[UseStrict]

I tend to buy a new car every 5 years, my next one would be coming up in 2023. If you asked me in 2020 I would say a Tesla Model Y, not a chance of that happening now. Lots of great alternatives with less of the social stain.

[newsclues]

What are the alternatives to Tesla you are considering?

[porphyra]

Hyundai Ioniq 5 is pretty nice if you can find one without an insane dealer markup.

[tmikaeld]

I tested this one and a lot of others, including the Teslas and polestar 2. The Ionic 5 was the one i was most satisfied with, it’s really spacious, has excellent range, vehicle to grid and even camping mode. With the on-screen rear mirror cameras addon, it’s really hard to beat.

Unfortunately, i had to cancel my booking after the energy crisis became too severe..

[hn_throwaway_99]

Some good options in my research:

Polestar

Ford F150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E

Chevy Bolt (I have a Volt and love that car, still sad it was discontinued)

Lucid cars are beautiful and amazing, but at a luxury price point.

[rayiner]

> Ford F150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E

Wasn't Henry Ford like an actual Nazi?

[alexose]

Henry Ford died 75 years ago?

Also, for what it's worth, modern-day Ford seems very much like the model of a diverse workforce.

[rayiner]

> very much like the model of a diverse workforce.

What has Ford done to make it up to Jews? It's not like different minority groups are fungible.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Try harder. I'm pretty positive Henry Ford isn't benefitting from sales of Fords these days.

[jonathankoren]

Porsche Taycan has had my attention for a while

[bufferoverflow]

That's in a completely different price category from Model Y.

[porphyra]

The upcoming Macan EV might be a closer match in terms of both pricing (hopefully) and utility/size. Probably still pricier than the Y though.

[aliqot]

Rivian truck is nice

[arcticbull]

Has the benefit of existing, too, which is nice.

[luma]

Might want to check recent news. It's questionable if Rivian is going to exist in 12 months.

[throwawayacc3]

>Might want to check recent news

I just did: Rivian is going to meet it's target for 25,000 vehicles produced this year, Amazon is continuing to take delivery of its Rivian electric vans, and preholder count continues to grow... The only "negative" is the Mercedes-Benz deal fell apart due to some Biden administration law that passed (dodged that bullet anyway, Mercedes-Benz makes garbage vehicles).

>It's questionable if Rivian is going to exist in 12 months.

Heard this exact quote about Tesla quarter after quarter 8 or so years ago.

[leesec]

The social stain is almost entirely in your head lol. No one is going to judge you for Musk's actions because you drive a Tesla

[pwinnski]

Perhaps it's less about the judgement of other people, and more about not wanting to contribute to someone they believe to be a bad actor.

At my age, I don't give a wet slap about how people view me, but I have never considered buying a Tesla, and am taking delivery of my second non-Tesla EV this Saturday. It has nothing to do with how people judge me. I mean, I drive a Fiat 500e, people undoubtedly judge me negatively based on that. :-)

[nightski]

There's something near 100,000 employees in multiple continents at Tesla. That's a lot of diverse opinions and social views. Elon Musk is just one person in that sea of people.

[pwinnski]

And every individual is complex, with many opinions on many issues, including some that are probably contradictory. Still, call one national hero a pedophile, and most of your other opinions are suddenly irrelevant, aren't they?

[freejazz]

Elon is the face of the company

[filoleg]

TIL there are people who actually make their car-purchasing decisions based on what people on twitter say on entirely unrelated matters.

And yeah, given how widespread Teslas are where I live (if stopped at any traffic light in the city, you will see at least 2 Teslas waiting), I can confirm that absolutely no one cares.

[spacemadness]

Today you learned that some people try to make purchasing decisions that aren’t in great misalignment with their values?

[filoleg]

Nope, I always knew it was a thing. Just like there are some people who go full-on FreeBSD or categorically refuse to use non-free software. Richard Stallman exists, after all, and is a celebrity.

And I also knew, for quite a while, that positions analogous to that of Stallman should never be taken at face value as something that the general public would care to even know about, let alone support or follow through. And it isn't because I am jaded or don't have faith in people, quite the opposite. It is because average people as a group tend to be pretty good at (perhaps blindly) filtering things into the "practically matters" and "doesn't ultimately matter" buckets.

In relation to this specific scenario, despite the negative reaction to my initial comment on HN and Elon's public perception trending increasingly negative, recent Tesla car sales numbers (which keep increasing) seem to only support my point. People online might loudly say XYZ, but once you look at the numbers that matter, the reality looks a bit differently.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> And yeah, given how widespread Teslas are where I live (if stopped at any traffic light in the city, you will see at least 2 Teslas waiting), I can confirm that absolutely no one cares.

Well, that's obviously false give the existence proofs in these comments. But more to the point, I only went from "Ugh, Elon is so fucking annoying, I just wish he would STFU" to "I will actively try to convince anyone I know to never do anything that would contribute to his wealth" in the past year with all the Twitter BS. I'm sure the vast, vast majority of Teslas you see on the road now were ordered before then.

[filoleg]

> Well, that's obviously false give the existence proofs in these comments

Sorry, I meant in real life, not on HN. If you judge reality by what comments here say, you would believe that the average person thinks of TikTok as the greatest evil and that american big tech is out there to violate their privacy to entrap them for life, which is why everyone and their grandma runs an Arch or Ubuntu distro.

This is what I call a niche flavor of a terminally online take.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Your statement was "I can confirm that absolutely no one cares."

Last I checked, I exist in real life, not just on HN, and I'm guessing many of the responders here do as well.

I agree, I have no idea how common this sentiment is, which is why I said so in my original comment. Still, it's a valid hypothesis that the people most likely to be turned off by Elon to the point of avoiding Tesla are also the people who were (at least previously) most likely to want to buy an EV.

[filoleg]

I appreciate your take, I really do. But I feel like you are just hyperfocusing on figures of speech.

Of course, there will be some people in real life who genuinely hold those takes. People on HN are real people after all, just like people on reddit/twitter/etc are (bots and astroturfing aside), and their opinions are real.

When I said "no one in real life", I meant that you wouldn't find that opinion heavily represented outside of those online communities, in a way that you would even know about it in real life. The only comments I got on that purchasing decision (and I got tons of those) were either asking about the charging situation or whether i regret getting white interior (answer: no, i don't, because whichever material they use is extremely resistant to dirt/stain and is very easy to clean/maintain).

It is kind of difficult to imagine many people (at least where I live in PNW) to really care, given that just outside of my window as i was writing this reply, I saw 2 model Ys, 1 model 3, and 1 model X pass by. I don't have the stats on hand, but if someone told me that Teslas were in the top 5 of the most sold new car brands in the state (along with Subaru, of course), I would be able to believe it.

Sidenote: I am very pleasantly impressed with the direction Hyundai is taking with their Ioniq line, and I definitely want to try it out.