Eight years of Nissan Leaf ownership, and the only comments I’ve ever gotten at lights were positive. Used to be my friend hated to go with me in the Leaf because every time I parked it, someone would chat me up for five minutes. Not so much anymore now that EVs are more common. Now, no one even looks at me. Fellow Leaf drivers don’t even wave anymore.
So I don’t know where that massive insecurity is coming from.
The biggest racket that the major car companies ever pulled was tying someones identity to the car they drove.
It doesn't work on most, but it definitely works on some. Look at any forum for a particular car and you'll find em.
I mean, to make fun of my Yaris someone has to:
- Stop right next to me at some intersection
- Roll down the window
- Somehow convince me to roll down my window when I'm enjoying my Brahms and not even looking at them
- Yell "Hey your car sucks!"
...why would anybody go through the trouble? -.-
Certain psychological profile of consumers. I personally couldn't care less about it and would never pay more to impress random strangers on traffic lights... and while I'm sure I'm a minority in this, I like to believe there's still a significant market niche occupied by people who're closer to my view than insecure 16 year olds'... so in my eyes this Mazda's move makes a lot of sense, they just don't target the same people as Elon Musk
Why would you care what other people think of your car if you yourself like it?
Where’s your bottom line?
- Why would you care about other people not liking it, if you like it.
- If you don't like it (i.e. it's someone else's), surely you have better things to care about with your time than what someone else thinks of a car that you didn't buy?
- Most people don't have the time or money to give a crap about what people think of their car, more than they do about things like fuel-efficiency and repair costs, so if your main concern is that other people don't like your car, you're very likely well-off enough to stand to donate that money to people who are actually worse off.
The first two are just two parts of the same argument, the third point was used to augment the second. You're the one who was moving the goalposts. See:
- The initial discussion was about the person buying the car (Your claim was originally "People buy Teslas because they get harassed less at traffic lights")
- I responded to that and you moved the goalposts to "People drive cars that they didn't buy" (Which is a valid point, hence why I responded, but not the subject of the original argument, because we were talking about the owner of the car).
Please don't move the goalposts and then accuse me of doing that?
> consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla
That's a bit of a stretch. First of all, why would anybody in a supercar make fun of a Tesla, they're not aimed at the same market. Consumers feel perfectly safe to buy a Prius or Leaf and neither of those have Tesla like acceleration, and don't need it either.
People making fun of other people because of the vehicles they drive are just insecure.
If you really think that the acceleration characteristics of a vehicle is what sells your average car then you're mistaken, most people simply need transportation and don't want to do drag races in traffic.
Also, you know, there are a lot of vehicles that are much slower than 10 seconds 0-60 on the roads, even though 10 seconds has become pretty much the maximum for late model cars in the US. Commercial vehicles aren't going to disappear or do 0-60 in 5 seconds even if they had the power.
It's true that most people need transportation, don't want to drag race, and a really just need simple A to B stuff.
BUUUUUT that's not how America works. See - most people in America don't buy things based on what they need. They buy based on what they want and what they want their image to represent. Ever heard the term mall crawler? It's the term used for vehicles that have a ton of off-road gear/capability but never see anything but a mall. What percentage do you think of off road capable vehicles (like a Jeep Wrangler) see off road duty? How many trucks do you think regularly tow anywhere near their max? How many use the bed? How often do people fill up their giant SUV with stuff/people? Same with sports cars. Same with a bunch of vehicles.
People almost never utilize their cars to their built potential. They use them as A to B. It's almost completely about image and desire.
Maybe you don’t want a drag race but all the luxury spending 80k new can give you. However Tesla isn’t very luxurious, so they better be fast in comparison.
I don’t know about the “average car”, I think the market is pretty segmented actually and different buyers make their choice based on different things.