Rivian seems clean but they are more expensive, only SUVs, and aren't doing well financially. Even still you probably end up using superchargers.
It's pretty difficult to be morally consistent in your purchases. Where you draw the line is a personal choice.
Yes, companies like Porsche and Ford were founded by Nazis. But that was then and this is now. If the CEO of one of those companies throws a Hitler salute in public, they will be unemployed the next day. If the CEO of Tesla does the same thing, they will be handed $50 billion, patted on the back, and told, "Good job." That's a perfectly good reason for someone who is in the market for a car to choose one over the other.
To be painstakingly clear I'm not defending Elon and I'm definitely not suggesting that people shouldn't avoid Tesla for whatever reasons they choose. My issue is inciting vandalism, or violence, against consumers who have made their own choices in this complex web.
I don't have a good use case for EVs myself, but there was a time when I wished I did because I believed in what Tesla and Musk in general were apparently trying to do. I thought he was doing what I'd like to think I'd do in his shoes -- building cool stuff, trying to make a positive contribution to human progress, and making bank in the process. But his true agenda unfolded in a very different direction relative to one of those ideals, and for me, two out of three doesn't cut it.
(And yes, people who fuck with other peoples' cars occupy the next level down from Nazis in my personal Inferno. No argument there.)
I'd like the latter to be generally illegal (along with most of the analytics industry — just the other day I got a popup that wanted me to share my use of a website with 1604(!) partners, whereas my secondary school only had about 1000 students).
The former, I wish we could actually do something about, but China is so dominant on the world Aluminium markets that even if you didn't buy from them directly, all you're doing is substituting yourself for another buyer — boycotting Chinese aluminium is probably possible, but is like trying to get private individuals to boycott Nestlé.
> Ford and most of the German and Italian automakers have fascist roots and were involved in forced labor. Many of them are owned by the same families implicated in those past decisions.
Stuff that happened before most people alive today were born, and where the evil was systematically routed out immediately after WW2 right up until people decided there was a greater evil next door (in the form of the USSR), isn't going to upset people as much as hitching your wagon to a party that is currently doing as much as it can as fast as it can to undermine the USA's economic and global soft-power, while openly disregarding the sovereignty of two direct neighbours (including one he's a citizen of!), tweeting a well-technically about how many people Hitler killed, and doing something that is close enough to a Nazi salute to be unlawful to reproduce in Germany.
As for who to replace with, I don't know what their sales are like in the USA, but the Stellantis group collectively has a lot of brands.
Hey, I boycott Nestlé and find it pretty low-effort; I expect boycotting Chinese aluminum would be much more difficult.
That I don't disagree with.
However maybe it's just me, but I find it a bit hypocritical to liken Tesla as some Nazi brand when there's some 5-8 brands on the road that willingly used forced labor. Some in their own concentration camps. I don't see how it matters how long ago that was. The generational wealth of these families and their companies are built off of that lineage.
If people were immortal, I'd agree.
I think in something like hyperbolic discounting, with each generation having diminishing connection to the atrocities of the past. If I didn't… well, I don't know how much of my family wealth came indirectly from the colonies — I do know one of my grandfathers was a British civil servant and my mother's mother was in the British Raj as either a young child or toddler. I may not be a Christian for the last 25-30 years, but I was raised Catholic and read the Bible, so I know about Matthew 7:5, motes and planks in eyes etc.
I do know that "Sins of the Father" and "Ancestral sin" is a long-standing aspect of human cognition, but I think it's this aspect which itself is the string in our heads upon which demagogues pull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_the_Father
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_sin
(None of that applies to current Uyghur (or other) forced labour, of course).
My argument isn't that we should be punishing consumers of VW, Audi, and GM. It's that consumers are one of the last people that should be responsible for how their money is used. If you go that route everyone is complicit in something awful. There are better ways to make change than blame the consumer.
Are liberals responsible for DOGE because they own a Tesla? It's nonsense.
These social movements have little room for nuance and decisions of who to target are rarely morally consistent.
After the board finally wakes up and kicks Elon to the curb.
Speaking personally, it could be as soon as Musk leaves the picture, depending on who else takes over.
As for "who decides", I think everyone has to decide for themselves — I won't think worse of anyone who boycotts the Tesla brand for life.
> These social movements have little room for nuance and decisions of who to target are rarely morally consistent.
Welcome to humanity.
Thing is, everyone involved in that is dead, and in the case of the Germans the ownership has entirely changed (any continuity between today's VW and Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH is, well, incredibly tenuous, say). Like, it's hardly comparable to a company where the _current CEO_ is flouncing about doing Nazi salutes and tweeting Hitler apologia.
A Ukrainian could have reasons to choose Tesla over Polestar. A liberal minded Korean could have reasons to buy Tesla over Hyundai. A human rights activist or journalist could have reasons to buy Tesla over Lucid. A Jewish person could have reasons to buy Tesla over BMW. That doesn't even touch on all the other decisions that go into purchasing a car.
If you want to boycott a brand, for whatever reasons, and promote others to do the same, I think it's totally acceptable. People just might have a different calculation than you and that is also acceptable.
There's no righteousness in inciting crime against people because one thinks their moral judgments are some how superior. It's irresponsible, dangerous, and illiberal.