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by filoleg 1276 days ago
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.

2 comments

It's like two days since it was widely reported that Tesla's net approval ratings in consumer polls are now negative (drop from 6% at the start of the year to -1% now).

So clearly the attitudes in real life with real people have changed recently. The number of cars you see on the roads is, incidentally, a trailing indicator. If literally all sales of Teslas stopped now you'd still see them in the wild with the same frequency for years.

Those approval ratings were gathered by Kelley Blue Book, and even they themselves pointed out that other reports disagree. As well as that the recent slippage in brand perception recorded last month had exactly zero negative effects on sales [0].

> The number of cars you see on the roads is, incidentally, a trailing indicator. If literally all sales of Teslas stopped now you'd still see them in the wild with the same frequency for years.

Correct, but their recently posted sales numbers should alleviate that concern.

0. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/is-tesla-brand-loyalty-starting...

> But I feel like you are just hyperfocusing on figures of speech.

Sure, I agree with that, just meant to point out that at least some people care, we just don't know how many or if it's in any way material to Tesla's overall numbers. Also think it's worth emphasizing that the number of Teslas on the road today isn't a good marker, given that Musk's most alienating behavior has only ramped up in the past year or so.

In full agreement with you on both of these points.