Southern suburbs tend to be fairly conservative. Maybe not quite as Trump loving as rural areas. But conservative nonetheless and likely not turned off by Elon's recent emergence as a right wing political figure.

Also, if you read enough /r/elonmusk you'll see that a lot of people have bought into Elon's schtick that he's actually just a centrist (apparently centrists love DeSantis)

Also emissions reductions doesn’t come from selling more private vehicles.

Had a group of BLM protestors positing live on twitter how they where coming up to where I live to burn down neighborhoods.

I’m surrounded by gun fanatics. If police hadn’t blocked mass transit and highways it would have been a blood bath.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I find this level of online political attachment to be completely deranged. Either it's a good car or not.

But if I know I'm going to enrich someone that I find completely obnoxious, it gives me pause. (Of course, dealing with an organization helmed by someone obnoxious tends to have its own costs: they tend not to be super laser-focused on the customer experience).

Ordinary political disagreement isn't enough to do this for me. But seemingly systemic wanton disregard for others gets me to the point that it's a lot harder for me to justify buying that product.

There's a pizza place in my town co-owned by a notorious jerk. They have pretty good pizza. I still don't go there anymore (even though he is generally not there and the risk of running into him is low).

and if you are part of the Democrat/NYT group buying a "MyPillow" is a bad thing.

To your point, this is crazy because both sides probably buy the exact same Tyson Farms chicken and have spent zero time learning about Tyson's business and labor practices and Tyson executives political beliefs. They are just thinking about which businesses Fox News / NYT has told them to care about.

Ever since Madison Avenue taught the postwar consumerist middle class to consider purchases as buying into aspirational lifestyles, tying it into personal identity, the same process has shifted from simply patronizing businesses all of the way to political choices. Thus, charismatic and attention-seeking CEOs no longer sell their businesses simply no the basis of the quality of their goods or services, but buying into entire constructs of Zizek voice ideology. Thus, perhaps paradoxically, consumer individuals, craving belonging, are buying their way into tribes of like-minded individuals with similar convictions.

In short, don't blame the country themselves; these businesses and their management are pushing politicizing as a tactic to sell, sell, sell. As we in tech know, everything is ads.

If the viability of the company relies on the hype machine then it’s pretty relevant what kj d of person is “renting” me the car

I think that, from watching the likes or Rich Rebuilds, who ostensibly operates without any approval from tesla, the cars will run without the internet but I guess they'd become "feature complete" and when modules die it will be on the car hacking community to pick up the mantle.

Traditional cars aren't in a much better position as somewhat superfluous modules (think a radio head unit) can take down one of the many CANbus networks in your car and leave it a brick.

Many (most?) auto techs are not well versed identifying these types of low level problems and will fall back to firing the parts cannon at the car rather than identifying the issue definitively. Just like in Battleship you can get a hit by random guessing but this is a waste of money and resources.

The random superfluous modules also become unavailable and if they're critical to making the car start then your car might be out of commission for the foreseeable future. GM and Ford just don't have as much of a social media halo around them.

You do see a few headlines around particularly egregious money digs, like one company making remote start a subscription feature. That module and the car it's in is not built to last in my view.

I strongly doubt millions of cars will be left bricked to be towed to the junkyard.

That eSilverado tho

I might have been a little less "blunt", but the word "deranged" for someone's ethical choice made me vomit in my mouth a little.