And Americans in general don’t want electric cars for some reason. I’m happily driving my Buzz and charging on my solar panels instead of paying 5 bucks a gallon on diesel. The propaganda here is strong and people buy it.

I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.

If you talk to anyone who worked there, they will tell you that he had little to do with the innovation at any of his companies. His lieutenants and the people that worked for them had all the innovative ideas, and for the most part tried to either avoid Elon's ideas or convince him that their ideas were his so he would push them.

GM Supercruise and Ford Bluecruise are the current competition it seems, with BMW, subaru and mercedes being behind those 2. I haven't driven with them although to personally compare yet.

Even though the interior is a bit lower quality, there isn't very much quite like it on the market. It also fits an almost 7 ft surfboard inside comfortably, is a nice car to sleep in for car camping and you can get a model Y for less than $20k used now.

- All of the other options made a painful trade off on cost or range or something else. Tesla was the only one that had both range and was (to some degree) affordable without being compromised in some way.

I'm not a Tesla fanboy, last year was the first time I bought one (new Model Y), but it is by far the best car I've ever owned, and the FSD blew my mind with how much better it was than I expected.

My wife hates Elon, and has a new hybrid Mitsubishi, but she still drives my Model Y all the time because it's just so much better to drive.

What are you basing the 'mediocre' opinion on?

I had a service center refuse to schedule a safety recall unless I paid $400 for a new dashboard monitor.

That car is behind me now and I'm so glad. Yes, it could accelerate and that's just about the only trick it has.

Got rid of it after it stomped the brakes on an empty road and had a battery issue that took weeks to fix.

I don’t own a car now and don’t want one. I’d probably buy a Polestar next time if I had to get one.

Next we went to the Tesla showroom. The sales guy just entered some address and told me to press the gas pedal and it would go by itself. Full FSD. And no sales guy in the car. That just blew me away.

We ended up buying the Model Y.

Tesla is well known for having shitty build quality.

https://www.jalopnik.com/teslas-quality-control-is-so-bad-cu...

Of course the quality has fallen faster than the price over time, but initial impressions still hold on for a long time in general.

I think SpaceX's success is mostly down to throwing money at the problem. The US had tons of graduated aerospace engineers with limited places to go, and places they could go directly in aerospace fields were already committing their funding to established programs. SpaceX startup would of been a dream job for the top aerospace engineers because it was all fresh ground but with a far larger budget than 99.9% of startup aerospace companies. They weren't offered to build one piece of a rocket that may or may not get sold to NASA or someone 15 years down the line, they were offered to work on and put their mark on a completely new rocket design that was going to at the least be test launched. And im sure their early successes helped boost recruitment even further, combined with government contract to keep the money flowing.

We probably don't see many rising EV companies in the US because you need an ass-ton of capital to start an automotive company, and most people holding enough capital to do so know that try to sell cheap consumer cars that most people want is not really the highest margin business. Selling a few hundred or even a few thousand cars still leaves you with a mountain of capital requirements in front of you that your margins are going to have a really hard time climbing. And if you don't climb fast enough, good luck fighting established auto makers and their lawyers with every cent tied up into trying to scale and engineer.

I'm not sure this holds true. SpaceX accomplished more with very little compared to the entire NASA budget, Boeing, etc.

I think it's much more to do with mission alignment. Run fast and lean, and approach the problem in a non-risk-adverse manner. Fail fast and often and iterate quickly.

Sure, it takes a lot of capital - but that is only a portion of the story. Look at Blue Origin/etc. in comparison.

Becaues they were ~first to market - and honestly, as a tesla driver for the last 6 years - It's the best car I ever owned (including Toyota, Mazda, and domestics).

6 years ago, for the effective price of a Honda Accord, I was able to get a car with excellent AWD for NorEast winters, perfect weight distribution (previously drove a Miata for comparison), could beat ~95% 'super cars' in a straight line, and it got 140MPG.

6 years ago. And I've had 0 maintenance outside of tire / air filter changes since. There was nothing anything remotely like it on the market, and it still holds up today. That's incredibly compelling.

Then PedoDiver, and it's been downhill from there... I'll likely get an R3X when it comes out.

https://www.motor1.com/news/781164/tesla-used-car-reliabilit...

For a year when we were doing the digital nomad thing, my wife and I didn’t own a car and we rented plenty of EVs. Tesla was by far our least favorite. Not having CarPlay alone is dealbreaker

That said, it's not all bad news for Tesla on the reliability front. According to Consumer Reports, Tesla ranks ninth in new-car reliability with a predicted reliability of 50. That's just behind Buick (51) and Acura (54), but ahead of Kia (49) and Ford (48), as well as luxury rivals like Audi (44), Volvo (42), and Cadillac (41).

You were so blinded by Elon Derangement Syndrome that you didn't even bother reading your own source.

Second, it may be counter-productive to label any criticisms of a person as [person] Derangement Syndrome.

Elon is an objectively awful, awful human being and one could only be called deranged for finding any redeeming qualities in him.

The 'Derangement Syndrome' trope is a cheap tactic to try to shift derangement from the actually deranged person to the people pointing it out.

And you did see the part about the lack of CarPlay being an automatic disqualifier for me didn’t you? What does that have do do with Musk?

Oh and another citation

https://boingboing.net/2026/01/05/new-study-ranks-tesla-as-t...

Then comparison of quality of manufacturing and driving experience would end up in very different way (as driver of even older bmw 5 series teslas I've been to feel very cheap, and driving enjoyment goes way further than straight line performance and there teslas just don't deliver).

I agree the pedodirver should have been an eye opener for everybody. People are who they are and they don't change. Circumstances change and thus corresponding reactions, but thats about it.

The Rav4 costs the same, but has far worse performance, technology, and ongoing maintenance costs.

The Highlander is slightly better, but costs $10k to $20k more, and still has far worse performance, technology, and ongoing maintenance costs.

Plus, I avoided spending hours at a dealership, and I must know at least a couple dozen Tesla owners that report no issues in the previous 5 to 10 years.

I thought I would miss Carplay, but it’s a non issue. Toyota wanted $15 to $25 per month for remote start, I pay Tesla $0 per month for remote start and remote climate control.

> Not sure which car you compare it to specifically from those manufacturers

My comparison at the time was a Honda Civic, BMW 3 Series, and that was kind of it.

I generally consider the Model 3 interior roughly middle between the Honda and the BMW, while having worlds better tech, twice the hp, and - Electric (when they were still rare).

There really was nothing like it at any price point at the time, and i still consider it a great car (though of course not perfect).

Tom Mueller was a VP of propulsion at TRW Inc., which, among numerous other things you know from textbooks, made the Apollo LM descent engine, as well as early Space Shuttle TDRS data relay system sats. Calling Mueller a guy interested with engines having issues with his bosses is like referring to Craig Federighi as a guy interested in designing his own laptop.

I guess now that everyone knows about Elon, and Elon himself probably becoming more paranoid from both age and after SpaceX years and exposure to Twitter infoflood without adequate mental immunity, on top of most people who'd be in position to meet him not being as smart and quietly lunatic as literal Old Space trained rocket scientists, the scheme of temporarily impinging ideas upon Musk so to securely attaching the funding for your own thing do not work so well anymore.

So, the initial good direction my have been despite him, and still successful mostly thanks to the big load of money he brought him instead.