this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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God, I hate this timeline.
Maybe the Tesla owners who still somehow worship or apologize for Musk, but most of them don't deserve this at all. A lot of Tesla drivers dislike Musk and regret their purchases at this point.
They were the best electric car to buy for a long time. I don't fault anyone for buying them in the past. If anyone buys one now, with all the information and other options we have, then maybe they'd deserve it.
Five years ago the average person didn't even know his name, or care. Honestly, even today the average person doesn't know who he is. My mom barely does. But those people still buy cars, and some of them still buy electric cars.
Doing any amount of research about the cars would bring him up. These people are spending that much without doing any research?
I just popped open an incognito window and searched "best electric cars" and checked the top ten results: all of which mentioned Tesla, and only one of which mentioned Musk. And that mention was "say what you will about...," which is fairly noncommittal about who he is or what he does. Most people aren't scrolling Reddit or Twitter or especially Lemmy all the time; they Google a question, and when they get the answer they think "oh, I've heard of a Tesla, my buddy Jeff has one" and so they go ask Jeff whether he likes it or not.
Now, in 2024, his name is probably far more recognizable. But five years ago, especially before he bought Twitter? If they did see his name, it would probably have brought associations of rockets if anything.
Or look at the Google Trends results for his name. There's a spike in May 2020 (when his baby with Grimes was born), a slight bump in 2021 when he was on SNL, and a huge spike in 2022 when he was forced to buy Twitter. Aside from that, the interest in Tesla has always been much higher than the interest in Musk, and people have been less curious about him than about Taylor Swift (for instance).
People just don't care about the CEOs of most companies they buy stuff from.
You searched top 10 EVs. If you search Tesla specifically his name and face are all over the place.
That presumes a lot more brand awareness than I think the average person has. Like I said above
—in this case, I think, "best electric car" or "electric car consumer reports" or something—
Admittedly this is just my gut reaction. But there's no really good way to test it out. "Tesla" is a tricky search term to nail down on Google Trends, since it could refer to the company or the inventor and has the confound of being searched a lot by people who are terminally online, for one reason or another. Unfortunately there's no way to select "only normies" in the viewer.
If buying things from pieces of shit means we should get fucked by them, then all we would do is get fucked by pieces of shit.
Which honestly isn't really any different than what we have now
As a, Tesla owner i agree. Musk is awful and Tesla are heading down the toilet. I'd never buy one agian.
Well, if you were buying a car with both your eyes wide shut.
What electric car was better than a Model X in 2015?
Renault Zoe, Kia Soul, BMW i3 and the list goes on. It just depends on what people expected of their cars.
None of those had close to the range of the Model X in 2015. Having less than 200mi range makes things difficult. Doubly so because the charging infrastructure wasn't there (and barely is now). The infrastructure that did exist was put there by Tesla.
Though with proper charging infrastructure, having more than 400mi isn't really necessary, and is almost silly.
I suppose that‘s quite location dependent. In Europe those cars sold really well, better than the Tesla’s in 2015. Maybe that‘s because the distances are shorter and there always was more non Tesla charging infrastructure!?
Probably, yes.
My wife goes to work and back on a Mini EV, which is around 110 mi range. Basically a BMW i3 dropped into the chassis of a Cooper S. It's not suitable for road trips in the US. If L3 charging was a little more reliable, you could almost do it, but it would still suck and I wouldn't choose to do it except in a pinch.
That would wholly depend on your qualifications of "better". Plenty of cars existed that could get you to work and back. None of them were "go 0-60 in 2 seconds and kill all the children in the crosswalk automatically with autopilot!". If that's your qualification for "better" then fine, you win. But there were other EV's that I thought were wholesale better after I looked at the early Tesla's in person and just couldn't get it out of my head of how ugly and dumb the car actually is.
Woah, how did you know my definition of better?
My wife needs to run on a ~70 mile trip about once a week to help their mom, often in freezing temperatures. An EV reasonably capable of that didn't really exist outside of Tesla until the last few years.
Please stuff the "kill all the children in the crosswalk" nonsense. It doesn't help anything. Until the Cybertruck, Tesla didn't even offer anything like that.
Yes they did. Nissan Leaf. Chevy Spark. Fiat 500e... Many had sufficient range for the 70 miles you're talking about.
No. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/09/tesla-self-driving-technology-safety-children. Stop defending Tesla.
Now try it in freezing weather, and account for 70 miles in both directions. And you don't want to actually use the entire range, but rather sit in the 10-80% marks. No, none of them could.
I'll criticize Tesla for actual reasons.
Now you've moved goalposts from the previous post. The trip magically went from 70 miles to 140 miles. If this conversation is just going to be shifting the argument repeatedly, then I'm just going to walk away.
I didn't specify either way, and I'm sorry for assuming.