If only we could solve starlink pollution as easily but privatize the profits, socialize the costs
I wouldn't romanticize it that much.
Tesla used to be: Unmatched software(+), unmatched electronics(+), Save the planet(+), great subsidies(+), electric car that doesn't look weird(+), USA and Startups and the future(+), unmatched acceleration(+), low built quality(-), Shitty driving dynamics(-)
Now alternatives are pretty good, so still Unmatched software(+) but the difference is not that big and the rest doesn't look good. No longer saving the planet because you don't save the planet with fascists, USA is no longer cool(hostile and clown-like), tech guys are no longer cool(greedy and sleazy and meddle with politics instead of doing cool shit), the design is dated and boring now and there are many alternatives doing much better in many other characteristics.
So Tesla still sells very well when the price is right, match the new situation and it sells. Tasla sells like hot cakes in Turkey for example because they introduced a version specifically for the Turkish regulations and that particular configuration is taxed just %10 when the cheapest petrol cars are taxed %80. AFAIK Tesla keeps selling well in Norway too.
It's easy to assume that atrocities while they're happening are as unpopular as they are after they happened but they're not.
Population level atrocities are impossible without throngs of gushing supporters waving flags and screaming about "restoring the natural order".
Always look out for flags, crosses and people with money trying to hide behind their symbols with reprehensible rhetoric.
There's a certain type of person who, when others criticize them for doing some offensive things, their automatic response is just to do it even harder: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-Y...
Car ownership is expensive and unnecessary so people with wealth bought the environmentally positive status symbols. There was simply no equivalent.
I wonder what will replace it.
Left-leaning and centrist Americans at least were similarly horrified, so I don't think it's an issue of understanding in the US. Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.
Also note that it's not just Europe where sales have dropped, Tesla EV market share has fallen quite hard in the US as well IIRC.
I was so stoned by all of that and the fact that our education and schooling hid that very fact from all of us. So it is up to us to teach kids when they grow up to allow them to know history as it exactly happened, without painting it, when the time is right.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/22/elon-musk...
The other thing is that Tesla is a US company. I suspect that many people outside the US look for alternatives to US products. The more expensive the product, the more important the decision. And Teslas are by far not the best EVs (clearly not an ecological car, not the cheapest, ...), so it's easy to go for an alternative.
And then, for people who wouldn't mind so much what Musk and Trump and their band are doing, it is anyway a risk: people in the street will judge you if you drive in a Tesla. Many drivers have put stickers on their Tesla to show they don't support Musk ("I bought it before Musk became crazy"), but they can't do that with a new model. Buying a new Tesla that was clearly built after those events is a great risk (Teslas have been burned even though they had been bought before the madness).
All that to say, I'm surprised to see that there are still Tesla sales in Europe at all.
I have aspergers, my hand movements are terrible when I try do them to 'blend in', so I usually don't bother.
maybe if there's a reddit meetup nearby
Edit: Yikes. Also, sympathy ≠ empathy.
We already have troops being deployed against Americans, ICE arresting citizens, and the Supreme Court making it impossible for lower courts to do anything after they’ve ruled the Trump administration is in violation of the law. There are numerous ongoing illegal attacks against our (private!) universities and free speech too. Also, they’re purging the executive branch of all scientists and military leadership that might uphold the constitution. We also have a new international network of detention camps, and are actively supporting genocide and starting wars.
So, yeah, Americans deeply understanding how f-cked the entire planet is.
More killed by British in India than Hitler killed. plus all the plundering of resources.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/independence-day-165-...
That reason is his breeder fetish/ideology. By the tabloid press he's paid for IVF gender selection for boys, and Vivian rejecting that, defying her father's wish and coming out as trans is what sent him off on the anti-woke crusade. And that's also why he bought and ruined Twitter - in his view, it was the woke people on there who ruined his "son".
It's all so damn petty, the actions of a man so rich he didn't think someone would ever tell him the word "no" and follow through with it. So much completely unnecessary suffering, all for the pure vanity of a single man.
Also drugs.
Elon’s about that bad. Tesla can probably dig out of their hole in 50-80 years, assuming they survive that long.
Genghis Khan is not demonized in European or American schools either.
I am afraid that is still the case. All of the kids I know within my cousins' families (8-14 years of age), have no idea about any of the Holocaust stuff.
The reason I think is the curriculum takes the holocaust not so seriously and also, the authorities believing that kids are not meant to be exposed to much details about all of the stuff. I remember it was just mentioned as "war" to us. It is still sadly the case.
Also, note that we weren't taught a bit of shit about Pol Pot, Imperial Japan etc. Nobody had any idea about the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731 etc.
All we were just taught was just "wars" - who fought and who won.
Starlink is an absolute net good.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1938793866389581865
„Connectivity saves lives“
Is that true? I would have bet that the adoption is driven by company fleet cars and incentives.
Tesla's market cap is still about $1 trillion, so it can't be much of a hole or more precisely investors with real money on the line don't think it can be:
Since Trump was elected America has been awful to its allies, specially Canada and EU. Many Europeans, are avoiding spending money on American companies, much less one owned by Musk.
In my case, almost nothing they sell fits in my garage. Even their shortest (Model 3) just barely fits, and there’s no hatch variant like I’d prefer, so I’m leasing a Nissan Ariya and will probably switch to one of those next-gen Leafs afterwards.
The real issue is simply that Tesla are attempting to maintain their pricing and margins while the cost of producing EVs is plummeting and the variety of options is increasing.
The result is that they are being severely undercut on price by BYD et al.
Tesla are going to have to either start cutting prices significantly, or accept being a low volume pseudo-premium offering.
Nuance is hard, and so to some people, accepting Hitler as a villain means whoever defeated him must be a hero, so if we don't want to accept Churchill as a hero then we must reject Hitler being a villain.
(It goes without saying that this logic is faulty, but at the same time it's part of human nature and we all have to grapple with it to some extent).
He has enough bills to wipe his tears away with, unlike others.
I suspect some of the more recent behavior is attributable to or influenced by drug use, and I feel some sympathy for anyone who comes under their thrall.
Yes, I believe they do.
It’s a good demonstration of how quickly things can go when you don’t have to clear lightyears of red tape and fend off constant obstructionism from NIMBYs and industry incumbents.
We could probably lay fiber at almost the same speed if we could get those factors out of the way, but reality is not that kind and so any large scale terrestrial project like that is a long, drawn-out, expensive nightmare.
When I personally know two cases of that, 70 years old disconnected from internet vitriol, I assume it's absolutely dead.
like yeah, sure bro, people see a $50K car and purse their lips because musk is le bad. just like they do about BMWs and Porsches, right?
Elon has a very loose association with truth, in a manner that usually yields long prison sentences. For many years he has been engaging with what could accurately be called securities fraud, and there is always some amazing new mega revenue stream just around the corner. If Tesla fired Elon (in an imaginary world where he didn't control the board), any competent hire would have to seriously say ooof and point out all of the mega risks the company faces. With Elon it's all magic and fairy tales and soon a trillion super robots and robotaxis to Mars and...
Therefore, let's honor Elon's words and rejoice at his misfortune.
Not sure that makes sense. The Uighurs need better PR, I guess.
This might sound like a hyperbole, but the comparison to terrorism is relevant here. The DOGE cuts have a cost in terms of human lives. I have no conclusive sources to show for it, but some estimates put it at 300K till date. Even Bill Gates criticized it. And Elon laughed and scoffed at it when he was asked about it. Drugs are not an excuse for any of it, since it was his choice and nobody's addiction should cause the deaths of thousands. Frankly, the greed of billionaires seem to have a bigger cost in terms of suffering and lives than even terrorists do. So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
I would speculate that European fleet purchasers in other parts of Europe would be wary of buying Teslas now partly because of the current trade war stuff and also with an eye on the resale value at end of lease; its really hard to shift a second hand Tesla these days.
That, and the lies from the man who owns a social media company (albeit later)
You can have sympathy for both. It's not one or the other.
> So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
I sympathize for you. I hope that you're willing to open up your mind and be open to the idea that everyone deserves humanity.
Hitler decided some people should be treated with humanity and others not. I imagine if you asked Hitler, he would have said the Jewish people were devoid of any empathy. I think we're above that, right?
-----
It seems that for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people. I wonder why that is.
It made those credits because it sells electric cars in volume.
I get the Musk bashing, and think the guy's an asshat, but isn't this literally what carbon credits are supposed to do -- funnel cash from dirty industries to carbon negative ones, as another channel of funding for them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#History
now, how many people give a fuck about any of that?
My needs also just aren’t that great. I don’t commute and I don’t drive much, so a small, highly maneuverable city car fits the bill perfectly.
Yes, Henry Ford had Nazi sympathies. But VW was literally founded by the Nazis:
> "Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront) as part of the Strength Through Joy (German: Kraft durch Freude) program in Berlin" [0]
> "The German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, pronounced [ˌdɔʏtʃə ˈʔaʁbaɪtsfʁɔnt]; DAF) was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification." [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#:~:text=1932–1944:%...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Labour_Front
Besides, both Mercedes (as Daimler-Benz) and BMW made Nazi tanks during that time.
All those brands are now squeaky-clean.
The UK has definitely seen it before!
I am sure it must also be at exactly a 30 degree angle with even a degree off invalidating it as an official nazi salute.
There is definitely no history of deportations, loyalty purges, secret police, cowing of the judiciary and universities, provocations of anti-semitism, big lies, or attacks on institutions that might inform the greater context and there definitely aren't people who have studied fascism at our most respected universities who are warning us that fascism is here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/76c762eb-b4cf-445c-8f0a-195...
No turn signal stalks? Need to quickly reverse if you stuck your nose out too far? (no stalk anymore) Need defrost now? (search on touchscreen)
I think it's now "cost-cuting ergonomic poverty", sort of like how macs lost too many ports.
https://carboncredits.com/teslas-carbon-credit-revenue-soars...
Yes, because you're looking at net income vs something that is entirely profit. Of course it's going to be a large portion.
That's like saying AWS is most of Amazon: it certainly contributes a ton of margin, but there's a lot of other revenue.
VW ev sales are well up; they’re in broadly the same price category as Teslas, for now (their 20k car is delayed til next year).
BYD has no such feelings or obligations. In fact, the opposite.
Also: I do not understand ANYONE opting for a cheap Chinese car, knowing that they are screwing their own and their children's future once all the other options are priced out of the market. Once they have the market: kneel down before them.
Also 2: This is one of the few cases where tariff's could actually correctly be applied.
What this means is an incomplete understanding of sympathy / empathy. These feeling don't need to pick sides. And they don't have to influence outcomes either - even feeling these feelings, you can come to the conclusion that you don't want to associate with, or support that person at all. Or even speak out against them, or do anything else. You are free to do all that, and it's not a contradiction. Quite the opposite, not doing that is to artificially restrict natural human expression.
Also, you don't have to feel sympathy / empathy, and that is okay as well. Others might, and that is just as valid. Either of them telling the other that they are wrong, and should or should not feel it, is now wrong. Feeling something about it, and voicing that, is not wrong though again.
Not so when a privileged minority inflicts staggering amount of suffering on a large population. Sympathy towards them is a luxury that's at odds with the dignity and survival of the ordinary people.
> I sympathize for you.
Please spare me!
> I hope that you're willing to open up your mind and be open to the idea that everyone deserves humanity.
It's your own duty to protect your humanity against corruption by the absolute power you wield. How many of these bad actors were spared prison sentences simply on account of being rich? How much were they emboldened each time they evaded justice?
> I imagine if you asked Hitler, he would have said the Jewish people were devoid of any empathy. I think we're above that, right?
Don't misconstrue justice with bigotry. Hitler deliberately projected the Jews as enemies in order to suppress sympathy and agency among his subjects. According to your logic, he should be shown sympathy regardless. Yet, his death in one of the countless assassination attempts against him would have been a small price to pay for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives that could have been saved.
> It seems that for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people. I wonder why that is.
That's not surprising at all. It's so because you insert politics into matters where there are none.
I'm not entirely sure where the downvotes came from since other than you nobody bothered to respond, but maybe it's based on people's belief that Nazis are some special and unique threat or that the only thing that should be thought about when they are mentioned is concentration camps and their treatment of the Jewish people, but they did so much more than just that, even if that was uniquely horrifying for the period. The Jews weren't the only people sent to concentration camps, and overall, WWII cost 70-85 million people their lives. Nazi Germany affected so many people, nobody gets to claim them as uniquely their own boogie men to the exclusion of all others.
This is the same confusion I have when someone decides to boycott a movie based on an actor. It's very likely some of the hundreds of people who make most movies are awful too, it's entirely futile.
https://www.history.com/articles/history-behind-the-crown-qu...
We only seem to care when the person who is bad is also famous. I think everyone else is just as apathetic, but deludes themselves. I promise you that most things you own or use have some tier of evil within them. People buy cheap clothes, slave made phones and all sorts of things all the time and elect to ignore the imorality of it.
But that's all during the war, and with one individual of the royals, and I would think the rest of the royals would not be happy going forward with the Nazis thinking they could mess with the line of succession/assassinate they King.