I stand corrected, not based.
“Power does not corrupt, it reveals.” John Steinbeck
We’ve also just created a system that rewards psychopaths.
Unless its a 2008 tesla roadster it’s not “pre-madness” and even then it’s very debatable.
“Pre my awareness of world politics”
When is ignorance an acceptable excuse?
Honestly it should be, as long as you correct yourself once you know better. You can’t blame folks for stuff they honestly don’t know.
I think ignorance should excuse people in most cases. Being uneducated about something does not mean they have bad intentions or intend to hurt someone.
Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Of course there are cases where ignorance is unlikely, but in most cases we should accept that ignorance is a part of human nature and society.
People need education, time and to be taught stuff. I grew up without a lot of parental supervision and guidance. This left me ignorant and lacking a lot of skills.
I had to learn a lot as an adult and in most cases by myself. Society has a vast variety of human experiences and upbringing. Schools are lacking and not covering enough about politics, economy, history and society.
I believe we should assume ignorance and good intentions, even from people we assume are far gone into the wrong side of politics.
One of my core beliefs is that people can change, my life experience supports this.
I had a friend who voted for a conservative party in my country, that has now changed completly to the opposite side. I like to think I was a part of helping that transition, by being open, honest and non-judgemental. Also admitting your own mistakes or when you change your own opinion fosters a climate in which change is not damaging the reputational standing of a friend.
That being said, a person buying the cybertruck now, is not someone I would give the benefit of the doubt.
Honestly I view Teslas with these sorts of stickers as even worse than not having them, because Musk was always this bad.
An “I didn’t know and now I regret it” sticker would garner much more sympathy from me.
Your memory is faulty. Musk “was” a visionary savant that tried to advance humanity by making EV mainstream and advancing the mars mission. The facade dropped recently
Edit because people will mention it. Yes musk was always shitty and Its doubtful that he deserves credit for any of his ventures. But most people didn’t realize that until at least 2022.
July 16, 2018. That’s when Musk called that rescue work a pedophilia.
That’s when his antics couldn’t be hand waved as eccentric or trolling. The rumors that he was a shitty boss weren’t back up yet, he was still pro-LGBT and he had renewed public interest in space travel after the shuttles were retired.
But Tesla was popular before that. In 2012, Tesla was the only EV that didn’t completely suck.
Its honestly blown my mind that it’s taken this long to get something that’s even somewhat competitive with the Tesla’s.
Like a Model 3 is $35k, has a near perfect safety score, can go like ~360 miles on a charge, and is a 4 door sedan.
Let’s look at some competitors why don’t we?
- BMW i3 has a 4 star rating, gets like ~300 miles range, and costs $60k
- Honda Prologue does have a 5 star rating, but it only gets ~300 miles range, and is a SUV, it also starts at $50k
- BYD HAN (the only one i could see on their website in the states) only gets “300+ miles” on a charge, but it supposedly only costs around $30k. I also couldn’t find any safety information that didn’t come from the Chinese government so I wont comment on that.
Obviously Musk is a bad guy and you shouldn’t give him money and all that. But it seems like the legacy manufacturers are like 3-4 years behind, and that’s the smallest the gap has ever been.
Tesla had two advantages. Let’s ignore the original Roadster here, nobody bought one anyway and it was not a ground-up design by them.
First off, they started with a “luxury” EV. Luxury cars have high margins and you can more easily fit the price of the big battery in there - and since the S was a pretty big car, you have space for a big battery. The other two mainstream EVs at the time were the tiny Nissan Leaf and the even tinier Mitsubishi I-Miev - you couldn’t fit a big battery in a car that tiny, nor can you charge enough of a price to pay for a big battery.
Note here I said “luxury” because if you compare the Tesla model S to the similarly priced Mercedes-Benz S-Class or BMW 7 series… Yeah no, the quality isn’t anywhere near good enough. But it was still in the same market segment and competed by being completely unique at the time, instead of competing through luxury.
Secondly, they had no ICE heritage. No existing cars to start with. It’s a huge advantage because they could design the platform right away to have a large flat battery pack at the bottom, etc. Meanwhile, Mercedes started selling its’ first serious EV attempt in 2019 and that still had a transmission tunnel because it was based on the GLC SUV (which itself was just a C-Class on stilts lol). It didn’t have a drive shaft, so no need for a tunnel for it. Just a waste of space. The first dedicated EV platform came out in 2021 with the EQS sedan. BMW made the i3 in 2013, but it was tiny, ugly and needed to burn gasoline to extend range. Bleh. First proper EV? The i7, came out in 2022, STILL shares its platform with the ICEs. Audi? First proper EV was the OG E-Tron SUV (now called the Q8 E-Tron, unrelated to the actual Q8) in 2019, shares platform with ICEs, but it was among the first earliest EVs to have a proper heat pump system to keep you warm without draining the battery straight to zero in the winter. Range? Bad. Overall quality? Meh. Performance was decent and it at least feels like a proper car though. Suspension was superb. Felt like a small light car driving it. For a 2.5 ton SUV that’s a compliment. But worst of all? It’s being discontinued, and the downmarket EVs (Q4 E-tron) from Audi are way worse. So of the big 3 Germans, Mercedes is the ONLY one to use a dedicated EV architecture for some of its vehicles.
Look, I’m a huge fan of German cars. Love-hate relationship with Audi, love relationship with BMW and Mercedes. Starting with the Passat B6, I pretend Volkswagen doesn’t exist. But they fumbled it all HARD and they would’ve had the absolute best chance to be Tesla killers. They know how to make big expensive luxury cars. Could’ve launched proper luxury EVs a decade ago and Tesla would be a regional automaker for the US. But they didn’t. Because of their arrogance and complacency. Fucking Jaguar of all companies even beat them to it.
