There is a community of Tesla critics out there, but they are so vocal because they've done something very strange.

They mostly exist on Twitter, but they all share the same block list. Anyone who argues with them or says anything positive about Tesla gets put on that blocklist by anyone else that shares it.

Their reality is very skewed. All they see on Twitter is hatred against Elon, 'proof' everything he does is a scam, misleading sales numbers and hype about competitors.

The only thing they can possibly see is basically a conspiracy theory.

And so they are very vocal because they can't believe anyone could support Tesla/Elon, because they have never seen a good reason to.

There is one guy that runs an investment company, 70% of his investment is shorting Tesla and he consistently complains about losing money doing so, but always saying the scam will finally be revealed 'soon'.

I am curious about this one:

“I don't like Elon because his company branded existing technology in a misleading way and pushed it past it's safe limits and people died.”

Most of the other ones vary in magnitude and specificity, but it’s fine with me if you don’t like Elon, he is a polarizing figure right now.

Autopilot's exact suite of sensors from Mobileye was in plenty of other cars and just not pushed to it's limits and was marketed as something that augments the driver in exceptional cases, rather than having the driver augment the system in exceptional cases, something we know kills people.

Additionally, it's shortcomings with stationary object detection were already well known, this is why full AEB on many cars is disabled at highway speeds.

And I didn't make this comment to say I dislike Elon, I could say that with three words.

Instead I take issue with the above comment's characterization of his detractors.

The above comment goes out of it's way to act like Elon's vocal opposition is a bunch of crackpots, which is silly.

I know this goes against culture on here, but I'll say it anyways.

It's _very_ strange that my comment above was flagged, while the comment it replied to was not.

I didn't say "I don't like Elon because he's a big stinky doodoo head", I gave legitimate missteps he and his company have made, some of which came at the cost of human life.

And it wasn't non-sequitur, I am replying to a comment about his detractors and thought it plenty fair to show my rationale for being one of them

If anything the comment it's replying to attempts to denigrate a large group of people in the hand-waviest way possible. I mean "they have the same blocklists on Twitter", really? This is the level of discourse that's acceptable while my comment is somehow unacceptable?

And to be clear, I don't think any comment in this thread should be flagged, it's silly the parent post to that comment is also flagged. People often say "We're all adults" to imply somehow no negative commentary should exist. To me "We're all adults" means we should all be capable of reading a comment with a negative tone without having a meltdown. Especially if the negatively toned comment has actual objective content.

After two major strawmen why should he add another reason?

Why does GP feel need to note that they are a Tesla critic rather than simply praising Zimbabwe's elegant use case?

Snarkiness abounds, apparently.

To illustrate that they are overcoming significant bias with the rest of their observation.

Seems purely extraneous to me. The comments could have stood on their own without a blatant declaration of (anti)fandom that so often surrounds this company. The strawman you pointed out exhibits similar declarations in the opposite direction.

There are reasons to criticize Tesla that are unchanged by whatever benefits the company can be credited with in the fight against climate change.

For example, the US govt just told them to stop lying about the safety of one of their cars.

There are lots of companies building electric cars without resorting to misleading marketing.

AFAIK they told Tesla to stop publishing their exact ranking of car safety, when they are only allowed to use a more vague "quantile" ranking of sort. Doesn't mean they lied about the ranking, just that they weren't supposed to share and use those detailed ratings for marketing purposes in the way they did.

You seem to be describing a single incident. Multiple parties, including the former head of NYSE and the NHTSA, see a pattern.

Ex: https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/news-story/former-nyse-chie...

It’s not misleading. Do some research.

> The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter last October over “misleading statements” Tesla made about the Model 3’s safety. The agency also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the statements “constitute[d] unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”[1]

You seem to be the one making the bolder claim -- that the NHTSA is either lying or wrong about their assessment of Tesla's marketing.

Since you're making the bolder claim, the onus is on you to provide some evidence, instead of making an unsubstantiated statement and childishly waving away your responsibility to back it up.

1. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758349/tesla-model-3-saf...

Wow, so either you are climate change denier or you love Tesla ?

That must be one the biggest strawmen I have ever seen.

It could have something to do with the subsidy fraud or perhaps the fact that Tesla's might actually produce more CO2 than a traditional gasoline car [1]. Or perhaps it's because Tesla's art the 4th least reliable cars according to a Consumer Reports survey meaning they break down more often

[1]https://interestingengineering.com/a-tesla-model-3-produces-... [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

The first link points to a press release that is dead (redirects to a home page), but based on the article, it doesn't look like they're giving it a fair fight.

> The research is revealing that these cars may produce significant CO2 emissions both in their battery production and their charging.

Important to note: "in their production and their charging"

> The study, for instance, estimates that driving a Tesla Model 3 in Germany is responsible for 156 to 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer. That is more than a diesel-powered Mercedes C220d which produces just 141 grams per kilometer.

The Model 3 is "responsible" for x grams, and the Diesel car (is diesel common in Europe? Very little US consumer cars recommend Diesel) "produces" x grams

Finally:

> Not only are there CO2 emissions generated in the production of electric vehicles, in addition almost all EU countries generate significant CO2 emissions from charging the vehicles’ batteries using their national energy production mixes.

There are CO2 emissions in the production of standard vehicles as well (this may be referencing the creation of the batteries, unsure, again the link is dead), and just as charging puts load on the grid, emissions are generated by the extraction, processing, and transportation of oil.

I'm not trying to invalidate the study, but the wording is suspicious (assuming it's not editorialized; the publication isn't one that only puts out critical TSLA articles).

Diesel is very common in Germany. About half the cars on the road are Diesel.

It’s a thoroughly debunked bit of misinformation.