But it turns out that having a hundred years of domain experience building cars actually matters for something. Tesla cars have had a lot of avoidable failures on technical merits.
German EV's are probably better built - fewer electrical issues over a longer duration (I hope), and fewer moving parts to replace.
I think this is a product differentiation / segmentation problem. People who wanted the current Tesla offering are being outnumbered by people who want buttons / information displayed front and center.
There's also a difference in brand positioning. If I know nothing except the car one drives, driving a Tesla, BMW, Audi or Mercedes conjures up different stereotypes in my mind. Which manufacturer wpuld you associate with the following: a Senior VP at Goldman, a petrolhead who does occasional track days, a Bitcoin millionaire, a suburban mom, a FAANG L5 SWE in the SF Bay?
It would have been our second Tesla purchase and now we have none. Could not imagine being associated with Elon in any way and certainly not in the car I drive around.
Which is probably the main point. It's well known that American companies sell a higher proportion of their cars in America than in Europe and vice versa. That a foreign company was ever outselling domestic producers in a region with a large automotive industry is an unusual and generally short-lived phenomenon.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/elon-musk-wades-into-ge...
Along with X's well adjusted moderation policies:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/elon-musk-gives-gold-ch...
I'm sure the Germans are thrilled with all of it.
Actually it is you who is insinuating something, incorrectly. You’re suggesting that Musk said the attack was justified. He didn’t. He retweeted an article that suggested a connection between the attacker and Paul Pelosi, and Musk added, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” Musk was careful to acknowledge that the chance that there was more to the story was low (“tiny possibility”). He also later deleted his own tweet within a few hours of it being posted.
I don’t see a problem with people speculating about what may have happened. We know what happens when speculation is not allowed - you get situations like the lab leak theory being incorrectly suppressed until it is too late to investigate WIV or hold the CCP accountable. As for why people speculated anything in the Pelosi situation at all: the official recording of the police interaction in this incident has Paul Pelosi telling police that David was a “friend”. This caused people to search for reasons this friend would be visiting the home at odd hours.
These days I usually default to reading that sort of comment as saying the things with the tiny chance was likely, and the smaller the stated chance the higher the likelihood.