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65 points doener | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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rmu09 ◴[] No.45345721[source]
US made cars had the reputation of being low quality, too big, too heavy and too inefficient for european cities.

Tesla was somewhat different. People bought Teslas not for their promised "self driving" capabilities (I know no Tesla driver that took those promises at face value or got the FSD option FWIW), but one motivation was to "stick it" to snobbish arrogant european manufacturers wanting to develop "clean" ICEs with "green fuels" or other non-sensical crimes against thermodynamics like H2-cars.

Now, Tesla (and the US in general) has a brand toxicity problem, and it is worsening. People I know that would consider a Tesla some years ago now drive electric VWs or BWMs or KIAs, often times much more expensive cars than the comparable Tesla 3 / Y model.

This trend will probably continue the next years, and I don't see a way for Tesla to repair the brand image.

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bayindirh ◴[] No.45345851[source]
Tesla killed its brand reputation thrice.

- First they went "camera only", alienating people who knows the tech.

- Then they mocked car industry for so long. It was a necessary poke at first, but they didn't get prepared, and the elephant proved that it can run.

- Then Elon's Trump affair and all the shebang happened.

The broken FSD promises, using non-auto rated parts (and related failures), being negligent of their own errors and acting like they are deaf to the criticism is the cement between the layers.

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1. lnsru ◴[] No.45346605[source]
Tesla‘s “vision only” with phantom braking suicide experiments reached court last year in Germany and for the first time the court proved they exist for real and the cars are dangerous. This will be interesting to watch. I tried often free autopilot in model Y and it hits hard the brakes on empty road every other time. Afterwards I stopped using it completely. The car is nice, but without working assistance systems. Lane keeping also does not work reliably. Model Y is nice electric car for people without much requirements like me - it’s spacious and electric range is acceptable.

About the process in court in German: https://teslaanwalt.de/autopilot-als-sicherheitsrisiko/