So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
The car already has low resale value, and if they did sell it it doesn't get it off the road. I do own one, and honestly I hate driving it around now because of the stigma but its the only car I have and while yes I could sell it at a massive loss thats both a lot of work and a waste of my time, effort, and money.
It was literally the first car I ever bought and was because I liked the convenience of EV's and for the environment. Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own and always have to look over my shoulders, and I don't even like Elon in the first place and never really cared for him.
It's obviously wrong to harass innocent people. But at the same time, Tesla is so anti-consumer that switching cars might actually be beneficial. Tesla workers were caught spying on car owners through the camera, sharing in internal chat videos of people doing "really intimate things" or approaching the car "completely naked." Not only that, they were photoshopping it and memeing. It shows a culture of complete moral breakdown in the company. I definitely wouldn't want a Tesla in my home, even without the current political events.
> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
Can't things be exceptional? "Inconvenient" seems to go very far in diminishing what's happening here, and I think your point would come across very differently without the understatement. Is there really no line he could cross where you would stop calling his politics an "inconvenience" and support direct actions being taken? (Not necessarily this action in particular)
I understand the stigma is painful but I would implore you to consider how that pain affects your outlook and perhaps makes you feel more sympathy for the company than you otherwise would.
And the only people who begin an argument with an ad hominem understand they have no argument at all.
I don't believe that the people who are dying in Ukraine after Starlink pulled out struggled to see reality as the bombs fell. I don't believe that all of the "parasites" as Musk calls them were terminally online before they lost their social security. I'm sure the many veterans he made jobless had a good dose of reality on the battlefield while serving the US. I don't believe that the leaders of so many countries in Europe and America are spending all of their time doomscrolling and I don't think Germany is starting investigations into electoral fraud on the basis of something they saw being terminally online.
And is this worse than what he's done? There are no calls for vandalism, it's only personal details. There was no threat implied wegen he shared the personal details of the daughter of a judge he disagreed with with millions of people right?
Tell that to the thousands who have lost their jobs in careers they no longer feel comfortable pursuing.
Claiming only those who are "terminally online" think this is more than inconvenient is an amazing display of either privilege or not giving a crap. Either way, lol calling kettle.
Seriously? Vandalizing innocent people's property is wrong, but ransacking government institutions is far worse and much more consequential. There's an order of magnitude difference in the number of victims and the ways in which they're affected, which includes death.
Death, you ask? Gutting health agencies, pollution regulators, or international efforts to prevent the spread of disease will all lead to increased numbers of death.
However, it seems that when the scale of the crime outgrows a certain threshold, the perceived severity goes down somehow. It's depressing.
The argument goes: Because 3% of the population is antisocial personality disorder in the screens on TV and the internet tell them it's okay to commit violence against you because Nazis.
> I still don't care. I may just buy another Tesla and a handgun :)
That kind of escalation is very American of you.
I'd like to remind you of the demonstration of the "bulletproof" windows of the Cybertruck and consider quite how bad things may get if Americans don't learn to live with each other without constantly laughing about "triggering" each other when the more literal trigger is on the firearms you have a constitutional right to own.
That so many are, like yourself, so blasé about the risks, was one reason I decided against migrating to the USA when I had the chance.
so you’re advocating for the “peaceful” protests to be allowed to continue? adults know this is improper behavior by the left, but we must just let it play out to avoid triggering the “protesters” who didn’t get their way in the election? why can’t they just act like adults?
> so you’re advocating for the “peaceful” protests to be allowed to continue? adults know this is improper behavior by the left, but we must just let it play out to avoid triggering the “protesters” who didn’t get their way in the election? why can’t they just act like adults?
The only change I have to do to make to your comment for it to be about the events of Jan 6 2021, is a single "left" becoming "right".
Now, as a non-American who isn't immunised and calloused to your nation's vocal rhetoric and use of literal gun sights in political campaign posters, I can't tell how close you are to a civil war.
I would rather not watch you have one, not even at this distance. So please, figure out how to not be cruel to each other.
> Two wrongs don't make a right. (Heck they're even different classifications of wrongs and not remotely comparable given that they're very different.)
Yes. Only one of "invading Capitol buildings to disrupt election confirmation while chanting 'Hang Mike Pence'" and "arson against private company and their vehicles" is actually attempting to overturn an election.
But both can be described by the comment I quoted, modulo s/left/right/
> It'd start by Europeans not egging on Americans to be complicit with or actively commit violence against other people's property.
what direct cost to individuals did Jan 6 cause? did anybody in Jan 6 loop individual citizens in and destroy their property to force alignment? no you say? this is literal terrorism because the entire point is to force an outcome using fear and violence and they should be dealt with according to US terrorism law.
> what direct cost to individuals did Jan 6 cause? did anybody in Jan 6 loop individual citizens in and destroy their property to force alignment?
Other than the funeral costs[0], the medical bills for injuries[1][2], journalists had equipment damaged[2][a] and stolen[3], various people had to increase security due to being doxxed[4], statues within the Capitol buildings were damaged[5], and the Speaker of the House had her laptop stolen[6] (more important due to her position than the device).
You may consider "$30 million"[7] to be peanuts, though that's without the cost of actually policing the event which was over 10x that[8]. The victims by and large, were not so rich as to be able to ignore such costs — even including the representatives (though most of the harm wasn't to their person, just their offices), though for this caveat about mere physical enumerable cost rather than political intimidation I am mainly talking about the journalists who had their stuff destroyed and the police who were injured.
And the FBI still doesn't know who planted the pipe bombs (plural!)[b].
> no you say?
What, exactly, do you think about 1500 people were convicted for doing? And they were convicted, even though Trump then pardoned them[9].
Why did you think Trump was impeached twice?
Why did you think Colorado, Maine, and Illinois tried to block Trump from being on the ballot?
Why, given Trump's record that included him not caring about people chanting to hang his own Vice President[10][11][12], do you think the Republican party allowed him back on their ticket if not for their members being intimidated by these riots?
> this is literal terrorism because the entire point is to force an outcome using fear and violence and they should be dealt with according to US terrorism law.
Yes, the Jan 6 attacks were in fact terrorism.
The fact you're trying to downplay that while being upset about property damage… is, unfortunately, very human.
I say "unfortunately", because that means it's hard to resolve. I can't just tell you to be reasonable, because reason is not how you got to your current state — that's very, very, dangerous, but I can't simply talk you out of this, and that means there's a huge chance you're going to escalate this and then be surprised by the response, which you don't see coming because you can't put yourself in other's shoes and see how you look from their point of view, how you're making enemies out of fellow citizens and making them fear for their lives and want to use against you the very force you say is fine when your own side does it.
Step back. Chill. Meet some people on the other side of the aisle. Share a beer and watch some sports or something. Whatever it is you Americans do for fun. Make friends, before this gets any worse.
Doing that might even prevent it getting worse.
Hopefully.
But here's a question for you: when you get to reading this paragraph, had you read any of these citations and considered them, or did you start drafting your reply performing what is called "arguments-as-soldiers" and disregarding anything that didn't fit your world view?
> But here's a question for you: when you get to reading this paragraph, had you read any of these citations and considered them, or did you start drafting your reply performing what is called "arguments-as-soldiers" and disregarding anything that didn't fit your world view?
TL;DR: 30 million dollars of enumerable damages, ~1500 convictions.
This is exactly the type of thing that makes me like America. Taking risks is an essential part of life and the more open you are to sane risks, the better. The reason I don't move there is tax laws, but boy do I, as a third worlder, want a "gold card".
Sorry, local news websites are a disaster. You can probably find the story by searching terms from the URL slug. That particular story doesn't really matter, it was just the most recent one in my area that came to mind. There is no shortage of similar stories across the US.
You may think yourself as very American, but the real Americans voted to keep you (and pretty much everybody else, don't worry) of their America. I call this cognitive dissonance (or trolling, I'm too simple to tell).
I don’t see a problem there, they take jobs from americans and the current companies abusing the H1B process are doing so not to gain rare knowledge or experience but to abuse people. So i’m totally onboard. H1B should be for people like Musk, not randos that happen to know a few things.
i have a problem with abuse of a system yes. I also have a problem with illegal immigrants. do you think trying to confuse and argue the point is going to change my or anybody’s mind?
You're the one who is confused. I know you're "america first", that was obvious.
You specifically said something which is false: "literally nobody has a problem with immigrants using legal methods".
This is false because your own statements in these very comments are continuing to demonstrate that you, personally, have a problem with immigrants using legal methods.
Abuse of the legal system? That would be a SLAPP, which is something your own example of Elon Musk has done, not "applying for and being granted a visa":
Historically the burden of proof in the legal system is on the authorities, not the accused. There's a name for countries where only people with security clearances are allowed to form opinions.
Not to dogpile too much here, but I think 1992's Unforgiven directed by and staring Clint Eastwood does the best here when it comes to my feeling about this comment:
so wonderful to share this country with folks like you! please consider shifting your scope outside yourself and your own personal protection, and consider the greater good at least occasionally, please.
> Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own
Maybe, but something like 90%+ of all Teslas sold were manufactured after Tesla the company was already on my blacklist due to the ethical issues with supporting Musk.
(There are a number of companies on my blacklist, but off the top of my head I can't recall any others that are specifically there because of the singular actions of an owner.)
If you own Apple or Nike products, you're supporting child slavery. If you own products made in China, you're supporting religious genocide. "Blacklisting" companies is just lazy slacktivism that only someone in the middle-to-upper class Twittersphere (or Blueskysphere) would ever partake in.
Murder & terrorism are morally impermissible, but at least Luigi, or the Unabomber, or the Proud Boys put their lives on the line for whatever ideas (good or bad, you decide) they had. Testicular fortitude that only extends to Hacker News is not very convincing.
What do I do to make the world a slightly better place? I volunteer at my local church and at homeless shelters, I donate, I help my neighbors, I clean up the beach, I organize community gatherings. Enough online activism with grandiose ideas, start with making a small positive change in your local community.
Tesla owner; same boat. I think Austin has voted with its doors enough for me to get the idea, at this point. I got the car in 2001, and it should be good for another 5–7 yrs as my daily commuter. I'm just resigned to my dingy fate, now.
The next car has to be a long hauler; we're looking at hybrid SUV/minivans. After that ... I hope Aptera is shipping.
I’m in Austin and have a Tesla (which I bought new) and I love it. Next car will be another new Tesla as well. Austin loves teslas, they’re everywhere. A handful of degenerate leftists isn’t scaring anyone.
True most CEOs are too cowardly to try to save us from $50 trillion in debt and financial collapse. Fighting the government jobs program of non productive people is something most don’t want to do.
Taking a position with established norms about how the job is to be done and taking direction from elected officials above you is one thing.
Interfering with elections to create a position for yourself and then using threats about further interference to bully the elected officials around you is quite another.
Interference? You mean donations to campaigns, which is entirely legal?
That's not interference. That's how the US system works. If you're upset a Musk for donating, then surely you are upset at others donating too, yes? Because all those contributions had a goal too, often policy changes.
Outside of donations, I see conspiracy theories about starlink and voting machines online, but surely you don't mean that.
What elected officials has Musk "bullied"? Was any of this supposed bulling quoted in context? Was any of this supposed bullying just impolite speech, for which Washington is famous?
This election changed perceptions. Punishing someone after perceptions have changed is morally bankrupt behaviour. This person could have bought their car pre-twitter, waay before perception change, and certainly stated a buy due to environmental concerns.
This sort of blind political hatred against innocents is literally this biggest problem with America today.
If you give somebody money, and they do harmful things with that money, then you are partially at fault. It's not political hatred, I just want people to take some responsibility for their actions.
I don't want to see anybody harmed, or have to take losses beyond the abysmal resale value of their car, but if developing an economy that is compatible with democracy means hurting some feelings along the way, well that sucks but it may be a necessary evil.
You are not even the tiniest bit at fault, if you did not know ahead of time.
You must realise that most people are busy working, trying to put food on the rable, raising a family, and helping their local community. Most don't read hours of news and social media every day, and barely hear anything from Twitter, etc.
Those same people buy thousands of products yearly, from food to cars, and have zero time to anaylise all aspects of each purchase. Expecting them to pay attention, to even know about the latest outrage is absurd.
Five years ago, Elon was still considered a shining light of environmental purity. In five years more, opinions may yet change again! Yet you seek to cause real world harm to the lives of people who bought Teslas, when doing so was considered the very best you could do environmentally?!
This is morally bankrupt. This is not acceptable.
Please, I beg you, think on this. Attitudes such as this are harming democracy, not helping.
How is it harming democracy? Do you think that we shouldn't send a message to investors that letting their money get involved in politics is a good way to to lose that money, or do you think that there's a better way to do so?
I'm aware that there wasn't a good way to predict that the power was going to go to Musk's head like it has. It was a very easy mistake to make, I almost made it as well. But if we avoid classifying it as a mistake, then we protect the value of the brand, and then we too are complicit in the harms caused by its owner--whose legitimacy (in the eyes of our myopic leadership) is derived from the value of his brands.
I'll admit that it's a bit of a hack, there are better ways to implement democracy, but can any of the them be used right now?
>Giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
I'll remember this comment when conservatives are the ones destroying something because the owner/CEO/etc. are Marxist child groomers or whatever. They'll be justified because giving money to an enemy of the people should have consequences, even after the fact. That's how we prevent it from happening in the future.
If what is being destroyed is a bunch of stock prices, and if the owner/CEO/etc. is under fire for using their wallet to disproportionally influence politics, then yeah more power to 'em. It's not about sending a message from left to right, but rather from bottom to top:
> Your contribution to politics should be 1 vote and 0 dollars, or else.
No, everybody does. And they talk to each other about it, and this affects prices and how investments are allocated, which determines whether and which people have government-influencing amounts of power.
I'm not proposing we trash his Tesla, I'm proposing that we maintain the stigma. For better or worse this is how markets work, so lets use them.
In our economy, the value of things is determined by the attitudes of everybody who interacts with those things. That's what I mean by everybody--we all get to decide whether to shame or praise each other based on the decisions we make.
Quite a lot of money has been spent ensuring that people believe--for better or worse--that the symbols that we surround ourselves with are an expression of who we are. That if we wear the right brands, or drive the right kind of car, then others will know that we're the right kind of people. Why else do people wear MAGA hats? Sentiment around symbols is the board on which on which billionaires play power games.
Are you proposing that it should only work in one direction? That it's fine to drive Apple stock up by expressing approval of somebody's MacBook, but it's forbidden to drive Tesla stock down by expressing disapproval of somebody's Tesla? Because that's absurd.
What's crazy is this was always seen as a left wing car. If you drove one of these into small blue collar towns there is a chance you would have been harassed a few short years ago.
Sounds made up. I live in a very lefty part of the Bay Area in California where Teslas abound, and there has never been any kind of campaign against them until recently, just some cynicism about Musk's grandiose claims.
My impression from reading your other comments is that you don't even live in the US. If that's wrong please correct me, but if not I think you should refrain from making counterfactual claims.
You don't need to read my comments, it's in my bio. I do work with US (Bay Area and now Texas) companies (contracting) for last 7 years. IDK why but I do get sucked into US affairs so much which I do not like.
Elon has been harassed online by woke and antifa for years now. Lately by actual people IRL too.
> So are we really going down the road of telling people "Hey just buy a new car" whenever yours is politically inconvenient?
I mean, that kind of politics is kinda why the US has locally-made cars at all, rather than buying them at half the price from China (and that's not just Trump's new thing, the 100% tariff on Chinese EV's was from Biden: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/09/0130c36c7c00-us-1...)
Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".
Or, famously, that time in Boston when the North Atlantic briefly became very weak, very salty, tea.
Montgomery bus boycott, the boycotts of South African Goods in protest against apartheid. Might even be able to argue alcohol and weed being made illegal due to political pressure that converts a boycott into a legal requirement.
> Or why the US briefly switched from "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries".
That never happened, "the US" never did that. What really happened was a few people were dumb for a little while, and a couple of signs were briefly changed.
What's the embodied energy cost of making your EV and driving it for X years compared to a similar ICE vehicle?
EV tire wear (and thus, pollution) is greater due to the extra weight.
If there's an edge on environmental harm reduction, it's marginal, and mostly in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, which is important yes.
The impactful way, not just greenwashed way, to be environmentally friendly is to embrace "public luxury, private sufficiency"- support public libraries, health care, education (and not just to churn out workers...), access to local food (which, given our dependence on petroleum-derived nitrogen instead of birdshit, leading to our population boom, will be rather difficult), urban design that promotes moving around under one's own power (likewise stifling energy-sucking AI- far better to so things ourselves, as our bodies are already burning calories and want to be useful and meaningful), and more- using less than a few thousand tons of CO2/annum for example, or less than 2k Watts/day, something like this.
I hear your concerns, and it sounds like you're whining?
I don't use Amazon anymore, for years now. I'm very close to going without Google. Deleted all my connections to Microsoft, moved away from Windows a few years ago and only use Linux and BSD (quitting videogames helped here, though Valve's Proton didn't help! I appreciate what they're doing, though), unsubbed from all streaming (we just use the library and PBS now), unsubbed from Apple, and more, and while I don't have much money to "vote" with anyway, I feel much better not contributing so much to the vampires (capitalism, neoliberalism (Hayek's term, not just disparaging), surveillance capitalism, etc).
Sell or donate your Tesla and move somewhere where you can walk/bike/wheelchair/bus to work? Embrace mutual aid (Dean Spade has a concise book on this) and help build community? You have a lot of agency, and maybe you have already considered all this (I didn't dig into any of your other posts, I'm just reacting to what sounds like whining, and I'm someone who indulges in that sometimes, but who sees a way out of that pit).
Good luck!
I want to get a Tesla because their driver assist is the best in the industry, hands down. However my friends and family have made it clear that it simply is not an option. I hate Elon too, but the cars shouldn't be political. So looks like I will keep burning gas for the time being.
As a side note, I hope republicans start buying Teslas as a statement. I might actually be able to forgive Elon if he gets republicans in EVs.
The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere. There isn't even really a close second. I don't care about anything else Elon does if he successfully gets the right to care about the atmosphere (or care about owning libs via solar roofs and cyber trucks). He would go down as a martyr in my book.
The effect of the carbon can cause such a war; the impact of such a war is likely to kill fewer than the carbon.
I'm optimistic about the carbon these days. But I also think the Trump administration's position on Ukraine is going to result in a lot of countries developing their own independent nuclear capabilities, and that itself creates more risk of nuclear war.
Perhaps it will be limited to Panama and America attacking each other. The world is looking at how worthless has been the signiatures on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and considering matters accordingly.
> The single most important thing facing humanity right now is carbon in the atmosphere
Then supporting Musk makes little sense.
He's massively cutting funding for research into addressing climate change or enforcing regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
He played a major role in electing a President who says climate change is a hoax, wants to kill renewable energy, wants to greatly increase fossil fuel use, and wants to get rid of any regulations that try to at least reduce emissions from that fossil fuel.
He promotes conspiracy theories that explain away things that might have been due to or partially due to climate change, thus downplaying the need to address climate change. E.g., that the California wildfires in the Los Angeles area recently were due to a "globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States".
Even if a few on the right buy a few EVs specifically because of Musk it won't outweigh the damage the things described above are doing to the effort to fight climate change.
If, somehow, this nonsense causes Republics to think that buying eco-friendly cars is "anti-woke" and buy Tesla cars en-masse to "own the libs", this is still a win for the environment.
Regardless, thanks to how Musk is messing around with politics (domestically via DOGE and internationally via personal spats with government ministers and judges in multiple different countries), I don't see Musk's power surviving very long. How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached yet again and then Musk will have nobody with meaningful power to ask for help.
> How long is high-variance, but if DOGE cuts and counter-tariffs hurt too hard, then Congress could flip in 2 years and Trump may find himself impeached
Except that the Trump regime is dismantling enforcement of voting protections, dismantling due process, and directly using force against people expressing dissenting political views, all of which are pretty good signs that there won't be anythig approximating free and fair elections in 2026 for Republicans to lose.
These are interesting times, and between (IMO inevitable) catastrophic domestic economic impact, already ocurring international diplomatic incidents, and near universal domestic support for both the 1st and 2nd amendments, I can't predict anything about this.
Have you given SuperCruise a chance? I tried Autopilot in a 22 Model 3, Supercruise in an Equinox EV and BlueCruise in a Mach-e.
Autopilot is very good but I don't fully trust it because it feels overly confident at times which is scary. Also dont like the fac tthat you have to keep squeezing the steering wheel.
Supercruise has a camera monitoring your eyeballs and is only set to run on tested roads that have been mapped out. It just feel like GM is being a lot more honest with their system given these design decisions. Its a really smooth ride in my experience. Im trying to eye a cheap EquinoxEV with supercruise.
Bluecruise kinda drove like a super nervous first time driver. Dont really trust it but if you can get it, it does provide some benefit.
Thats some pretty shady shit. I have a relative who is mostly a-political and bought a Tesla years ago with the intention of being good for the environment. Now she has a target on her back? What?
I get the environment angle. In the current timeline though, personally I would be considering all the other EVs that are also good for the environment but don't have the albatross hanging around their ... rearview mirror.
Agree it's a cruel thing to do though. I prefer the "I humped Your Hummer" type site from a decade or so ago. More humorous. Definitely mostly harmless.
Which evs are those? Geely (polestar), Hyundai, and Lucid all have political baggage. GM caught up in Uyghur forced labor aluminum and sells driver data. 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.
Rivian seems clean but they are more expensive, only SUVs, and aren't doing well financially.
Even still you probably end up using superchargers.
What a ridiculous bad faith deflection. No other auto maker is explicitly and aggressively aligning itself with the current administration and their policies. Tesla’s CEO wants to associate his company with a political vision and is vocal about using his money to further that vision.
Geely is making a killing in Russia where other automakers pulled out. Khashoggi was assassinated in 2018 by the same people that own most of Lucid. The Chung family's political embezzlement is recent memory (2007).
It's pretty difficult to be morally consistent in your purchases. Where you draw the line is a personal choice.
There are plenty of automakers besides Tesla and the Chinese, and your BSAB perspective contributes nothing helpful.
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.
Then please tell us which EV people should trade their Tesla in for and which moral judgements to make. You seem to think it's easy, I'm arguing it's not.
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'm not in the moral arbitration business, sorry. Buy whatever car meets your needs and fits into your budget. I'm just pointing out that people who avoid buying Tesla because they don't want to feed Musk even more cash are not unjustified in their feelings. It doesn't sound like we disagree in that respect.
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.)
> GM caught up in Uyghur forced labor aluminum and sells driver data.
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.
> 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.
Hey, I boycott Nestlé and find it pretty low-effort; I expect boycotting Chinese aluminum would be much more difficult.
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.
> I don't see how it matters how long ago that was.
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.
So when will it be OK to own a Tesla again? After this administration's term? After this generation dies? Who decides this? Is it zero sum?
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.
> Ford and most of the German and Italian automakers have fascist roots and were involved in forced labor.
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 salute is just as much an invention as a car. As you pointed out, the politics of a carmaker almost 9 decades ago has little bearing on the car-buyer of today. If the people who invented a decades-old concept behind a salute are dead, then why should said salute have any relevance to the modern consumer either?
I don't really agree with that (the salute bit), but I would say it's deeply personal.
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.
Do Teslas even have functional rear view mirrors? I thought they did everything with cameras on the dash and only had as much shitty rear view mirror as necessary to not violate the law necessitating there be a rear view mirror.
Well, sort of. The real target is Musk & his wealth, which is in large part derived from Tesla. The people doing this want to harm Tesla, by making owning a Tesla unpleasant, which depresses Tesla car sales & values, which harms Musk & his wealth.
I'm personally kind of neutral on the approach. It is the case that most Tesla owners are not awful people and don't really deserve to have their lives upset by this. On the other hand, society really doesn't have very many options when it comes to reigning in invincible monsters like Elon Musk. Is this approach ethical? Probably not. Is it also the best available option? Seems so. I don't know.
> "If you are a-political you implicitly support what’s happening."
Stop saying that. Stop stirring up people and instead let sleeping dogs lie.
From a detailed post-election analysis posted on HN earlier today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43400172): "The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]. So, I think that a “we need to turn up the temperature and mobilize everyone” strategy would’ve made things worse."
Lots of people are indifferent or even supported what's happening and if your side continues to harass them they'll come out in even bigger numbers to vote against your side in the midterms or 2028. Hectoring people for being apolitical has been a losing strategy so stop following it.
Ah so its just a "fuck you" if you just want to live a quiet life and care about your own life. Suddenly we have to be political and choose a side on every issue.
Come on man... its tiring as hell why can't people just be themselves. Why do we all have to be 100% connected to everything all the time.
Unless you were raised by a pack of wolves in the wilderness, you're benefiting from the society that's been built by generations of your fellow man. Leeching off of that when it's convenient and living a private life when it's not, is a violation of the social contract.
As a Canadian, I feel quite exasperated and angry about how you frame this. Sounds very cowardly-American when your country is crumbling beneath you, taking the world down with it
Then you misread my post. I'm not implying be completely apolitical, just that I don't understand the expectation now that everyone has to know and choose a side and be connected to every single tiny issue there is.
Its completely astounding that we're now all expected to know and choose a side about every single thing, and if we don't know about it or for a given issue we either don't have enough information to choose a side or are unaware then we're complicit.
Exactly how have I harmed someone through owning a Tesla since before Elon's political stunts. And do we really expect everyone who owns one, including people who financed and would almost guaranteed take a loss and screw up their financial wellbeing for potentially years to sell it at the cost of their families financial health?
Elon's a general in the culture war being waged by your country, and you're asking why bearing his standard is seen as a political choice. I'd say that your question should be directed at Elon.
Likewise, Russian citizens are suffering the consequences of their leader's choices. They didn't vote to go to war, they were born there before the war broke out, but they're paying the price. I'm sure the people of Ukraine would love to live in peace and be left alone, but that choice was taken from them. And so they fight.
And since you own a luxury car, you can afford to get rid of it. It might not be a comfortable choice, you might lose some money, but I am confident that your life does not depend on you holding and using that asset. Serviceable used cars go for a couple thousand bucks. Really cool and flashy ones can go for ten.
No one else can solve the system of equation for you, but there are likely creative solutions that don't require any large action on your part. Maybe put a sticker on your car to reason with your fellow citizens who expect more of you than you can offer right now?
[EDIT: But if you resent even having to think about it (bc it need not cost you money, but things always cost attention), then I don't know what to say to you in this moment.]
I'm just glad it's now taboo to own a Tesla. Because in my world view, the poorer Elon Musk gets, the safer we all are in our home democracies.
I hear you on feeling innocently targeted. Elon wasn’t always this crazy. He’s causing irreparable damage right now, however. You should be pissed at him as well. He’s supporting anti-EV measures directly or indirectly anyway. He’s pissing people off enough to take serious measures against him. He made a nazi salute at the inauguration for fucks sake. A lot of your ire should be toward him. His whole life is dedicated to making “everything political” right now whether you like it or not.
As an American, I 100% agree. This is extremely frustrating. This community has way too many people who are far too comfortable, complaining about how an authoritarian government is making their comfortable lives more difficult.
The current government is exhausting. That's the point. It's so frustrating hearing people complain instead of taking action. Things are harder for everyone, a lot of people here have lived too many decades without any real form of struggle and it shows in the things they complain about & how they frame the current reality.
I don't think that, I even said "whether that's your ideal or not." But whether you are worried or you think it's the best thing ever the relations are still crumbling, that's the point I was making.
Also just to say you might want to read a newspaper because Trudeau is no longer the prime minister.
That's literally and explicitly government policy now; the administration is asserting a right to deport people based purely on opinions rather than follow legal process.
Yes, it is. At this moment in time, none of us get the luxury of a quiet, simple life. Burying your head in the sand & refusing to engage with the world around you is a choice, a tacit support of what's keeping you from that ideal life you want.
It's a very tone deaf & privileged stand to complain about how an authoritarian government is making your life harder. If you're not being mistakenly imprisoned or actively hunted, the options are to join the resistance, or put your tail between your legs, let the government trample others' rights (and by proxy, your rights), and try to fool yourself into thinking you can just let things blow over.
If you're not joining in the resistance and you're instead choosing to sit out the fight for your freedoms & rights, you don't get to criticize the people who ARE fighting. They're fighting for themselves & their loved ones, and for you, whether you join in or not.
If you're not joining in the resistance and you're instead choosing to sit out the fight for your freedoms & rights, you don't get to criticize the people who ARE fighting.
I’m not sure I follow the logic here. Let’s say a person owns a Tesla outright, and purchased it ignorant to Elon’s behavior (esp if prior to the last year or two). How does selling it benefit some cause? Tesla already has that person’s money. It’s purely a performative action?
Teslas require constant maintenance (like all cars, plus the recalls) and many have a subscription, it's not performative. Each Tesla owner is an asset to them post-sale.
there is/was a meme going around "boston tesla party" and i think if people are serious they should dismantle the teslas they bought, and (freely) recycle all the parts. Just take the L; otherwise this is, in fact, performative.
In fact, i'll propose this to HN. You have your tesla that you can "no longer, in good faith, continue to own" delivered to a lot i specify, and i'll livestream a team of people taking it apart, sorting it, and sending the pieces off to recycling. I will not pay you for your tesla, and you must include the pink slip.
any takers? I am completely serious. I think it would be fun (for me to set up and watch), it would probably be a well-viewed stream and VoD for each car, you could share the links with friends and family to show the strength of your convictions. It's win-win-win; Tesla already got their money, recycling is good for the earth, and you get to make a statement. I also win because i will pay the team that dismantles the car with the proceeds from recycling, which makes me a job creator.
why don’t you use your money and go buy one and do this instead of someone else taking a loss for you? you can even get great deals on leases you can buy at the end. come on, it’s only $50k, what’s the big deal?
You may have misunderstood the coment you replied to.
It's directed at others that want to performatively demonstrate getting rid of their Tesla, there's no claim that genewitch wants to rid the world of Tesla's, just an offer to provide a team and a channel for those that are prepared to go the whole way.
Destroying the market for used Teslas and the brand harms Elon Musk's personal wealth which he uses to achieve his personal political goals. Now you may or may not agree with that as a method, but the logic is straightforward.
But we have to suffer for their inaction. They have some small power to fight against it and are choosing not to. It's reasonable to watch people suffer or die but not to sell your car?
That's what we're finding out in real time. A house signifies a one time purchase for a builder, whereas a Tesla is not only a moving advertisement but normally comes with a subscription service for maintenance and support, so the connection to and enablement of the company continues after purchase and through use.
Selling your house also wouldn't affect the power of the builder because his payment comes as a single packet after completing the contracted work, whereas Musk's power is supported by the stock value of his various companies and Tesla's stock price is connected to the value of their cars which is in Oost predicated on having a good resale value. If people rush to sell their Teslas then these values are negatively affected.
Finally the question about the builder is A) hypothetical while the Tesla situation is actually unfolding before us today, and B) aan unfair comparison because it's unlikely a tradesman will amass so much influence that his "unsavory" acts could lead to changing the power balances in warzones, shaking the foundations of American democracy, dismantling the relations that our treaty and security organisations are built upon etc etc etc.
Also sell toyota, nissan, folksvagen, Audi. Right? For the same reasons?
Glad I roll American coal!
ETA: i haven't driven a diesel in ~20 years, and it wasn't rolling coal. we have two japanese cars. If you can't detect the irony and self-deprecation in this comment, just move on.
IMO this is a stupid "activism" move, similar to declaring people who stay silent on a topic (instead of joining your cause) as part of the problem. The activist declares that people not actively joining their protest are bad people.
Geez, guilt-tripping, what a great way to gain support for your movement.
I think it's maybe not as you understand. It's not a political movement -- they don't need your support. The goal is economic logic. It's trying to do economic damage to Tesla. No one needs to care if someone feels warm or cold about Tesla, they don't need to sell you or anyone but a very small subset on "a movement"... just that every rational actor has good reason to sell or never even buy.
It's curious though, if the brand became so toxic/dangerous to own that no one could be caught owning one, and I want to sell my hypothetical Tesla, who's going to buy it? Nobody would want to own a molotov magnet (in this hypothetical scenario).
In the end it'll be hurting my wallet and not Elon's because I have to junk the car and buy a different brand.
Another scenario would be Teslas getting police escort and exclusive protected parking...
To be clear, I'm not supporting damaging random Tesla's, just answering the questions asked.
> who's going to buy it? Nobody would want to own a molotov magnet
If nothing else, it has value as parts.
> In the end it'll be hurting my wallet and not Elon's because I have to junk the car and buy a different brand.
It hurts both. Nobody is going to buy Tesla is what they can look forward to a string of vandalism and eventually having to either sell it for a song or scrap it for parts. Tesla/Elon may already have the money from your current purchase, but destroying the second hand market and otherwise making it painful to own one reduces demand, and that hurts Elon's wallet.
Elon's power comes from his money and his position at the head of these companies. Take that away and you take away his power. Or maybe he realizes before that point he's fucking himself and changes course. Either one probably seems like an improvement.
It turns moderate people against you more than it helps. Not sure where people get this idea that moderates react well to purity spirals directed at them.
Right. The problem is these kinds of groups don’t carry internal dissent (sometimes by definition), so they carry out and do things that undermine their goals in return for some quick but ephemeral reward.
oh no, not the moderates who checks notes stand up for nothing and no one except themselves and overwhelmingly align with right wing politics. what's the moderate position on Trump/Musk, that we should accept a little bit of authoritarianism to make the government more efficient?
I'm guessing people who haven't taken a stance don't feel the pain (yet). The old adage is "No country is more than three meals away from a revolution." 1), and some people still have meals. But alienating the "moderates" might lead them to join the "other side", because "our side" are just full of assholes...
If his wealth and influence are duminished then he has less chance of interfering in politics here in Europe the way he is doing in the US. People are frightened.
i don't know, probably the same as his end goal with doing nazi salutes. we want the same things for Elon that he wants for us. hitting a billionaire's wealth and influence is the only way us commoners have of "voting him out".
Does anyone know the URL for the actual site? Seems weird to write about a website and not link to it, and searching for it just brings up more articles that don't link to the site
Yeah, the whole area within miles of downtown LA had 3 Teslas, and the area around Redmond WA (where the Microsoft HQ is) had exactly one (and it wasn't even a Microsoft employee, apparently it was someone from Pure Storage). Which is obviously laughable, as my floor of the apartment parking garage alone (Seattle, 3 years ago) had 7 (out of maybe 18 total parking spots), and my floor at the work garage (in Redmond) had way more.
All in all, at this point, I am just curious how they obtained/gathered those specific datapoints. It isn't even a case of "some data is missing", it is more like "99%+ of data in the most Tesla-dominant areas in the US is missing".
Doing all that because you disagree with someone in the government is kinda wild ngl, especially considering that Tesla used to be a leftist-leaning car due to EVs and etc
I am not an expert sleuth, but using the WHOIS lookup tool it looks like the domain registrar is Japanese. Not to call everything and anything a "psyop" but if I were to set up something like this, I would do it for financial gain (shorting Tesla) rather than political gain, or to use it as a honeypot.
This kind of targeting of Tesla owners after the fact is essentially a dragnet that will affect people of all sorts of backgrounds, and is less effective than a direct boycott at achieving your political goals-- since you are going to polarize a huge chunk of people against you. I think many left-leaning protest organizers would understand this, but I may be mistaken since there are a lot of dumbasses in the world.
Again this is total speculation, but alarm bells immediately went off in my head.
Is it actually possible for things to get any more polarized at this point? You're either ok with this guy doing a Nazi salute in our seat of government, or you're not.
America needs to wake the fuck up and remind Nazis they are not welcome here and we already beat them once. Is this not a completely razor perfect targeted attack? No. But the guy you're supporting with these cars is fucking doxxing judges children to manipulate them. So I'm not going to fault this guy for fighting back.
I suppose resettling all Gazans and expelling pro-Palestininan protesters from the country is also tokenism. Or having Miriam Adleson as the second largest donor after Musk.
I have no idea what your point is or what you think my point is. But yes, people with all sorts of different backgrounds can be fascists. Fascism is inherently contradictory, and fascists are willing to make alliances even if they have ideological schisms.
There are plenty of legitimate antisemites in Trump's base, however Miriam Adelson is willing to overlook that to further her own fascist project. I think we are in agreement here.
The parent comment was using tokenism in their "argument" if you could call it that.
Well, Ford and the Dulles brothers first supported Hitler against the communist threat. Up until Pearl Harbor WW2 was just a little continental war where it wasn't clear which side should be annihilated.
In the end they gave Poland, which was the initial casus belli and supposed to be protected by Britain, to Stalin (another lesson what being a proxy for maritime powers looks like).
That means nothing, the ADL is willing to make an uneasy alliance with legitimate antisemites if it means furthering their settler colonialist project in the middle east.
he literally did it not once, but twice. i've been alive for thirty two years and done my fair share of autistic shit (programmer). But yknow what I've managed to never accidentally do? Anything even vaguely resembling a nazi salute. And yknow what? Fine, suppose for a moment it was an accident or whatever. If i were a billionaire figureheard of my company on national television in the seat of power of the free world, I would ensure I had media training and knew how to not have the international audience go "wow he just did a nazi salute, twice" if I didn't intend it. Remember George W stopping himself from saying the sound bite of "shame on me"? Elon is either literally, genuinely stupid, or he meant to do a nazi salute. And I honestly don't believe Elon is stupid from an intelligence perspective.
One last remark: if I did accidentally do a nazi salute on live television, do you know what I would do at the soonest available opportunity? Clarify that I'm not a nazi, it was an accident, and that nazis are bad. It's a surefire way to ensure you're not accidentally perceived as a nazi. Similar to how "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" really helped Dead kennedys in this regard.
He’s said several times that he’s not a Nazi. But people like you who are so steeped in tribal politics have the mindset that he’s evil, so you won’t take anything he says as anything but evil. Confirmation bias sucks ass.
The GOP and Trump himself swore up and down heading into the election that he wasn't planning to implement the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, and yet here we are implementing it, and with several of its authors occupying senior executive branch positions. I hate to break this to you, but people are not always honest.
If someone is really concerned about so-called fascism I don't think smashing VW Beetle windows in 1935 would've helped anything - in fact it would've just made things worse.
VW Beetles were not produced until 1938, but I get your point.
What don't get is your idea that things would have been worse. Worse how? Within a few years the nazis were beheading people for distributing postcards critical of the regime. It's equally arguable that they might not have got as far as they did if people had been more willing to stand up to them in the first place.
My point was mainly that causing chaos for the regular citizen/voter tends to drive them into supporting the opposite party, especially if they are promising safety and stability.
Even the Nazis had to consider what their citizens were willing to put up with, so targeting everyday people with stunts like this would just undermine support for any viable opposition. "Worse" just meant having more unconditional support even earlier - that couldn't do a good thing.
Graffiting a Telsa may make the vandalizer feel good, but it doesn't win votes for the opposition.
How often are totalitarian regimes defeated by voting, though? The problem with this mindset is that people can use it to talk themselves out of ever doing anything, which is the ideal environment for totalitarianism. Unpleasant as these tactics are, they seem to be effective in achieving their goal of cratering Tesla sales.
Why are historical events like the Boston Tea Party celebrated then? After all the tea merchants were innocent and did not impose the tax upon the American colonists, they were just shrewd negotiators who managed to carve out an exemption for themselves.
Or as a more recent example, look at the January 6 2021 protests. Trump supporters quite literally stormed the national legislature; although a lot of the rank and file ended up in prison, none of the organizers even faced charges, and 4 years later Trump regained office, in part based on his promise to pardon all the J6 defendants (which he subsequently did). Now one could argue about what proportion of hearts and minds hold him in affection by comparing various opinion polls, but the reality is that he holds power and is wielding it like it's going out of fashion.
So while I agree with you that it's an unlikeable tactic (the more so when it impacts individual consumers; I don't much care about the dealerships), I disagree about its longer-term effectiveness. There's a lot of evidence pointing to the conclusion that violating norms frequently pays off. Protests that go out of their way not to offend or inconvenience anyone may attract some sympathy but seem to yield little in the way of results.
The only thing that matters is the economy. January 6 happened and the bozos still voted him back in office. If a crash happens or DOGE really f things up then they are done.
I don't believe the horrors of Nazi Germany would have been made worse if people smashed the windows of VW Beetles.
And besides, if someone turns to fascism just to piss off the anti-fascists who smashed their car windows, then it was never about the car windows, they're just looking for an excuse.
In the same boat. Bought '24 MSP last year which has been sitting in the garage for the last month. Love the car but wish I could justify driving it off a cliff at this point. I have 3 other cars, so it's not a big inconvenience but it is a gigantic paper weight. I knew I had to park it when I realized I had to check the live view on the cameras every 10 seconds. This level of extremism is exactly what the half that voted against trump did not want and now we have it on both sides.
Yeah this definitely doesn't help anything. I don't know why some people can't understand that everyone can get behind dunking on Elon Musk, because he is clearly an alien wearing a human suit. But doxxing Tesla owners is absolutely stupid.
It doesn't help anything, it hurts. It puts people in danger. It paints protestors as "terrorist". It gives Elon something to point at to claim himself the victim. Which is how we know actual Tesla protestors aren't behind it.
I wonder if Musk may reconsider his actions as a result of the general outcry, not that I approve of the likes of dogequest. I mean in to 1990s they reduced govt employees by 426,000, consolidated 800 agencies and got rid of 640,000 pages of rules without the arbitrary cruelty. The doge stuff is quite unnecessary. (source doonesbury https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/03/16)
HN seems to be really struggling with the why here. The bubble that people live in on here is wild to me. Maybe you have issues with the tactics, but the why is pretty clear.
The CEO is hardly an external actor. What you're seeing is the personality behind a personality-driven business steadily destroying his reputation, and his business along with it. Elon Musk's public image went from "real-life Iron Man genius inventor" to "Nazi salute guy" - his businesses can't just brush that off.
Nothing anyone can do to Twitter or Boring Company matters.
Cars are high-priced consumer objects that sit in public. They are high impact objects. And cars have always been symbolic identity objects in western culture.
It's totally rational to target Tesla and ignore spending effort on the rest
> Nothing anyone can do to Twitter or Boring Company matters.
Well, afaik the Boring Company hasn't done anything since 2021 [1] so I'll agree there.
However, Twitter is very much not the case. Elon very much reads what people post there otherwise he wouldn't bother to censor the mothers of his kids. If there was a 50% decline in viewership he'd definitely notice.
TBC is still operational in Vegas and is shuttling people all day. I rode them during DEFCON and the sad employees are fully bought into this "mission" of revolutionizing transport. It seems so stupid driving through these tunnels, the novelty wears off instantly.
The belief is that Musk's wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla. I have no idea if it's true, but that's what underlies the focus on Tesla as opposed to, say, SpaceX. By hurting Tesla and bringing down its value, the idea is that Musk himself is brought down.
> The belief is that Musk's wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla.
DDG’s search AI answer thing told me that Musk owns 410M shares of Tesla, which is priced roughly at $224 per share, which is about $90B of his supposed $305B net worth.
Plenty of people have quit twitter, others are victims of their own social media addiction but are at least simply using a free service rather than paying 30k+. Most probably haven't launched a satellite in recent months but could be looking at alternatives.
I haven't done the work to compare auto CEOs but one of them has gone well out of his way to make his shitty opinions unavoidable.
> others are victims of their own social media addiction but are at least simply using a free service rather than paying 30k+
Yeah, well many Tesla owners are victims of wanting to do better for the environment in the way that they could before Elon went full psyop.
The difference here is that Twitter users are still actively perpetrating and reinforcing his platform to speak dangerous nonsense. The Tesla income was reported on a shareholder filing, for many, before 2020, and realistically doesn't matter anymore.
If someone still has Twitter, they are shockingly accepting of the goings on.
Come on, it's pretty obvious that Tesla is the easiest company to target because they have a lot of real-world products and locations. Any regular person could go to a protest at a Tesla dealership. If someone wanted to boycott SpaceX there's not much they could do.
The same people that hate Elon have probably already moved to alternative social media platforms, but that's not as impactful and it doesn't get as much attention as the car protests. Since Twitter isn't an open data platform and they don't allow third party research, it's hard to figure out real world usage patterns.
Engineers can go to SpaceX and Starlink competitors and work to finally build some meaningful competition. At this point the US government cannot toss Musk to the curb even if they wanted to. If the republicans ever lose again, the next administrator wouldn't hesitate to command NASA to use another vendor(if they had one).
Twitter is a cesspool and the rise of Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon have managed to eat away at a lot of the left and centrist leaning Twitter user base. You could argue that the only value it has left is the influence it can enact during this right wing wave. What will happen afterwards? Probably that recent rise in valuation to bring it back to Musk's purchase price will reverse and then it will be tossed in the dumpster.
Easier to excuse as ignorant the people who bought a Tesla sedan before Elon Musk made it very clear his views. For fighting back, consider limiting extreme action to cybertrucks? These boxes of space junk off an 80s movie set came out after his views were more and more out in public. If he's going to not insulate himself (ego) from his companies, as many other CEOs do (takes extra effort to dig into campaign funding and other actions by individuals not so public), that makes it easier to act in ways he and any neo-fascist apologists don't like.
I do not understand these kind of hate-promoting acts against the Tesla car owners.
If someone owns a car made by a Elon Musk's brand, it does not automatically mean that they are also supporting Trump's BS policies or Elon Musk's unhinged crusades. It might just mean that they like the car.
If someone intentionally conflates these two concepts, they are just finding an excuse to bully others.
If you want to protest against Trump or Elon Musk, go for it. Organize marches in DC every week. Protest with your wallet if you like. Do not buy their stuff. Or sell your stock. And I am sure there are other ways to express your opinion in an intelligent way.
But please, do not spread hate against people who happen to own their products. It is disingenuous. And it might lead to vandalism or even violence.
By far not every Tesla car owner is an Elon Musk fan or a Trump's supporter. Even if they chose to keep their car after "Musk went crazy", it does not automatically mean that they support Musk's or Trump's actions in any way, shape or form.
They might just have chosen a different way to protest.
I don't think #notAllTeslaOwners is going to convince people not to have these visceral emotional reactions. I'm not entirely sure what people expect when the worlds richest man makes a point of trying to make millions of people unhappy, trolling or otherwise. This is the natural outcome.
It has already lead to vandalism. Shooting at dealerships, lighting superchargers on fire. There's people spray painting Nazi and keying swastikas on Teslas. It's only a matter of time before it's done on a Jewish person's car.
Gonna just put the obvious on the table: it is one thing to fuck with a Tesla dealership, it is quite another to seek out random owners to fuck with. If you are doing the latter, specifically going to someone's residence to fuck with their automobile, I sincerely hope you get shot in the head with a large caliber gun and your brains are splattered on the ground. That is what you deserve. Enough fucking around and coddling these FREAKS.
The car already has low resale value, and if they did sell it it doesn't get it off the road. I do own one, and honestly I hate driving it around now because of the stigma but its the only car I have and while yes I could sell it at a massive loss thats both a lot of work and a waste of my time, effort, and money.
It was literally the first car I ever bought and was because I liked the convenience of EV's and for the environment. Now I feel like I'm being punished for it through no fault of my own and always have to look over my shoulders, and I don't even like Elon in the first place and never really cared for him.