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Comment by margalabargala | Hacker News Reader

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margalabargala

We'll see. After throwing out a few Nazi salutes, Tesla sales have been tanking in Europe.

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And Australia. Musk drove everyone in BYD's arms.

The weak Aussie dollar and the low cost of BYD cars is what did that.

Also, Tesla stopped selling the Model S here.

Nothing specific to Australia, there are no RHD versions of the new S/X anywhere in the world. But S/X sales were a rounding error compared to 3/Y anyway.

Model S stopped being sold here in 2023.

In 2024, Tesla reported a 17% drop in Australia despite EV market growing.

I'm pretty sympathetic on protecting the country from CCP subsidized market capture, but at this point we need to let BYD sell here. It would lower vehicle prices and knock off tesla. Both of which need to happen.

and plenty of other great cars. Zeekr X looks tasty. So many choices Americans won't ever have because Musk owns that country now.

September 2025: President Musk announces all new federal vehicles will be Teslas.

September? It's early February. You really think it'll take 7 months?

To get to President Musk, longer than that. On the other hand, he was called Prime Minister Musk by a congressman all the way back in December.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/gonzales-elon-musk...

Nah, just has to convince Trump to replace Vance with him, and then do a regicide.

The qualifications for VP are the same as the qualifications for President, Musk isn't eligible. For now.

I don't think the Constitution is going to be something they pay a lot of attention to, going forward, if they get their way.

Trump and Musk may not pay attention to the constitution, but I understand that the US armed forces swear allegiance to the constitution — while they must obey lawful orders of the president, unconstituional orders must be refused even if from the president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces_oat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Uniformed_Servic...

We'll see what happens when push comes to shove.

Why would he want to be demoted to president?

Oh come on stop perpetuating misinformation. Unless Musk is going to Nazi rallies and jew hating I can't take anyone who believes this seriously.

How is it misinformation? It's obvious what it was. Doesn't mean he's a Nazi, maybe he's "just" a '90s era trolling edgelord. Come to think of it, considering his X shitposts he boosts to hundreds of millions of people every day, that's a good description of him.

[To people who think he's a Nazi: yes, I've read all the arguments, no, I don't care - giving him the benefit of the doubt still makes him a gigantic shitlord who think its funny to do Nazi salutes.]

Reach matters. If you’re a nobody with three followers and tell someone on the internet to kill themselves, you’re a troll and can be ignored. If you have millions of followers, that one comment will get the other person doxxed, threatened by your followers, and may end up in physical harm to them and their family.

If you own a social media platform and have this amount of reach you can never be “just a troll edgelord”.

You forgot the /s tag.

Musk has been going to far right rallies and jew hating for some time now.

eg: https://clearthis.page/?u=https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/01/...

Lol this article is nothing but conjecture written by someone who clearly already hates him

Misinformation? There are multiple videos of Elon doing a Nazi salute.

The goalpost does not need to be moved to "if he's not literally operating a gas chamber, he's fine".

The best interpretation is that he doesn't care how it looks to others when he does a Nazi salute. Like others said, he's more 90s edgelord than actual jew-hating Nazi.

And the car markets in Europe are showing him what they think of people who do Nazi salutes publicly.

I don’t think we need to lie or be disingenuous about this gesture, Elon is not known for his hate of Jewish people. I think this obviously fake take helps him.

There is enough to criticize in his actions.

European countries are quite capable of making their own judgement about a gesture, especially when it would be illegal in France and Germany.

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-01/elon-musk-hitler-salute-i...

German media has been extremely coy calling Elon out about it. You would think that they'd be all over this, but them phrasing it as questions and digging out the "roman salute" (that no one here has heard of before) has been an eye-opening experience.

Have they?

I mean, that was a link to a German newspaper and the headline is:

> A German Eye On Elon Musk's Hitler Salute (Yes, That's A Hitler Salute)

It's an opinion piece, and exceptions confirm the rule. Just search for German news articles on Google.de. See how many legit news outlets mention "Musk Hitlergruß" and how many more opt to beat around the bush when you search for "Musk Geste".

Do you even get a count of search results? They no longer include that number in my search results.

But I have just tried "Musk Geste" on google.de news tab (I don't know how Google is personalising either my search results or your results, but FWIW I'm in Berlin), and of the first page, 6/10 links explicitly call the gesture a "Hitlergruß" in the summary, and the other four call it that (or note that some people have called it that) in the body.

Obviously this is room for a flame war, but I don’t think the poster was being deliberately malicious, rather it is perfectly reasonable to interpret the gesture as a nazi salute. You may disagree that it was.

We shouldn’t let that argument distract from the impact it has had on Tesla demand in Europe. For me personally it was the final straw and I won’t be buying one as I had hoped to.

Along with other actions certain to hit sales, and the lack of an apology (which would have been wise, even if you didn’t mean it as a nazi salute) suggests that Musk doesn’t care about Tesla car sales.

I suspect he knows the writing is on the wall for Tesla, so he’s betting on robotics as an escape hatch. I wonder if he’s also hoping tariffs against china will help vs their EVs. Either way, I don’t see much hope for Tesla right now.

Must has spent quite a lot of time recently supporting far right groups. Most likely he picked it up unconsciously.

Guy who talks like a nazi, supports nazi parties, boosts nazis on his social media platform does a nazi salute and you still doubt what he meant?

> Elon is not known for his hate of Jewish people.

You might not know him for that, but people who pay attention do.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-hi...

Also after Teslas keep catching on fire more than the damn Ford Pinto did.

Might not be enough data for good statistical significance yet, but IIRC the "die in a fire" probability in a Tesla Refrigerator is something like 17x the Ford Pinto based on current numbers.

Citation needed. Last I checked EVs are much less likely to catch fire than ICEs. (They are, however, much harder to put out if they do.)

https://www.tesla-fire.com/

That list is garbage: it includes Tesla Megapacks (energy storage, not car), multi-car crashes where any car catches fire, a car carrier carrying Teslas catching fire, etc.

Did you have any actual statistics to back up your assertion?

  Vehicle Model   | Total Units | Fire Fatalities |Fatality Rate (per 100k)
  Tesla Cybertruck|      34,438 |               5 |        14.52
  Ford Pinto      |   3,173,491 |              27 |         0.85

https://fuelarc.com/evs/its-official-the-cybertruck-is-more-...

Like the parent comment says, this is garbage. For the cybertruck it includes all fatalities (3 in a high speed crash that caught on fire, 1 in a different crash, 1 in the recent car bomb outside Trump's tower). For the pinto they only count the 27 deaths the NHTSA identified as being caused by the design flaw that led to catching fire from low speed collisions.

A meaningful comparison would say that the Pinto could catch fire as a result of a low speed collision and the cybertruck apparently does not.

tbh, despite the rap the Pinto gets it really was just as dangerous as the rest of the vehicles on the road [1].

Of course, a gas can with a spear pointed at it isn't a great design. But the rest of the cars were also dangerous as well.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safet...

if you keep dismissing the data, maybe you can provide some data

The people involved are clearly trying hard to make the cybertruck look bad. If there was real data, I assume they'd present it. The fact they choose to produce these crude distortions instead implies to me there is not real data that makes the cybertruck look bad.

The data is right there. You're welcome to do your own analysis rather than ask other people to do it for you.

I'm not sure what your point is - as I've already mentioned this comparison is between all cybertruck deaths, none of which were low speed collisions resulting in a fire, and the deaths that the NHTSA review identified as caused by fires from low speed collisions caused by the design flaw in the Pinto.

I know that neither you nor the other commenters nor the person who made that website needs anyone to explain to you why this comparison is invalid. It is such a facile comparison that to describe it is to explain why it's invalid.

So, again, I'm confused as to the point of your comment.

My point is the data is right there and you can do your own analysis to make the comparison. Do you not know the difference between data and analysis?

I'm confused as to the level of your incompetence.

https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/environment-energy-coordinatio...

Or the press pretending that it was a nazi salute, outrage sells.

Everyone who saw the speech, saw the three (!) Heil Hitlers and the ensuing smirk that said “whatcha gonna do, suckers?”.

Pretending at equivocating just to troll will tank your own credibility.

If it was standalone event you could perhaps argue it was accidental. But the fact that he is supporting Afd who had done similar things in the past where they run a campaign, and make nazi symbolism in such a way that it would be barely legal, but at the same time obvious to everyone what they are referring to, it is pretty damning.

I'm curious if you know what a Nazi salute looks like? Make a comparison by looking it up, he does the salute twice.

Of course you can argue in bad faith because it costs you nothing to be wrong but does that imply you are promoting this behavior? Seems like the obvious implication

The media is outraged because a duck quacks like a duck

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy48v1x4dv4o I really don't buy it, it just looks like an awkward gesture. From the article:

But the Anti-Defamation League, an organisation founded to combat antisemitism, did not agree.

"It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute," it posted on X.

You mean the German newspaper Zeit with headlines like "Ein Hitlergruß ist ein Hitlergruß ist ein Hitlergruß"

It WAS a Nazi salute, and claiming otherwise is textbook gaslighting.

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