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The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.

Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.

Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.

What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.

Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.

You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.

That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group.

The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.

That's my impression too. You'd need to be 80 years old to be excited by a toyota.

I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.

Tesla owners aren't that young.

This site claims the average age of Tesla owners is 48 (updated for 2025):

https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demograph...

Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do.

A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer.

Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.

I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_.

People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.

Car and house are usually most expensive persons purchases. It is absurd to not make them smart.

Have you ever stopped to think _why_ cars specifically are so expensive? The manufacturers need to put on a fake show to the market and consumers and pretend they are innovating with new "features" every year. But in reality they stuff so many expensive, fragile, and difficult/ impossible to replace electronics and gadgets into cars because 1) every single piece in that car is marked up from the price they paid. The more (ideally expensive) components, the more they get to mark up as the middleman, the more they get to gouge the customer. 2) The more challenging it is to repair the car, the more likely you _must_ come back to the manufacturer (i.e. dealer) and pay them exorbitant fees to fix problems only they know how and have the parts to fix.

I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.

I've been keeping an eye on Slate lately. They _supposedly_ will be selling their trucks for sub $30k late 2026. Presumably they will meet every modern safety standard.

3) The "smarter"/ more unnecessarily complex the vehicle, the easier it becomes to enact planned obsolescence, forcing you to forever buy a new vehicle every 5-7 years, if not more frequent.

4) The "smarter" the vehicle, the more they get to track you and sell your data. You'd think "oh in that case I'm sure it'll be like google where I'd pay a reduced price that's offset by the ad money". No, they will obviously happily rip you off on the vehicle itself AND by selling your data. edit: Because guess what? It's working! People are more than happy to fall for this stuff apparently. I mean hell, it's worked for the phone market too, as one other example.

I'd be ecstatic to see the entire industry wiped out by a newcomer on the scene.

I am also very suspect of the origins of some of these regulations as well. Modern airbags are wonderful, don't get me wrong, but it's not unreasonable to question, in the US at least, whether auto manufacturers and their lobbyists have been causing new rules to be invented that coincidentally both require fancy, expensive technology AND increase the difficulty/ cost of meeting the standards as a mean to prevent new competitors from starting up in auto manufacturing. Rear-view cameras, eye tracking, and drunk-driving detection all come to mind.

>>Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.

Exactly.

Says someone who seems to have absolutely no idea about 'car culture' and no realisation about just how un-cool Tesla's have become.

I associate them with their wanker of a CEO, Uber drivers, and parents complaining about being stung on EV depreciation.