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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

The CEO too. I know a few people who refuse to buy a Tesla because of him.

People buy Volskwagen, Porsche, Ford or Renault cars without thinking about the actions of the previous people attached to the manufacturer.

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Nobody currently working at VW/Porsche worked for Hitler, and nobody currently working at Ford helped Henry run the presses for his antisemitic pamphlets. So that's a nonissue.

What did Renault's founder do? Hadn't heard about that.

VW was involved in a colossal emissions con.

As consumer I always wondered, were the cars worse for it? Or were they actually better, if I don't consider emissions critical in my decision making process.

They were better.

Renault was collaborating during ww2, and built trucks for nazis. Female workers got their head shaved at the liberation (male workers got out OK though, funny how things works), and Renault got nationalized, and was under state control for the 4cv, 4l and r5/r6/r8/r11/r19/r21 models, as well as the 'moteur F', still used in the 2010s.

Its director was assassinated by a far right commando also (I think the killers got out early 2000s, the story is quite interesting).

Your friends have a point. Volkswagen to my knowledge isn't currently actively spreading conspiracy theories or boosting the voices of fascists.

There was the whole diesel-gate thing with volkswagen which was pretty shadey.

And the whole Nazi history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#History

Yes I am aware. Henry Ford was also problematic. There's a difference between present day which will impact my life and the lives of my kids and something that is 80 years old. I have gay family members and a daughter and I worry about what this election cycle will do to both. VW isn't going to change that, Musk might.

Even more importantly from a strictly business point of view, the CEO of VAG isn't telling his engineers to make the customer experience significantly worse to save $50 of parts on a $50k vehicle.

VW is saving money on stupid things on their vehicles. Hard plastics, terrible buttons on the steering wheel, tiny screens and bad sound systems on the default models to invite you to pay more…

Bad sound systems... wow, yeah, that's right up there with building gas vans.

People also do things like travel to and buy products from Germany without thinking about the actions of the previous people running that country.

One difference is that a man in the high castle is running Tesla today.

(...Not that I have a lot of love and goodwill for other industrialists in the general.)

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