Hated for Tesla isn't here on HN. It's out in the world.
Back even 5 years ago the brand was crazy hot. Everyone loved it. People at work, driving around, students on campus would stop me to ask about it. There was nothing else you could drive that signaled you cared about the environment and wanted to do something about it.
Now, the brand is completely toxic.
People talk about it apologetically. No one is proud or happy to own one. The best anyone says now is that there was nothing else good on the market at the time or they bought it before.
Heck. My wife loves our Tesla. Never wanted to drive anything else. We were going to keep buying them until the end of time. She now refuses to buy another one.
If you told me a few years ago that in a few months I'll be buying a VW instead of a Tesla I would have thought you were crazy.
Really, in my circles it's gone from a positive signal to an embarrassing negative one at best.
The CEO of Tesla has just called for the UK govenment to free one of the UK's most prominent far-right activists Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (also known as Tommy Robinson) from prison.
Musk tried to frame the situation as if the person was sentenced for sharing memes, but the reality involved more serious charges, including weapons-related offenses.
The same applies to the AFD. In 2022, a group called "Patriotische Union" plotted a coup to overthrow the German government, and several AFD figures were involved in the plan. To now seem him fanboying over AFD is nuts.
All it took for me was renting their vehicle to drive and finding that the controls for everything we're terrible, just awful to use while trying to operate a vehicle. Turning on the windshield wipers? Gotta fill out your taxes on the touch screen. Changing the direction of the AC? Don't look at the road, look at our "fancy animated widget for changing which way the air blows". It was shockingly poorly thought out and a total bandaid over them cheaping out just having buttons for things you'll do every time you drive.
Driving their cars is what made me hate their cars.
Did you try the very latest models that don't have an indicator stalk? Not even kidding on this one either. If you thought removing the wiper stalk was bad try the latest Tesla models! No indicator stalk!
I wouldn't be surprised at all if US politics was far lesser of an impact than the actual car itself.
Same reason there is so much love for Tesla here on HN. It's polarizing, and its CEO even more, to the point people lose the ability to have an opinion beside totally awesome or entirely terrible.
Myself I think the cars are bland inside for their aim of luxury, the driving assists is terrible for its aimed goal, but the overall car is okay. Except their most recent rust bucket which is clearly a meme car and I don't know why they went ahead with that.
I'm not just trolling when I say, is that a serious question? Like, really. How could you live in this day and age and legitimately wonder why many people on HN wouldn't like Tesla?
Plenty of independent, valid reasons to dislike the guy. Some of them are purely political. Some have nothing to do with politics. You might not agree or value these, but that isn't the same as them being invalid:
1) he's an anti-trans right winger. If you aren't, you might dislike him.
2) he's boastful and prideful, which some people find irritating.
3) he lies, constantly about the capabilities and timeliness of his companies. If you are excited about EVs or space or tunnel boring you might dislike the hype->reality->hype cycle.
4) guy is... kinda just an asshole online?
5) if you believe billionaires are fundamentally people who got their money exploitatively, you'll dislike musk.
6) you might disagree with his stewardship of key technologies in space or evs. He's made prioritization decisions one might disagree with.
7) he made high speed rail in California more difficult through the hyperloop nonsense
8) he's anti worker and anti union, and many people here are workers or union members and find the way he treats his employees as unethical.
9) he's has a history of having many children out of wedlock, and kinda ignoring those children and women
10) he has positions about birth rates that could be just esoteric or could be great replacement theory racism and it's unclear which is true.
Probably many reasons beyond these. If someone believes one of these, they might leave a pretty tepid comment.
If someone believes multiple of these, odds are good they'll see Musk as a villain.
Self-driving is a bucket of lies and a travesty with regard to safety and ethics when compared to something like Waymo.
Lots of questionable design decisions clearly coming from the top, such as capacitive/touch controls for everything (turn signals? horn?!) and, well, the entire Cybertruck.
Mediocre build quality. Dated body designs. Lack of CarPlay.
As the face of the company, Elon continues to make it political. As a Tesla owner myself I'm annoyed by his politics, both personal and as it relates to labor and manufacturing.
The FSD promises continue to underwhelm. The prices have not gone down. I personally wish Carplay/Android Auto were supported. Cybertrucks are polarizing stylistically.
Lots of reasons to not want a Tesla these days. Fewer and fewer reasons to root for them.
I just think they're bad cars. The "minimalist interior" is just a way to cheap out on features and they're not built that great. Hyundai or Rivian have some great EV offerings for same price or cheaper.
Hyundai might have some great EV offerings that are cheaper, but Rivian does not have anything even close in terms of price, unless you only consider Plaid models. You can get a used model 3 for $20k now, which is good value if you put aside politics & CEO.
this is blantantly false. you cannot sell this many “bad” cars to start with. people can say whatever they want about elon politically or otherwise but the cars themselves are fucking awesome. and not only that, the supercharger network takes all the anxiety of owning ANY OTHER EV completely out of the equation. my wife has a non-Tesla EV and every longer trip basically is a project where she needs to prepare for where she will stop, what she will do if there are 11 cars waiting there (happened before)… I drive a 2014 Tesla S and the last thing on my mind (even with a battery which is now at like 90%) is where I will charge the car. would not take rivian if someone gave it to me for free and same with hyundai. even luxury-side EVs (Audi eTron, BMW i7…) can’t hold water to Tesla (and number of cars sold tells a simple story…)
if something is bad you won’t be able to make an empire out of it and outsell your competition by a wide margin - you gotta use a little bit of your head here… millions of people won’t pluck down $50k because something is “popular”
elon is a fucking tool - the cars are fucking amazing.
This could be true of songs and movies. But cars are too expensive. And Teslas are bought not just by the rich but all across the economic spectrum. I can't relate to what you talk about here.
Hyundai does not have the track record Tesla does. The best part about Tesla is the buying experience. While Musk's personal conduct is less than desirable, doing business with a dealership affects me far more.
The hate is for Musk. Tesla hate is just collateral damage.
People tolerated Musk's narcissism when he was largely apolitical and his entrepreneurship seemed to benefiting the world at large. Since 2020, Musk's brain seems to have been pretty severely infected by the woke/anti-woke mind-virus, and it's far less clear that his impact on the world is an unmitigated good thing.
IMHO: politics, and irritation at his personality and disruption. He has been the driver of some pretty amazing things, but that makes some people jealous or just bitter.
Isn't it basically the only logical conclusion at this point?
If you don't like Musk, you don't like Tesla.
If you like Musk, you believe what he says, and what he's been saying during his ascension to the White House is that EVs are trash. Aren't Teslas EVs?
That's too binary. You can dislike Musk without disliking Tesla, and vice versa.
I think it's rather pointless to avoid companies led by people with politics I dislike, because that is nearly all of them. Hell, I wouldn't have been able to see a movie or watch a TV show for years.
Of course, anything is possible, but your opinion then becomes fringe. I'm trying to answer to the parent's question, which was about general sentiment rather than fringe opinions.
Politics is transitive. What Musk says is less relevant than what he does; what he's done is given anti-EV interests power. (In exchange for gaining his own.)
I don't know if you've somehow avoided seeing him in the news buddying up with the Trump administration + the German nationalist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland)
Back even 5 years ago the brand was crazy hot. Everyone loved it. People at work, driving around, students on campus would stop me to ask about it. There was nothing else you could drive that signaled you cared about the environment and wanted to do something about it.
Now, the brand is completely toxic.
People talk about it apologetically. No one is proud or happy to own one. The best anyone says now is that there was nothing else good on the market at the time or they bought it before.
Heck. My wife loves our Tesla. Never wanted to drive anything else. We were going to keep buying them until the end of time. She now refuses to buy another one.
If you told me a few years ago that in a few months I'll be buying a VW instead of a Tesla I would have thought you were crazy.
Really, in my circles it's gone from a positive signal to an embarrassing negative one at best.