Tesla used to be: Unmatched software(+), unmatched electronics(+), Save the planet(+), great subsidies(+), electric car that doesn't look weird(+), USA and Startups and the future(+), unmatched acceleration(+), low built quality(-), Shitty driving dynamics(-)
Now alternatives are pretty good, so still Unmatched software(+) but the difference is not that big and the rest doesn't look good. No longer saving the planet because you don't save the planet with fascists, USA is no longer cool(hostile and clown-like), tech guys are no longer cool(greedy and sleazy and meddle with politics instead of doing cool shit), the design is dated and boring now and there are many alternatives doing much better in many other characteristics.
So Tesla still sells very well when the price is right, match the new situation and it sells. Tasla sells like hot cakes in Turkey for example because they introduced a version specifically for the Turkish regulations and that particular configuration is taxed just %10 when the cheapest petrol cars are taxed %80. AFAIK Tesla keeps selling well in Norway too.
This is spot on, I bought a BYD instead of a Tesla because of the reasons above. The build quality was better, the subsidy was great, and the Tesla brand is associated with Musk, so it's not a brand I personally want to touch.
Brand image is really important ev where already better in china than any other place in the world before Tesla but Tesla give the allure that the tech need to have mass appeal.
That's why it was so successful as a company
I thought it was really successful as a company due to all the carbon credit handouts it received from government, which it sold to the other car companies.
That, and the lies from the man who owns a social media company (albeit later)
Tesla made a little under 3% of its 2024 revenue from carbon credits.
It made those credits because it sells electric cars in volume.
I get the Musk bashing, and think the guy's an asshat, but isn't this literally what carbon credits are supposed to do -- funnel cash from dirty industries to carbon negative ones, as another channel of funding for them?
I always assumed that pro-fascism folks don't trust him as he's not really in this for the right reasons. He must be the ultimate poser, "useful for now" in these circles.
In Europe EV adoption is really driven by a concerted effort by individual buyers wanting to make green choices. And Musk has completely alienated all support from that buyer base. I don't see Tesla ever recovering its green credentials, and as a consequence ever recovering its sales or second-hand value.
The company fleets are a thing of the past in my part of Europe so I didn't have them in mind when I was making my comment.
I would speculate that European fleet purchasers in other parts of Europe would be wary of buying Teslas now partly because of the current trade war stuff and also with an eye on the resale value at end of lease; its really hard to shift a second hand Tesla these days.
What’s the point in a luxury brand where you’re embarrassed to be seen displaying the logo? I don’t think I’ve ever seen brand impairment like this that didn’t result in the brand being retired. The only way forward I can see for them in Europe is partnership with a European firm and I can’t see that working either.
Do people really care about this that much? The European company that made my car probably uses its social media and ad presence to spread progressivism, which I’m completely against, but what are we supposed to do, find and buy only from companies that we identify with politically? That would be very hard and limiting. And somewhat stupid too (as stupid as a car company taking a political stance, or people that think that buying from some company means you identify with their politics, but here we are!)
Do people care that one of the most powerful men in the world has become an enthusiastic cheerleader for the ignorant beliefs and dangerous rhetoric that led to the deadliest war in human history?
If you think "progressivism" is somehow on equal footing as one of the worst genocides in history then you are morally bankrupt. Several of my family died under the Nazi regime, and I'm not even Jewish or other Untermensch group. This is not unusual in Europe. There's a reason purchases dropped off a cliff after the Sieg Heil specifically, and not before when he merely had some questionable politics.
That’s the beauty of living in a free country. You can choose to spend money with companies that share your values. Personally, I wouldn’t give my money to a neo-Nazi bootlicker, but you do you.
Aside problems with Musk it has to be said that the model lineup of Tesla is poor by today’s Euopean standards. We have lots of models and brands available in all sizes, luxurious and expensive to small and fun. Tesla was a great choice in 2019, but now it is just one among many and it doesn’t boast a great design or interesting imterior.
Even in the US, Tesla has problems with lack of variety.
In my case, almost nothing they sell fits in my garage. Even their shortest (Model 3) just barely fits, and there’s no hatch variant like I’d prefer, so I’m leasing a Nissan Ariya and will probably switch to one of those next-gen Leafs afterwards.
I have 2 or 3 neighbors that solved that problem by parking in the driveway. I think the car would fit in the garage but ~75% of my neighbors use their garage as an extra room to store shit.
Yeah that’s what my neighbors do too, but I live in a dense suburb and it makes getting in/out difficult if everybody’s driveways (including mine) are full, and the size of my car exacerbates that. Even as it is it’s a pain when the one neighbor has their truck in their driveway instead of their usual smaller Forester — in that case my small-by-SUV-standards Ariya suddenly feels like a whale trying to slip through.
My needs also just aren’t that great. I don’t commute and I don’t drive much, so a small, highly maneuverable city car fits the bill perfectly.
Not much, I guess. His bad behavior goes back a long way, and has hurt many people around him. He used to lie publicly about his first child having died in his arms, when it was the mother's, just to provide a stark example.
He has enough bills to wipe his tears away with, unlike others.
I suspect some of the more recent behavior is attributable to or influenced by drug use, and I feel some sympathy for anyone who comes under their thrall.
Instead of worrying about the richest man in the world, feel sympathy for the people actively dying from his “wood chipper” tactics: https://archive.is/25XCC
You can feel sympathy for a person without agreeing with them or having the same viewpoints. I hope there are people out there that feel bad for another living being.
Does anybody feel sympathy for a terrorist? If your answer is yes, then you're unsympathetic towards numerous innocent others who have or may fall prey to them. Your sympathy becomes selective and meaningless.
This might sound like a hyperbole, but the comparison to terrorism is relevant here. The DOGE cuts have a cost in terms of human lives. I have no conclusive sources to show for it, but some estimates put it at 300K till date. Even Bill Gates criticized it. And Elon laughed and scoffed at it when he was asked about it. Drugs are not an excuse for any of it, since it was his choice and nobody's addiction should cause the deaths of thousands. Frankly, the greed of billionaires seem to have a bigger cost in terms of suffering and lives than even terrorists do. So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
> Does anybody feel sympathy for a terrorist? If your answer is yes, then you're unsympathetic towards numerous innocent others who have or may fall prey to them. Your sympathy becomes selective and meaningless.
You can have sympathy for both. It's not one or the other.
> So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
I sympathize for you. I hope that you're willing to open up your mind and be open to the idea that everyone deserves humanity.
Hitler decided some people should be treated with humanity and others not. I imagine if you asked Hitler, he would have said the Jewish people were devoid of any empathy. I think we're above that, right?
-----
It seems that for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people. I wonder why that is.
Which is precisely why the company cannot split with Elon, and people who think it will are deluded.
Elon has a very loose association with truth, in a manner that usually yields long prison sentences. For many years he has been engaging with what could accurately be called securities fraud, and there is always some amazing new mega revenue stream just around the corner. If Tesla fired Elon (in an imaginary world where he didn't control the board), any competent hire would have to seriously say ooof and point out all of the mega risks the company faces. With Elon it's all magic and fairy tales and soon a trillion super robots and robotaxis to Mars and...
Is anyone surprised by this? Europeans still vividly remember, and are reminded, of the cost of WWII. When the head of a company, no matter how trendy, sieg heils on stage (twice!) and then goes on to publicly appear at far-right german political rallies - europeans take note, and act accordingly.
I don't think it's just the Nazi salute to be honest. The reputational damage the US has suffered this year is insane and it's getting worse.
Since Trump was elected America has been awful to its allies, specially Canada and EU. Many Europeans, are avoiding spending money on American companies, much less one owned by Musk.
Americans have a poor understanding of what’s going on with Teslas sales numbers because their market largely lacks the competition that exists elsewhere and so they overindex on lesser factors like Elon.
The real issue is simply that Tesla are attempting to maintain their pricing and margins while the cost of producing EVs is plummeting and the variety of options is increasing.
The result is that they are being severely undercut on price by BYD et al.
Tesla are going to have to either start cutting prices significantly, or accept being a low volume pseudo-premium offering.
Invoking “1984” doesn’t automatically make you profound or right. You sidestep with a quip, offering no counter-evidence or analysis, just a tired dystopian trope. If you’re going to accuse someone of ignoring “evidence of your eyes and ears,” at least bring a shred of proof to the table instead of leaning on literary clichés to mask a weak rebuttal. The video may raise questions, but dismissing the point with a smug one-liner only shows you’re more interested in sounding clever.
It wasn't for you, it was for everyone else who feels the same way I do about what is quite clear. There's at least 3 other prominent republicans who also Sieg Heiled, including Bannon, once Trump's chief strategist, in front of CPAC (the tea party/the GOP): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E9pXCuJnbc
I am sure it must also be at exactly a 30 degree angle with even a degree off invalidating it as an official nazi salute.
There is definitely no history of deportations, loyalty purges, secret police, cowing of the judiciary and universities, provocations of anti-semitism, big lies, or attacks on institutions that might inform the greater context and there definitely aren't people who have studied fascism at our most respected universities who are warning us that fascism is here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
Maybe it’s the fault of my US centric education, but I must be forgetting that part of Europe that had a fun time during WWII. Even the Swiss spent the time preparing for the other shoe to drop.
Virtually everywhere in Europe, broadly defined, was either directly involved in WW2 or was severely impacted by it while not technically being a combatant.
There is effectively none, besides Tesla. With the exception of Ford the US brands' Europe strategy essentially died in the financial crisis, and even Ford (which historically was a big player in Europe and designed cars specifically for the market) isn't what it was.
It was widely covered throughout Europe. And widely despised throughout Europe across the political spectrum from left to right. To suggest it's unrelated is a profoundly unserious suggestion.
Cars in particular tend to get bound up in peoples' self-image (to a rather unhealthy degree IMO, but anyway...) Few people would want the association.
It came up at the same time as the UK prince as a "wealthy folks just do these things it's funny and not an endorsement you pleebs don't understand" sort of way.
For what it's worth, a UK prince is one of the few people or groups of people that I would assume were likely not hiding Nazi sympathies. Their entire country, and specifically their recent royal ancestors, where subject to Nazi aggression and responsible for countering it. There's a long history of dressing up as those you want to lampoon, especially in British media.
Well, there is Edward VIII which as an American who doesn't follow UK monarchy drama was flabbergasted and in disbelief to learn about and which triggered a wikipedia rabbithole after seeing in particular the closing credits of The Crown S2E6
So...it makes it worse(for me). Instead of being a stupid and foolish thing he did in the moment of high emotions it just confirms he's an actual Nazi. I'm literally from Oswiecim, used to go past Auschwitz on my way to school every day - the richest man on earth doing sieg heils on stage despite visiting this place is filling me with dread.
I will give you some context here - in my high school (India) we were never taught any of the million horrible things Hitler did to people. We were only taught that Hitler was a very prominent leader and an icon of history that always won wars and held Germany and many other countries in his grip. It was only when I read about him on the internet that I found what kind of an SOB he actually was, many years later.
I was so stoned by all of that and the fact that our education and schooling hid that very fact from all of us. So it is up to us to teach kids when they grow up to allow them to know history as it exactly happened, without painting it, when the time is right.
What was the motivation for the curriculum to hide - or even glorify - Nazi Germany? And do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?
I'm definitely not an expert on this but I think India has (well-grounded) resentment towards Churchill, and so the enemy-of-my-enemy effect may have resulted in a softening of Hitler's image and a tendency to downplay his crimes and negative attributes.
Nuance is hard, and so to some people, accepting Hitler as a villain means whoever defeated him must be a hero, so if we don't want to accept Churchill as a hero then we must reject Hitler being a villain.
(It goes without saying that this logic is faulty, but at the same time it's part of human nature and we all have to grapple with it to some extent).
You have to understand that nations who weren't directly involved will only be interested in broad strokes of history. Up until recently you had people in Europe and elsewhere calling themselves Maoist.
Genghis Khan is not demonized in European or American schools either.
"do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?"
I am afraid that is still the case. All of the kids I know within my cousins' families (8-14 years of age), have no idea about any of the Holocaust stuff.
The reason I think is the curriculum takes the holocaust not so seriously and also, the authorities believing that kids are not meant to be exposed to much details about all of the stuff. I remember it was just mentioned as "war" to us. It is still sadly the case.
Also, note that we weren't taught a bit of shit about Pol Pot, Imperial Japan etc. Nobody had any idea about the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731 etc.
All we were just taught was just "wars" - who fought and who won.
It's actually really incredible the lengths that people will go to deny this stuff. Here's Joe Rogan, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, trying to do that, yet of course does not actually show the video!
Clumsy hand movement is a signature sign of autism/aspergers and anyone who watches Musk for more than 10 minutes will notice he suffers from this a lot, but it's okay to mock people for disabilities when their politics don't align with yours. I don't agree with Musk on any things, but think it's wrong to call him a nazi over clumsy hand movement.
I have aspergers, my hand movements are terrible when I try do them to 'blend in', so I usually don't bother.
Writing from Germany the first association with Tesla is Musk and following that his Nazi stuff and involvement with the current US chaos. The brand name Tesla is burned and it will need years of good behavior to bring it back to neutral. If Tesla wants to sell cars here, they need a new company name.
It is likely that most of the teslas you saw around Amsterdam were part of the Schiphol airport taxi fleet. They went all in on tesla about a decade ago.
One thing is obviously Musk with his Nazi salutes and open support to the far right in multiple European countries, including Germany. This, to me, is enough to mock anyone who would buy a Tesla after those events.
The other thing is that Tesla is a US company. I suspect that many people outside the US look for alternatives to US products. The more expensive the product, the more important the decision. And Teslas are by far not the best EVs (clearly not an ecological car, not the cheapest, ...), so it's easy to go for an alternative.
And then, for people who wouldn't mind so much what Musk and Trump and their band are doing, it is anyway a risk: people in the street will judge you if you drive in a Tesla. Many drivers have put stickers on their Tesla to show they don't support Musk ("I bought it before Musk became crazy"), but they can't do that with a new model. Buying a new Tesla that was clearly built after those events is a great risk (Teslas have been burned even though they had been bought before the madness).
All that to say, I'm surprised to see that there are still Tesla sales in Europe at all.
> Kind of insane that one company was permitted to launch so many.
It’s a good demonstration of how quickly things can go when you don’t have to clear lightyears of red tape and fend off constant obstructionism from NIMBYs and industry incumbents.
We could probably lay fiber at almost the same speed if we could get those factors out of the way, but reality is not that kind and so any large scale terrestrial project like that is a long, drawn-out, expensive nightmare.
I’m honestly not sure which group I hate more, the Elon fans who think he can’t do anything wrong or the Musk haters who think everything he does is evil/dumb.
How is buying from Chinese companies embracing the CCP? BYD didn't do anything to Uighurs. The US is also supporting something much worse than what China has done at this moment, so if we use the same logic, we shouldn't be buying anything produced by US companies.
Some Americans certainly understand. Sadly (or maybe thankfully?) a lot of them have passed on. My grandfather was in France and Germany and was so scarred by what he experienced there that he never spoke of it once to any of his 6 children or 16 grandchildren and he was a fantastic story teller. I shudder to think how he would feel about what's happened in America recently. The Europe that he risked his life for and his friends that he watched die ... all that sacrifice and good will has been discarded in a few months.
> I don't think that Americans (or South Africans) really understand the scars that the Nazis left in Europe.
Left-leaning and centrist Americans at least were similarly horrified, so I don't think it's an issue of understanding in the US. Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.
Also note that it's not just Europe where sales have dropped, Tesla EV market share has fallen quite hard in the US as well IIRC.
> Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.
That reason is his breeder fetish/ideology. By the tabloid press he's paid for IVF gender selection for boys, and Vivian rejecting that, defying her father's wish and coming out as trans is what sent him off on the anti-woke crusade. And that's also why he bought and ruined Twitter - in his view, it was the woke people on there who ruined his "son".
It's all so damn petty, the actions of a man so rich he didn't think someone would ever tell him the word "no" and follow through with it. So much completely unnecessary suffering, all for the pure vanity of a single man.
I don’t have an answer to that, but I grew up with plenty of Americans, some of whom might even have fought in WWII, who wouldn’t buy a VW for the obvious reasons.
It would be interesting to see if the brand could be recovered if Elon left. I have to imagine a significant fraction of anyone still working there is still there because they're politically aligned with Elon, so, it might be difficult.
I think now that VW and Renault have their own very attractive options and the US is acting more and more hostile, even if Tesla was purged from Elon loyalists, why would anyone buy American if they can buy European?
Yes, Henry Ford had Nazi sympathies. But VW was literally founded by the Nazis:
> "Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront) as part of the Strength Through Joy (German: Kraft durch Freude) program in Berlin" [0]
> "The German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, pronounced [ˌdɔʏtʃə ˈʔaʁbaɪtsfʁɔnt]; DAF) was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification." [1]
Many do not but still many do. Hopefully those of us that do will still be around to pick up the pieces. The American Spirit is a thing but we'll just have to hope it endures whatever the consequences are going to be for recent actions.
Polls say somewhere between 55-80% of Americans get it. The republicans are explicitly ignoring everyone except a < 20% fringe movement, and are systematically dismantling the rule of law and our democracy faster than hitler did.
We already have troops being deployed against Americans, ICE arresting citizens, and the Supreme Court making it impossible for lower courts to do anything after they’ve ruled the Trump administration is in violation of the law. There are numerous ongoing illegal attacks against our (private!) universities and free speech too. Also, they’re purging the executive branch of all scientists and military leadership that might uphold the constitution. We also have a new international network of detention camps, and are actively supporting genocide and starting wars.
So, yeah, Americans deeply understanding how f-cked the entire planet is.
I don't think you understand the sentiment in Europe. Supporting far right extremist parties while doing Nazi salutes makes you a pariah, irrecoverably.
>Tesla can probably dig out of their hole in 50-80 years
Tesla's market cap is still about $1 trillion, so it can't be much of a hole or more precisely investors with real money on the line don't think it can be:
Europe is economically strained right now. Inflation has hit hard, with housing costs skyrocketing even in less expensive countries, and people are being gentrified out of their own cities. Its no time to be buying expensive vanity cars. People cant even buy normal cars right now.
It’s odd to read the comments here, somehow getting into a long thread about nazi camps when the buried lede is that Europe is under tremendous financial stress and it’s not getting better. Losing ground for 20 years to USA and ascendant Asia where Tesla sells a ton of cars is a concern. Talk about boiled frogs.
no matter how many events prove them to be laughably wrong, they keep deluding themselves into thinking that the values held in their extremely isolated bubbles are commonplace.
like yeah, sure bro, people see a $50K car and purse their lips because musk is le bad. just like they do about BMWs and Porsches, right?
The same news from 5 days ago(117 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44374761
I wouldn't romanticize it that much.
Tesla used to be: Unmatched software(+), unmatched electronics(+), Save the planet(+), great subsidies(+), electric car that doesn't look weird(+), USA and Startups and the future(+), unmatched acceleration(+), low built quality(-), Shitty driving dynamics(-)
Now alternatives are pretty good, so still Unmatched software(+) but the difference is not that big and the rest doesn't look good. No longer saving the planet because you don't save the planet with fascists, USA is no longer cool(hostile and clown-like), tech guys are no longer cool(greedy and sleazy and meddle with politics instead of doing cool shit), the design is dated and boring now and there are many alternatives doing much better in many other characteristics.
So Tesla still sells very well when the price is right, match the new situation and it sells. Tasla sells like hot cakes in Turkey for example because they introduced a version specifically for the Turkish regulations and that particular configuration is taxed just %10 when the cheapest petrol cars are taxed %80. AFAIK Tesla keeps selling well in Norway too.
This is spot on, I bought a BYD instead of a Tesla because of the reasons above. The build quality was better, the subsidy was great, and the Tesla brand is associated with Musk, so it's not a brand I personally want to touch.
Ok but the association of BYD with China is also something I personally have reservations with.
99% of the stuff you buy is "associated" with China.
I also think they went too far past "elegant simplicity".
No turn signal stalks? Need to quickly reverse if you stuck your nose out too far? (no stalk anymore) Need defrost now? (search on touchscreen)
I think it's now "cost-cuting ergonomic poverty", sort of like how macs lost too many ports.
And just recently added "shitty brand image (-)"
True. The prince needs to match that to sell. In Europe if you are going to buy a Tesla better have a really good price to compensate for this.
Brand image is really important ev where already better in china than any other place in the world before Tesla but Tesla give the allure that the tech need to have mass appeal. That's why it was so successful as a company
I thought it was really successful as a company due to all the carbon credit handouts it received from government, which it sold to the other car companies.
That, and the lies from the man who owns a social media company (albeit later)
Tesla made a little under 3% of its 2024 revenue from carbon credits.
It made those credits because it sells electric cars in volume.
I get the Musk bashing, and think the guy's an asshat, but isn't this literally what carbon credits are supposed to do -- funnel cash from dirty industries to carbon negative ones, as another channel of funding for them?
In 2023, it made 30% of its net quarterly income from carbon credit sales. That’s substantial.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/76c762eb-b4cf-445c-8f0a-195...
You mean Q4 2024?
https://carboncredits.com/teslas-carbon-credit-revenue-soars...
Yes, because you're looking at net income vs something that is entirely profit. Of course it's going to be a large portion.
That's like saying AWS is most of Amazon: it certainly contributes a ton of margin, but there's a lot of other revenue.
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I always assumed that pro-fascism folks don't trust him as he's not really in this for the right reasons. He must be the ultimate poser, "useful for now" in these circles.
Musk is anti-White?
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In Europe EV adoption is really driven by a concerted effort by individual buyers wanting to make green choices. And Musk has completely alienated all support from that buyer base. I don't see Tesla ever recovering its green credentials, and as a consequence ever recovering its sales or second-hand value.
> In Europe EV adoption is really driven by a concerted effort by individual buyers
Is that true? I would have bet that the adoption is driven by company fleet cars and incentives.
The company fleets are a thing of the past in my part of Europe so I didn't have them in mind when I was making my comment.
I would speculate that European fleet purchasers in other parts of Europe would be wary of buying Teslas now partly because of the current trade war stuff and also with an eye on the resale value at end of lease; its really hard to shift a second hand Tesla these days.
I think "for the non-professional market" was implied.
No it's not true.
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> In Europe EV adoption is really driven by a concerted effort by individual buyers wanting to make green choices.
That would be nice but it is mostly driven by EU-wide fleet emission rules and individual country subsidies/taxes.
What’s the point in a luxury brand where you’re embarrassed to be seen displaying the logo? I don’t think I’ve ever seen brand impairment like this that didn’t result in the brand being retired. The only way forward I can see for them in Europe is partnership with a European firm and I can’t see that working either.
I don't think I've ever seen brand impairment like this, full stop. Certainly not for a large consumer product manufacturer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
The UK has definitely seen it before!
Jacob & Co. Watches recently
MyPillow? /s
Huh. I had kind of assumed that this was a vestigial company attached to a crazy CEO, but it appears to have been, at least at one time, quite big.
Do people really care about this that much? The European company that made my car probably uses its social media and ad presence to spread progressivism, which I’m completely against, but what are we supposed to do, find and buy only from companies that we identify with politically? That would be very hard and limiting. And somewhat stupid too (as stupid as a car company taking a political stance, or people that think that buying from some company means you identify with their politics, but here we are!)
Do people care that one of the most powerful men in the world has become an enthusiastic cheerleader for the ignorant beliefs and dangerous rhetoric that led to the deadliest war in human history?
Yes, I believe they do.
If you think "progressivism" is somehow on equal footing as one of the worst genocides in history then you are morally bankrupt. Several of my family died under the Nazi regime, and I'm not even Jewish or other Untermensch group. This is not unusual in Europe. There's a reason purchases dropped off a cliff after the Sieg Heil specifically, and not before when he merely had some questionable politics.
Yes, they do. When 70+ years old grandparents in Sweden are aware of the bad image the brand brings, it's dead.
When I personally know two cases of that, 70 years old disconnected from internet vitriol, I assume it's absolutely dead.
That’s the beauty of living in a free country. You can choose to spend money with companies that share your values. Personally, I wouldn’t give my money to a neo-Nazi bootlicker, but you do you.
Aside problems with Musk it has to be said that the model lineup of Tesla is poor by today’s Euopean standards. We have lots of models and brands available in all sizes, luxurious and expensive to small and fun. Tesla was a great choice in 2019, but now it is just one among many and it doesn’t boast a great design or interesting imterior.
Even in the US, Tesla has problems with lack of variety.
In my case, almost nothing they sell fits in my garage. Even their shortest (Model 3) just barely fits, and there’s no hatch variant like I’d prefer, so I’m leasing a Nissan Ariya and will probably switch to one of those next-gen Leafs afterwards.
I have 2 or 3 neighbors that solved that problem by parking in the driveway. I think the car would fit in the garage but ~75% of my neighbors use their garage as an extra room to store shit.
Yeah that’s what my neighbors do too, but I live in a dense suburb and it makes getting in/out difficult if everybody’s driveways (including mine) are full, and the size of my car exacerbates that. Even as it is it’s a pain when the one neighbor has their truck in their driveway instead of their usual smaller Forester — in that case my small-by-SUV-standards Ariya suddenly feels like a whale trying to slip through.
My needs also just aren’t that great. I don’t commute and I don’t drive much, so a small, highly maneuverable city car fits the bill perfectly.
> Even in the US, Tesla has problems with lack of variety.
Also all their cars (with the exception of the Cybertruck) literally look the same (like Neo in that scene from the Matrix where he has no mouth).
Is anyone out there who feels sympathy for Elon? His public image is so damaged, I don’t think it can be recovered.
Elon taught us that empathy is weakness. One needs empathy to have sympathy for the fellow man.
Therefore, let's honor Elon's words and rejoice at his misfortune.
For anyone wondering, he literally said that the empathy response is “a bug in Western civilization”: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-...
Not much, I guess. His bad behavior goes back a long way, and has hurt many people around him. He used to lie publicly about his first child having died in his arms, when it was the mother's, just to provide a stark example.
He has enough bills to wipe his tears away with, unlike others.
I suspect some of the more recent behavior is attributable to or influenced by drug use, and I feel some sympathy for anyone who comes under their thrall.
Instead of worrying about the richest man in the world, feel sympathy for the people actively dying from his “wood chipper” tactics: https://archive.is/25XCC
I mean, that's not something that just happened, it's something that he did. Hard to feel too much sympathy, tbh.
He threw that out so fast. It's pretty impressive.
He thought he had Trump in his pocket and didn't need to pretend any more.
Also drugs.
I do not think we can blame the nazi stuff on drugs. He seems to have a family history of this.
The irony is the Nazis also had a issue with drugs (amphetamines?).
I mean frankly the vast majority of drug addicts don't come across as _remotely_ this deranged.
You can feel sympathy for a person without agreeing with them or having the same viewpoints. I hope there are people out there that feel bad for another living being.
Edit: Yikes. Also, sympathy ≠ empathy.
Does anybody feel sympathy for a terrorist? If your answer is yes, then you're unsympathetic towards numerous innocent others who have or may fall prey to them. Your sympathy becomes selective and meaningless.
This might sound like a hyperbole, but the comparison to terrorism is relevant here. The DOGE cuts have a cost in terms of human lives. I have no conclusive sources to show for it, but some estimates put it at 300K till date. Even Bill Gates criticized it. And Elon laughed and scoffed at it when he was asked about it. Drugs are not an excuse for any of it, since it was his choice and nobody's addiction should cause the deaths of thousands. Frankly, the greed of billionaires seem to have a bigger cost in terms of suffering and lives than even terrorists do. So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
> Does anybody feel sympathy for a terrorist? If your answer is yes, then you're unsympathetic towards numerous innocent others who have or may fall prey to them. Your sympathy becomes selective and meaningless.
You can have sympathy for both. It's not one or the other.
> So please stop giving these humans devoid of any empathy, the benefit of your humanity.
I sympathize for you. I hope that you're willing to open up your mind and be open to the idea that everyone deserves humanity.
Hitler decided some people should be treated with humanity and others not. I imagine if you asked Hitler, he would have said the Jewish people were devoid of any empathy. I think we're above that, right?
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It seems that for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people. I wonder why that is.
Yeah but you know, there's gonna be a million robotaxis driving around in 2 months time, pinky promise.
Yet the stock refuses to go down from a PE of almost 200, to the dismay of my options play... :-)
no crying in the casino
It's a meme stock, fundamentals don't matter, just vibes.
The market can remain irrational more than you can remain liquid.
Which is precisely why the company cannot split with Elon, and people who think it will are deluded.
Elon has a very loose association with truth, in a manner that usually yields long prison sentences. For many years he has been engaging with what could accurately be called securities fraud, and there is always some amazing new mega revenue stream just around the corner. If Tesla fired Elon (in an imaginary world where he didn't control the board), any competent hire would have to seriously say ooof and point out all of the mega risks the company faces. With Elon it's all magic and fairy tales and soon a trillion super robots and robotaxis to Mars and...
Is anyone surprised by this? Europeans still vividly remember, and are reminded, of the cost of WWII. When the head of a company, no matter how trendy, sieg heils on stage (twice!) and then goes on to publicly appear at far-right german political rallies - europeans take note, and act accordingly.
I don't think it's just the Nazi salute to be honest. The reputational damage the US has suffered this year is insane and it's getting worse.
Since Trump was elected America has been awful to its allies, specially Canada and EU. Many Europeans, are avoiding spending money on American companies, much less one owned by Musk.
Americans have a poor understanding of what’s going on with Teslas sales numbers because their market largely lacks the competition that exists elsewhere and so they overindex on lesser factors like Elon.
The real issue is simply that Tesla are attempting to maintain their pricing and margins while the cost of producing EVs is plummeting and the variety of options is increasing.
The result is that they are being severely undercut on price by BYD et al.
Tesla are going to have to either start cutting prices significantly, or accept being a low volume pseudo-premium offering.
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Invoking “1984” doesn’t automatically make you profound or right. You sidestep with a quip, offering no counter-evidence or analysis, just a tired dystopian trope. If you’re going to accuse someone of ignoring “evidence of your eyes and ears,” at least bring a shred of proof to the table instead of leaning on literary clichés to mask a weak rebuttal. The video may raise questions, but dismissing the point with a smug one-liner only shows you’re more interested in sounding clever.
It wasn't for you, it was for everyone else who feels the same way I do about what is quite clear. There's at least 3 other prominent republicans who also Sieg Heiled, including Bannon, once Trump's chief strategist, in front of CPAC (the tea party/the GOP): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E9pXCuJnbc
You know that for it to be a Sieg Heil salute one must actually say Seig Heil while saluting?
No I don't. I've never had Sieg Heil lessons.
I am sure it must also be at exactly a 30 degree angle with even a degree off invalidating it as an official nazi salute.
There is definitely no history of deportations, loyalty purges, secret police, cowing of the judiciary and universities, provocations of anti-semitism, big lies, or attacks on institutions that might inform the greater context and there definitely aren't people who have studied fascism at our most respected universities who are warning us that fascism is here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
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Europe goes beyond central Europe.
Maybe it’s the fault of my US centric education, but I must be forgetting that part of Europe that had a fun time during WWII. Even the Swiss spent the time preparing for the other shoe to drop.
Virtually everywhere in Europe, broadly defined, was either directly involved in WW2 or was severely impacted by it while not technically being a combatant.
So did scope of WWII.
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We have been pretty well informed of Musk's shenanigans in Portugal. His sieg heil spread pretty quickly.
Marketing. Being informed of is different than repeated contact with a crafted message.
Those would all affect the rest of the EV market too, but overall that is up.
How about the US EV market in Europe?
There is effectively none, besides Tesla. With the exception of Ford the US brands' Europe strategy essentially died in the financial crisis, and even Ford (which historically was a big player in Europe and designed cars specifically for the market) isn't what it was.
Better value electric cars from China
EV sales are up 25%.
It was widely covered throughout Europe. And widely despised throughout Europe across the political spectrum from left to right. To suggest it's unrelated is a profoundly unserious suggestion.
To suggest that market moves based on antics of a US CEO seems unserious to me.
Cars in particular tend to get bound up in peoples' self-image (to a rather unhealthy degree IMO, but anyway...) Few people would want the association.
Competitors have the same issue, but not the same decline :)
US EVs?
Which notable EV's does the US have besides Tesla?
Oh. We know. It is as we didn't have internet.
His association with Trump didn't help
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He went to Auschwitz after being pressured to apologize for some unhinged tweets. This was all before he swig heiled twice on stage.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68055368.amp
Wow, didn't know that. Thanks.
He also has been known to show up at costume parties dressed as a Nazi commander. (Long forgotten controversy from over a decade ago)
wtf, the only such instance I remember from a VIP is one of the UK princes. How can these people think that such stuff is acceptable is beyond me.
It came up at the same time as the UK prince as a "wealthy folks just do these things it's funny and not an endorsement you pleebs don't understand" sort of way.
For what it's worth, a UK prince is one of the few people or groups of people that I would assume were likely not hiding Nazi sympathies. Their entire country, and specifically their recent royal ancestors, where subject to Nazi aggression and responsible for countering it. There's a long history of dressing up as those you want to lampoon, especially in British media.
Well, there is Edward VIII which as an American who doesn't follow UK monarchy drama was flabbergasted and in disbelief to learn about and which triggered a wikipedia rabbithole after seeing in particular the closing credits of The Crown S2E6
That makes it(for me) so much worse, knowing that he's been to Auschwitz and still decided to do it.
It makes it an expression of his honest ideology as opposed to a thoughtless troll.
I don’t know, it sounds exactly like what a thoughtless troll would do.
So...it makes it worse(for me). Instead of being a stupid and foolish thing he did in the moment of high emotions it just confirms he's an actual Nazi. I'm literally from Oswiecim, used to go past Auschwitz on my way to school every day - the richest man on earth doing sieg heils on stage despite visiting this place is filling me with dread.
The wealthiest man in the world is want for lack of resources? Unlikely. He's 54, he knows what he's doing.
It's easy to assume that atrocities while they're happening are as unpopular as they are after they happened but they're not.
Population level atrocities are impossible without throngs of gushing supporters waving flags and screaming about "restoring the natural order".
Always look out for flags, crosses and people with money trying to hide behind their symbols with reprehensible rhetoric.
If you think Elon could be persuaded to do that, I want what you're smoking.
There's a certain type of person who, when others criticize them for doing some offensive things, their automatic response is just to do it even harder: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cartoon-Y...
I will give you some context here - in my high school (India) we were never taught any of the million horrible things Hitler did to people. We were only taught that Hitler was a very prominent leader and an icon of history that always won wars and held Germany and many other countries in his grip. It was only when I read about him on the internet that I found what kind of an SOB he actually was, many years later.
I was so stoned by all of that and the fact that our education and schooling hid that very fact from all of us. So it is up to us to teach kids when they grow up to allow them to know history as it exactly happened, without painting it, when the time is right.
What was the motivation for the curriculum to hide - or even glorify - Nazi Germany? And do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?
I'm definitely not an expert on this but I think India has (well-grounded) resentment towards Churchill, and so the enemy-of-my-enemy effect may have resulted in a softening of Hitler's image and a tendency to downplay his crimes and negative attributes.
Nuance is hard, and so to some people, accepting Hitler as a villain means whoever defeated him must be a hero, so if we don't want to accept Churchill as a hero then we must reject Hitler being a villain.
(It goes without saying that this logic is faulty, but at the same time it's part of human nature and we all have to grapple with it to some extent).
I imagine most of history in India will focus on Britain being more evil than Germany.
More killed by British in India than Hitler killed. plus all the plundering of resources.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/independence-day-165-...
You have to understand that nations who weren't directly involved will only be interested in broad strokes of history. Up until recently you had people in Europe and elsewhere calling themselves Maoist.
Genghis Khan is not demonized in European or American schools either.
"do those motivations keen the current students similarly uninformed?"
I am afraid that is still the case. All of the kids I know within my cousins' families (8-14 years of age), have no idea about any of the Holocaust stuff.
The reason I think is the curriculum takes the holocaust not so seriously and also, the authorities believing that kids are not meant to be exposed to much details about all of the stuff. I remember it was just mentioned as "war" to us. It is still sadly the case.
Also, note that we weren't taught a bit of shit about Pol Pot, Imperial Japan etc. Nobody had any idea about the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731 etc.
All we were just taught was just "wars" - who fought and who won.
He did that last year, yet he sieg heiled this year so the effect does not seem permanent or durable..
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/22/elon-musk...
Apology for what?
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The other way around. He went there to wash his image and did the nazi salute about a year after going to Auschwitz. I would argue that is even worse.
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There’s a video of him doing it.
It's actually really incredible the lengths that people will go to deny this stuff. Here's Joe Rogan, one of the most popular podcasts in the world, trying to do that, yet of course does not actually show the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3dJvHIvRI
Clumsy hand movement is a signature sign of autism/aspergers and anyone who watches Musk for more than 10 minutes will notice he suffers from this a lot, but it's okay to mock people for disabilities when their politics don't align with yours. I don't agree with Musk on any things, but think it's wrong to call him a nazi over clumsy hand movement.
I have aspergers, my hand movements are terrible when I try do them to 'blend in', so I usually don't bother.
I think for a lot of people, politics is more important than having humanity for other people.
It’s probably more related to the fact that EV subsidies were cut in Germany at the end of last year when the government ran out of money.
You’re only getting a tax discount with BEV, but no purchase discounts financed from taxes.
That still 8,729 too many sold.
Writing from Germany the first association with Tesla is Musk and following that his Nazi stuff and involvement with the current US chaos. The brand name Tesla is burned and it will need years of good behavior to bring it back to neutral. If Tesla wants to sell cars here, they need a new company name.
So the stock tomorrow will jump up 10% on this news.
It was crazy to visit Oslo or Amsterdam in the mid-2010s and notice just what a high % of vehicles were Tesla Model S's.
Car ownership is expensive and unnecessary so people with wealth bought the environmentally positive status symbols. There was simply no equivalent.
I wonder what will replace it.
It is likely that most of the teslas you saw around Amsterdam were part of the Schiphol airport taxi fleet. They went all in on tesla about a decade ago.
One thing is obviously Musk with his Nazi salutes and open support to the far right in multiple European countries, including Germany. This, to me, is enough to mock anyone who would buy a Tesla after those events.
The other thing is that Tesla is a US company. I suspect that many people outside the US look for alternatives to US products. The more expensive the product, the more important the decision. And Teslas are by far not the best EVs (clearly not an ecological car, not the cheapest, ...), so it's easy to go for an alternative.
And then, for people who wouldn't mind so much what Musk and Trump and their band are doing, it is anyway a risk: people in the street will judge you if you drive in a Tesla. Many drivers have put stickers on their Tesla to show they don't support Musk ("I bought it before Musk became crazy"), but they can't do that with a new model. Buying a new Tesla that was clearly built after those events is a great risk (Teslas have been burned even though they had been bought before the madness).
All that to say, I'm surprised to see that there are still Tesla sales in Europe at all.
>people in the street will judge you if you drive in a Tesla
maybe if there's a reddit meetup nearby
When that nightmare budget bill is pushed through next week and they replace EV credits with coal mine subsidies, Tesla sales will crater in US too
If only we could solve starlink pollution as easily but privatize the profits, socialize the costs
https://satellitemap.space/
What a crazy map. Kind of insane that one company was permitted to launch so many.
The map is not to scale, there is gigantically more space satellites between than the map implies.
> Kind of insane that one company was permitted to launch so many.
It’s a good demonstration of how quickly things can go when you don’t have to clear lightyears of red tape and fend off constant obstructionism from NIMBYs and industry incumbents.
We could probably lay fiber at almost the same speed if we could get those factors out of the way, but reality is not that kind and so any large scale terrestrial project like that is a long, drawn-out, expensive nightmare.
I’m honestly not sure which group I hate more, the Elon fans who think he can’t do anything wrong or the Musk haters who think everything he does is evil/dumb.
Starlink is an absolute net good.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1938793866389581865
„Connectivity saves lives“
A friend was fired for calling Musk a Nazi in work chat
Did they work at Tesla ?
I think it's kinda funny people ditch Musk only to embrace the CCP.
Not sure that makes sense. The Uighurs need better PR, I guess.
Good point but I think it just shows how toxic the Musk brand is now.
How is buying from Chinese companies embracing the CCP? BYD didn't do anything to Uighurs. The US is also supporting something much worse than what China has done at this moment, so if we use the same logic, we shouldn't be buying anything produced by US companies.
It shows you how far the US and the Trump/Musk brand has fallen if China suddenly appears moderate and tame.
I guess that publicly performing Nazi salutes sends a loud and clear message to people
Huh? Trump would be the analog to the CCP, not Musk. That's like saying people are choosing the CCP when they buy from Temu instead of Amazon.
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If he's not a nazi, why does he give speeches at nazi rallies?
Well it's a take based on "things he actually did and said". The conspiracy theories are _much_ weirder.
I'd say it's pretty indisputable that he's at least Nazi-friendly and doesn't care to bother distance himself from Nazis.
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And they never should be nor should anyone be forgiven for offering one up now. Whether joking or not, it’s not acceptable.
Some Americans certainly understand. Sadly (or maybe thankfully?) a lot of them have passed on. My grandfather was in France and Germany and was so scarred by what he experienced there that he never spoke of it once to any of his 6 children or 16 grandchildren and he was a fantastic story teller. I shudder to think how he would feel about what's happened in America recently. The Europe that he risked his life for and his friends that he watched die ... all that sacrifice and good will has been discarded in a few months.
> I don't think that Americans (or South Africans) really understand the scars that the Nazis left in Europe.
Left-leaning and centrist Americans at least were similarly horrified, so I don't think it's an issue of understanding in the US. Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.
Also note that it's not just Europe where sales have dropped, Tesla EV market share has fallen quite hard in the US as well IIRC.
> Musk in particular is just dead set on being a right-wing extremist now for whatever reason.
That reason is his breeder fetish/ideology. By the tabloid press he's paid for IVF gender selection for boys, and Vivian rejecting that, defying her father's wish and coming out as trans is what sent him off on the anti-woke crusade. And that's also why he bought and ruined Twitter - in his view, it was the woke people on there who ruined his "son".
It's all so damn petty, the actions of a man so rich he didn't think someone would ever tell him the word "no" and follow through with it. So much completely unnecessary suffering, all for the pure vanity of a single man.
Then how did VW survive?
It didn't, in any meaningful way. Certainly the legal entity didn't; I suppose a trademark and some IP did.
I don’t have an answer to that, but I grew up with plenty of Americans, some of whom might even have fought in WWII, who wouldn’t buy a VW for the obvious reasons.
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It would be interesting to see if the brand could be recovered if Elon left. I have to imagine a significant fraction of anyone still working there is still there because they're politically aligned with Elon, so, it might be difficult.
I think now that VW and Renault have their own very attractive options and the US is acting more and more hostile, even if Tesla was purged from Elon loyalists, why would anyone buy American if they can buy European?
Remind me who created VW again? Seems like that brand is rehabilitated...
I've always found it amusing how the VW Beetle got its cultural associations. Maybe some things just stand on their own regardless of their origins.
Ferdinand Prosche. Oh you mean the association with the Nazis, like Henry Ford?
You must be joking.
Yes, Henry Ford had Nazi sympathies. But VW was literally founded by the Nazis:
> "Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront) as part of the Strength Through Joy (German: Kraft durch Freude) program in Berlin" [0]
> "The German Labour Front (German: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, pronounced [ˌdɔʏtʃə ˈʔaʁbaɪtsfʁɔnt]; DAF) was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification." [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#:~:text=1932–1944:%...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Labour_Front
Besides, both Mercedes (as Daimler-Benz) and BMW made Nazi tanks during that time.
All those brands are now squeaky-clean.
I agree entirely. I can't imagine the reputation of the US being repaired inside a generation.
I don't think Americans quite understand the damage that has been done to their country.
This stuff is how empires fall.
Many do not but still many do. Hopefully those of us that do will still be around to pick up the pieces. The American Spirit is a thing but we'll just have to hope it endures whatever the consequences are going to be for recent actions.
Polls say somewhere between 55-80% of Americans get it. The republicans are explicitly ignoring everyone except a < 20% fringe movement, and are systematically dismantling the rule of law and our democracy faster than hitler did.
We already have troops being deployed against Americans, ICE arresting citizens, and the Supreme Court making it impossible for lower courts to do anything after they’ve ruled the Trump administration is in violation of the law. There are numerous ongoing illegal attacks against our (private!) universities and free speech too. Also, they’re purging the executive branch of all scientists and military leadership that might uphold the constitution. We also have a new international network of detention camps, and are actively supporting genocide and starting wars.
So, yeah, Americans deeply understanding how f-cked the entire planet is.
As long as he or any of his subsidiaries or family hold stock, buying a Tesla will still enrich him, making it toxic to anyone who cares about that.
He would also have to sell his shares.
Its not 'forever ruined'. A percentage of buyers will have been put off.
Those not put off will not buy an EV anyway
I don't think you understand the sentiment in Europe. Supporting far right extremist parties while doing Nazi salutes makes you a pariah, irrecoverably.
Henry Ford used to put a copy of a book about the jewish banking conspiracy in each glove box, and VW were literally founded by Nazis.
Elon’s about that bad. Tesla can probably dig out of their hole in 50-80 years, assuming they survive that long.
>Tesla can probably dig out of their hole in 50-80 years
Tesla's market cap is still about $1 trillion, so it can't be much of a hole or more precisely investors with real money on the line don't think it can be:
https://companiesmarketcap.com/tesla/marketcap/
"The stock market overvalues it, so it must be fine" is a hell of a take.
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Europe is economically strained right now. Inflation has hit hard, with housing costs skyrocketing even in less expensive countries, and people are being gentrified out of their own cities. Its no time to be buying expensive vanity cars. People cant even buy normal cars right now.
That may be true, but fact is that car sales in Europe are up in the same period. EV sales in particular are also up. Only Tesla sales went down.
It’s odd to read the comments here, somehow getting into a long thread about nazi camps when the buried lede is that Europe is under tremendous financial stress and it’s not getting better. Losing ground for 20 years to USA and ascendant Asia where Tesla sells a ton of cars is a concern. Talk about boiled frogs.
I realise it is most improper to read the article on this here orange website, but:
> Overall, battery electric vehicle sales rose 25% in Europe compared to a year earlier
Come on, now.
Absolutely no context behind that. It’s meaningless in isolation.
no matter how many events prove them to be laughably wrong, they keep deluding themselves into thinking that the values held in their extremely isolated bubbles are commonplace.
like yeah, sure bro, people see a $50K car and purse their lips because musk is le bad. just like they do about BMWs and Porsches, right?
Are BMW and Porsche actively encouraging neo-Nazi groups?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Origin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#History
now, how many people give a fuck about any of that?