Tesla Sales Down
Via CNN: Tesla sales plunge 13%. The brief write-up calls it “the largest drop in deliveries in its history.”
I am reminded of Michael Jordan’s quip, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Whether he was joking or not, the notion that wrapping up one’s brand in politics can have downsides.
It can especially have downsides when your key demographic largely adheres to one side of the spectrum and you decide to go all-in on the other side.
I am also reminded of this.
Which then reminds me of this.
He was specifically talking about taking in immigrants (source: CNN). The whole interview is here.
“If they had another four years, they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing states not swing states,” Musk told Rogan. “They would just, they would be blue states. Then they would … win the presidential; they’d win the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
[…]
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.
While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
Sooo, he wants us to have empathy for stock prices. But, you know, not for refugees nor tens of thousands of fired federal employees. And you can forget about worrying about the degree to which earthquake relief to Myanmar was hampered by the closure of USAID or the substantial death toll from the shuttering of US humanitarian aid.
Will no one think of the stock prices?
The added layer of hypocrisy here is the degree to which Musk revels in the alt-right’s usage of crass humor while constantly deploying the “just joking!” response.
But, you know, Tim Walz is an “evil” “creep” because he used Tesla stock as a political punching bag.
I don’t throw the word around lightly, but this sure looks like an oligarchic response to me: money being more important than people.
This is clearly not a person who should have the power he has been given.
Of course, I suppose some readers might assume that the decline in sales is the Biden administration’s fault, given the horrible economy he left behind, and it is just now catching up with us. As such, Musk’s tethering of himself to Trump is all just superfluous. Further, the fact that Musk and Trump had a massive photo op on the White House lawn was just a couple of bros talking cars, as bros do.
********************@
This makes no sense. Flipping the order shows why: Musk thinks empathy is destroying society, but he also believes in it and that you should care about other people.
So he’s either lying that he believes in it (that’s where my money is), or, he’s okay with society-destroying empathy.
I’m not sure how this guy ended up being called a “genius,” but he most certainly is not one. I’m hoping that Trump unloads him as a liability soon, but given Musk’s wealth, this toxic relationship might drag on for a while.
So, stopping climate change is now on the back oil burner? Tesla made EVs cool and the other mfr EVs are just expensive without the cool factor.
But one must wonder about how many Democrats are stopping and having a think. I saw that 40% of Tesla owners were Democrats. They naturally would more likely live in a Democrat dominated area where the Tesla attacks are more likely due to tacit permission from the local politicians. Nothing forces thought that being the victim of the terrorism you supported.
Tesla owners now facing Democrat driven violence, wealthy landowners of burned out property in CA now facing the reality of Democrat driven bureaucratic interventionism as they hope to rebuild….
And people are starting to weigh and consider
@Jen: It’s frequently observed that a high IQ makes it easier to rationalize whatever nonsense you happen to believe. A problem exacerbated by being very rich and surrounded by yes men. Dunning-Krueger isn’t overcome by IQ.
I’m hoping Trump keeps Musk highly visible.
Cybertrucks seem to be appearing more frequently here in red SW FL. I see a lot of them in graphic wraps advertising local companies. Probably a better idea here than in, say, San Francisco. But I think Cybertrucks would look better in the more appropriate panzergrau.
@Jen: I’m
He was born white and rich.
I’d be curious to see a poll of Tesla owners as to what they think of Musk now.
@JKB:
Republicans put it on the back burner. Are y’all now ready to admit you’ve been lying about climate change is real and stop blocking efforts to mitigate it.
@gVOR10:
From your keyboard to god’s ears.
@JKB: Daft comment, on several points.
One, climate change is not “on the back burner”–that’s a silly takeaway from Musk’s descent into utterly toxic, ketamine-fueled behavior.
Two, Democrats are indeed “having a think.” They are either offloading their Teslas or affixing “I bought this before I knew what an asshole he was” bumper stickers.
Three, Tesla dealerships are in more left-leaning areas. That’s where the people with money and a preference for EVs live. The dealerships are being protested, as the dealerships are conveniently located in protesters’ areas. Win-win, as they don’t have to burn much fossil fuel to get there. It has nothing to do with local leadership, as we’ve seen from the pictures of police lined up to protect the stores, in red hotbeds, like the city of Chicago.
As a PR person, I’m quite pleased at Musk’s tumble. He’s said for years that he doesn’t “do” PR, he thinks it is a waste of money. Much of modern PR is reputation management, so as far as I’m concerned, Musk is welcome to swim forever in the cesspool he’s created for himself. This was all avoidable, but he–like so many arrogant people–thought he was somehow protected from the ramifications of his own actions. The whining and sniveling is hilarious.
Chambers of commerce used to keep the lid on the “immigrantz are eevil” nonsense by pointing out that every factory farm, chicken processing plant, construction jobsite, and restaurant [they’re in every county in the country] keeps labor costs down by employing illegal immigrants.
Oopsie!
And those illegals pay into Social Security through their wages.. which of course they’ll never receive.
Stopping entry of those illegals would also happen immediately if ICE raided those businesses and fined 5-10 of the businesses 50k for each employee on-site without a green card. But, as we have seen, disappearing is so much more fun to Republicans, the party of family!
@JKB:
There are many, many alternative EVs. And none of them are sold by Nazis. So, zero negative impact from sanctioning psychos.
That was a particularly limp effort from you.
“This is clearly not a person who should have the power he has been given.” And ironically, he was given that power by the other person who should not have the power he has been given. He has zero empathy because he has zero self-awareness and, like Trump, he has no sense of humor and no true friends. Like Trump, Musk is a guy who should be on an analyst’s couch.
@JKB:
Rightwing extremist oligarch and drug addicted illegal immigrant nepo baby Musk made Tesla uncool. He arrogantly and stupidly alienated his largest customer bloc, who are discovering other EVs are just fine without the Nazi factor.
Meh. Trump launched a terror attack on Congress on Jan 6 trying to overturn an election and kill politicians including his Republican VP Mike Pence.
Yet Republican politicians still unthinkingly lick his incompetent, bloated orange rear end like obedient slaves. So.
Yes, that’s why Tesla sales are down an in-house record 13%, and why unlikeable, unpopular Musk just lost the Wisconsin supreme court race by double-digits. Turns out mass layoffs and Nazi salutes are poor brand management.
Womp womp.
@Michael Reynolds:
JKB and Musk have issues in common.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Nah, they each need a team.
@Kylopod:
This may be paywalled, but the headline says a lot: One guy making anti-Musk(sic) stickers for Tesla(sic) cars is raking in $100,000 a month
I’ve seen a few Texlas on the road, but never been in one. I’ve heard the build quality leaves a lot to be desired. Many videos on the Xybertruck stress the many build flaws. In particular many say the interior neither looks nor feels like that of a vehicle that costs that much.
It may be the chief nazi enjoyed early success by selling a reliable, if not good, EV when the market lacked many options. Now that other manufacturers offer more variety, Texla may be dropping down to the level of its quality. And there’s the whole matter of the end of tax credits for EV purchases. And on top of all that, the fact that few want to be associated, however tenuously, with the nazi oligarch destroying the government.
This leaves out the added fees for not self-driving features, the cars left paralyzed during software updates (cars are not phones, BTW), the fatal accidents when employing the not self-driving features, etc.
@JKB: As is well known, Teslas are the only EVs in existence.
I would accuse you of just spouting right-wing taking points, but surely you are a sufficiently independent thinker and came up with this on your own.
I stuck with Musk a long time. Because of the EVs and because I like his top-level strategy for SpaceX. I mean, he hired Gwynne Shotwell. That’s a plus.
You might recall other posters here being angry with me for standing up for him.
And now, he has squandered all that good reputation with me. I recall a friend who worked as a first-tier manager for Tesla, who said, “To work for Tesla, you have to believe in the mission. We work really hard. And Elon is not a people person.”
I can tolerate a guy who is not a people person if he also isn’t an egomaniac who thinks the world should just shut up and do what he tells them. I don’t know what happened to him, but it wasn’t good.
@Jay L Gischer:
Substance abuse, probably.
@Kathy: I’ve ridden in a Model S. Also in a Model X. There are lots of them here in Silicon Valley. I see them on the road all the time.
They are amazing. Tesla did not merely slam batteries and electric motors into a conventional chassis with conventional controls. They rethought everything. Also, they are super, super fun to drive. *cough*best torque at low rpm*cough*. That means they leave a stoplight like a bullet leaves a rifle. But without the noise. Amazing.
The reliability issues could well be there. Tesla does not have model years. That means that each vehicle has an independent manifest that must be consulted to obtain new parts, which might result in delays in getting those parts. There may be other manufacturing problems. This likely reflects Elon’s lack of concern for operations versus big ideas. He needs a Tim Cook to his Steve Jobs (though he isn’t one percent the salesman that Steve Jobs was).
As I described quite recently, I try to be receptive when men voice their vulnerability. I want to encourage that, not mock it. But for the thing Musk feels vulnerable about to be money? Not the difficulties that his own children face? Not the trouble an immigrant family might face?
That’s messed up.
@DK:
It sure didn’t help.
Actually, I’m disappointed that sales were down only 13%, really was hoping that they would have been down a France like 65% or German like ~50%.
But we can be hopeful for Q2.
The doors are hard to open manually. People have not been able to exit when Teslas have caught fire, unpleasant way to die.
@Jay L Gischer:
Microsoft rethought everything when it released WINDOS*, and they took a massive hit. I’ve seen video of the interior of Texlas, and I find the touch screen controls a major turn off. This is based on using the phone’s touchscreen inside the car. It’s not always safe to do so, and even when it is I tend to miss. Some functions also seem to require quite a bit of drill down (ie open this to get to that to open the thing you want).
So, color me skeptical.
@Jay L Gischer:
I first heard of the nazi in chief when XpaseS was trying to launch the Xalcon I demonstrator**. I was favorably impressed, even after the failed launch attempts (some of which were comical, like the first stage bumping into the second stage mid flight).
The nazi struck me as a different type of plutocrat. One who wanted to use his money to do something with it, not just to make more money. To some extent that’s still the case, only now he went for political power. that’s definitely not a good combination. He’s also reverted to oligarch form in the chase for more money.
He reminds me of Caligula. When the tyrant emperor succeeded to the throne, the people loved him, because he replaced the much hated Tiberius. A short time later he developed some kind of illness, from which he eventually recovered. Once back in action, he began to do mean, tyrannical, and insane things. Many thought the disease had changed him, others that he simply revealed his true colors. He wound up killed by his own bodyguards.
Not that having over a dozen children with several women is in any way sane…
*Windows 8 Is Not a Desktop OS.
**Too small a payload capacity, and limited altitude. It was not a serious launch work horse.
@Steven L. Taylor: JKB’s game has really fallen off recently. I think he should maybe go back to simply spouting right-wing talking points if his in-house material is going to keep being this bad.
@Jay L Gischer:
We looked at Teslas like a decade ago, before Musk went full Nazi. The driving experience was fun then, but is no longer at all unique. I rejected it for three reasons: the interior looks like a Courtyard by Marriott, or a lame futuristic set. Cheap and plasticky. And putting controls on a screen rather than the steering wheel was idiotic and unsafe, the work of a try-hard engineer. Finally, no convertibles. I wanted a convertible.
As for being fast off the light you don’t want to do that in Vegas, the amount of red-light running in this city is insane. Besides, how much faster do I want to be than a Mercedes E450?
According to Politico, Musk will be leaving the White House and Trump’s inner circle shortly.
I guess Trump wasn’t too thrilled with the election results in Wisconsin.
As for the cybertruck, it’s the new PT Cruiser or Pontiac Aztec. The fugly piece of crap dorks think will make them look cool.
@JKB: I’ve pointed this out before but when you use “whataboutism” as an argument it is doomed to fail. While you are wailing about liberals and democrats no longer favoring Teslas, you leave out the point that you should be cheering the Tesla slide because EVs are liberal. Are you? See? Makes no sense as a rhetorical device.
@CSK:
ETTD. Everything Trump Touches Dies. It’s the curse even a billionaire can’t escape.
RIP Tesla.
@Jay L Gischer:
I don’t know if you are referring to me. I don’t recall being angry, but I could be wrong. Perhaps others were.
If I am remembering that thread, and my contemporaneous thoughts, correctly, I thought your personal connection to those on the spectrum clouded your assessment of Musk.
On the flip side, my frustration with great man theory, particularly, the American obsession with idolizing businessmen even when that person did little of the actual innovation, could be seen to have clouded mine. Maybe it continues to cloud it.
Yes, visionaries are important. Yes, management is a skill that should be well-compensated.
But Musk has cultivated (ha) an image of a polymath—business, computer/electrical/industrial/aerospace engineer, software dev, top Diablo IV player, free speech champion, psychopharmacologist, economist—that doesn’t comport with reality nor with what he has accomplished himself.
In fact, plenty of pieces have interviewed individuals who have achievements in those fields who relate that when they discuss details with Musk, he betrays a lack of technical knowledge in that field. Yet, he argues with them.
Is it hubris? Narcissism? Spectrum? Did they suture the hair plugs to his brain? I don’t know.
—
A general point:
One of the issues I have, not limited to OTB, is that my views on specific topics are usually connected to other observations and viewpoints. Some have been fleshed out here over the years. But it is unreasonable to expect that anyone who responds to one of my posts on a specific topic knows, or recalls, any of that. Even if they remember the post, they would also have to remember that I, as opposed to another commenter, wrote it.
So, I’m usually stuck either mounting a hobby horse—repeating general points—or accepting the risk that comments on a specific topic seem over-calibrated and under-warranted.
Other than starting my own blog or writing an unlikely to be finished, much less published, book, there is really no solution to this.
The clip of Musk almost crying made me quite happy when I saw it the other day. Now we know what really hurts Musk.
@Michael Reynolds: The Aztec had some really nice features that everyone overlooks because of it’s look.
The cybertruck in comparison is just a dumpster fire of bad decisions. The half ass nature of assembled Teslas turned me off the brand fairly early on.
Tesla is up almost 5% on the prospect of Musk leaving DOGE. More than ever Tesla seems like a meme stock. Every quarter an analyst says they are just about to make some incredible breakthrough.
@Michael Reynolds: You are welcome to your preferences. I like the cars.
There is never one thing that works for everyone. I mean, we have multiple brands of salt, for pete’s sake.
AND, I am very likely to get an EV soon, and it won’t be a Tesla. I am hoping to get a Jeep Recon when they come out.
@Scott: The funny thing is that not that long ago I had more than one Fox-watching family member sharing mocking stories of Teslas catching fire or not working well in the cold as evidence of silly libs are with their little toy electric cars.
But now the right-wing talking point is that Tesla must be defended.
And for the record, I do not support vandalizing Teslas and certainly do not support attacking dealerships. Protests, however, are perfectly cool with me.
And I am not pleased that Tesla sales are down because it means possibly fewer EVs on the road (but, again, they aren’t the only EVs). I am pleased because Musk deserves pushback for what he has been doing via DOGE.
@Michael Reynolds: Yep, lots of other EV-fish in the sea. At our house we have a Kia, a Cadillac Lyric and a Polestar. I had a Tesla a few years ago and didn’t like it because it makes you do everything through the screen. Other EVs are just better.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The MAGAs have to reverse course on a lot of things, don’t they? Hate something one week, love it the next.
It must be exhausting.
@Jay L Gischer: I disagree; they are not actually fun to drive. If you’re someone who likes to adjust your climate control, get a car with actual buttons. Teslas were launched when there was a viable marketing angle for having a car that was basically a phone with wheels. It isn’t viable any more because everyone remembered after five minutes driving one that they like having buttons. Their latest move was to remove the stalks from the steering wheel. Ridiculous.
@Steve V: And the build quality is terrible–rattles and squeaks galore. Our Chevy Volts were much better built than my son’s Model S (now returned and replaced with a Porsche). We went with the Polestar 2 as our first 100% EV and have been very, very pleased.
@Steven L. Taylor: My right wing rural life conservative family back home still hate EVs and some of them have outright voiced their dislike of Elon Musk.
Not a good sign when 100% GOP voting rural america conservatives still hate Elon despite Trump praising him.
@James R Ehrler: I have not been in a Tesla that didn’t have build quality issues. Maybe it’s self selecting or something I dunno but it’s not a good look.
The controls are just outright stupid for the most part. The screen is cool and all but having to go deep into a menu for basic stuff while driving seems not so safe..
The build quality issues must be a somewhat more recent development. I haven’t been in one for a while.
A friend of mine commented that Teslas are fun to drive for people who don’t like driving. Notably, he’s a manual-shift person (as am I).
Friends of ours really like their Rivian. They say it has performed well, even in very cold temps here in NH, and not that long ago they used it to pull a neighbor out of the ditch (said neighbor was surprised that an electric vehicle had the ability/torque to do so).
@Steven L. Taylor: BTW, forgot to add that there is a typo in the article, Tim Walz not “Tim Waltz”. Don’t know if its autocorrection or just the mind’s ear, but this is very common.
@JKB:
And since you never stop and think, I guess that means you can be dumb as a post? Got it. Good talk, bro, good talk.
@Kathy:
I saw pictures of the Cybertruck interior in an article about the throttle pedal cover coming loose and jamming the throttle. I cracked it looked like the interior I cobbled together in my garage for my (very low dollar) race car. Bare aluminum and plain black padding. Except I had analog gauges and physical switches.
The same article noted the Cybertruck has electric steering. A lot of cars have electric power steering, this is apparently pure fly by wire, no mechanical manual steering backup. Aircraft do that, with careful, expensive detail design and triple redundancy. I’d have to question whether under Musk’s cost cutting Tesla even did a basic Failure Modes and Effects analysis. (Which is exactly what it sounds like. What can go wrong? What happens then? Followed by what we’ll do so we, and the crew, can live with that.)
@Matt:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Actually, I think that the Muskrat Cybertruck development team deserves praise for finally bringing a “truck” to market that out-uglies the late 70s El Camino.
I’m not sure what Musk leaving DOGE would even mean. I’m against it, because I suspect the vandalism of DOGE would continue either way, and it’s helpful to have a single target. But if he does leave DOGE, does that mean all the twenty year-old brown shirts go with him? Or do they stick around? If they do, who else would they listen to, exactly? They’re there because they’re members of the Musk cult. What state would all of the systems and organizations they’ve broken be in, if they left?
This seems all very on-brand for Musk, in that he goes somewhere, sets it on fire, and then leaves after declaring victory. But it’s not going to get better if he does leave. Not for him, not for Trump, not for us. It just might make it harder to explain to people why everything is worse.
@JKB:
One must wonder why Elon Musk thought it was a good idea to run down, deride, denigrate and trash California liberals, many of whom were first adopters of his Tesla EV’s and continued to purchase his EV’s until he went all in on MAGA Chainsaw Republicanism.
Brilliant marketing strategy, right?
@Flat Earth Luddite:
El Camino? That things uglier than a Pontiac Aztec.
@Kevin: That’s a really interesting question (what happens to the DOGE doofuses when Musk leaves).
The single point of contact with a direct line to the President’s ear probably enabled them. I suspect more push back from career-line people if Musk leaves.
@Kevin: @Jen:
The Musk bros go home, carrying drives full of stolen government data. When it’s all said and done Musk will have saved zero dollars while ruining many lives.
@Michael Reynolds: “As for the cybertruck, it’s the new PT Cruiser or Pontiac Aztec.”
With ya completely on two out of three, but I always loved the PT Cruiser…
@wr: All three share the Harley Davidson marketing theory – I can show my individuality by buying a mass produced product.
@gVOR10:
I saw an early review by Marques Brownlee on Youtube. He mentioned the drive by wire feature, which has been talked about in automotive circles for decades. The review wasn’t negative at all, but I don’t think he tried using it for stuff people use pickups for, like towing, carrying tons of stuff and tools, etc. He did mention at least one other electric pickup, Ford I think, which was far cheaper.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
You know that’s Spanish for “The Camino”? 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
That really hurt. My wife had a PT Cruiser convertible. It had a turning radius of about a block and a half and the vaunted Chrysler reliability, but it was fun car for us dorks. Even if it didn’t make us cool. And however stupid we looked when we drove it, no one ever said it made us look like Nazis.
@Kevin: Musk’s comments indicate he’s living in the RW info bubble, and he seems truly shocked at the political pushback his business is taking. It may have also occurred to him that by taking a side his government funding of Space X is at risk if (when) the political winds change. Hard to imagine a D majority congress approving anything “Musk” now that his grandiose political ambitions have been revealed.
And he seems to view this as surprising.
Anyone know if there’s been any impact on Tesla’s utility-scale grid storage business? That’s their fastest growing division, and an increasing volume of battery production is going into those rather than cars. I think I’ve read they have some advantages for US sales: US battery production; vertical integration of batteries, power electronics, and software; and the software fits into US utilities’ management schemes.
@dazedandconfused: As of this moment, SpaceX is the only way to take US crew to the ISS other than buying whatever seats the Russians might sell us. Also Falcon 9/Heavy are the only vehicles certified for high-value NASA/NRO/DOD payloads with available launches. ULA’s remaining Atlas Vs are all booked. ULA’s Vulcan was very recently certified under what appear to be somewhat questionable standards, but there are very few available. Boeing’s Starliner capsule is probably a year away from certification, and may never fly any of its allocated ISS missions. Eric Berger at Ars Technica has an interview piece up with the two astronauts that flew in Starliner last year. It was apparently much dodgier than anyone has said to date.
@wr: I like the idea of the PT Cruiser — rake design cues from the past, when cars didn’t all look the same. I don’t think the execution quite worked. Volkswagen did it better when they brought back the cute Nazi car.
@Jay L Gischer: My experiences were earlier on with Model 3s. The biggest complaint about the car was the half ass fixes to production issues that were showing up. Basically duct taping the cars together to get them out the door. The cybertruck is experiencing issues galore in a similar vein.
@gVOR10: The 60s series SS el caminos were awesome looking. The wife of Finnegan from roadkill has a beautiful 69 el camino.
I’d love to know how Tesla shares remain so wildly overvalued. What other company could announce a quarterly drop of 13% in sales with barely any impact on the share price?
@Michael Cain:
Yeah, XpaceS is safe for the next few years. ULA is slower in development, and more expensive per launch. Rocket Lab still ahs to scale up from its Electron rocket, not to mention making it reusable.
The one near threat is Lex Bezos’ Blue Origin. They successfully launched their semi-heavy lift New Glenn rocket last year, and it has a reusable first stage (though they failed to recover it). One expects they’ll get better, and they’ll be able to match the nazi’s company in price. they match it in payload mass, and exceed it in payload size.
On the other hand, Lex’s company is about as fast as an arthritic turtle that likes to take its time. It was founded around the same time as XpaceS, and only now they’re doing orbital launches (and the joy ride suborbital rocket is a waste of a dead end)
@Michael Cain:
Congress’s goal would then be to force Musk to sell it.
@Michael Cain: Not sure about Tesla specifically, but battery storage is struggling in some respects. Mostly the issue of fires, and that has spread enough that some communities are wary about utility scale installations.
Musk is the poster boy for my proposal that as wealth increases, a person’s ownership right over it decreases until at some point, the marginal property rights vanish to zero. I’d suggest a billion as that marker, but could be persuaded otherwise.
This is because the only way to accumulate wealth is to grow farther and farther away from wealth by labor, towards wealth by rentseeking and political machination.
Even the most talented superstar in a field can only earn somewhere in the low millions through labor; The rest is from investments and arbitrary ownership rights like IP.
@Chip Daniels:
An interesting discussion on a different day might be intellectual property and copyrights remaining with the originating creator and limiting them to the life of the creator. Also vis-a-vis ownership by corporate entities buying ownership.
@gVOR10:
@matt:
IMO, pre 70s Camino’s were awesome. In the 70s, they bloated (like most US cars) were bloated and bone ugly. YMMV
@Chip Daniels:
I’d be fine with the cap being $25M, but I am a Luddite.
@Steven L. Taylor:
“Hypocrisy” describes a singular event. What we have here is raging narcissism.
Of course we should ALL be pained that his personal monetary venture that propelled him into all-powerful status, is experiencing a reversal of fortune. After all, he is us and we are him. Which is why he can upend a 250 year arc of societal-wide development and remake it to comport to his own personal fantasy world of elite power players bent on colonizing the Cosmos
@Steve V:
I drove a Hyundai Ioniq and absolutely loved it. I really want that to be my next car. With tariffs, who knows when that purchase will happen.
@Rob1: I don’t think raging narcissism is strong enough. Based on twitter comments, Musk sometimes seems to think he’s the only real person around, that everyone else is a simulation, or something. He’s here to save the world, and we’re all NPCs. Or he’s in the Matrix. Or who knows what, exactly. But it’s pathological, whatever it is.
Like Trump, I’m not convinced he understands that other people are real, and continue to exist when they close their eyes. And have wants and needs that are completely unrelated to their own.I really struggle imagining what it’s like being in their heads, and part of the problem is that I don’t think it would ever occur to them to try and understand what it’s like to be in mine.
So… to be caught up in all this…
I’m about as progressive liberal as they come. And recently retired, I became “low income” in 2023.
Living in Colorado, I decided to take advantage of the EV incentives in 2024. Love all the benefits and cost savings of EVs.
I Compared the qualifying EV’s, I was about to buy a VW ID4 for $25k, but they has a lengthy stop sale.
So Tesla Model Y AWD was #2 on the list. I actually ended up buying the Model Y Performance because of the information below in early October 2024.
MSRP — $52,500
Fed incentive — $7500
Colorado incentive — $5350
Colorado Cash 4 clunkers – $6000
Xcel Energy incentive – $5500
Xcel Energy chrger incent. – $2300
Tesla discount – $5200
That means that i purchased that Tesla for just over $20k… right before Elon completely went fascist.
On the one hand, that Tesla can blow the doors off a few Vettes that I have owned, it’s fun to drive (or at times not drive), and I have any depreciation for the next 10 years already addressed.
But man. What a complete F’up on Elon’s part.
I completely remember Japanese import cars being smashed in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and now they are common as dirt and no one has an issue.
This too shall pass.
(Likely me passing you in that MYP. Mann the thing is crazy fast.)
@Liberal Capitalist:
Just purchase one of these, and put it in your back window.