• @malloc@lemmy.world
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    321 days ago

    I shamefully admit I almost pulled the trigger on a Tesla Model S Plaid back in 2021 or 2022. Flush with a shit ton of cash, but fortunately I was reading reports of production build quality issues, many recalls, and ultimately pulled back my deposit.

    Looking back at it. The one decision I have no regrets on.

    • @13igTyme@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      That’s the part I never understood. Even if you weren’t a Musk fan boy and before Musk showed his true colors, Telsa has always, ALWAYS been shit quality. I remember back in 2015, or so, there was a video of someone finally getting their Telsa and it had a massive crack running the length of the driver side A-pillar, yet they just ignored it.

      • @futatorius@lemm.ee
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        120 days ago

        The Roadsters were well-made. That was when production volumes were low and Musk hadn’t bought the company yet.

      • @LeFantome@programming.dev
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        120 days ago

        If you were an EV early adopter, Tesla is the only brand that delivered the range.

        So, they were the only game in town for a lot of buyers.

        Not nearly as big a problem now. Tesla has real competition which is why sales are crashing.

      • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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        021 days ago

        I’ll have to be honest and admit back when I was in high school or so, I was enthusiastic about electric cars and his seemed like some of the best. He was also opening up the charging standards so that there could be a mixed playing field. Back then, I was likely ready to dismiss small critiques as the retaliation of the fossil fuel industry.

        God I hate old me.

        • @Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          021 days ago

          Tesla was a long way ahead of the competition for a very long time, to the point where they were the only option for a vehicle that was genuinely a replacement for a combustion vehicle.

          Without them, I very much doubt EV market share would be anywhere near what it is today.

            • @LeFantome@programming.dev
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              120 days ago

              Even now, the Leaf only goes 200 miles. Less than a 2018 Model 3. Not good enough.

              I agree, Tesla was the viable option fora long time. The charging network is part of that even still.

              The NACS connector is a big deal.

              • @jabjoe@feddit.uk
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                119 days ago

                Range is important, but so is cost. Teslas are too expensive for Leaf owners.

                My 7 seat EV only does at most 150 miles. But even now, two years later, there isn’t anything else that comfortably fits 7 adults. Let alone not over twice the price. So 200 miles seams ok to me.

                I agree standard charger connectors are important. But CHAdeMO is standard, just not in Europe or North America. Can’t blame the Leaf for not knowing that would happen.

                The Leaf is also one of the very few cars, least in the UK, which can be using bidirectionally. https://www.indra.co.uk/v2g/

                I don’t own a Leaf, but I respect what they did. You see loads of them here.

  • @zyberteq@lemm.ee
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    320 days ago

    That would be good for the EV conversion market. Since they use a lot of Tesla motors and battery packs.

  • Chozo
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    222 days ago

    For its part, Tesla has been trying to boost its image with the help of President Trump.

    Yeah, that’s part of the problem, Elon.

  • @cocolowlander@feddit.nl
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    222 days ago

    For its part, Tesla has been trying to boost its image with the help of President Trump. On Monday, the president took to the South Lawn of the White House to promote Tesla’s cars, apparently buying one despite having campaigned on an explicitly anti-electric vehicle platform.

    Somehow, I don’t think MAGA cult will buy electric vehicles in quantities needed to offset even a fraction of people who used to buy Tesla.

    • @Uniquitous@lemmy.one
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      122 days ago

      Half of them are broke as fuck and the other half are heavily invested in oil company stocks. Elon made a poor choice of allegiance.

      • @T156@lemmy.world
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        122 days ago

        A portion also associate EVs and their ilk with environmentalists, and would probably not buy one even if their very lives depended on it.

    • @tburkhol@lemmy.world
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      022 days ago

      Imagine the CEO of Browning or American Rifles helping Joe Biden pick out a new gun from a display in the state dining room.

      • @LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        -122 days ago

        The difference is Biden is a gun owner. So at least it would be buying a product he actually has. There has been incidents referencing him and his wife having at least a shotgun (so 2+ guns)

        With Trump hating on electric cars like he had for so long, and not knowing how to drive, it’s a bit different.

    • @JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      221 days ago

      I feel bad for Nikola Tesla having his name associated with all this nonsense. Not even death let him escape from rich assholes taking credit for the work of others.

        • LustyArgonian
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          121 days ago

          https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikola-tesla-the-eugenicist-eliminating-undesirables-by-2100-130299355/

          The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

          Oof, that’s a tough read.

          • @futatorius@lemm.ee
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            020 days ago

            It was a common view, especially among progressives, from the late 1890s to the start of WW2. The temperance movement embraced eugenics, so did the family-planning movement, and through it, early feminism.

            • LustyArgonian
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              112 days ago

              Eh, I don’t buy this. There were always dissenters and weirdos and people knew differently. There were trans pioneers. There were vegans. There were abolitionists. Not everyone was like that.

              Tesla wasn’t a biologist, let’s leave it at that. Humanity’s greatest biological strength is their adaptability, which requires variety. Eugenicism is inherently disadvantageous to humanity because it reduces their ability to adapt and respond to environmental threats. A counter to that would be E.O. Wilson, see Half Earth, a short read that emphasizes biodiversity.

              Eugenics only makes sense to cowardly people who are afraid of being treated how they would treat others. It’s a bad idea to Cavendish Banana Hapsberg people (oh and btw eugenics is deeply tied to incest kinks, see Elon and Trump).

              Again, this is thinking that is pretty intuitive if you aren’t bloodthirsty and pathetic

          • @Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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            020 days ago

            I have read a number of comments from people with illnesses or other issues that are genetic, saying they don’t want to pass their problems onto the next generation.

            So, bizarrely enough, there is a certain amount of eugenics happening, it’s just purely voluntary.

          • @Krudler@lemmy.world
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            021 days ago

            Imagine disregarding the entire domain of Tesla’s work - changing the entire world as we know it with his research and innovations - and the comment they need to make for online points is some virtue-oriented pat-me-on-the-back-im-ethical blorp about random social norms of the time. lol but cry.

              • @Krudler@lemmy.world
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                20 days ago

                I think he was just intuitively good at seeing what exactly is the portrayal of electricity and magnetism. A unique genius with a certain insight.

                I sometimes feel that there were many businesses concerns that grew around his early research and they were so successful that his newer research must have been a threat to that.

                Through all the mystery, half-truths, and frankly magical thinking people have with this man, it’s really hard to know what he was up to in his final days of work, before he became a homeless bag-man. I somehow feel, without making any kind of declarative statement, that he was working on transmission of energy with longitudinal (vs transverse) waves, and discovering methods of conveying and extracting electrical potential from and through Earth.

                Inline Edit: To expand on the above paragraph: The Earth doesn’t really “absorb” electrons like a pillow absorbing a ping pong ball. The energy in the negative charges that the Earth grounds must move in waves, therefore they’re grounded but now the waves are bouncing around in the Earth; that energy still exists and may sum with other waves in an additive way. I believe, again without making a declarative statement, that Tesla recognized this and was pioneering research on how to transmit energy via, and gather momentum from those waves. There were successes transmitting energy and encoded information through Earth which can be repeated today with garbage dump salvage electronics. I believe he was discovering a few dangerous things as well: Harmonic discharges of electrical devices to ground could be captured (think telecommunications and military); and he was conducting novel elemental research on tapping Earth to harmonize and extract force(s) - what these things portended led to his complete scientific alienation.

                The word “free energy” always obliterates any form of rational discourse. But there was something to it in a way, but to clarify, not in a literal way. Not in the sense of violating fundamental laws of conservation, rather seeing the “other side of the coin” that if the Earth is effectively infinite Ground then it’s also effectively an “infinite” source of power if harvested.

                I’ve never really “researched” the man directly but what I do know comes from quite a bit of my casual STEM self-study over decades.

  • @RedditSucks88@lemmy.world
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    220 days ago

    Most people who own these crappy cars can’t even really afford them. Now they are in big trouble because they can’t get rid of them. Lol.

  • LustyArgonian
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    121 days ago

    Who will service those when Tesla goes out of business? Where will you get parts? Yeah, it’s time to jump ship

    • @LeFantome@programming.dev
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      220 days ago

      There are already aftermarket batteries. The biggest problem would be autobody panels.

      That said, while I hope Tesla stock continues to crash, not much chance of them going out of business.

    • @Ferroto@lemmy.world
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      120 days ago

      You can still get aftermarket parts for Pontiac vehicles. Then again Pontiac didn’t go around suing everyone who even thought about making aftermarket parts for their vehicles.

      • @HiTekRedNek@lemm.ee
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        119 days ago

        Pontiac was a part of GM, who standardized most parts across all their brands decades ago.

        There’s no parent company for Tesla.

  • Singletona082
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    122 days ago

    Same people proudly claiming the market is self regulating shocked when the market responds to them being openly fascist cunts.

  • katy ✨
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    121 days ago

    spacex and starlink need to be the next to go.