17 ms·

Amazing to me the knee jerk response from most people is to criticize this company. Yes they have issues (as does literally every brand/company), but on the who

by leesec 8y ago

Amazing to me the knee jerk response from most people is to criticize this company. Yes they have issues (as does literally every brand/company), but on the whole aren't we glad people are leading the charge towards electric vehicles? They've sped up the advent of electric vehicles by at least 5 years, possibly more like 10. Looking forward to seeing this company continue to thrive.

neovive 8y ago
I agree. It's refreshing to see a relatively new company bearing the risk of expanding the electric vehicle industry and not accepting the status quo.
0x262d 8y ago
1. individual cars are a dumb way to "fix" the environment, they're hyper resource intensive and have so many problems 2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that 3. additionally tesla propagandizes against the above 4. elon musk is a colossal dipshit so that is mostly why I criticize them.
- ancorevard 8y ago
  "2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society". Study transportation needs of people and you will discover that mass transit only fulfill some parts of people's mobility needs. Study: https://micromobility.io https://micromobility.io
  - mhermher 8y ago
    And it's falling short of that even! The issue isn't what the optimal state is, it's the delta between here and there.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  > 1. individual cars are a dumb way to "fix" the environment, they're hyper resource intensive and have so many problems This may have been a poor way to say it, but it is the truth. We will not buy or consume our way out of climate change or negative externalities that affect the environment. > 2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that Again, a poor choice of words for an otherwise good point: if we want to see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to move away from the idea of ubiquitous transportation via personal vehicles.
  - jppope 8y ago
    > "if we want to see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to move away from the idea of ubiquitous transportation via personal vehicles." Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult in the United States... we've spent 70+ years building our entire country around the personal vehicle. Save Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Chicago, and perhaps SF, ALL of our cities require owning a car. Strategically Musk might actually be going the right way... by starting to get people to think about transit in a different way.
    - dereke 8y ago
      Maybe the infrastructure that is in place to support cars could pivot to public transport? We could replace some/all lanes on motorways/interstates with train tracks. Reduce roads in cities to one way and install trams in the other lanes.
      - eMSF 8y ago
        Railway fetishism is truly something I guess I'll never really understand. Trams are LOUD and annoying.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        Replacing interstates with rail doesn't work. For one thing, there is already rail running parallel to most of them, so there is no need for it. Moreover, the usage is different. A person lives in the suburbs, they drive five miles through their suburb, then get on the interstate for 10 miles, then drive to an office park 5 miles off the interstate. If you get rid of the interstate, what are they supposed to do? Drive 5 miles to the train, take the train 10 miles and then walk 5 miles? Buy a second car to use for the other leg of the commute? What you need is to relax the zoning/density restrictions in the city so that more people and businesses can afford to be there instead of in the suburbs. Then they can use the existing mass transit within the city, which unclogs the interstate for the people who can't, e.g. because one of their endpoints is outside the city for legitimate reasons or because they have to transport bulk material in addition to humans.
- nabnob 8y ago
  Agreed. Consumerism is part of the problem. People don't want to think about the fact that we might have to accept a different standard of living in order to fight climate change.
  - sridca 8y ago
    Yup. It is far easier to fight against meat eaters than give up your fancy car.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I don't want say anything bad about mass transit for large cities where it makes sense. But you have to reach a certain economy of scale before trains become more efficient than cars. A train with just a couple of people uses far more power than a car does. We can do a lot to encourage people to live closer together by ending subsidies, removing zoning laws, etc. But in the end we still need farmers and other professions living spread out across the country. We can't achieve perfect urbanization. And given that electric cars are going to be a necessary part of getting to zero emissions.
- tengbretson 8y ago
  > the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that I don't understand how people can simultaneously hold this belief and then act surprised when others criticize the "green movement" as just an excuse to control people. Modern personal transportation is one of the ultimate expressions of individual freedom. We're making it cleaner, we're reducing externalities, and still environmentalists want to herd people onto busses and trains. How about no?
  - com2kid 8y ago
    > I don't understand how people can simultaneously hold this belief and then act surprised when others criticize the "green movement" as just an excuse to control people. Massive subsidies to the entire car industry, from cheap roads to cheap gas, are a form of nudging society towards certain behaviors. Building reliable mass transit, proper safe isolated bike lanes, and removing subsidies that are in place, are another form of societal nudging. As an example, wide city streets are a form of subsidy, the city loses money on those streets, a 4 lane road in a downtown region of a major metro is a huge lost opportunity cost! But a combination of political and societal factors came together to cause cities sacrifice buildings for for car lanes. > Modern personal transportation is one of the ultimate expressions of individual freedom. I personally enjoy driving, but when visiting cities with real mass transit (Tokyo, London, etc), I feel a lot more free to travel within the city. No being stuck in traffic, transit times are a lot more reliable than driving, no worrying about finding parking and then walking to my destination, and no worries about not being able to find parking at all! And in cities with "almost there" mass transit, such as Boston, so long as you are on the transit lines, everything is incredibly nice. Honestly I think Bostonians complain about their transit system too much, whenever I visit Boston I am very pleased with MBTA's service! > We're making it cleaner, we're reducing externalities, and still environmentalists want to herd people onto busses and trains. Individual transit has huge external costs. From giant parking lots everywhere, to the fact that it just doesn't scale[1]. Cities cannot grow beyond a certain size/density relying on individual transit. Self driving car's don't solve the density problem, while self driving taxis kind of solve the parking lot problem[2]. For that matter, an underground parking space in a condo in a metro area costs around $30k to build! Want two spaces for a family? That is $60k added to the purchase price. Housing that isn't incredibly expensive? Not going to happen if there is a $60k tax added to the price of every new housing unit in a city![3] No one is arguing to build out mass transit in every single small town, but for the majority of the population that lives in metro areas, mass transit makes an enormous amount of sense. [1]https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif [2]Parking lots have lower tax rates, being unimproved land, than land with proper building on them. This reduction in revenue, for land in the most valuable part of the city, has obvious large $ costs. Of course cities can get around this by special taxes for parking lots to discourage them, but without proper mass transit in place, people still need to drive into a cities dense downtown core, and fees just get passed along to citizens. It becomes more efficient to just build mass transit, and put in proper building rather than concrete flatlands! Mass transit is a large up-front cost with rather low on-going maintenance costs compared to road ways (unless you are NYC and manage to defer maintenance for several decades...), but the property taxes from the additional land that is freed up is an ongoing revenue source that will last for centuries. Unfortunately few politicians care about "well the city will be super vibrant for the rest of time". [3]Obviously only applicable once a city grows beyond a certain size and starts building medium and high density housing.
smolsky 8y ago
Well, I would like to get a Model 3, yet I want Tesla to get glitches out of their production first. I am sure v2 will be much better (sw/hw issues, trim quality, gaps etc). And then they need to start all over with Model Y. What quality expectations are there?
- jlv2 8y ago
  Trim quality, gaps? That's very old news and hasn't been true for almost a year. (I know 2 dozen people with 3s purchased in the last 8 months and none of them have had any quality issues)
  - ssewell 8y ago
    Yep. Look at look at a side-by-side comparison a Model 3 from about a year ago (Premium Interior) vs. today (Partial Premium Interior). In the first few frames, there's a notable improvement in the body tolerances around the frunk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSIC6zvQy5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSIC6zvQy5Y
  - jgalt212 8y ago
    > I know 2 dozen people with 3s purchased in the last 8 months What's the population size of people who you know who purchased any car in the last 8 months?
  - abc_lisper 8y ago
    As much as I am a Tesla fan, I have to call spade a spade. I know two people in the last couple of months who bought a Tesla, and I noticed misalignments on both of them.
  - beefman 8y ago
    My Model 3 was purchased the last week in October and has severely uneven fittings and gaps that are getting worse with time. I think the whole gap thing is generally myopic and stupid but this is really remarkable.
    - 8y ago
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
It's kind of a Russian election situation. Anonymous accounts posting lots of BS to try and control the conversation.
- acct1771 8y ago
  You mean any election.
gamblor956 8y ago
It's quite possible to support the goal and criticize the players, especially when those players repeatedly fail to execute and use the lofty goal as an excuse for their failings instead of learning from their mistakes and getting better. And why should Tesla get the credit for making green cars a thing? True credit belongs to Toyota for introducing the Prius 2 decades ago when gas was king and getting consumers to see alternative engines as viable options, and to California for its green vehicles incentives for making possible the financial structure that has kept Tesla alive.
- wilg 8y ago
  > And why should Tesla get the credit for making green cars a thing? Well, you've awkwardly expanded the wording to make this criticism work. People give Tesla credit for making _electric_ cars a thing.
- confiscate 8y ago
  ya but neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric. It was only when Tesla started making money that every car manufacturer is being serious about competing in this space, and even then they are behind. Curious to see why you think credit goes to Toyota, instead of Tesla?
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Car companies started going electric because California and Federal fuel standards require increasing fuel efficiency on a fleet basis, and the only way to achieve those goals is now through zero-emissions vehicles like hydrogen, fuel cell, or EV. Hydrogen tech and fuel cells are still too inefficient and expensive for consumer vehicles (especially given the rare-earth materials required for high-efficiency fuel cells). Batteries happened to get much cheaper due to their increasing use in non-vehicle electronics like cell phones, which made EVs the best choice from a tech and cost perspective. In other words, Tesla didn't actually make car manufacturers "wake up and go electric." They were going to go electric anyway because it was the obvious tech choice. Tesla's accomplishment was to show that people were finally ready to buy green cars that looked like normal cars. (The first hybrids and EVs from Toyota and Nissan looked like normal cars, and sold horribly. Toyota and Nissan introduced the butt-ugly designs because green car buyers back in the day wanted distinctive cars to show off their greenliness.) t neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric. California's green car incentives and fuel efficiency requirements are what drove most car companies to invest in green car tech in the first place.
paulcarroty 8y ago
You don't need to answer every hater speech, your new product/project/success will do it much better.

by leesec 8y ago

neovive 8y ago

I agree. It's refreshing to see a relatively new company bearing the risk of expanding the electric vehicle industry and not accepting the status quo.

0x262d 8y ago

1. individual cars are a dumb way to "fix" the environment, they're hyper resource intensive and have so many problems 2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that 3. additionally tesla propagandizes against the above 4. elon musk is a colossal dipshit so that is mostly why I criticize them.

ancorevard 8y ago
"2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society". Study transportation needs of people and you will discover that mass transit only fulfill some parts of people's mobility needs. Study: https://micromobility.io https://micromobility.io
- mhermher 8y ago
  And it's falling short of that even! The issue isn't what the optimal state is, it's the delta between here and there.
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> 1. individual cars are a dumb way to "fix" the environment, they're hyper resource intensive and have so many problems This may have been a poor way to say it, but it is the truth. We will not buy or consume our way out of climate change or negative externalities that affect the environment. > 2. the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that Again, a poor choice of words for an otherwise good point: if we want to see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to move away from the idea of ubiquitous transportation via personal vehicles.
- jppope 8y ago
  > "if we want to see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to move away from the idea of ubiquitous transportation via personal vehicles." Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult in the United States... we've spent 70+ years building our entire country around the personal vehicle. Save Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Chicago, and perhaps SF, ALL of our cities require owning a car. Strategically Musk might actually be going the right way... by starting to get people to think about transit in a different way.
  - dereke 8y ago
    Maybe the infrastructure that is in place to support cars could pivot to public transport? We could replace some/all lanes on motorways/interstates with train tracks. Reduce roads in cities to one way and install trams in the other lanes.
    - eMSF 8y ago
      Railway fetishism is truly something I guess I'll never really understand. Trams are LOUD and annoying.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      Replacing interstates with rail doesn't work. For one thing, there is already rail running parallel to most of them, so there is no need for it. Moreover, the usage is different. A person lives in the suburbs, they drive five miles through their suburb, then get on the interstate for 10 miles, then drive to an office park 5 miles off the interstate. If you get rid of the interstate, what are they supposed to do? Drive 5 miles to the train, take the train 10 miles and then walk 5 miles? Buy a second car to use for the other leg of the commute? What you need is to relax the zoning/density restrictions in the city so that more people and businesses can afford to be there instead of in the suburbs. Then they can use the existing mass transit within the city, which unclogs the interstate for the people who can't, e.g. because one of their endpoints is outside the city for legitimate reasons or because they have to transport bulk material in addition to humans.
nabnob 8y ago
Agreed. Consumerism is part of the problem. People don't want to think about the fact that we might have to accept a different standard of living in order to fight climate change.
- sridca 8y ago
  Yup. It is far easier to fight against meat eaters than give up your fancy car.
Symmetry 8y ago
I don't want say anything bad about mass transit for large cities where it makes sense. But you have to reach a certain economy of scale before trains become more efficient than cars. A train with just a couple of people uses far more power than a car does. We can do a lot to encourage people to live closer together by ending subsidies, removing zoning laws, etc. But in the end we still need farmers and other professions living spread out across the country. We can't achieve perfect urbanization. And given that electric cars are going to be a necessary part of getting to zero emissions.
tengbretson 8y ago
> the good way is to build mass transit and radically change society, which is a political issue. tesla comes in a long tradition of sucking public funding into a private entity which cuts across that I don't understand how people can simultaneously hold this belief and then act surprised when others criticize the "green movement" as just an excuse to control people. Modern personal transportation is one of the ultimate expressions of individual freedom. We're making it cleaner, we're reducing externalities, and still environmentalists want to herd people onto busses and trains. How about no?
- com2kid 8y ago
  > I don't understand how people can simultaneously hold this belief and then act surprised when others criticize the "green movement" as just an excuse to control people. Massive subsidies to the entire car industry, from cheap roads to cheap gas, are a form of nudging society towards certain behaviors. Building reliable mass transit, proper safe isolated bike lanes, and removing subsidies that are in place, are another form of societal nudging. As an example, wide city streets are a form of subsidy, the city loses money on those streets, a 4 lane road in a downtown region of a major metro is a huge lost opportunity cost! But a combination of political and societal factors came together to cause cities sacrifice buildings for for car lanes. > Modern personal transportation is one of the ultimate expressions of individual freedom. I personally enjoy driving, but when visiting cities with real mass transit (Tokyo, London, etc), I feel a lot more free to travel within the city. No being stuck in traffic, transit times are a lot more reliable than driving, no worrying about finding parking and then walking to my destination, and no worries about not being able to find parking at all! And in cities with "almost there" mass transit, such as Boston, so long as you are on the transit lines, everything is incredibly nice. Honestly I think Bostonians complain about their transit system too much, whenever I visit Boston I am very pleased with MBTA's service! > We're making it cleaner, we're reducing externalities, and still environmentalists want to herd people onto busses and trains. Individual transit has huge external costs. From giant parking lots everywhere, to the fact that it just doesn't scale[1]. Cities cannot grow beyond a certain size/density relying on individual transit. Self driving car's don't solve the density problem, while self driving taxis kind of solve the parking lot problem[2]. For that matter, an underground parking space in a condo in a metro area costs around $30k to build! Want two spaces for a family? That is $60k added to the purchase price. Housing that isn't incredibly expensive? Not going to happen if there is a $60k tax added to the price of every new housing unit in a city![3] No one is arguing to build out mass transit in every single small town, but for the majority of the population that lives in metro areas, mass transit makes an enormous amount of sense. [1]https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif https://i.imgur.com/sCvRIEd.gif [2]Parking lots have lower tax rates, being unimproved land, than land with proper building on them. This reduction in revenue, for land in the most valuable part of the city, has obvious large $ costs. Of course cities can get around this by special taxes for parking lots to discourage them, but without proper mass transit in place, people still need to drive into a cities dense downtown core, and fees just get passed along to citizens. It becomes more efficient to just build mass transit, and put in proper building rather than concrete flatlands! Mass transit is a large up-front cost with rather low on-going maintenance costs compared to road ways (unless you are NYC and manage to defer maintenance for several decades...), but the property taxes from the additional land that is freed up is an ongoing revenue source that will last for centuries. Unfortunately few politicians care about "well the city will be super vibrant for the rest of time". [3]Obviously only applicable once a city grows beyond a certain size and starts building medium and high density housing.

smolsky 8y ago

Well, I would like to get a Model 3, yet I want Tesla to get glitches out of their production first. I am sure v2 will be much better (sw/hw issues, trim quality, gaps etc). And then they need to start all over with Model Y. What quality expectations are there?

jlv2 8y ago
Trim quality, gaps? That's very old news and hasn't been true for almost a year. (I know 2 dozen people with 3s purchased in the last 8 months and none of them have had any quality issues)
- ssewell 8y ago
  Yep. Look at look at a side-by-side comparison a Model 3 from about a year ago (Premium Interior) vs. today (Partial Premium Interior). In the first few frames, there's a notable improvement in the body tolerances around the frunk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSIC6zvQy5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSIC6zvQy5Y
- jgalt212 8y ago
  > I know 2 dozen people with 3s purchased in the last 8 months What's the population size of people who you know who purchased any car in the last 8 months?
- abc_lisper 8y ago
  As much as I am a Tesla fan, I have to call spade a spade. I know two people in the last couple of months who bought a Tesla, and I noticed misalignments on both of them.
- beefman 8y ago
  My Model 3 was purchased the last week in October and has severely uneven fittings and gaps that are getting worse with time. I think the whole gap thing is generally myopic and stupid but this is really remarkable.
  - 8y ago

omarforgotpwd 8y ago

It's kind of a Russian election situation. Anonymous accounts posting lots of BS to try and control the conversation.

acct1771 8y ago
You mean any election.

gamblor956 8y ago

It's quite possible to support the goal and criticize the players, especially when those players repeatedly fail to execute and use the lofty goal as an excuse for their failings instead of learning from their mistakes and getting better. And why should Tesla get the credit for making green cars a thing? True credit belongs to Toyota for introducing the Prius 2 decades ago when gas was king and getting consumers to see alternative engines as viable options, and to California for its green vehicles incentives for making possible the financial structure that has kept Tesla alive.

wilg 8y ago
> And why should Tesla get the credit for making green cars a thing? Well, you've awkwardly expanded the wording to make this criticism work. People give Tesla credit for making _electric_ cars a thing.
confiscate 8y ago
ya but neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric. It was only when Tesla started making money that every car manufacturer is being serious about competing in this space, and even then they are behind. Curious to see why you think credit goes to Toyota, instead of Tesla?
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Car companies started going electric because California and Federal fuel standards require increasing fuel efficiency on a fleet basis, and the only way to achieve those goals is now through zero-emissions vehicles like hydrogen, fuel cell, or EV. Hydrogen tech and fuel cells are still too inefficient and expensive for consumer vehicles (especially given the rare-earth materials required for high-efficiency fuel cells). Batteries happened to get much cheaper due to their increasing use in non-vehicle electronics like cell phones, which made EVs the best choice from a tech and cost perspective. In other words, Tesla didn't actually make car manufacturers "wake up and go electric." They were going to go electric anyway because it was the obvious tech choice. Tesla's accomplishment was to show that people were finally ready to buy green cars that looked like normal cars. (The first hybrids and EVs from Toyota and Nissan looked like normal cars, and sold horribly. Toyota and Nissan introduced the butt-ugly designs because green car buyers back in the day wanted distinctive cars to show off their greenliness.) t neither of those 2 things (Toyota's Prius 2, and California's green car incentives) were successful in making car manufacturers wake up and go electric. California's green car incentives and fuel efficiency requirements are what drove most car companies to invest in green car tech in the first place.

paulcarroty 8y ago

You don't need to answer every hater speech, your new product/project/success will do it much better.