know if it is true) that tesla and spacex are doing better since elon is occupied with twitter
No one cares about the rich assholes who own other car companies, so why Tesla? For example Toyota were some of the biggest campaign donors to Trump.
Also what does this have to do with Fuck Cars? This is about the minutiae of car culture… We should be talking about trains and bicycles here.
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No one cares about the rich assholes who own other car companies, so why Tesla? For example Toyota were some of the biggest campaign donors to Trump.
Because the others know to keep their mouths shut and not draw attention to themselves. Also F Toyota for being donors.
Also what does this have to do with Fuck Cars? This is about the minutiae of car culture… We should be talking about trains and bicycles here.
This I totally agree with though. I would perhaps also include cars in the capacity of how they hurt our cities for instance, but in this case it’s not like the article said that the Tesla owners bought bikes instead.
Iirc many Tesla owners were/are left leaning and I’m guessing many of them bought a Tesla in a combination of tech enthusiasm and wanting avoiding fossil fuel. The same group of people are probably more positive to, for instance, 15 min cities. So it’s likely that some members here own a Tesla.
@NotYourSocialWorker @stilgar Here is a list of the CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies who are not assholes:
How many of them bought a social media company because they were tired of racist bullies getting banned?
@legion02 Well, theres 🍊🤡 but yes Its a distinction that grabs immediate attention. No one is forced to use X. Im more directly concerned with those that dump forever chemicals in the nations public water supplies, destroy the climate, and directly fund the overthrow of democracy. But, you know, #priorities
Wait. That Trump thing. You got a source? I’d love to learn more about it.
OK my claim was a bit overblown, but they’re not exactly strangers to the far right https://www.huffpost.com/entry/toyota-backlash-gop-donations_n_60dacd0ce4b08ef5e2be61c7
Thanks
Clicked through the first link and saw like half a dozen stickers with the only joke conservatives have ever been able to think of; “x identifies as y”. Imagine thinking that’s such a pinnacle of comedy that you reuse it for everything you can think of for years and years, never tiring of it.
I would prefer they drive a Tesla than a petrol car. But if they swap to another electric car, I’ll take it. I hope they advocate for better public transport links locally though.
What would be the purpose of swapping ?
It wouldn’t automagically reuse the resources used to build the Tesla car into another one.
This is a stretch but with bad press the resale value of existing teslas may drop to within reach of more consumers who would otherwise drive an ICE.
Would generally be better if they just kept driving their old car.
Imagine “Twitter stuff” being your breaking point after all the bad shit Musk did. These people are the real problem.
He had some credibility with nerds because Tesla transformed the electric car market* and was making contributions to renewable energy storage, SpaceX revived the idea of doing more in space than just launching the occasional satellite or probe, and Starlink was pitched with the idea that it’d bring about globally accessable, high-speed low-latency internet. The result is that, because he is the face of Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink, he received the major of the credit for them. Nerds were willing to overlook the fact that he was an asshole for the contributions that his companies were making to science and technology because either “he’s just shitposting” or “sometimes you have to take what you can get *shrug*”. It wasn’t until he bought Twitter that they realized that he’s not just shitposting, he really is just like that, and that maybe he was causing more harm than he was doing good.
Source: My dad and I had a lot of respect for him up until he bought Twitter and started throwing a temper tantrum. My opinion of him was already waning when I saw the fit he threw about not being able to use his submarine and the bigoted shit he said on Twitter, but him buying Twitter broke any illusions that the either of us had about him being even a somewhat decent person. I’ve also seen others have similar experiences as well.
* seriously, does no one remember how the major car manufacturers were trying to bury electric cars? Does no one remember that one of the big reasons why we have so many electric cars now is because Tesla voluntarily released all their patents to the public in 2014?
Look I get it. Elon is an asshole. But the thing is he took his money and put it into two companies that people basically laughed out of the room as a joke. That is why he is worth so much now.
I agree that Tesla did a TON to popularize electric vehicles when the closest thing from a major American auto manufacturer at the time was probably the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. That spark, largely ignited by Tesla, is likely a huge reason we have many of the options we do today.
It’s a shame major manufacturers like Toyota and Honda still won’t get onboard (yes, Toyota technically has a single EV offering as of this year, but good luck finding it and most reviews seem to find it underwhelming at best), but I think that fact further bolsters your point. If those two major players still can’t be bothered to get involved, I think it does indicate that what Tesla did during the last decade or so helped inspire others to get into the market that may not have otherwise.
That said, do we have any evidence that Tesla’s announcement of a plan to release their patents in 2014 really made any real difference? I am unaware of any of those patents being used by competitors anywhere, though it is entirely possible I am uninformed and I’d appreciate any sources you have.
I think one of the most glaring examples that the patent release may have had little to no impact is that the now-presumptuously-renamed “NACS” connector still isn’t used by anyone other than Tesla almost a decade on. In fact, SAE only announced that they would standardize the thing at the end of June this year.
Again, I freely admit that I agree Tesla deserves credit for finally creating a real, mainstream electric vehicle market. However, I am personally unaware of any benefits their 2014 “announcement of a plan to release their parents” has actually directly benefited the industry.
Ford, GM, Volvo, Nissan, Rivian, Polestar, and Mercedes-Benz have all announced that they will support NACS with an adaptor some time next year, and they will all have NACS ports in 2025.
Honestly it’s pretty shocking they are all essentially saying don’t buy our cars for a year because our charging network can’t compete with Tesla.
Ok, but the comment to which I was replying was referring to when Tesla (supposedly) opened up their parents almost a decade ago so I’m not sure your comment addresses my question.
Tbh I don’t actually have any sources for cars using the patent, it was my understanding however that a number of the patents were related to things like how the batteries were designed. As such, it makes logical sense to me that the explosion of electric cars with Tesla-like ranges would indicate that they were using Tesla’s tech to some extent. However, after your reply I did look to see if there was any concrete information about whether or not anyone is using them, and found this article from 2015 in which Musk claims there are/were multiple parties using their patents. That’s Musk’s claim though, and he didn’t provide any proof for it so take that with a grain of salt.
Secondly, something to note is that the Chevy Volt (2010) didn’t launch until after the Tesla Roadster (2008) had already been released. What’s important, imo, is that the previous full-electric cars were cars like the GM EV-1, Ford Ranger EV, Chrysler TEVan, Chevy S-10 EV, Honda EV Plus, or the infamous G-Wiz. All of these cars have something in common, which is that they were very slow, had very short ranges, took a long time to charge, and were fairly expensive and/or had a very limited run (or you had to be entered into a lottery to buy one). Some, like the GM EV-1 were forcefully recalled and destroyed after their makers got bored of them and declared them a failure. Finally, I like this quote from the Wikipedia article on the history of electric cars:
In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz was quoted as saying, “All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us – and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, ‘How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam.”
Well that’s because he went from having an ounce of credibility to none at all.
Doesnt matter. Do people really do no research before spending so much on a car?
absolutely, there are so many folks I have to warn about ‘problem models’. Stuff you could learn yourself just by googling the model of the car + ‘problems’
Probably not. The brand reputation could be best summed up as sect.
While the car might be reliable but they are objectively anti-right to repair causing issues for the consumer and they need to build dozens before being reliable:
With VW you can get (most) software, order VW parts overnight or OEM and third-party parts within 2-3 days. At the same time, I hear that some Tesla repairs take months and workshops are 1-2 hours drive away …
Build quality is clearly not a strong point of Tesla. If you wouldn’t know one might suspect the car had an accident before (gap dimensions all over the place). I think Tesla is also the only car where it is strongly recommended to perform wheel alignment on a new car.
Makes sense the people buying teslas are obsessed with what others think of them
Eyy
I’m sure the resale value plummeting after the driving range bullshit was exposed probably doesn’t factor into the not selling. Right?
The resale value is plummeting because Tesla is cutting prices because their goal is to become a larger auto manufacturer. Tesla took advantage of COVID just like everyone else to extract money from suckers. Those suckers are crying that Tesla is hurting their resale when Tesla does not give a fuck about their resale. They have a history of lowering prices to drive volume That isn’t some secret plan. There are more new buyers to be had than satisfy the people who bought overpriced cars in an expanding market.
Also what evs are people cross shopping for better range per dollar. It is well documented Teslas are still among the most efficient evs.
That being said I own a Tesla because it drives itself.most places. I would rather live in a place with better public transit access to the service calls I have and not own a car at all.
cool story, bro
Not a educated criticism but ok
Well, the only thing I’ll bother to comment on, because I have no interest in debating Tesla stans, is that the prices weren’t initially getting lowered because of some rosey-hued intention of becoming more accessible or anything like that. Prices were dropping because his antics with Twitter turned off potential buyers and he was forced to reduce prices to seem more palatable to those not completely turned off by him already, under the facade of trying to become more of a competitive brand etc etc etc. And that was before the driving range reporting, during which many owners reported being pissed that their already-depressed value cars were now worth even less, so they were probably stuck with them. Hope that response was more acceptable for you. If not, oh well.
Tesla production is growing year over year rapidly. If they want to sell higher volume they have to have lower prices. If they didn’t want to sell higher volume, they wouldn’t be expanding production so much.
uh huh, keep telling yourself that’s the reason, despite multiple levels of Tesla employees and customers anonymously and publicly expressing that they wished he would turn Twitter over to someone else and focus on Tesla again to keep their stock from falling more that it already was at the time. You’re not educating anyone here.
Tesla is not a company of one person.
Edit: I get wanting to protect yourself from folks who want to take their Elon rage out on random tesla, but isn’t it easier to just talk to folks about this?
Thank you for sharing the article, op.
A significant part of what Tesla is, is Elon Musk. If not for Musk’s wild and broken promises, Tesla wouldn’t be as overvalued as it is. Tesla without Musk would probably make better cars, but without him running the world’s biggest confidence game from the top office, it wouldn’t have the valuation it currently has.
I mean if you bought a normal car and then the owner of the car company turns out to be an asshole, who cares?
But if you buy a Tesla the owner of the car company can force an update on you tomorrow because he’s a cunt. So there is still direct influence. I don’t want to know how badly the terms and conditions for Tesla software is worded, if they can randomly up subscription cost, limit your range (to protect the battery of course), shut off features and put them behind a subscription, …
Or hell, if a Tesla is located in Ukraine it might just not start at all, they also shut down Starlink.
Yeah too bad that idiot at the top hasn’t been thrown out like in any normal company and the company is using resources to accommodate his whims.
Why do you think he as been able to retain his position with the company?
Because the value of the company is mostly determined by his fans irrational boner for him
My family buys Tesla cars because they are awesome despite hating Elon musk… Also have friends who just love Tesla that much and also hate him.
they’re fine, QA is extremely spotty for cars tho.
Frunk, not owned by oil friendly car company, best EV recharging, safest cars, amazing acceleration and smooth ride with low center of gravity. I don’t care about the crappy QA honestly. My Toyota straight up came with a fuel tank that’s significantly smaller than advertised due to a manufacturing defect (2020). The teslas I’ve driven seem to just have mild finish issues that frankly don’t bother me.
By being filthy rich and owning a lot of the company?
Its always a debate which CEO has the word to stop a company. Let’s say do you think if he really wanted to Satya Nadella could just stop Microsoft? I do believe he could not. On the other hand I do believe Elon could stop Tesla even though he is only ~21% into the company.
When you find out the owner of the brand you’re literally flying the flag of is a fascist, and you don’t make a change, it’s at that point you become the asshole flying the fascists flag. Elon Musk IS Tesla. nice try though dickhead.
Whoops. The CEO of my car’s company is a douche canoe. Guess I gotta buy a new car.
Fuck no, man. I hate Musk, and I’ll happily express that sentiment to anyone who asks, but I’m not taking on a car payment or trading in my 2019 M3 with tons of life left in it to make a political point.
Wow I really appreciate your comment. No idea why you feel the need to call me a name though. Anyways, thanks stranger. Your opinion is enlightening.
Whatever. I bought a tesla because it's still the best EV when it comes to range and charging network, and during the pandemic Tesla was the only manufacturer who didnt inflate cost due to chip shortages. I dont care for Musk, but most ceo's are douches, hes just the loudest.Yeah pretty much my view. Musk is a loud asshole. You don’t think the execs at Ford or GM or Chrysler aren’t just as/more evil? Using their billions to further slant laws their way and rig the system for their benefit and at our expense…
That being said though I wouldn’t buy one at this point probably. Up until a year or two ago, maybe.
I own a Model Y. It’s a great car, but I don’t think I’d buy another Tesla. I’m hoping by the time I’m in the market for another car, there are viable competitors with a good charging network (most likely will be due to NACS) or the competition has forced Tesla to cut their bullshit and treat consumers better.
This is the equivalent of voting Republican, then complaining how everything is getting worse.
Eh, if you vote Republican, complain about things getting worse, then vote Democrat, that’s changing your mind. If I saw someone with that sticker, I’d assume they regret the decision and won’t be getting another one. Being able to change your opinion with new information really shouldn’t be discouraged.
That’s a good point.
Clarification: This is like voting for the incumbent Republican on your ballot, complaining how things are getting worse… then voting for the ‘R’ again.
I was so close to getting one. What a disgrace that would have been…
it must be like licking elon’s taint everytime you have to charge up
