However, a buddy of mine got T-boned in one by a distracted driver running a light at high speed, and he walked away fine. The car was completely mangled except for passenger space where it held. I’ve not called it a bad car after seeing photos from that.

As soon as the car companies who, you know, know how to make cars starting dipping their toes in, it was over. It takes time for inertia to be overcome but it will, and once that inflection point is reached there's nothing anyone can do.

Tesla could have prevented this by being proactive and chasing new designs and new interiors before they felt any pressure to. But like all American companies, once they have even a hint of market success, they give up. They just keep doing whatever they're doing because clearly it's working.

Until one day you look around and your competition is 10 years ahead of you and you've been sitting with your thumb up your ass. Oops. Better catch up right now. Except you can't, so you rush it, and then your quality and delivery suffers even more, so the gap only widens because while you're playing catch-up your competitors just keep marching forward.

We saw it with GM, we saw it with Ford, and now we're seeing it with Tesla. Is this unavoidable?