Might effect new buyers decisions I guess, but since about 99% of Tesla's were sold to green, left-leaning buyers, before the Elon hate-fest, I am not sure how targeting that group of people for your hatred is helping any "cause".
Nah. Insurance is based on the numbers, and Tesla is a shitty company to have financial liability to fix. There’s no parts, few shops, and lots of stuff to get stuck with.
A friend had a rental for 4 months when the panoramic sunroof cracked on his Tesla.
The vandalism isn’t computed in yet, and will immediately resulted in dropped coverage. If the Feds label it as terrorism, insurance generally excludes riot and terrorism from coverage anyway.
TRIA insurance against terrorism is required by law to be offered as a rider. It's actually shockingly affordable, because the law shifts the ultimate financial burden for any events between $200 million to $100 billion onto the federal government. So insurers have a reasonable cap on their expenses and don't need to rely on traditional re-insurers for black swan events.
Most people decline this rider anyways, no matter how cheap it is - and therefore most people are not covered for terrorism related damages.
Is there a downside to having a terrorism rider, other than higher premiums?
For example, if your insurance company would otherwise have to declare a claim as due to non-terrorism, and just pay it (because they'd probably lose in court if they didn't pay), but because you had the terrorism rider, they decide to declare it as due to terrorism, and then you get a less-desirable experience?
(For imagined example of less-desirable, maybe you have to wait longer to get paid while the company interacts with gov't, or the reimbursement is calculated or capped differently, or some consumer protection you'd normally have doesn't apply.)
> insurance generally excludes riot and terrorism from coverage anyway
If that's true, they'd have even more incentive to declare a claim as due to terrorism if you didn't have a rider. They could avoid paying it altogether.
My question was about cases in which they wouldn't/couldn't deny claim due to terrorism on weak grounds, since they'd be taken to court for denying the claim, since the grounds are weak.
But if you had a terrorism rider in those cases, then maybe it's worse for you, because then they wouldn't be denying the claim initially, but maybe instead you're stuck in a different process, with various downsides, and maybe less able to contest the assertion?
The problem with Tesla is they used financial engineering to get where they are today, and that cycle eventually catches up to you.
Enshittification is a real thing, and happens because benefits were front-loaded through ponzi (in this case backed by money printing and the public market retirements that must rebalance based on S&P or other indexes).
There are also higher risks with 'licensing' a Tesla. Both to society as a whole, and to the owners themselves. Licensing isn't owning, and you get what you pay for.
Few of the people who choose to get a Tesla actually think about what they are doing aside from their own ego, which is actively supporting un-American ideals.
How-so?
A Tesla is not a car, it is a sensor/node based computer that is networked and connected that performs the functions of a car.
A networked computer with many sensors is part of a mass distributed network called "Remote Sensing Networks" or RSNs.
The short-term profit on money isn't in building the car. It is in selling the data that has been collected and aggregated to the highest bidder, while getting you to pay for your own enslavement to such willfully provided subscription data.
Every time you see a Tesla while driving, whether it is on or off, the Tesla logs you and your passengers face, biometrics, behavior, location, history, travel, and other hints that may be visible including EM following a master data-management strategy that is built on big-tech primitives at their data center. This includes conversations or more intimate settings which have already leaked to the general internet (in some cases).
It is illegal for anyone to film, and distribute film of others, and record conversation without their explicit and specific consent, let alone such other aspects of personal data, where it contains everywhere you go, what you do, even in your own backyard or within your garage (home), or your neighbors (where consent is not given). Yet this is what Tesla is doing through complacent consent, and coercion (corruption by dependency in sunk cost/function).
A Tesla is not the only RSN, your cell phone does this, your media players (Roku) and Smart TVs do this. Your laptops, modern OS (Windows), and too many other devices to count do this. When profit is guaranteed, monopolists seek coercive control, and information is power.
If you have these, you have consented to have a digital soldier mediating in every aspect of your life whether you know it or not. Even though they didn't tell you what they were doing. They were not required to specifically say what and how they used that data, and they defined it broadly and ambiguously. Dis-aggregation of Alarm, and Separation of Concerns.
That is how the banality of evil (complacency) becomes the radical evil (Nazi's).
What does that open the door to or allow?
Abuse, Coercion, Arbitrary Discrimination, Loss of some things that become everything. These are the same abuses that inspired the constitution's third amendment, and what led us to join the War for self and others during WW2.
We are repeating what lead up to the American Revolution, and because so many people have wilfully blinded themselves they can't see the consequences of their actions while they actively participate towards definite systems failures, mindlessly.
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Implicit in this is that there remains a rule of law, which has mostly failed.
I really pity the people who have such little awareness that they go and buy a Tesla. It is like waving the communist/fascist flag which is statism, for all to see... we're American. "Yes, but what kind of American".
This has happened before, and it is too late to stop it from happening again.
I'm sorry, but either it's factually true (or mostly there, to be chartiable) or it's just good vibes and made up, and the latter doesn't lead to curious discussion, an important ethos for this site. If you make a claim then understandably people will try to evaluate the claim to see if it's true, and to also decide whether the conversation can be held in good faith or not.
If you look at places like Reddit where the organizing is happening, they don't differentiate between left-leaning buyers of years past, and in fact call them out for being complicit by not selling their (paid for?) car. It's scorched earth and is not limited to new buyers.
Reddit might not be representative of the larger shift. I am sure there is plenty of hatred, and even violence that makes the news, and that stuff is bad, but I mostly see people politely nudging those they know that own Teslas to sell them.
Which makes sense. The company sold to left-leaning, environmentally conscious buyers, and the CEO has now rebranded Tesla to basically the worst thing for that demographic. Sales are down, resale values are dropping, and insurance rates are rising. And there is no real opportunity on the horizon to save the company and/or the brand (robotaxis without LiDAR..?)
Maybe it looks like scorched earth on reddit, but in reality it's just a lot of people realizing the brand has self-destructed.
It's even more confusing, who are they supposed to sell it to, if no one should drive these cars (and how big of a loss are they expected to take in order to sell it)?
Sounds dramatic (scorched earth! my lord), but the posts I've seen are like, "here's the anti-tesla flyer that was left on my friend's tesla" and then a bunch of upvoted comments replying that it's dumb and counterproductive to target people who bought their teslas years ago.
> It's scorched earth and is not limited to new buyers.
This whole thing is about destroying already bought vehicles to intimidate potential new buyers, and thus lowering future sales. Not that I support the vandalism, but I think that's the kind of logic they are applying here.
Build quality is so bad, those old cars will destroy themselves. Wonder how many of the original 2018 model 3 are still on the road. The other day I saw a comment chastising a person complaining about their 120k Model 3 battery failing and how its already at end of life. I was gobsmacked.
I also see reports of some Tesla making it to 500k miles. Honestly there is so much nonsense on both sides and you can't even trust any numbers coming out of Tesla because they have distorted the truth so many times.
With rational investors I doubt it. Space launch market size is like 20 billion. One launch is 70 million and they had 133 of them in 2024. Times two (currently at half market share) this would be 18 billion.
That does not take into account that they are increasing the market size themselves with Starlink.
And with Starlink it remains to be seen if that can be profitable. I doubt it. The Starlink satellites deorbit every 5 years and need to be replaced (CapEx+++).
Shotwell has claimed that Starlink is cash-flow-positive. They also have >5 million subscribers. ARPU is likely > $1000.
Both Starlink and Starship are >$5B programs. SpaceX has not raised nor borrowed near enough money to fund both of those programs, indicating that they've got sufficient cash flow to mostly self-fund both of them as well as pay the salaries of >13,000 employees.
Hence why they've now said they're a robot company. Yet any bullish targets now are more likely to be based on Musk awarding himself large government contracts than technical advancements.
Yes we do. A lot of people, for a lot of different reasons.
For me, it will be the end of the biggest con, the stock market has ever seen. And I can't wait to read about the details behind it, once the dust settles.
What makes Tesla exactly a con? Their cars are amazing appliances, literally nothing in market like it, for less than a Toyota. FSD is largely delivered. Space internet for everyone (soon potentially also with Freedom™ now that Trump is involved in demonopolising space or whatever it's called) with a phone. Where is the con???
A lot of things, I will just cite one - "FSD is largely delivered". Really ? Can you tell us, where Full-Self Driving is really fully self-driving ? Like being able to summon your car from Los Angeles to New York, like Elon claimed one will be able to do in 2017 !
Tesla sold millions of cars that were supposedly going to become Robotaxis with a simple software update, somewhere in 2019. SIX YEARS AGO. Tesla even showed screenshots of a ride-sharing app. SIX YEARS AGO. Now it's obvious to anyone, that those cars will never become Robotaxis, as Tesla pivots to trying to fake a Roboataxi service this year, with remote operators.
But the greatest con of course, was towards investors. Of course nobody is complaining now, since the stock is still a meme stock. Just wait a bit more...
You can buy supervised FSD right now. It works extremely well to the point testers are bored out of their minds - their channels became worthless since it barely makes any mistakes.
It's overpriced and not available where I live, but I'd love one. It doesn't do everything under the sun as promised, but I'd rather drive less than more. The basic 10 year old Autopilot is already huge help.
Yeah, that's the problem with a real Full Self Driving. It's either 100%, or it's not. 80% doesn't make the cut.
Do you seriously believe the company was valued at >1T$ because investors believed that an "FSD 80% delivered" is enough ?
Tesla and Elon claimed ALMOST 10 YEARS AGO, that the car will drive itself from Los Angeles to New York. Just think how insane this is, even today. And then look up the state of their technology 10 years ago.
Of course self driving will be solved one day. Probably not by Tesla. But it doesn't matter - they were selling this stuff for almost 10 years already, knowing perfectly well it doesn't work. But hey, next version will blow your mind !
Before the inauguration, Tesla was trading at a P/E 30 times bigger than Toyota. Now it's about half that (110).
Some say Tesla shouldn't be valued as a car stock; it should instead be valued as a Tech stock. Well, Tesla traded at a P/E about 4-5 times that of NVIDIA which itself had a high P/E compared to the other Magnificent 7 which in turn have a high P/E compared to the stock market in general.
What exactly is Tesla so great at that they deserve this enormous valuation? Its P/E has gone down to ~110 now, bit this is still incredibly high compared to e.g. NVIDIA which is trading at a P/E of ~40.
Elon Musk’s power is based on his wealth. A bankrupt Elon Musk will no longer be able to influence politics in several nations. He won’t be able to buy the US presidency. He won’t be able to threaten primaries against US representatives. He’d lose Twitter. He’d most likely no longer be running the so-called Doge.
So yes, we would very much win and there are a lot of people who care.
What sucks is that the cars* are actually very, very good cars. I've owned three of them so far, and I love driving and owning them. They take almost no maintenance, and I've only had one problem that needed me to take it into the shop, and it was for a recall that was totally handled in a day, and they gave me a loaner.
Legitimately, Teslas have been the best cars I've ever owned, but thanks to Elon, I will never buy another one, so long as he runs the company.
There’s a saying about watching what people do, not what they say, that seems to apply well to Musk. The proof that Elon cares about wealth is that he keeps doing everything in his power to gain more of it (well, up until recently, but only because he found he can access power directly instead of indirectly through more wealth).
wrong. the people in question are not "protesting" anything. they are committing violent destruction of property against random people who happened to buy an EV. calling them "protesters" only does a disservice to those who actually are. these people are criminals to catch and lock away, nothing more.
Sadly I think, and for some time now, we are well past the point where political action needs to make sense either to the people involved or to the people outside. The message, the narrative, they’re whatever you want them to be. Whether that makes sense - much less where the truth lies - is irrelevant.
Well, is your claim that's it's isnt working? Perhaps after Tesla is bankrupt 6 years from now, tycoons with political ambitions will be less likely to adopt extremist political stances.
It doesn't need to make sense to you, personally, the HN commentariat, to be effective political action.
It's obviously being offered as justification for the anti-Tesla behavior (using the context of the GP in a tongue-in-cheek way). You may reasonably disagree, but the message wasn't unclear.
Thanks to Leon's salute, instead of buying 1-3 more Tesla's in my lifetime, I'm going back to plain gas powered Hondas. I'm choosing specifically non-turbo non-hybrid models. The American people, with their choice of President, have shown me they don't care about the present or the future. I'm sure their president will keep gas prices low. I don't see any reason for me to suffer for their benefit or anyone else's. The American people have chosen to doom us all, so why not just make life easy on myself.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
> Thanks to Leon's salute, instead of buying 1-3 more Tesla's in my lifetime [...]
I can see how one could make a plausible argument for this...
> [...] I'm going back to plain gas powered Hondas. I'm choosing specifically non-turbo non-hybrid models. The American people, with their choice of President, have shown me they don't care about the present or the future. I'm sure their president will keep gas prices low. I don't see any reason for me to suffer for their benefit or anyone else's. The American people have chosen to doom us all, so why not just make life easy on myself.
...but that makes no sense whatsoever.
A non-plug in hybrid is a gas car. All the energy used by its electric motors comes from either using the gas motor to charge its battery or from regenerative braking. It just uses less gas per mile than a non-hybrid and is more reliable than a non-hybrid [1]. If you want to drive a 100% powered by gas car and want to make life easy on yourself a non-plug in hybrid is the way to go.
Unless you need a pickup truck or something similarly beefy it is hard to make a case that a gas powered non-hybrid is better than a non-PHEV hybrid.
[1] Yes, non-plug in hybrids from the top hybrid car makers like Toyota and Honda are more reliable than gas cars. It is a little counterintuitive because you'd expect that hybrids would be much more complex due to having both gas and electric drive systems, but it turns out that they also remove quit a bit, and also the drive train can actually be simpler. Toyota's transmission on its hybrids for example is mechanically much simpler. The data from Consumer Reports and others that track reliability show about 25% fewer problems on non-plug in hybrids.
Usually this type of thing isn't really about a cause but making oneself feel better. The stuff that is actually beneficial to a cause tend to be less emotionally satisfying.
Protests and ethics and capitalism and products and politics are more complicated than that. If collateral damage or somehow hurting anybody in "your" half of The Two Groups (which is a faulty premise to begin with) is ruled out, you're wiping out nearly all opinions and protest. Things just aren't that simple (though it's convenient to pretend they are when it lets us point a finger at the enemy out-group - look at their hypocrisy/in-fighting!)
That is not to say the opposite - that I think all anti-Tesla hatred/actions are justified. I'm just refuting your opinion specifically.
I have a lot of thoughts that run in both directions on topics like this, including this one. However, this specific case is especially far gone, in terms of drawing lines between "understandable" and "unreasonable" on any given anti-Tesla action/opinion, simply because of the fact that he and some of his supporters invoke Nazism. If it wasn't for that, I could more confidently say something like, "No, that one is over the line" for any given anti-Tesla thing. But I can't.
i didn't quote you that way. you said you do not think that all anti-tesla actions are justified. "actions" in this case heavily implies not picketing their HQ but the recent spate of vandalism and destruction. you didn't say you do think that all such actions are not justified.
if that is the case, then we have no disagreement, and i'm glad this cleared things up.
The person you're replying to isn't me. You did misquote me in your post, and then maliciously paraphrased, which is why I didn't reply, but I just wanted to point out that the person who replied to you was a different person.
i didn't maliciously paraphrase, that's a sentiment a reasonable number of extremely online types seem to share. if you're saying i didn't seem to favor that sentiment, well, obviously.
This probably doesn't fit the two-team paradigm. When you consider the objectives might be something different from ensuring democrats win offices in two years, the rationale may make more sense.
It would be if anyone cared to do anything about it. It's not even legal to modify trucks to fart out black smoke like that to begin with but it's never stopped them from doing it. Cops do not care about that issue.
That’s definitely an exaggeration. I’d bet it’s closer to ~60% green left leaning, and another ~30% libertarian, tech types. Would still mean at least 60% of his former audience is lost.
I also think there are a lot of people who are neither and just bought teslas because they're a relatively high performance exec-style car at a decent price
It's clearly intended to impact new buyers. Most of Musk's wealth is tied up in Tesla, and that funding allowed him to both buy an election and -- gestures broadly -- demonstrate convincingly that he is an absolutely reprehensible, garbage-bin of a human.
The rich used to start ivy leagues and build libraries. This guy is cutting off funding for the poor and declaring himself, proudly, a "deadly threat" to people he perceives as "woke".
And the "99%" thing is pretty dubious regardless. Elon Musk has been a garbage person for years. A self-dealing creep. >80% of Tesla sales have happened over the past four years.
And of the people I know with Teslas, zero of them are "green, left-leaning" buyers. They're people who wanted the novelty with the crazy acceleration and the boasting tech. I feel like this "leftist car" thing was never, ever true for the brand. And if it was sales would have been 0 for the past six years or so, but there are an endless rank of daytraders and crypto bros who need their Teslas.
> And of the people I know with Teslas, zero of them are "green, left-leaning" buyers.
White petit bourgeois center-right corporate capitalist Democrats that engage in environmental virtue signalling are “left-leaning”, if you view things from sufficiently far to the right.
In fact, Elon Musk is the source of the hatred. He can’t seem to go a day without amplifying weird depraved shit like “Hitler was actually a commie” and “recipients of benefits are part of the parasite class” that makes people shudder with disgust. Plus the whole illegally dismantling our federal government thing.
Let me ask this: maybe, just maybe, it was before Elon went politically to far right and started cater to Russia, and to try reabilitated Nazism with actions and History revisionism?
I mean, when we saw Putin try to get Hitler off the hook and blame Poland for WW2, it was kind of expected, not only because Putin finances Neo Nazis all over the world, but because it suits his current agenda.
Now when Elon is doing it, it doesn't look weird to you? It's just the "hate-fest" maybe...
> The Musk derangement syndrome is strong here still, I see.
I just realized you’re the other guy glazing musk in this thread.
How do you have someone who makes themselves the center of attention constantly, does polarizing shit like carry a chainsaw into the government to symbolize how he’s cutting it all down, and by his own admission is doing things that will upset people,
And then you waltz in here and accuse all of us of being deranged for even talking about it?
> Musk was a darling of the left like 2 years ago.
Not in any leftist circles I was in. You can look through my post history and find me criticizing Musk for wanting to put indentured servants on Mars well before the Twitter buy. There is no such thing as a good person who is a billionaire, and I've never said otherwise.
What exactly are you saying that we CT owners "deserve"? I like my CT. It has served my family well for a year. It's a car, not a political statement. I hope that this kind of vicious sentiment doesn't become mainstream.
The hints were there for a long time (like pedo-guy), but there were mixed messages. In 2017 Musk resigned in protest from a Trump advisory committee when Trump dropped out of the Paris agreement. That's the Musk I bought our Tesla from.
This article provides no causation between 'Tesla hate' and insurance costs. The only factual claim is that Tesla insurance premiums rose 30% in 2024, and cost to insure is 25% higher than a Mercedes A-class. But a quick internet search shows that 2022 MSRPs for those cars were $47k and $34k respectively, a 32% difference.
This has more to do with Tesla's being totaled in fender benders than the events of the last two months because the cost associated with replacing and fixing the cameras, electronics, and sensors. I've had two friends who had rear end accidents with their Teslas. One took over a year for his car to be returned in full working order after being rear ended at a stop sign. The other backed into a pole in a parking lot and they totaled out the car. All this cool stuff made these vehicles unrepairable from what are minor issues with less advanced vehicles.
I struck a column in a multilevel garage while reversing out of a parking spot, my mistake completely, resulting in damage to the driver door, door hinge, mirror, and front quarter panel. Progressive considered the car totaled due to the cost/availability/labor to fix it. Unsure what the cost would be for a toyota or honda, but I was perplexed at the total loss of my still drivable car.
It's not entirely because of all the gadgets in there. They have a massive supply chain restriction which means that some repair centers can't even be sure that they will ever get the parts they need for some repairs.
Absolutely correct. But also there could be other reasons. The Mercedes cars offer SAE Level 3 certification ("you are officially not driving the car or watching the road, but we may demand you take over"), versus the much more dangerous Tesla Level 2 ("you are still responsible for driving and must constantly supervise but also the car will be doing it all for you, please don't stop paying attention at any point").
There have been, what, more than 50 self-driving fatalities in Teslas already? Of course the insurance premium would be higher.
this is probably because teslas are 1. poorly built, and 2. not very repairable. they're crappily constructed cars, honestly, probably none more than the cybertruck. like whistlindiesel found a washer resting on a piece of duct tape. insane. fisher price ass cars. just as importantly, get into a crash and they're very tough to fix, before considering the low availability of parts and common service wait times.
Clearly the two are not connected - it just hasn't been enough time for insurance rates to be adjusted based on recent happenings. The industry does not react that fast.
My thought is that this is not going to last. Law enforcement is completely different from a year ago, when they "couldn't find" who was ransacking Apple retail stores. There are many lawful forms of expressing your views.
Yes, after the recent promotional event at the White House I can easily imagine protecting Teslas becomes a top priority, and that damaging one is punishable by death.
It is unequivocally terrorism to participate in violence against civilians with the aim of causing political change. And it's domestic because it's here. It's definitionally correct.
It is not definitionally correct because when you or I say "domestic terrorism", despite being the same text and same sound, it is not the same as when the administration says "domestic terrorism". All they're saying is that they care to stop people damaging tesla's. Not that they are going to be stopping the dictionary definition of "domestic terrorist"
It is terrorism, indisputably. Arguing other point is relatively inconsequential. But if we were to argue the point, to argue that spray-paint isn't "violence" isn't going to have much credibility when it's perceived to be from the long standing "words are violence" and "silence is violence" crowd. A selective standard is no standard at all. How the spray paint differs is that it is property destruction in service of intimidation toward a political end.
Does that mean that Republicans engaged in terrorism when they threatened to hang journalists, shoot immigrants or Democrats, etc.? Seems like the courts might be overloaded if we redefine every threat as an act of terrorism.
Honestly, I don't think the article supports the headline.
ex. "The cost to insure a Tesla Model 3 went up 30 percent last year.". Nothing happening in March of this year is affecting the price of insurance from last year. I have no doubt that stuff happening in March of this year will affect insurance prices this year but Tesla insurance is just expensive because the availability of Tesla repairs is low.
Whether or not law enforcement (which is most likely state level and therefore didn't change this year) can figure out whose doing vandalism isn't going to affect the price as significantly as Tesla's own inability to repair vehicles.
The insurance in question is more about individual cars rather than stores;
And while Teslas have Sentry mode that could detect things like paint, door dings, tire vandalism to record a criminal act, law enforcement has rarely been able to enforce much except the extreme or flagrant.
But it is more difficult to prove criminal intent and value paint, metal, and tire damage.
If Sentry mode records the perpetrator, the cops have to find it criminal, and then the DA decides to prosecute....
Good luck civilly pursuing every door ding or the mustard that fell off a sandwich -- even if somebody holds their ID up to a sentry mode camera, or drives off with their license plate clearly visible.
Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
I think it's more likely they'll start enforcing jaywalking laws against children playing hockey in the street.
Now, I'm not saying anyone should vandalize someone else's car for political reasons but as a campaign to dissuade people from buying Teslas this seems to be quite effective.
> Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
Law enforcement has both generally been spared direct cuts and had federal accountability measures removed, so they, and especially the worst actors, have plenty of reason to friendly to the regime.
> It’s a machine run on actuarial tables and its calculations are telling insurers that they’ll probably have to pay out a damage claim if they cover a Tesla EV.
How is something as recent as this already affecting interest rates? If this is true, then only negative short term trends can have such an effect. Otherwise I would expect rates to lower just as quickly when public ire moves onto the next outrage generator.
I have a financed Tesla that hasn't driven enough miles to offset the embodied carbon (we're a one car family who walks wherever we can). I'd love to get rid of it because as I'm mad about Musk and Trump, and I'm really afraid someone will protest while my 2 year old is in the car, putting him at risk.
If I sell— and it's a terrible financial decision (laid off in the fall)—I will assuage some of my fears and worries, but I will make the world worse for everyone else (more carbon in the atmosphere).
Needlessly replacing a working item is over consumption. An EV has much more embodied carbon compared to an ICE vehicle and needs 20,000 miles to "break even." I'm likely 2 years away from that given our driving habits.
You could argue that the next driver will pick up the slack for me, but I can't guarantee that to be the case.
While both those points would normally be valid, this is a pretty unique one-time event.
The best way to look at it is that cars are getting redistributed: left-leaning people that bought Teslas are trading them to right-leaning people (that's who are buying such cars today).
Those right-leaning people are getting fairly good deals from their perspective, and they'll use those cars, same as any traded car.
In fact, this is probably going to be a net win for the environment, because for many of those right-leaning people this will be their first electric vehicle, and some of them will continue that habit going forward. This is bringing EVs to a population that was resistant to them until now.
It's funny to read these deranged comments as at the same time as the astronauts are returning to Earth the only (non Russian) way possible... with SpaceX.
Vandalism is not violence and property destruction is generally not considered terrorism under existing laws. If the "vandalism" resulted in widespread destruction of infrastructure or disrupted essential services, then it sometimes falls under legal definitions of terrorism.
Completely normal country. First they consume from and subsidize this guy into the richest guy in the world, now they're vandalizing each other's cars.
I wonder if it's weird to be vandalizing somebody's car for being the same luxury brand as the car you sold last week. Does it feel revolutionary? Resistance libs are basically Carlists now.
The downvotes on all tesla threads recently are abyssmal. God forbid someone mentions vandalising someone's property isn't likely to make them join your cause.
The fascists aren't trying to get us to join their cause, they're trying to disfranchise us and drive us out of the country. Trying to get them to join our cause would be idiotic--they aren't playing by those rules. Trying to placate fascists is how our milquetoast liberal party got us into this mess in the first place.
The company would have more cash in the bank when he exercises those options.
They also wouldn't have to pay to create a new pay package to replace the voided one. This process is surprisingly expensive to create and implement a CEO pay package.
There were more reasons that shareholders voted for the package in the revote, but omitting others as I don't think they are related to financials
The Tesla, last I read about and test drove one, is a great car. Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences? The phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" comes to mind. It makes no sense whatsoever.
>Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences?
With how our society is set up, you are suggesting not holding any political viewpoints or preferences.
I had a whole diatribe typed up that I deleted because I realized I cannot actually empathize or have a theory of mind for how you could think this was an acceptable way to live life. Do you silo every interaction you have with everyone else?
If it makes you feel better, the person you're replying to isn't siloing. These people set up a wonderful Catch-22: "we don't need laws or regulations: consumer choice and people voting with their wallets is enough to ensure good behavior. If people really care, they will stop buying it" (people exercise consumer choice and vote with their wallets) "Hey, whoa, not like that! Let's not bring politics into this!"
What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency.
> What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency.
Having political viewpoints is fine. Protesting at their showrooms is fine. Making purchasing decisions for yourself based on your political viewpoints, also fine.
Punishing people (vandalism, scrawling Nazi symbols, hostile/threatening interactions on the road) for owning a brand of car and not sharing your viewpoints is not fine.
I remember when tech people were deeply suspicious of expanding the definition of "terrorism" to encompass protest and dissent. Now apparently it's awesome and based if Glorious Leader does it.
Because it is destruction of private property. If you can destroy my car, I can set fire to your house, because, you know, Swastihouse. Our society hinges on protecting individual citizens from vandals and thieves, otherwise we’re back to the jungle.
He is suggesting the opposite. Attacking every company run by someone you disagree with politically is a recipe for not being able to participate in society in any meaningful way. Musk's views are quite normal and are shared by people involved in every company and institution out there. Are you going to boycott them all?
These boycotts only work as isolated, selective outrage. It is the same with countries. If you wanted to be consistent, you'd have to boycott every country in the world. They all do some bad things.
Absolutely, it is impossible to draw a line based on, say how evil the person is or how much they are trying to spread the evil. Because anyone can be evil, we simply cannot take action against anyone!
You, and most who believe that, are ignoring the part where he said something like, "My heart goes out to you!" as he threw his hand from his heart out to the people in the crowd.
it ends up reading to me as an afterthought or half-hearted attempt to explain away the salute. a salute which was given with a grimace and a violent force, twice; it doesn't match the warmth of a message of 'my heart goes out to you.'
when you say 'my heart goes out to you' your hands typically stay on your heart ( which he seemed to know to do then ) or move very slightly directly out, not diagonally and up.
If I use a word to describe you, and you took it as an insult, but later found out the word was a compliment, is my description of you still an insult?
If someone who increasingly looks like a nazi sympathizer does a nazi salute and says 'my heart goes out to you,' it's still a nazi salute.
not to mention the out and out white supremacists thought that's what it was.
i would probably view this more charitably in his favor if he just apologized or clarified like a mature person. instead he doubles down on 'corrupt' media, calls to defund wikipedia, and makes juvenile nazi jokes.
No one is ignoring that, and it's bizarre seeing people defend Musk in such a ridiculous fashion.
The plausible deniability angle would hit a little better if Musk hadn't also been endorsing a number of Nazi-adjacent parties and views, pushed literal white nationalist views repeatedly (which he has been doing for years -- he isn't concerned about birth rates, he is literally only worried about white birth rates while he runs his creepy birthing farm down in Texas, and that's aside from his endless "empathy is our weakness" attacks on migrants), and most recently literally excused Hitler on the basis that really it's the public servants who are to blame.
It's quite incredible really. If the guy wasn't already absolutely soaked with extremely far right rhetoric and beliefs -- save the absurd "oh he's a centrist" nonsense that zero people believe if they have any functioning grey matter at all -- it might have been excusable as something that just looked concerning.
I wouldn't be so quick to say a 'majority of the American people.' The 'majority' that voted for him is only about 31% of the voting-eligible population.
right. with the availability of early voting, that implies that most of that 69% didn't care enough either way. it was a pretty close election, probably with a slight edge going in for Harris, so that would tend to cause more would-be Trump voters to stay home.
in other words, there are plenty of valid complaints, but "abnormal" or denying a clear democratic mandate aren't any of them.
> The phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" comes to mind.
It should come to mind for elon, not car buyers. He built a car company based on environmentalism that naturally appealed to people with environmental concerns and then pivoted to publicly insulting and denigrating those exact people.
It's not even really political. Elon isn't the first CEO to hold political values that differ from a majority of the company's customers. It's the fact that he goes out of his way to call his most likely customers retards.
Making a sacrifice, whether great or small, is a very common ethical behaviour.
I refuse to make purchases on Amazon. Sometimes that's a minor inconvenience: perhaps the alternative has slower delivery. Sometimes purchasing elsewhere probably costs me more than it would on Amazon.
My purchase value is low considering the whole world, but it's not zero. I can also influence my employer's decisions, which are larger — and we use Azure rather than AWS.
The car isn't the problem, but it's tied to an incredibly overvalued stock, which in turn made it possible for Musk to buy massive influence and political power, and wield it irresponsible self-serving ways.
I think this phrasing mellows the reality that he has, regardless of intent, displayed Nazi-like behavior. Why not tear at a company whose absentee CEO acts this way? Tesla is not the only great car or the only great car company. Let it thrive or die based on myriad factors, including leadership optics.
I guess the question is when does accountability stop? If a company and its descendant employees and products are built on an evil foundation and benefit from it, how do we rectify as a society? Ford is hardly alone here, many German, Japanese, and American companies were built on wartime atrocities and exist today from that previous goodwill. If the malignant founder is dead, is then the rest of the machine exempt from responsibility?
I personally think the only way to be truly principled is to boycott basically everything. I imagine the vast majority of people reading this right now are wearing clothes produced by child slavery or eating imported products that clear cut rainforest and villages or whatnot. Society for better or worse has to carry some amount of baggage to just subsist without emotional stress.
I agree, and I've long thought that there is no such thing as a clean dollar. I could donate $100 to an animal shelter, and some % of that will eventually make its way into evil hands. But I'd make that trade-off because the money is being used more for good than bad, and the bad part is largely out of my control.
Musk's wealth is however causing very direct and obvious harm to causes I care about, and he uses his platform of 100M+ followers to spread hateful views which now permeate every conversation. I am tired of him being relevant. There are many alternatives to Tesla so it is easy enough to not give him money.
I also take a forward-facing view. I can't change what people's past dollars were spent on. Instead I care about what my dollars be spent on after I give them to a company. I buy Porsche cars today even though their founder was a Nazi and the company is still majority-owned by the Porsche family. But their founder is dead, and today's Porsche has strongly disavowed Nazi views. Seems my money mostly goes toward developing cool cars while the owners stay out of politics.
> I guess the question is when does accountability stop? If a company and its descendant employees and products are built on an evil foundation and benefit from it, how do we rectify as a society? Ford is hardly alone here, many German, Japanese, and American companies were built on wartime atrocities and exist today from that previous goodwill. If the malignant founder is dead, is then the rest of the machine exempt from responsibility?
Corporations aren't people. Yes, I understand the supreme court rulings on this subject, I'm saying the supreme court is wrong.
Each person in a corporation is responsible for their own actions.
This is a very big problem in our society. A more recent Ford misdeed, the Pinto, was rushed through production despite 40+ crash tests in which the fuel tanks ruptured in every test. People knew it would kill people, did it anyway because they could make more money by letting people die, and shareholders were the ones punished. This is an injustice: the people who pushed through the Pinto committed at the very least manslaughter, and have as far as I can tell, never even been named publicly.
Until we address this problem we're going to keep having these problems. GM in 2014 refused to replace faulty ignition switches which ignited, killing 13 people. The car industry is littered with bodies, but these faults are not limited to automotive companies. In 2010 PG&E refused to fix known problems with a gas line and it exploded, leveling 38 homes. It's a miracle that Boeing hasn't killed someone yet. And this is setting aside simple safety neglect: letting people die isn't just a small cost-cutting measure for healthcare companies, it's a core part of their business model.
These decisions are not made by corporations, they are made by individuals, and as long as we continue to punish corporations for individual decisions, while letting literal murderers move on to the next job, this will keep happening. We need to hold individuals, not corporations, accountable.
Unfortunately, a lot of the people with money and power don't want to be held accountable, and have crafted a legal and propaganda system that avoids that. So until that changes we have Luigi Mangione and tanking Tesla stock--actual justice isn't an option we've been given.
The 737-MAX killed 346 people. Which reinforces your point rather than taking away from it. In any sane world the CEO should have gone to prison for that, but instead he walked away with $62 million.
He’s called a nazi because he does nazi signs, endorses the German far right party (not a literal nazi party in itself but endorsed by neo-nazis), keep getting closer and closer to say Hitler did nothing (apparently Hitler didn’t murder millions of people himself so no responsibility according to him).
If Hitler was a candidate today, Elon would endorse him, period.
He could tattoo a svastika on his forehead and people would still find him excuses.
> Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
Why are folks so incapable of making an argument in good faith on this subject? Like, even if you give elon the most benefit of the most doubt you can muster and you manage to handwave away the multiple sig heils and nazi sympathetic tweets as just some sort of quirky behavior and not at all related to nazism - you have to realize that not everyone does.
He did not doubt fatality numbers, he made the point that one man cannot kill millions alone. It is something that requires the resources of a state. One man didn't kill millions, the state apparatus of Nazi Germany did.
There were numerous pogroms of Jews in European history but they pale in comparison to the Holocaust because it was the policy of an advanced, centralised, bureaucratic state.
Whether you support a big state or not, one undeniable fact about them is that they are highly capable. That capability can be used to do evil. cf. The US federal government of the 1890s, for example, was institutionally incapable of genocide.
So I wasn't referring to the recent tweets about public servants perpetrating the Holocaust. I was referring to the incident from late 2023 where he replied "this is the actual truth" to someone who posted that Jewish communities are trying to create divisions in society. It was quickly discovered that the person he replied to had posted plenty of Holocaust denial material - specifically about fatalities. I misremembered the actual tweet that Elon promoted. One could make the argument that he was making a very narrow point, recklessly doing no diligence on who he chose to amplify. He did follow it with an apology tour though.
> Unlike Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
He's called a Nazi because he boosts and endorses Nazi content on twitter, and recently repeatedly emulated an aggressive arm gesture that looks exactly like a Nazi salute.
> Maybe you shouldn't buy Fords then. After all, Henry Ford was basically an actual Nazi.
Henry Ford was indeed a Nazi.
He's also dead, so purchasing a Ford vehicle doesn't support his Nazism any more. But you knew that.
> Unlike Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
This is a straw man.
Nobody thinks Musk is a Nazi because he is against illegal immigration. I think he's a Nazi because he's repeatedly doubled down on racist remarks, Nazi saluted repeatedly, and keeps supporting economic and social policies that Nazis support.
Illegal immigration is and always has been a red herring. The right isn't against illegal immigration--if they were, they would be providing reasonable paths for legal immigration instead of pretending they don't know ladders exist.
That's also my point. No one gains anything by not owning one, either. If one does like and want the car, they only hurt themselves by not buying one. If Tesla went out of business and one couldn't buy a car they wanted, they hurt themselves.
I buy things that make me happy or give me an advantage of some sort. I wouldn't want to lose that. Someone else's politics or personal life don't matter to me.
Might effect new buyers decisions I guess, but since about 99% of Tesla's were sold to green, left-leaning buyers, before the Elon hate-fest, I am not sure how targeting that group of people for your hatred is helping any "cause".
Nah. Insurance is based on the numbers, and Tesla is a shitty company to have financial liability to fix. There’s no parts, few shops, and lots of stuff to get stuck with.
A friend had a rental for 4 months when the panoramic sunroof cracked on his Tesla.
The vandalism isn’t computed in yet, and will immediately resulted in dropped coverage. If the Feds label it as terrorism, insurance generally excludes riot and terrorism from coverage anyway.
> insurance generally excludes riot and terrorism from coverage anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Risk_Insurance_Act
TRIA insurance against terrorism is required by law to be offered as a rider. It's actually shockingly affordable, because the law shifts the ultimate financial burden for any events between $200 million to $100 billion onto the federal government. So insurers have a reasonable cap on their expenses and don't need to rely on traditional re-insurers for black swan events.
Most people decline this rider anyways, no matter how cheap it is - and therefore most people are not covered for terrorism related damages.
Is there a downside to having a terrorism rider, other than higher premiums?
For example, if your insurance company would otherwise have to declare a claim as due to non-terrorism, and just pay it (because they'd probably lose in court if they didn't pay), but because you had the terrorism rider, they decide to declare it as due to terrorism, and then you get a less-desirable experience?
(For imagined example of less-desirable, maybe you have to wait longer to get paid while the company interacts with gov't, or the reimbursement is calculated or capped differently, or some consumer protection you'd normally have doesn't apply.)
A comment above claimed:
> insurance generally excludes riot and terrorism from coverage anyway
If that's true, they'd have even more incentive to declare a claim as due to terrorism if you didn't have a rider. They could avoid paying it altogether.
My question was about cases in which they wouldn't/couldn't deny claim due to terrorism on weak grounds, since they'd be taken to court for denying the claim, since the grounds are weak.
But if you had a terrorism rider in those cases, then maybe it's worse for you, because then they wouldn't be denying the claim initially, but maybe instead you're stuck in a different process, with various downsides, and maybe less able to contest the assertion?
Could the downsides of a rider really be worse than a lawsuit?
The problem with Tesla is they used financial engineering to get where they are today, and that cycle eventually catches up to you.
Enshittification is a real thing, and happens because benefits were front-loaded through ponzi (in this case backed by money printing and the public market retirements that must rebalance based on S&P or other indexes).
There are also higher risks with 'licensing' a Tesla. Both to society as a whole, and to the owners themselves. Licensing isn't owning, and you get what you pay for.
Few of the people who choose to get a Tesla actually think about what they are doing aside from their own ego, which is actively supporting un-American ideals.
How-so?
A Tesla is not a car, it is a sensor/node based computer that is networked and connected that performs the functions of a car.
A networked computer with many sensors is part of a mass distributed network called "Remote Sensing Networks" or RSNs.
The short-term profit on money isn't in building the car. It is in selling the data that has been collected and aggregated to the highest bidder, while getting you to pay for your own enslavement to such willfully provided subscription data.
Every time you see a Tesla while driving, whether it is on or off, the Tesla logs you and your passengers face, biometrics, behavior, location, history, travel, and other hints that may be visible including EM following a master data-management strategy that is built on big-tech primitives at their data center. This includes conversations or more intimate settings which have already leaked to the general internet (in some cases).
It is illegal for anyone to film, and distribute film of others, and record conversation without their explicit and specific consent, let alone such other aspects of personal data, where it contains everywhere you go, what you do, even in your own backyard or within your garage (home), or your neighbors (where consent is not given). Yet this is what Tesla is doing through complacent consent, and coercion (corruption by dependency in sunk cost/function).
A Tesla is not the only RSN, your cell phone does this, your media players (Roku) and Smart TVs do this. Your laptops, modern OS (Windows), and too many other devices to count do this. When profit is guaranteed, monopolists seek coercive control, and information is power.
If you have these, you have consented to have a digital soldier mediating in every aspect of your life whether you know it or not. Even though they didn't tell you what they were doing. They were not required to specifically say what and how they used that data, and they defined it broadly and ambiguously. Dis-aggregation of Alarm, and Separation of Concerns.
That is how the banality of evil (complacency) becomes the radical evil (Nazi's).
What does that open the door to or allow?
Abuse, Coercion, Arbitrary Discrimination, Loss of some things that become everything. These are the same abuses that inspired the constitution's third amendment, and what led us to join the War for self and others during WW2.
We are repeating what lead up to the American Revolution, and because so many people have wilfully blinded themselves they can't see the consequences of their actions while they actively participate towards definite systems failures, mindlessly.
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Implicit in this is that there remains a rule of law, which has mostly failed.
I really pity the people who have such little awareness that they go and buy a Tesla. It is like waving the communist/fascist flag which is statism, for all to see... we're American. "Yes, but what kind of American".
This has happened before, and it is too late to stop it from happening again.
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Cool, haven't had any crazy Elon people around here in awhile. If he doesn't care about Tesla, why do you?
Oh and how does insurance get 10x cheaper?
> the world's best crash avoidance system
Interesting claim. Can you share any research or source into this?
https://gizmodo.com/teslas-self-driving-fails-the-wile-e-coy...
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I'm sorry, but either it's factually true (or mostly there, to be chartiable) or it's just good vibes and made up, and the latter doesn't lead to curious discussion, an important ethos for this site. If you make a claim then understandably people will try to evaluate the claim to see if it's true, and to also decide whether the conversation can be held in good faith or not.
The whole point is new buyers..
People are protesting Musk. Something like 75% of Musk's current wealth comes from Tesla stock.
Tesla stock is going down.. so it is helping the cause
If you look at places like Reddit where the organizing is happening, they don't differentiate between left-leaning buyers of years past, and in fact call them out for being complicit by not selling their (paid for?) car. It's scorched earth and is not limited to new buyers.
Reddit might not be representative of the larger shift. I am sure there is plenty of hatred, and even violence that makes the news, and that stuff is bad, but I mostly see people politely nudging those they know that own Teslas to sell them.
Which makes sense. The company sold to left-leaning, environmentally conscious buyers, and the CEO has now rebranded Tesla to basically the worst thing for that demographic. Sales are down, resale values are dropping, and insurance rates are rising. And there is no real opportunity on the horizon to save the company and/or the brand (robotaxis without LiDAR..?)
Maybe it looks like scorched earth on reddit, but in reality it's just a lot of people realizing the brand has self-destructed.
> by not selling their (paid for?) car.
It's even more confusing, who are they supposed to sell it to, if no one should drive these cars (and how big of a loss are they expected to take in order to sell it)?
Sounds dramatic (scorched earth! my lord), but the posts I've seen are like, "here's the anti-tesla flyer that was left on my friend's tesla" and then a bunch of upvoted comments replying that it's dumb and counterproductive to target people who bought their teslas years ago.
Scorched earth strategies can be effective depending on your goals.
> It's scorched earth and is not limited to new buyers.
This whole thing is about destroying already bought vehicles to intimidate potential new buyers, and thus lowering future sales. Not that I support the vandalism, but I think that's the kind of logic they are applying here.
Build quality is so bad, those old cars will destroy themselves. Wonder how many of the original 2018 model 3 are still on the road. The other day I saw a comment chastising a person complaining about their 120k Model 3 battery failing and how its already at end of life. I was gobsmacked.
I also see reports of some Tesla making it to 500k miles. Honestly there is so much nonsense on both sides and you can't even trust any numbers coming out of Tesla because they have distorted the truth so many times.
You probably wanna read up on recent Toyota fiasco (100k engines recalled because they are self destroying).
He's got less than 20% of Tesla now, but he owns nearly half of SpaceX... bet you he'd be so so sooooooooo much richer if that went public too
With rational investors I doubt it. Space launch market size is like 20 billion. One launch is 70 million and they had 133 of them in 2024. Times two (currently at half market share) this would be 18 billion.
That does not take into account that they are increasing the market size themselves with Starlink.
And with Starlink it remains to be seen if that can be profitable. I doubt it. The Starlink satellites deorbit every 5 years and need to be replaced (CapEx+++).
This is compared to the trillion+ EV market.
Shotwell has claimed that Starlink is cash-flow-positive. They also have >5 million subscribers. ARPU is likely > $1000.
Both Starlink and Starship are >$5B programs. SpaceX has not raised nor borrowed near enough money to fund both of those programs, indicating that they've got sufficient cash flow to mostly self-fund both of them as well as pay the salaries of >13,000 employees.
Also the stock was effectively a meme stock. So now the jig is up, the stock deflates like no other.
That's the funny thing here.
In case of Musk, if those protests work and as you say 'the jig is up', he can go from the richest man on earth to bankrupt in a space of months.
He is very 'cash poor' and has pledged a lot of Tesla shares as collateral to fund his other businesses.
If Tesla is priced as an automaker (shares would be in the ±10-20$), Musk will be bankrupt.
Hence why they've now said they're a robot company. Yet any bullish targets now are more likely to be based on Musk awarding himself large government contracts than technical advancements.
Didn't he cancel a large Tesla contract from the government?
> Musk will be bankrupt.
Then what? “We win” somehow? Nailed it?
Who cares?
Yes we do. A lot of people, for a lot of different reasons.
For me, it will be the end of the biggest con, the stock market has ever seen. And I can't wait to read about the details behind it, once the dust settles.
What makes Tesla exactly a con? Their cars are amazing appliances, literally nothing in market like it, for less than a Toyota. FSD is largely delivered. Space internet for everyone (soon potentially also with Freedom™ now that Trump is involved in demonopolising space or whatever it's called) with a phone. Where is the con???
A lot of things, I will just cite one - "FSD is largely delivered". Really ? Can you tell us, where Full-Self Driving is really fully self-driving ? Like being able to summon your car from Los Angeles to New York, like Elon claimed one will be able to do in 2017 !
Tesla sold millions of cars that were supposedly going to become Robotaxis with a simple software update, somewhere in 2019. SIX YEARS AGO. Tesla even showed screenshots of a ride-sharing app. SIX YEARS AGO. Now it's obvious to anyone, that those cars will never become Robotaxis, as Tesla pivots to trying to fake a Roboataxi service this year, with remote operators.
But the greatest con of course, was towards investors. Of course nobody is complaining now, since the stock is still a meme stock. Just wait a bit more...
You can buy supervised FSD right now. It works extremely well to the point testers are bored out of their minds - their channels became worthless since it barely makes any mistakes.
It's overpriced and not available where I live, but I'd love one. It doesn't do everything under the sun as promised, but I'd rather drive less than more. The basic 10 year old Autopilot is already huge help.
I'd say it's about 80% delivered. Far from a con.
Yeah, that's the problem with a real Full Self Driving. It's either 100%, or it's not. 80% doesn't make the cut.
Do you seriously believe the company was valued at >1T$ because investors believed that an "FSD 80% delivered" is enough ?
Tesla and Elon claimed ALMOST 10 YEARS AGO, that the car will drive itself from Los Angeles to New York. Just think how insane this is, even today. And then look up the state of their technology 10 years ago.
Of course self driving will be solved one day. Probably not by Tesla. But it doesn't matter - they were selling this stuff for almost 10 years already, knowing perfectly well it doesn't work. But hey, next version will blow your mind !
Every single company claimed something and haven’t delivered. Why single out one that actually delivered most of claims?
I’m tine if you call it “some self driving”, I don’t care. I’m not going to put my car as a taxi, that’s stupid.
Before the inauguration, Tesla was trading at a P/E 30 times bigger than Toyota. Now it's about half that (110).
Some say Tesla shouldn't be valued as a car stock; it should instead be valued as a Tech stock. Well, Tesla traded at a P/E about 4-5 times that of NVIDIA which itself had a high P/E compared to the other Magnificent 7 which in turn have a high P/E compared to the stock market in general.
What exactly is Tesla so great at that they deserve this enormous valuation? Its P/E has gone down to ~110 now, bit this is still incredibly high compared to e.g. NVIDIA which is trading at a P/E of ~40.
Elon Musk’s power is based on his wealth. A bankrupt Elon Musk will no longer be able to influence politics in several nations. He won’t be able to buy the US presidency. He won’t be able to threaten primaries against US representatives. He’d lose Twitter. He’d most likely no longer be running the so-called Doge.
So yes, we would very much win and there are a lot of people who care.
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what else do you believe the appropriate outcome includes?
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What sucks is that the cars* are actually very, very good cars. I've owned three of them so far, and I love driving and owning them. They take almost no maintenance, and I've only had one problem that needed me to take it into the shop, and it was for a recall that was totally handled in a day, and they gave me a loaner.
Legitimately, Teslas have been the best cars I've ever owned, but thanks to Elon, I will never buy another one, so long as he runs the company.
* - not you, Cybertruck
Tesla can continue to operate without Musk.
I wish it would.
What makes you think Elon cares about wealth?
He's been telling about Mars for _2 decades_ and people somehow think he's a nazi about to pull off ethnic cleansing.
There’s a saying about watching what people do, not what they say, that seems to apply well to Musk. The proof that Elon cares about wealth is that he keeps doing everything in his power to gain more of it (well, up until recently, but only because he found he can access power directly instead of indirectly through more wealth).
wrong. the people in question are not "protesting" anything. they are committing violent destruction of property against random people who happened to buy an EV. calling them "protesters" only does a disservice to those who actually are. these people are criminals to catch and lock away, nothing more.
Sadly I think, and for some time now, we are well past the point where political action needs to make sense either to the people involved or to the people outside. The message, the narrative, they’re whatever you want them to be. Whether that makes sense - much less where the truth lies - is irrelevant.
Well, is your claim that's it's isnt working? Perhaps after Tesla is bankrupt 6 years from now, tycoons with political ambitions will be less likely to adopt extremist political stances.
It doesn't need to make sense to you, personally, the HN commentariat, to be effective political action.
Or, you should do politics without promoting nazism and white supremacy on the platform that you solely bought to be able to do so.
Did you mean to respond to another comment? You’re in the thread about vandalizing left-leaning Tesla owners.
It's obviously being offered as justification for the anti-Tesla behavior (using the context of the GP in a tongue-in-cheek way). You may reasonably disagree, but the message wasn't unclear.
Was not obvious but could be inferred, which is why I asked. There were a few adjacent threads it made more sense in.
Thanks to Leon's salute, instead of buying 1-3 more Tesla's in my lifetime, I'm going back to plain gas powered Hondas. I'm choosing specifically non-turbo non-hybrid models. The American people, with their choice of President, have shown me they don't care about the present or the future. I'm sure their president will keep gas prices low. I don't see any reason for me to suffer for their benefit or anyone else's. The American people have chosen to doom us all, so why not just make life easy on myself.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw
> Thanks to Leon's salute, instead of buying 1-3 more Tesla's in my lifetime [...]
I can see how one could make a plausible argument for this...
> [...] I'm going back to plain gas powered Hondas. I'm choosing specifically non-turbo non-hybrid models. The American people, with their choice of President, have shown me they don't care about the present or the future. I'm sure their president will keep gas prices low. I don't see any reason for me to suffer for their benefit or anyone else's. The American people have chosen to doom us all, so why not just make life easy on myself.
...but that makes no sense whatsoever.
A non-plug in hybrid is a gas car. All the energy used by its electric motors comes from either using the gas motor to charge its battery or from regenerative braking. It just uses less gas per mile than a non-hybrid and is more reliable than a non-hybrid [1]. If you want to drive a 100% powered by gas car and want to make life easy on yourself a non-plug in hybrid is the way to go.
Unless you need a pickup truck or something similarly beefy it is hard to make a case that a gas powered non-hybrid is better than a non-PHEV hybrid.
[1] Yes, non-plug in hybrids from the top hybrid car makers like Toyota and Honda are more reliable than gas cars. It is a little counterintuitive because you'd expect that hybrids would be much more complex due to having both gas and electric drive systems, but it turns out that they also remove quit a bit, and also the drive train can actually be simpler. Toyota's transmission on its hybrids for example is mechanically much simpler. The data from Consumer Reports and others that track reliability show about 25% fewer problems on non-plug in hybrids.
Usually this type of thing isn't really about a cause but making oneself feel better. The stuff that is actually beneficial to a cause tend to be less emotionally satisfying.
Protests and ethics and capitalism and products and politics are more complicated than that. If collateral damage or somehow hurting anybody in "your" half of The Two Groups (which is a faulty premise to begin with) is ruled out, you're wiping out nearly all opinions and protest. Things just aren't that simple (though it's convenient to pretend they are when it lets us point a finger at the enemy out-group - look at their hypocrisy/in-fighting!)
That is not to say the opposite - that I think all anti-Tesla hatred/actions are justified. I'm just refuting your opinion specifically.
I have a lot of thoughts that run in both directions on topics like this, including this one. However, this specific case is especially far gone, in terms of drawing lines between "understandable" and "unreasonable" on any given anti-Tesla action/opinion, simply because of the fact that he and some of his supporters invoke Nazism. If it wasn't for that, I could more confidently say something like, "No, that one is over the line" for any given anti-Tesla thing. But I can't.
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Please read the entire sentence when you quote something:
> That is not to say the opposite - that I think all anti-Tesla hatred/actions are justified. I'm just refuting your opinion specifically.
i didn't quote you that way. you said you do not think that all anti-tesla actions are justified. "actions" in this case heavily implies not picketing their HQ but the recent spate of vandalism and destruction. you didn't say you do think that all such actions are not justified.
if that is the case, then we have no disagreement, and i'm glad this cleared things up.
The person you're replying to isn't me. You did misquote me in your post, and then maliciously paraphrased, which is why I didn't reply, but I just wanted to point out that the person who replied to you was a different person.
i didn't maliciously paraphrase, that's a sentiment a reasonable number of extremely online types seem to share. if you're saying i didn't seem to favor that sentiment, well, obviously.
This probably doesn't fit the two-team paradigm. When you consider the objectives might be something different from ensuring democrats win offices in two years, the rationale may make more sense.
Today I saw a diesel truck roll coal on anti-tesla protestors.
We've gone full circle.
I'm curious if that's plausibly an act of criminal assault.
It would be if anyone cared to do anything about it. It's not even legal to modify trucks to fart out black smoke like that to begin with but it's never stopped them from doing it. Cops do not care about that issue.
There's no laws any more
>99% of Tesla's were sold to green, left-leaning buyers
source
That’s definitely an exaggeration. I’d bet it’s closer to ~60% green left leaning, and another ~30% libertarian, tech types. Would still mean at least 60% of his former audience is lost.
I also think there are a lot of people who are neither and just bought teslas because they're a relatively high performance exec-style car at a decent price
It's clearly intended to impact new buyers. Most of Musk's wealth is tied up in Tesla, and that funding allowed him to both buy an election and -- gestures broadly -- demonstrate convincingly that he is an absolutely reprehensible, garbage-bin of a human.
The rich used to start ivy leagues and build libraries. This guy is cutting off funding for the poor and declaring himself, proudly, a "deadly threat" to people he perceives as "woke".
And the "99%" thing is pretty dubious regardless. Elon Musk has been a garbage person for years. A self-dealing creep. >80% of Tesla sales have happened over the past four years.
And of the people I know with Teslas, zero of them are "green, left-leaning" buyers. They're people who wanted the novelty with the crazy acceleration and the boasting tech. I feel like this "leftist car" thing was never, ever true for the brand. And if it was sales would have been 0 for the past six years or so, but there are an endless rank of daytraders and crypto bros who need their Teslas.
> And of the people I know with Teslas, zero of them are "green, left-leaning" buyers.
White petit bourgeois center-right corporate capitalist Democrats that engage in environmental virtue signalling are “left-leaning”, if you view things from sufficiently far to the right.
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> Somehow he is a "reprehensible" person because he has the most milquetoast middle of the road centrist liberal opinions.
Yeah, throwing Nazi salutes and endorsing neo-Nazi parties are signs of “the most milquetoast middle of the road centrist liberal opinions”.
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In fact, Elon Musk is the source of the hatred. He can’t seem to go a day without amplifying weird depraved shit like “Hitler was actually a commie” and “recipients of benefits are part of the parasite class” that makes people shudder with disgust. Plus the whole illegally dismantling our federal government thing.
Maybe Tesla should change that.
> before the Elon hate-fest
Let me ask this: maybe, just maybe, it was before Elon went politically to far right and started cater to Russia, and to try reabilitated Nazism with actions and History revisionism?
I mean, when we saw Putin try to get Hitler off the hook and blame Poland for WW2, it was kind of expected, not only because Putin finances Neo Nazis all over the world, but because it suits his current agenda.
Now when Elon is doing it, it doesn't look weird to you? It's just the "hate-fest" maybe...
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> The Musk derangement syndrome is strong here still, I see.
I just realized you’re the other guy glazing musk in this thread.
How do you have someone who makes themselves the center of attention constantly, does polarizing shit like carry a chainsaw into the government to symbolize how he’s cutting it all down, and by his own admission is doing things that will upset people,
And then you waltz in here and accuse all of us of being deranged for even talking about it?
>Musk was a darling of the left like 2 years ago
Eh, maybe like 6 years ago. Hasn't been true for quite some time now.
> Musk was a darling of the left like 2 years ago.
Not in any leftist circles I was in. You can look through my post history and find me criticizing Musk for wanting to put indentured servants on Mars well before the Twitter buy. There is no such thing as a good person who is a billionaire, and I've never said otherwise.
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Most people are not plugged into reddit and social media politics the way we are, and simply don't care.
> I feel bad for the people who bought Teslas before everyone knew who he really was
He bought Twitter in 2022 and it’s arguable that his true colours have been on display since then.
But it was also clear much earlier for those paying attention [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
What exactly are you saying that we CT owners "deserve"? I like my CT. It has served my family well for a year. It's a car, not a political statement. I hope that this kind of vicious sentiment doesn't become mainstream.
The hints were there for a long time (like pedo-guy), but there were mixed messages. In 2017 Musk resigned in protest from a Trump advisory committee when Trump dropped out of the Paris agreement. That's the Musk I bought our Tesla from.
This article provides no causation between 'Tesla hate' and insurance costs. The only factual claim is that Tesla insurance premiums rose 30% in 2024, and cost to insure is 25% higher than a Mercedes A-class. But a quick internet search shows that 2022 MSRPs for those cars were $47k and $34k respectively, a 32% difference.
This has more to do with Tesla's being totaled in fender benders than the events of the last two months because the cost associated with replacing and fixing the cameras, electronics, and sensors. I've had two friends who had rear end accidents with their Teslas. One took over a year for his car to be returned in full working order after being rear ended at a stop sign. The other backed into a pole in a parking lot and they totaled out the car. All this cool stuff made these vehicles unrepairable from what are minor issues with less advanced vehicles.
>The other backed into a pole in a parking lot and they totaled out the car.
That's ludicrous.
I struck a column in a multilevel garage while reversing out of a parking spot, my mistake completely, resulting in damage to the driver door, door hinge, mirror, and front quarter panel. Progressive considered the car totaled due to the cost/availability/labor to fix it. Unsure what the cost would be for a toyota or honda, but I was perplexed at the total loss of my still drivable car.
This is effectively the same sort of accident my friend had.
It's not entirely because of all the gadgets in there. They have a massive supply chain restriction which means that some repair centers can't even be sure that they will ever get the parts they need for some repairs.
Absolutely correct. But also there could be other reasons. The Mercedes cars offer SAE Level 3 certification ("you are officially not driving the car or watching the road, but we may demand you take over"), versus the much more dangerous Tesla Level 2 ("you are still responsible for driving and must constantly supervise but also the car will be doing it all for you, please don't stop paying attention at any point").
There have been, what, more than 50 self-driving fatalities in Teslas already? Of course the insurance premium would be higher.
> The Mercedes cars offer SAE Level 3 certification
In an S-class. The comment above compares it to a MB A-class.
Tesla produces no car in the MB S-class category.
Good catch.
Nothing MB has is anywhere close to FXD 13.2.x
So if the SAE standards don't reflect that, they are poor standards
this is probably because teslas are 1. poorly built, and 2. not very repairable. they're crappily constructed cars, honestly, probably none more than the cybertruck. like whistlindiesel found a washer resting on a piece of duct tape. insane. fisher price ass cars. just as importantly, get into a crash and they're very tough to fix, before considering the low availability of parts and common service wait times.
It fits the narrative, who needs logic?
Clearly the two are not connected - it just hasn't been enough time for insurance rates to be adjusted based on recent happenings. The industry does not react that fast.
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My thought is that this is not going to last. Law enforcement is completely different from a year ago, when they "couldn't find" who was ransacking Apple retail stores. There are many lawful forms of expressing your views.
Yes, after the recent promotional event at the White House I can easily imagine protecting Teslas becomes a top priority, and that damaging one is punishable by death.
Trump did literally say during that event that attacking Tesla showrooms was domestic terrorism.
I'm sure the apartheidist made similar statements when Musk was a child. Didn't really work out for them IIRC.
It is unequivocally terrorism to participate in violence against civilians with the aim of causing political change. And it's domestic because it's here. It's definitionally correct.
It is not definitionally correct because when you or I say "domestic terrorism", despite being the same text and same sound, it is not the same as when the administration says "domestic terrorism". All they're saying is that they care to stop people damaging tesla's. Not that they are going to be stopping the dictionary definition of "domestic terrorist"
It’s against property, and political change is a vague aim, if any. In my book it’s just vandalism.
Spray painting Teslas is not "violence against civilians". Even setting fire to them in a showroom is debatable if it's at night when no one's about.
It is terrorism, indisputably. Arguing other point is relatively inconsequential. But if we were to argue the point, to argue that spray-paint isn't "violence" isn't going to have much credibility when it's perceived to be from the long standing "words are violence" and "silence is violence" crowd. A selective standard is no standard at all. How the spray paint differs is that it is property destruction in service of intimidation toward a political end.
It's certainly disputable: https://lisa-legalinfo.com/2019/09/11/spray-paint-and-violen...
Does that mean that Republicans engaged in terrorism when they threatened to hang journalists, shoot immigrants or Democrats, etc.? Seems like the courts might be overloaded if we redefine every threat as an act of terrorism.
We need a new word then, for hijacking planes and driving explosives-laden boats into tankers.
Any ideas?
Why? Not all crimes with the same name is of the same severity.
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Isn't most law enforcement in the US at a state or local level? Why would that be completely different from a year ago?
I would guess that the multiple interstate locations will bump it to the Federal level. Exactly as it would have, with the Apple stores.
Honestly, I don't think the article supports the headline.
ex. "The cost to insure a Tesla Model 3 went up 30 percent last year.". Nothing happening in March of this year is affecting the price of insurance from last year. I have no doubt that stuff happening in March of this year will affect insurance prices this year but Tesla insurance is just expensive because the availability of Tesla repairs is low.
Whether or not law enforcement (which is most likely state level and therefore didn't change this year) can figure out whose doing vandalism isn't going to affect the price as significantly as Tesla's own inability to repair vehicles.
Agree
Tesla and Tesla charger vandalism was high last year by the anti-ev crowd
It's expected to be higher occurrence, but less measurable (ie, petty vandalism) by the anti Elon crowd
The insurance in question is more about individual cars rather than stores;
And while Teslas have Sentry mode that could detect things like paint, door dings, tire vandalism to record a criminal act, law enforcement has rarely been able to enforce much except the extreme or flagrant.
Unfortunately a Tesla is not under $900
But it is more difficult to prove criminal intent and value paint, metal, and tire damage.
If Sentry mode records the perpetrator, the cops have to find it criminal, and then the DA decides to prosecute....
Good luck civilly pursuing every door ding or the mustard that fell off a sandwich -- even if somebody holds their ID up to a sentry mode camera, or drives off with their license plate clearly visible.
Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
I think it's more likely they'll start enforcing jaywalking laws against children playing hockey in the street.
Now, I'm not saying anyone should vandalize someone else's car for political reasons but as a campaign to dissuade people from buying Teslas this seems to be quite effective.
> Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
Law enforcement has both generally been spared direct cuts and had federal accountability measures removed, so they, and especially the worst actors, have plenty of reason to friendly to the regime.
Sure, but how many are either veterans or are friends with veterans?
> It’s a machine run on actuarial tables and its calculations are telling insurers that they’ll probably have to pay out a damage claim if they cover a Tesla EV.
How is something as recent as this already affecting interest rates? If this is true, then only negative short term trends can have such an effect. Otherwise I would expect rates to lower just as quickly when public ire moves onto the next outrage generator.
I decided to test the hypothesis. I compared quotes for a 2024 Nissan Leaf and 2024 Tesla Model 3. Kept all parameters the same.
Nissan Leaf: $94/mo Tesla Model 3: $140/mo
By design, no? The point of Tesla vandalism is to incur costs to the owners. Or is it just a mostly peaceful protest?
I have a financed Tesla that hasn't driven enough miles to offset the embodied carbon (we're a one car family who walks wherever we can). I'd love to get rid of it because as I'm mad about Musk and Trump, and I'm really afraid someone will protest while my 2 year old is in the car, putting him at risk.
If I sell— and it's a terrible financial decision (laid off in the fall)—I will assuage some of my fears and worries, but I will make the world worse for everyone else (more carbon in the atmosphere).
Why would selling cause more carbon in the atmosphere?
I suppose it might if you replace with a non-EV, but there are plenty of good EVs.
Needlessly replacing a working item is over consumption. An EV has much more embodied carbon compared to an ICE vehicle and needs 20,000 miles to "break even." I'm likely 2 years away from that given our driving habits.
You could argue that the next driver will pick up the slack for me, but I can't guarantee that to be the case.
While both those points would normally be valid, this is a pretty unique one-time event.
The best way to look at it is that cars are getting redistributed: left-leaning people that bought Teslas are trading them to right-leaning people (that's who are buying such cars today).
Those right-leaning people are getting fairly good deals from their perspective, and they'll use those cars, same as any traded car.
In fact, this is probably going to be a net win for the environment, because for many of those right-leaning people this will be their first electric vehicle, and some of them will continue that habit going forward. This is bringing EVs to a population that was resistant to them until now.
Just buy one of these "I bought this before we knew Elon was a piece of shit" stickers
It's funny to read these deranged comments as at the same time as the astronauts are returning to Earth the only (non Russian) way possible... with SpaceX.
Insurance companies will use ANY EXCUSE to raise rates on their customers.
Source: Go look at your last bill.
Insurance companies use ANY EXCUSE to raise premiums on their customers.
Source? Go look at your last bill.
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Vandalism is not violence and property destruction is generally not considered terrorism under existing laws. If the "vandalism" resulted in widespread destruction of infrastructure or disrupted essential services, then it sometimes falls under legal definitions of terrorism.
Its still Guantanamo. And we pardon people who cause damage because they dont like governmental policies in this country
Completely normal country. First they consume from and subsidize this guy into the richest guy in the world, now they're vandalizing each other's cars.
I wonder if it's weird to be vandalizing somebody's car for being the same luxury brand as the car you sold last week. Does it feel revolutionary? Resistance libs are basically Carlists now.
"I saw you listening to Kanye in 2005 and now you don't like him, what a hypocrite!"
The downvotes on all tesla threads recently are abyssmal. God forbid someone mentions vandalising someone's property isn't likely to make them join your cause.
The fascists aren't trying to get us to join their cause, they're trying to disfranchise us and drive us out of the country. Trying to get them to join our cause would be idiotic--they aren't playing by those rules. Trying to placate fascists is how our milquetoast liberal party got us into this mess in the first place.
go tesla go broke doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Go fash lose cash?
Should/would the government bail out Tesla were it to get into financial difficulties?
Isn't that why Tesla exist in the first place? Tax payer dollars.
As of December 31st, 2024, Tesla has around $17b in cash and cash equivalents, $122b in assets, and $49b in liabilities
It doesn't seem likely the government will have to bail them out.
Musk has just appealed the rescinding of his $56B pay deal. Where would Tesla be were he to get a more favourable ruling this time?
The company would have more cash in the bank when he exercises those options.
They also wouldn't have to pay to create a new pay package to replace the voided one. This process is surprisingly expensive to create and implement a CEO pay package.
There were more reasons that shareholders voted for the package in the revote, but omitting others as I don't think they are related to financials
The government did it for GM in '08.
> Should/would the government bail out Tesla were it to get into financial difficulties?
Should? No. Would? Yes.
I'm fine with people here who think it's totally fine to set fire to tesla vehicles AS LONG AS they are also fine with Jan 6th.
I’m not.
The Tesla, last I read about and test drove one, is a great car. Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences? The phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" comes to mind. It makes no sense whatsoever.
>Why tear at a company that makes a great car over anyone's political preferences?
With how our society is set up, you are suggesting not holding any political viewpoints or preferences.
I had a whole diatribe typed up that I deleted because I realized I cannot actually empathize or have a theory of mind for how you could think this was an acceptable way to live life. Do you silo every interaction you have with everyone else?
If it makes you feel better, the person you're replying to isn't siloing. These people set up a wonderful Catch-22: "we don't need laws or regulations: consumer choice and people voting with their wallets is enough to ensure good behavior. If people really care, they will stop buying it" (people exercise consumer choice and vote with their wallets) "Hey, whoa, not like that! Let's not bring politics into this!"
What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency.
> What the OP and others like them actually want is a total lack of accountability for bad actors, and they will pick whatever argument is convenient in that moment regardless of consistency.
Thank you for eloquently putting this into words.
Having political viewpoints is fine. Protesting at their showrooms is fine. Making purchasing decisions for yourself based on your political viewpoints, also fine.
Punishing people (vandalism, scrawling Nazi symbols, hostile/threatening interactions on the road) for owning a brand of car and not sharing your viewpoints is not fine.
Why is it not fine? It's apparently effective.
Because it's terrorism.
I remember when tech people were deeply suspicious of expanding the definition of "terrorism" to encompass protest and dissent. Now apparently it's awesome and based if Glorious Leader does it.
Only if there’s people inside.
Otherwise it’s vandalism.
That's wrong.
Boeing flies into building.
Missile hits hospital.
Captured dam floods city.
Drone explodes civilian’s head.
Upset leftist scratches swastika on car.
I see the similarities.
Because it is destruction of private property. If you can destroy my car, I can set fire to your house, because, you know, Swastihouse. Our society hinges on protecting individual citizens from vandals and thieves, otherwise we’re back to the jungle.
He is suggesting the opposite. Attacking every company run by someone you disagree with politically is a recipe for not being able to participate in society in any meaningful way. Musk's views are quite normal and are shared by people involved in every company and institution out there. Are you going to boycott them all?
These boycotts only work as isolated, selective outrage. It is the same with countries. If you wanted to be consistent, you'd have to boycott every country in the world. They all do some bad things.
Absolutely, it is impossible to draw a line based on, say how evil the person is or how much they are trying to spread the evil. Because anyone can be evil, we simply cannot take action against anyone!
Throwing around Nazi salutes is normal? Are you writing this from an evil mirror universe?
You, and most who believe that, are ignoring the part where he said something like, "My heart goes out to you!" as he threw his hand from his heart out to the people in the crowd.
You're already misremembering what actually happened - that he says that after two vigorous salutes.
And how does that change anything?
it ends up reading to me as an afterthought or half-hearted attempt to explain away the salute. a salute which was given with a grimace and a violent force, twice; it doesn't match the warmth of a message of 'my heart goes out to you.'
when you say 'my heart goes out to you' your hands typically stay on your heart ( which he seemed to know to do then ) or move very slightly directly out, not diagonally and up.
If I use a word to describe you, and you took it as an insult, but later found out the word was a compliment, is my description of you still an insult?
If someone who increasingly looks like a nazi sympathizer does a nazi salute and says 'my heart goes out to you,' it's still a nazi salute.
not to mention the out and out white supremacists thought that's what it was.
i would probably view this more charitably in his favor if he just apologized or clarified like a mature person. instead he doubles down on 'corrupt' media, calls to defund wikipedia, and makes juvenile nazi jokes.
He knows how to do "My heart goes out to you". The Nazi salute was intentional:
https://loops.video/v/65yj8nROYv
No one is ignoring that, and it's bizarre seeing people defend Musk in such a ridiculous fashion.
The plausible deniability angle would hit a little better if Musk hadn't also been endorsing a number of Nazi-adjacent parties and views, pushed literal white nationalist views repeatedly (which he has been doing for years -- he isn't concerned about birth rates, he is literally only worried about white birth rates while he runs his creepy birthing farm down in Texas, and that's aside from his endless "empathy is our weakness" attacks on migrants), and most recently literally excused Hitler on the basis that really it's the public servants who are to blame.
It's quite incredible really. If the guy wasn't already absolutely soaked with extremely far right rhetoric and beliefs -- save the absurd "oh he's a centrist" nonsense that zero people believe if they have any functioning grey matter at all -- it might have been excusable as something that just looked concerning.
>> Musk's views are quite normal
Citation please
a majority of the American people voted for the guy who explicitly and repeatedly campaigned with him. that's a pretty solid citation.
I wouldn't be so quick to say a 'majority of the American people.' The 'majority' that voted for him is only about 31% of the voting-eligible population.
right. with the availability of early voting, that implies that most of that 69% didn't care enough either way. it was a pretty close election, probably with a slight edge going in for Harris, so that would tend to cause more would-be Trump voters to stay home.
in other words, there are plenty of valid complaints, but "abnormal" or denying a clear democratic mandate aren't any of them.
> The phrase "shooting oneself in the foot" comes to mind.
It should come to mind for elon, not car buyers. He built a car company based on environmentalism that naturally appealed to people with environmental concerns and then pivoted to publicly insulting and denigrating those exact people.
It's not even really political. Elon isn't the first CEO to hold political values that differ from a majority of the company's customers. It's the fact that he goes out of his way to call his most likely customers retards.
It's at the bottom of all reliability lists so I'd argue it's not a "great car"
Making a sacrifice, whether great or small, is a very common ethical behaviour.
I refuse to make purchases on Amazon. Sometimes that's a minor inconvenience: perhaps the alternative has slower delivery. Sometimes purchasing elsewhere probably costs me more than it would on Amazon.
My purchase value is low considering the whole world, but it's not zero. I can also influence my employer's decisions, which are larger — and we use Azure rather than AWS.
The car isn't the problem, but it's tied to an incredibly overvalued stock, which in turn made it possible for Musk to buy massive influence and political power, and wield it irresponsible self-serving ways.
> over anyone's political preferences
I think this phrasing mellows the reality that he has, regardless of intent, displayed Nazi-like behavior. Why not tear at a company whose absentee CEO acts this way? Tesla is not the only great car or the only great car company. Let it thrive or die based on myriad factors, including leadership optics.
Because buying the car essentially gives money to Adolf Hitler. Do you not see that?
Because the better Tesla does the more financial leverage that Elon Musk, a terrible person who is causing a great deal of harm, has.
Because some of us don't want our money to go to Nazism. That's not crazy, it's basic ethical behavior.
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Last I checked Henry Ford was still dead and the current owners of Ford are not known to be Nazis.
Just in the last week Musk reposted "Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did."
I would rather not be getting a car in return for a sizeable donation to someone who is spreading that kind of rhetoric.
Just thinking and putting some thoughts out.
I guess the question is when does accountability stop? If a company and its descendant employees and products are built on an evil foundation and benefit from it, how do we rectify as a society? Ford is hardly alone here, many German, Japanese, and American companies were built on wartime atrocities and exist today from that previous goodwill. If the malignant founder is dead, is then the rest of the machine exempt from responsibility?
I personally think the only way to be truly principled is to boycott basically everything. I imagine the vast majority of people reading this right now are wearing clothes produced by child slavery or eating imported products that clear cut rainforest and villages or whatnot. Society for better or worse has to carry some amount of baggage to just subsist without emotional stress.
I agree, and I've long thought that there is no such thing as a clean dollar. I could donate $100 to an animal shelter, and some % of that will eventually make its way into evil hands. But I'd make that trade-off because the money is being used more for good than bad, and the bad part is largely out of my control.
Musk's wealth is however causing very direct and obvious harm to causes I care about, and he uses his platform of 100M+ followers to spread hateful views which now permeate every conversation. I am tired of him being relevant. There are many alternatives to Tesla so it is easy enough to not give him money.
I also take a forward-facing view. I can't change what people's past dollars were spent on. Instead I care about what my dollars be spent on after I give them to a company. I buy Porsche cars today even though their founder was a Nazi and the company is still majority-owned by the Porsche family. But their founder is dead, and today's Porsche has strongly disavowed Nazi views. Seems my money mostly goes toward developing cool cars while the owners stay out of politics.
> I guess the question is when does accountability stop? If a company and its descendant employees and products are built on an evil foundation and benefit from it, how do we rectify as a society? Ford is hardly alone here, many German, Japanese, and American companies were built on wartime atrocities and exist today from that previous goodwill. If the malignant founder is dead, is then the rest of the machine exempt from responsibility?
Corporations aren't people. Yes, I understand the supreme court rulings on this subject, I'm saying the supreme court is wrong.
Each person in a corporation is responsible for their own actions.
This is a very big problem in our society. A more recent Ford misdeed, the Pinto, was rushed through production despite 40+ crash tests in which the fuel tanks ruptured in every test. People knew it would kill people, did it anyway because they could make more money by letting people die, and shareholders were the ones punished. This is an injustice: the people who pushed through the Pinto committed at the very least manslaughter, and have as far as I can tell, never even been named publicly.
Until we address this problem we're going to keep having these problems. GM in 2014 refused to replace faulty ignition switches which ignited, killing 13 people. The car industry is littered with bodies, but these faults are not limited to automotive companies. In 2010 PG&E refused to fix known problems with a gas line and it exploded, leveling 38 homes. It's a miracle that Boeing hasn't killed someone yet. And this is setting aside simple safety neglect: letting people die isn't just a small cost-cutting measure for healthcare companies, it's a core part of their business model.
These decisions are not made by corporations, they are made by individuals, and as long as we continue to punish corporations for individual decisions, while letting literal murderers move on to the next job, this will keep happening. We need to hold individuals, not corporations, accountable.
Unfortunately, a lot of the people with money and power don't want to be held accountable, and have crafted a legal and propaganda system that avoids that. So until that changes we have Luigi Mangione and tanking Tesla stock--actual justice isn't an option we've been given.
> Boeing hasn't killed someone yet.
The 737-MAX killed 346 people. Which reinforces your point rather than taking away from it. In any sane world the CEO should have gone to prison for that, but instead he walked away with $62 million.
He’s called a nazi because he does nazi signs, endorses the German far right party (not a literal nazi party in itself but endorsed by neo-nazis), keep getting closer and closer to say Hitler did nothing (apparently Hitler didn’t murder millions of people himself so no responsibility according to him).
If Hitler was a candidate today, Elon would endorse him, period.
He could tattoo a svastika on his forehead and people would still find him excuses.
> Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
Why are folks so incapable of making an argument in good faith on this subject? Like, even if you give elon the most benefit of the most doubt you can muster and you manage to handwave away the multiple sig heils and nazi sympathetic tweets as just some sort of quirky behavior and not at all related to nazism - you have to realize that not everyone does.
Let me offer something between your sarcasm and 'Nazi': he retweeted Holocaust denialism (specifically, doubting the fatality numbers).
He did not doubt fatality numbers, he made the point that one man cannot kill millions alone. It is something that requires the resources of a state. One man didn't kill millions, the state apparatus of Nazi Germany did.
There were numerous pogroms of Jews in European history but they pale in comparison to the Holocaust because it was the policy of an advanced, centralised, bureaucratic state.
Whether you support a big state or not, one undeniable fact about them is that they are highly capable. That capability can be used to do evil. cf. The US federal government of the 1890s, for example, was institutionally incapable of genocide.
So I wasn't referring to the recent tweets about public servants perpetrating the Holocaust. I was referring to the incident from late 2023 where he replied "this is the actual truth" to someone who posted that Jewish communities are trying to create divisions in society. It was quickly discovered that the person he replied to had posted plenty of Holocaust denial material - specifically about fatalities. I misremembered the actual tweet that Elon promoted. One could make the argument that he was making a very narrow point, recklessly doing no diligence on who he chose to amplify. He did follow it with an apology tour though.
> Unlike Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
He's called a Nazi because he boosts and endorses Nazi content on twitter, and recently repeatedly emulated an aggressive arm gesture that looks exactly like a Nazi salute.
> Maybe you shouldn't buy Fords then. After all, Henry Ford was basically an actual Nazi.
Henry Ford was indeed a Nazi.
He's also dead, so purchasing a Ford vehicle doesn't support his Nazism any more. But you knew that.
> Unlike Musk, who is called one because... he is against illegal immigration?
This is a straw man.
Nobody thinks Musk is a Nazi because he is against illegal immigration. I think he's a Nazi because he's repeatedly doubled down on racist remarks, Nazi saluted repeatedly, and keeps supporting economic and social policies that Nazis support.
Illegal immigration is and always has been a red herring. The right isn't against illegal immigration--if they were, they would be providing reasonable paths for legal immigration instead of pretending they don't know ladders exist.
It's just a car bro. No one is "shooting oneself in the foot" by not owning Tesla of all things.
That's also my point. No one gains anything by not owning one, either. If one does like and want the car, they only hurt themselves by not buying one. If Tesla went out of business and one couldn't buy a car they wanted, they hurt themselves.
I buy things that make me happy or give me an advantage of some sort. I wouldn't want to lose that. Someone else's politics or personal life don't matter to me.
This "hurting themselves" you're talking about is as hurtful as buying hot chocolate instead of coffee.