Summary
Elon Musk’s vocal support for Donald Trump and promotion of far-right conspiracy theories has alienated many Tesla owners, who now express embarrassment over their cars.
Sales of anti-Musk stickers, such as “Anti Elon Tesla Club,” have surged as owners distance themselves from Musk’s politics.
Once admired by liberals for his environmental advocacy, Musk’s alignment with Trump and leadership in his administration have sparked backlash.
While Tesla remains the dominant EV maker, analysts warn Musk’s polarizing image may impact sales as competition grows and Trump plans to cut EV tax incentives.
EVs were not made to save the environment. They were made to save the auto industry.
To be honest, it was almost like they tried to prove EV wasn’t feasible, making ridiculously laughable small cars that could only go 60 km/h, and had even worse range. Then they claimed it should be hydrogen, which for a decade went absolutely nowhere. That was until Tesla proved a functional attractive EV was indeed possible.
I hate Elon Musk, but Tesla was a huge leap forward for fully battery electric cars.
Good thing that Tesla was doing this thing before Musk came along. All Musk did was buy it.
Absolutely, Musk didn’t create the concept or invent anything, he just bought the right thing at the right time. And had some very skillful people working for him. Something only possible if you already have money. Still Tesla struggled early on financially, and he did mange to help Tesla through to success. I don’t think he was as crazy back then as he is now.
Tesla didn’t even do anything new. They put the right product to market at the right time.
This is not true, Tesla did a lot of things that were new. They used Lithium batteries, made an electric car that was fast sporty and had long range, instead of the typical “city” electrics. And they built a charging network.
To say the Tesla wasn’t new, is like saying iPhone wasn’t new, because smartphones already existed.
Funny you should mention iPhone, because it was the same thing. Yes the whole package didn’t exist in that form, but all the parts were already in use. They both got lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
Lithium batteries hadn’t been used before because the technology had just reached the point where they were viable for use in a vehicle. Electric motor technology had also just reached the price to performance to size necessary to make a sporty vehicle. The original Tesla was unique for it’s time, but not because of some genius design. They were just lucky enough to be doing it at a time when others tech was reaching the punt that made it possible.
The Palm Treo I had when the iPhone came out could do all of the stuff the iPhone could do, but you had to work at it. I miss that phone…
No that’s not funny, that was on purpose, because all the elements already existed, but nobody had put it together to work nearly as well.
When iPhone came out, it completely obliterated Blackberry Microsoft and Nokia in the smartphone market. It was so far ahead in design probably about 10 years. So you can’t claim they did nothing new. Please note that I don’t personally use Apple products, because I find their control freak ecosphere policy disgusting, I made that decision already in the early 90’s, and Apple has only gotten worse since, so I haven’t changed my decision not to use their products. But when I saw the presentation of the iPhone and the iPad because I’m a tech nerd, I immediately saw it was a superior product to anything on the market at the time.
With Tesla it’s very similar, other car makers messed around with embarrassing underwhelming lackluster designs with maybe 40 km range and ugly 2 seater city car format, that could generally only do 60-80 km/h. GM had had a research project with a pretty cool looking car, but it was run at a massive deficit, and was still expensive to buy, and it was still underwhelming.
The Prius was probably the height of electric even though it was only a hybrid, at the time, and could only do 7km on battery! SAo not much of a hybrid. And Toyota allegedly sold that at a deficit too! Many claimed that what Tesla aimed to do was impossible.
So no matter how much I despise both Apple and Musk, it must be acknowledged that they were ahead of their time with groundbreaking products.
Being ahead by about 10 years is not just luck. That takes ingenuity and a lot of clever engineering. Musk was not responsible for either, he just stepped in and bought Tesla at the right time.
I appreciate that people love to gargle tech Bros, but the truth of the matter is what they were most lucky with was having access to the capital necessary to bring those ideas to market. Do you think Steve Jobs or Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were the only ones to have the idea to put those technologies together? They were just the ones lucky enough to have the means to do it.
I already mentioned that.
That’s speculation, as I already mentioned, lots of companies were already researching in the field before Tesla and Apple, even companies that had more money and bigger research budgets in both cases. Somehow you feel a need to make the effort and result negligible, despite it obviously was not. Of course we would probably have arrived at similar solutions eventually, but it may have taken a decade.
A person having an idea is inconsequential, ideas are cheap. Putting in the effort and resources and actually making it work is what counts.
It is a bit more complex than that. EVs are the necessary replacement for use cases where a car is needed. It is far from reality to think, that we are able to life in a world without cars. There are use cases where a car is absolutely required and here EVs are better than gasoline powered ones. However, a lot of people don’t really need one. Especially in the bigger cities it is very easy to live without a car(its also sometimes much faster because when driving in the city you are standing/crawling forwards most of the time)
And the majority of that is the auto industry’s fault.