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Comment by nr2x | Hacker News Reader

Well said, I’m potentially in the market for a car and this is like reason #5 I’m ruling out Tesla.

Same, though there were about a dozen previous reasons, starting with "pedo guy". This won't help, but I was pretty much long gone as a customer.

Funny enough, it was test driving a Tesla that got me interested in getting an EV as my next vehicle.

And like many, Musk's behavior has dissuaded me from purchasing one, and instead likely a Ford.

The EV Mustang looks so dope. See a lot of them in SV.

I pre-ordered a Model 3 in 2016. Still have the charger I installed in my garage, but now I use the J1772 one I installed later.

Tesla is also thousands of brilliant engineers that transformed the industry, and not just one guy who tweets a lot.

In other words, Musk isn't doing his engineers any favors either.

Exactly, so they should do the only logical thing and vote out Elon as Tesla's CEO so he stops destroying whatever public image they have left. Elon doesn't "do" anything besides be a double edged hype machine.

It would be amazing if Tesla were a worker cooperative where that were possible.

Trying to hold Elon to a standard in his companies gets you fired, not him: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-17/spacex-fi...

How can any self respecting individual work in such an environment? It's sad to know there are so many talented engineers that spend all of their days making amazing things that Elon just takes credit for.

I'm sorry but working for Tesla and building electric vehicles is more useful and more moral then most other companies. No matter if you think the CEO is an ass.

If people knew or cared all the dumb shit all other car CEO said in their live, or all the corruption they engage in with the Union bosses and the list of things goes on.

Compare working at Tesla and working at Lockheed Martin for example. How can self respecting engineer work there? You are literally building bombs that illegally blow up US citizens (and weddings) around the world.

So if 'CEO fired a some people who clearly were not on board with CEO management style' is the reason for a moral panic, there are a whole lot of places you can never work at. And that's fine, but lets be clear about that.

It my shock you, but most people in the world down know who Elon Musk is and the same goes for many people in the US. And many people, some the same don't know that Tesla and Elon Musk have anything to do with each other.

Also, firing the CEO when the company is growing at breakneck speed while also having industry leading margin. Just for example, Tesla NetIncome this Q matched Ford and GM combined at 1/10 the revenue and in a Quarter where Tesla main factory was mostly closed.

So I guess the question is how highly do you value image compared to 12 years of amazing growth.

It took "thousands of brilliant engineers" to replace the engine of a vehicle with some large batteries?

I think you're overstating the "brilliance" of the engineers. I have no doubt the core of them working on the battery tech could be in the brilliant category, but the rest of those thousands of engineers are run-of-the-mill automotive engineers.

Would you describe Ford as being composed of thousands of brilliant engineers?

> Would you describe Ford as being composed of thousands of brilliant engineers?

Absolutely.

I've seen people believe that creating a browser is no big deal, can you imagine developing, manufacturing, compliance certification, marketing and distribution of actual vehicles, planet-scale?

Also the “crash” outcome isn’t lost tabs.

That one guy who tweets a lot can overrule and/or fire any one of those brilliant engineers.

He can overpromise to the point of outright lying about functionality and delivery schedule.

The CEO is not 'just one guy'

A CEO can do many things, but they generally don't design, develop, test and fix products. I have no personal affection for Elon Musk, just wanted to point out that the actual things we all use are products of genuine hard work by lots of different people.

Is it my fault they hitched their wagon to a person who turned out to be crazy?

If Tesla somehow folded overnight I'm sure all the other car companies making BEVs would be ecstatic to scoop up that newly available talent.

Yeah like the RTO mandate that turned into a Fire(d) Sale of top talent. Lol.

Which is why more and more auto companies are opening offices in SV to poach them.

Hell, when was the last time Tesla released a new car? The Big Auto companies are rolling out new models every other week. Fact is, Tesla blew a lead and aren’t impressing.

Yeah other car companies are really, really good at announcing new car models. I mean look at GM, so amazing by 2025 they are gone have 30 EVs.

Of course in the last 6 month they have sold less then 10k EVs, about what Tesla does in a week or so. But I guess they announced many new models.

> Fact is, Tesla blew a lead and aren’t impressing.

A lead in what? They are dominating both in terms of volume and in terms of profitability. A few years ago everybody was hype about how VW would blew Tesla doors within a year or two, well turns out Tesla still matches VW for growth.

> Hell, when was the last time Tesla released a new car?

The question is, what is the goal? To release a car because you have released a car? Is that your goal?

Because what matters in the real world is growth and profit. And if you have a fixed supply because of chips and batteries. Just building more different models while you can still sell your existing model is just financially idiotic.

Other manufactures like VW spend billions to turn the ID.4 into a Skoda that is basically the exact same inside.

I occasionally do business with people who are probably assholes to other people.

I don't do business with people who are assholes to their customers.

My big red flag is “self driving mode that may kill your family”.

Quite - I'm absolutely in the market for an EV, and 5 years ago it would have been a Tesla no questions asked, but Musk's behaviour and Tesla's general inability to do quality control mean I instead placed an order for a BMW i4.

Care to share the others? I'm weighing my options as well.

Anything you are leaning towards buying?

Battery issues being a cost of early adoption aside, I love my Bolt. It’s a hatchback and with the 0-60 of an EV it handles like Mario Kart. Super fun.

I'd say this is a great reason to not a used one. Which Tesla doesn't care about at all and probably want to discourage.

That seems short-sighted. Having a healthy secondary market makes purchasing a new one more appealing since you can recover some of the purchase price later. It also allows the superfans to buy the latest and greatest model more often.

Agreed. They're giving the middle finger to people who can't afford a new one but were still interested in Tesla. Could have been a good opportunity to create loyal customers who are on a budget now, but could afford to spend more later in life.

Also if TSLA actually cares about "saving the planet" then they probably need to support a used car market...

You don't think car makers have a vested interest in there being a robust secondary market for their cars? If I have a choice between a $50k car that will have a $25k resale value after 5 years, and one that will have a $10k resale value, that's a strong incentive to buy the former. That's another $15k in my budget for my next car, and if I liked the last one, there's a good chance that money is going right back to that same manufacturer.

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