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Tesla is a car for people who know nothing about cars and are easily impressed by buzzwords they can then use over a drink with friends. They were driving 2000

by nixass 3y ago

Tesla is a car for people who know nothing about cars and are easily impressed by buzzwords they can then use over a drink with friends. They were driving 2000 Kia and now suddenly they parrot Musk's words and have no idea about anything they just said.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Elon Musk was the best snake oil salesman in the world.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Yeah, you're right. We should've left the EV revolution up to General Motors to kick off. They were almost ready, they swear!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Ah, yes, please hit me with your invisible straw men. Elon Musk didn't invent EVs or Tesla, he bought it. Not saying Tesla is bad, but its market value was completely pumped up by Elon's tactics of turning $TSLA into a hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      (Shrug) They shipped a lot of electric cars. What have you done lately?
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Yeah, I thought so.
    - bdcravens 3y ago
      > but its market value was completely pumped up by Elon's tactics of turning $TSLA into a hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own There's no shortage of companies, many of which HN readers are employed by, that did the same. I'm no fan of Elon - I cancelled a Model 3 order and went with an EV6. However you only have to drive around on the freeway for a few minutes to see the success Tesla has had, despite their stock price or how shitty of a dude Elon is.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Musk was about to fund his own EV startup when he was company that had just started to do the same thing. That company had no interest from investors and was shortly gone go down the shitter, literally dead in the water. So Musk showed up, financed it himself and he brought easily the most important engineer, JB Strauble, with him. > hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin Then you made a killing on shorting it? If you knew so much better then the market? Because Tesla stock was super high when pretty much all EV stocks were incredibly high. And all companies around that industry (and others) came back down. But its also not like Tesla collapsed to some historic lows after that. And if you look at actual Wallstreet annalists from that time period you will see that most of the valuations wasn't based on some speculative FSD stuff. It was mostly based on their production, margin and growth. > versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own. So it had nothing to do with going from a 1000 cars a year to 2 million cars a year, and while doing that having highly positive margin in an industry where (almost) nobody else makes positive margin on EV, and at the same time also continuing to grow fast? All of those things simply happened because of hype like Dogecoin? Are you serious?
jjoonathan 3y ago
This Mercedes Benz press release, "our revolutionary world first highway driving stack is gonna change the world," has real Elon-Musk-of-10-years-ago energy to it. Meanwhile, Tesla FSD is driving a million miles per day around town, not playing follow-the-leader on a highway. I find one of these significantly more impressive than the other.
- nixass 3y ago
  Tesla is free to go for L3 approval, if Musk is to believed they have best AI/FSD/snake_oil stack on market
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Mercedes is free to join the robotaxi race, if L3 is a general indicator of their sophistication rather than a focused sprint down a dead-end use-case.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  - Musk, 8 years ago: "We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." - Musk, 2 years ago: FSD will yields for emergency vehicles using microphone - Today: Mercedes reaches L3 before Tesla passes L2 and FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens while Drive Pilot does. There's a trend on these things but I can't quite put my finger on it...
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    > FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens while Drive Pilot does. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_d1nW2jtPr0 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_d1nW2jtPr0
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens. https://insideevs.com/news/534868/tesla-autopilot-update-emergency-vehicles https://insideevs.com/news/534868/tesla-autopilot-update-eme... Drive Pilot uses external microphones to detect the approaching siren and manages right of way before making visual contact. Not all drivers understand the value in the latter though.
erulabs 3y ago
I was a car mechanic for 2 years, have re-built several engines, and I love my model 3 and fully believe it's one of the best possible cars for the average consumer. I also love my Civic SI, but my wife feels safer in the Telsa. She couldn't tell you the first thing Musk has been up to in the last 10 years. It's not one of the best selling cars in the country due to celebrity worship. "Everyone else is stupid and I'm smart" is not exactly the rock-solid argument you might think it is. It will never stop being surprising to me to see, on HackerNews, such baseless vitriol.
Rygian 3y ago
I'm impressed by how much fun it is to drive.
- nixass 3y ago
  The only "fun" is instant torque and that's universal EV thing If someone drives by constantly "abusing" that "feature" and accelerating like a maniac then they're being douche. Other than that I wonder what other fun factor Tesla has to offer, their cars are mediocre at best in basically every segment
  - Rygian 3y ago
    Care to elaborate in which particular ways you find a Model 3 (or any Tesla car) "mediocre at best"? I'd like to know about your experience. Here's mine: I have driven other EVs. The torque is not universal at all, especially considering I have AWD. The very low center of gravity, combined with the torque and AWD, makes for very fun rides in mountain roads. The autopilot is really convenient in highway driving, and is much better than the driver assist features I've experienced in other cars (Honda, Fiat, MG). Interacting with the screen is natural, snappy and very intuitive, as opposed to most other cars I've interacted with. Being able to use the screen as an entertainment center (e.g. play youtube cat videos while charging) is fun. Regular software updates are seamless. Hopping in the car and getting a list of new features is fun. Maybe the most fun was the time a software update shaved half a second from my 0–100 time. The steering wheel is simpler to use (just two knobs instead of tens of buttons spread around) and the screen is much cleaner to read than other cars that try to ram too much information in too-small displays. The audio quality is much, much better than any other car I've been in.

by nixass 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Elon Musk was the best snake oil salesman in the world.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Yeah, you're right. We should've left the EV revolution up to General Motors to kick off. They were almost ready, they swear!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Ah, yes, please hit me with your invisible straw men. Elon Musk didn't invent EVs or Tesla, he bought it. Not saying Tesla is bad, but its market value was completely pumped up by Elon's tactics of turning $TSLA into a hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    (Shrug) They shipped a lot of electric cars. What have you done lately?
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Yeah, I thought so.
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    > but its market value was completely pumped up by Elon's tactics of turning $TSLA into a hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own There's no shortage of companies, many of which HN readers are employed by, that did the same. I'm no fan of Elon - I cancelled a Model 3 order and went with an EV6. However you only have to drive around on the freeway for a few minutes to see the success Tesla has had, despite their stock price or how shitty of a dude Elon is.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Musk was about to fund his own EV startup when he was company that had just started to do the same thing. That company had no interest from investors and was shortly gone go down the shitter, literally dead in the water. So Musk showed up, financed it himself and he brought easily the most important engineer, JB Strauble, with him. > hype driven speculative asset like Dogecoin Then you made a killing on shorting it? If you knew so much better then the market? Because Tesla stock was super high when pretty much all EV stocks were incredibly high. And all companies around that industry (and others) came back down. But its also not like Tesla collapsed to some historic lows after that. And if you look at actual Wallstreet annalists from that time period you will see that most of the valuations wasn't based on some speculative FSD stuff. It was mostly based on their production, margin and growth. > versus gaining it from achieving sales succes on its own. So it had nothing to do with going from a 1000 cars a year to 2 million cars a year, and while doing that having highly positive margin in an industry where (almost) nobody else makes positive margin on EV, and at the same time also continuing to grow fast? All of those things simply happened because of hype like Dogecoin? Are you serious?

jjoonathan 3y ago

This Mercedes Benz press release, "our revolutionary world first highway driving stack is gonna change the world," has real Elon-Musk-of-10-years-ago energy to it. Meanwhile, Tesla FSD is driving a million miles per day around town, not playing follow-the-leader on a highway. I find one of these significantly more impressive than the other.

nixass 3y ago
Tesla is free to go for L3 approval, if Musk is to believed they have best AI/FSD/snake_oil stack on market
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Mercedes is free to join the robotaxi race, if L3 is a general indicator of their sophistication rather than a focused sprint down a dead-end use-case.
BoorishBears 3y ago
- Musk, 8 years ago: "We're going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." - Musk, 2 years ago: FSD will yields for emergency vehicles using microphone - Today: Mercedes reaches L3 before Tesla passes L2 and FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens while Drive Pilot does. There's a trend on these things but I can't quite put my finger on it...
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  > FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens while Drive Pilot does. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_d1nW2jtPr0 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_d1nW2jtPr0
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    FSD does not yield for emergency vehicle sirens. https://insideevs.com/news/534868/tesla-autopilot-update-emergency-vehicles https://insideevs.com/news/534868/tesla-autopilot-update-eme... Drive Pilot uses external microphones to detect the approaching siren and manages right of way before making visual contact. Not all drivers understand the value in the latter though.

erulabs 3y ago

I was a car mechanic for 2 years, have re-built several engines, and I love my model 3 and fully believe it's one of the best possible cars for the average consumer. I also love my Civic SI, but my wife feels safer in the Telsa. She couldn't tell you the first thing Musk has been up to in the last 10 years. It's not one of the best selling cars in the country due to celebrity worship. "Everyone else is stupid and I'm smart" is not exactly the rock-solid argument you might think it is. It will never stop being surprising to me to see, on HackerNews, such baseless vitriol.

Rygian 3y ago

I'm impressed by how much fun it is to drive.

nixass 3y ago
The only "fun" is instant torque and that's universal EV thing If someone drives by constantly "abusing" that "feature" and accelerating like a maniac then they're being douche. Other than that I wonder what other fun factor Tesla has to offer, their cars are mediocre at best in basically every segment
- Rygian 3y ago
  Care to elaborate in which particular ways you find a Model 3 (or any Tesla car) "mediocre at best"? I'd like to know about your experience. Here's mine: I have driven other EVs. The torque is not universal at all, especially considering I have AWD. The very low center of gravity, combined with the torque and AWD, makes for very fun rides in mountain roads. The autopilot is really convenient in highway driving, and is much better than the driver assist features I've experienced in other cars (Honda, Fiat, MG). Interacting with the screen is natural, snappy and very intuitive, as opposed to most other cars I've interacted with. Being able to use the screen as an entertainment center (e.g. play youtube cat videos while charging) is fun. Regular software updates are seamless. Hopping in the car and getting a list of new features is fun. Maybe the most fun was the time a software update shaved half a second from my 0–100 time. The steering wheel is simpler to use (just two knobs instead of tens of buttons spread around) and the screen is much cleaner to read than other cars that try to ram too much information in too-small displays. The audio quality is much, much better than any other car I've been in.