Why's there so much hate for Tesla here on HN?
Back even 5 years ago the brand was crazy hot. Everyone loved it. People at work, driving around, students on campus would stop me to ask about it. There was nothing else you could drive that signaled you cared about the environment and wanted to do something about it.
Now, the brand is completely toxic.
People talk about it apologetically. No one is proud or happy to own one. The best anyone says now is that there was nothing else good on the market at the time or they bought it before.
Heck. My wife loves our Tesla. Never wanted to drive anything else. We were going to keep buying them until the end of time. She now refuses to buy another one.
If you told me a few years ago that in a few months I'll be buying a VW instead of a Tesla I would have thought you were crazy.
Really, in my circles it's gone from a positive signal to an embarrassing negative one at best.
https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-far-right-prodigy-dr...
Musk tried to frame the situation as if the person was sentenced for sharing memes, but the reality involved more serious charges, including weapons-related offenses.
The same applies to the AFD. In 2022, a group called "Patriotische Union" plotted a coup to overthrow the German government, and several AFD figures were involved in the plan. To now seem him fanboying over AFD is nuts.
Driving their cars is what made me hate their cars.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if US politics was far lesser of an impact than the actual car itself.
Myself I think the cars are bland inside for their aim of luxury, the driving assists is terrible for its aimed goal, but the overall car is okay. Except their most recent rust bucket which is clearly a meme car and I don't know why they went ahead with that.
I'm sure most the country at large don't know/care about X.com/Election stuff.
1) he's an anti-trans right winger. If you aren't, you might dislike him.
2) he's boastful and prideful, which some people find irritating.
3) he lies, constantly about the capabilities and timeliness of his companies. If you are excited about EVs or space or tunnel boring you might dislike the hype->reality->hype cycle.
4) guy is... kinda just an asshole online?
5) if you believe billionaires are fundamentally people who got their money exploitatively, you'll dislike musk.
6) you might disagree with his stewardship of key technologies in space or evs. He's made prioritization decisions one might disagree with.
7) he made high speed rail in California more difficult through the hyperloop nonsense
8) he's anti worker and anti union, and many people here are workers or union members and find the way he treats his employees as unethical.
9) he's has a history of having many children out of wedlock, and kinda ignoring those children and women
10) he has positions about birth rates that could be just esoteric or could be great replacement theory racism and it's unclear which is true.
Probably many reasons beyond these. If someone believes one of these, they might leave a pretty tepid comment.
If someone believes multiple of these, odds are good they'll see Musk as a villain.
Lots of questionable design decisions clearly coming from the top, such as capacitive/touch controls for everything (turn signals? horn?!) and, well, the entire Cybertruck.
Mediocre build quality. Dated body designs. Lack of CarPlay.
Comically overvalued stock.
The CEO’s repulsive politics and behavior.
The FSD promises continue to underwhelm. The prices have not gone down. I personally wish Carplay/Android Auto were supported. Cybertrucks are polarizing stylistically.
Lots of reasons to not want a Tesla these days. Fewer and fewer reasons to root for them.
elon is a fucking tool - the cars are fucking amazing.
Teslas may be bought across the spectrum, none of that is remotely relevant.
Tesla owners are often insufferable to listen to as they go on and on about their cars, like they make vegans seem a treat by comparison, that alone may dissuade people - I know it does for me.
People tolerated Musk's narcissism when he was largely apolitical and his entrepreneurship seemed to benefiting the world at large. Since 2020, Musk's brain seems to have been pretty severely infected by the woke/anti-woke mind-virus, and it's far less clear that his impact on the world is an unmitigated good thing.
If you don't like Musk, you don't like Tesla.
If you like Musk, you believe what he says, and what he's been saying during his ascension to the White House is that EVs are trash. Aren't Teslas EVs?
Politics is transitive. What Musk says is less relevant than what he does; what he's done is given anti-EV interests power. (In exchange for gaining his own.)
I think it's rather pointless to avoid companies led by people with politics I dislike, because that is nearly all of them. Hell, I wouldn't have been able to see a movie or watch a TV show for years.
I don't know if you've somehow avoided seeing him in the news buddying up with the Trump administration + the German nationalist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland)
Musk has become a partisan brand. I'd guess HN tends classically liberal (whether left-liberal or libertarian). That and apolitical.