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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

Why aren’t Tesla sales taking at this point? It’s been two years of continuous bad news against Elon.

Land Rovers have had shitty long term maintenance since forever and people still buy them. People buying Teslas just don't care enough to stop buying them.

In my experience, enough of the “news” about Tesla has proven to be strongly biased that I default to assuming this is another piece of clickbait following a narrative that reporters know has traction at this moment in time.

Because the cars are actually quite good for the most part despite what you read on the news. They are incredibly safe, reasonably priced, and efficient.

I agree with this, particularly the ability to resist rolling over. "Reasonably priced" is quite relative though

Well, reasonable compared to other electric cars I guess. But yes, a $50k car, even though it's the average cost of a new vehicle in the US, is still quite expensive and out of reach of most people.

When the news stops being consistent with my lived experience, I stop paying attention.

Only if you're getting news from HN. Negative stories and false hitpieces are heavily upvoted, bad news about competitors is buried as is positive news. If you dare write any non-negative comments you get downvoted and angry replies so people slowly stop posting anything that doesn't go with the negativity.

People don’t buy Teslas for their build quality (or any other similar high price vehicles that aren’t known for build quality like other mid-range vehicles like Toyota/Honda).

They buy them for the status that (for now) comes with owning a Tesla.

Maybe that's true for some people. I can only answer for myself. When we bought our Model Y back in mid 2021, I test drove basically all the competitors: iPace, Mach E, the Volvo XC something Recharge, etc. The MY had practically double the cargo space of any of those, with the same size footprint. It had more acceleration than any of the others (which doesn't really matter, but is fun) even in the long range version. And it was the only one that had a 7-seat config, which is extremely handy for occasionally transporting kids' friends. I actually didn't want to buy a Tesla because even then Elon was off-putting (though not nearly like now), but it was just clearly the best option available at the time. (Supercharging also played a role there.)

This - "TESLAS CRASH MORE THAN ANY OTHER BRAND" - https://futurism.com/the-byte/teslas-crash-more-brand-analys... - certainly ought to be manifesting in differential insurance rates, right?

This is such a ridiculous distortion. Not by you, by the headline writers. The study found nothing of the sort.

The study found that people who were interested in insuring a Tesla had a higher accident rate than other people.

These are people many of whom do not even own a Tesla yet.

And have never driven a Tesla.

And did not have an accident in a Tesla. SOME of them did have an accident in a Tesla, but many (an unknown number, the article is not interested in facts) did not.

They did have an accident, probably not in a Tesla, and possibly not even their fault.

So. They have an accident, and for some subset of people, the accident was bad enough that they need to acquire another car. Then some of them think "hmm, what kind of car should I buy." And some of them think "hey, what about Tesla?" And some of them go ask for a quote to see how much insurance would cost. And they just had an accident.

And the study records, for people looking to insure a given brand, who may not even own that brand yet, how many of them had accidents in the past.

The study says less about whether Tesla owners have accidents, and more about what new car people are interested in.

And yet the article distorts this to be "Teslas crash more than any other brand." Wow.

And then people uncritically repost it, and here we are.

There is a reason the media gets criticism, and a reason people are advised to be skeptical.

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