Ask HN: How do you feel now about your Tesla purchase?

18 points by metadat ↗ HN
Now that the cat is out of the bag, how do you feel about your Tesla purchase?

I traded mine in for a Rivian this week, couldn't stomach it anymore.

33 comments

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I have four and I won’t buy another until he’s no longer associated with the enterprise. Test driving an F150 Lightning tomorrow.
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Love it! Zero issues with my Teslas. Don't like the design of Rivian.

> couldn't stomach it anymore

Why?

I find this kind of sealioning really unproductive, given the publicity around Tesla's owner right now. I highly doubt someone with your resumé and levels of capital ownership would need any of this context explained, let alone the average HN reader.
I love my car irrespective of public opinion about Tesla's owner. Media narratives don't affect the reliability of my car or the comfort I experience driving it. I simply enjoy the vehicle for what it is.
Feels like this is the same playbook Google, Meta and Apple apologists all roll out.

"I love this product because I am oblivious to the immediate political consequences of owning it. You can't make me care about security or privacy until I decide to care about it!"

At least we now know with hindsight that every Google, Apple and Meta product was completely benign. At least, that's what my deprivation from media narratives tells me.

Wait'll you try to sell or trade it.
I know that the price of a Tesla vehicle has gone down, but I'm not looking to sell my car. It has no reliability issues. Not once have I had to repair anything. The battery is performing great. Why would I sell it? I understand that five years from now, the battery may not be as good as it is today. But if you own, say, a BMW—the holy grail of car engineering—good luck keeping it after the warranty expires.

My other Tesla is on lease, so I couldn't care less about the price drops.

> I find this kind of sealioning really unproductive, given the publicity around Tesla's owner right now.

These assumptions(including the ones in the submission) is only true within a certain bubble and an echo chamber. Strange that half the country isnt even acknowledged and are actively downvoted and flagged to stop them from engaging, which works well.

You don’t appear to have any trouble engaging and your only downvoted posts appear to low-quality, is this like the imaginary “cancel culture” claims where people with national reach pretended that they had been silenced?

It’s not an echo chamber to notice that Tesla’s owner linking his identity to an extremely partisan role turns off the approximately half of people who don’t share his politics:

https://navigatorresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Nav...

That’s not a bubble, it’s just basic business sense: if you’re in a competitive market, there a cost to giving people a reason to look elsewhere and especially so when most of your historical buyers have been in the opposing camp. It’s why you don’t know how the CEOs of Ford or Toyota vote, because they are smart enough not to jeopardize their long-term future just for a little publicity now.

Just 4 comments down you didn't see this one?

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43101536

I got downvoted(without a counterpoint reply) for asking for sources and making a fact based assertion. There's probably dozens of examples like that. On Reddit you see comments with dozens of downvotes for replying with a simple fact "Musk founded SpaceX" to a comment which says "Musk bought all his companies" which has hundreds or thousands of upvotes.

> You don’t appear to have any trouble engaging

Many a time I stop myself from commenting even though I think have a good counterpoint because I get dowvoted(which sometimes restricts commenting for like an hour or two and you get time limited) and flagged. Not to mention personal attacks when I made a good point because people are angry. It's all one sided posts making the front page for the most part. Reddit is wayyyy worse though, I had to stop engaging there.

> It’s not an echo chamber

It's hard to see the bubble when you're inside it. It's like having green goggles on all the time the world looks green. It's hard for people to even understand that for some people the world may not look green. I never voted Republican in my life anyway and may not, but it's really hard not to miss all the abject bias everywhere.

> Just 4 comments down you didn't see this one?

That comment could have been more thoughtful. You were asking about the wrong thing (“for this”) because the parent commenter was referring to previous events.

> which sometimes restricts commenting for like an hour or two and you get time limited

> Not to mention personal attacks when I made a good point because people are angry.

Gotta say, neither of these happen to me. (At least, any personal attacks usually seem to come after a personal attack of my own.) The fate of your comments may very well benefit from a bit more thoughtfulness.

Perhaps keep in mind that many comments with good qualities and bad qualities are downvoted for their bad qualities; the trick is to minimize those.

> It's hard to see the bubble when you're inside it.

Indeed. Why do you feel like you are more informed than them? Could it not be your bubble that you fail to see?

> That comment could have been more thoughtful

Comments which are not thoughtful but in the other direction are not dowvoted for example search for "Daddy Trump" in HN search.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Those are not flagged, and prolly not even downvoted. If there are similar loq quality name calling comments making fun of thehe other side, bam flagged in seconds.

Any way other examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098607

> Why do you feel like you are more informed than them? Could it not be your bubble that you fail to see?

Because facts, opinions and slanted headlines and stories that support the prevalent bubble of one side are heavily featured. The facts that support or negate those barely even show up on the front page, and comments referencing those are usually downvoted or flagged. This happens with a lot of topics that don't fit the preferred narrative of the site.

I consume content mostly from the same bubble that is prevalent on HN, but I also look at the opposite side with an open mind while checking possible misinformation and my own biases, which appears to be sorely lacking with people.

> Gotta say, neither of these happen to me

Maybe it's because you're in the same prevelant bubble as most of HN is in? Try posting facts with good sources that don't support the narrative and see what happens.

There is more than one narrative and you think only one of them is valid. I’ll just ask one more time in the hopes you consider the question with more care: why do you think you are not failing to see your bubble?

> Try posting facts with good sources that don't support the narrative and see what happens.

People you disagree with post facts and good sources and they get upvoted. Is it possible that you are disregarding them the same way you feel your comments are being disregarded?

> There is more than one narrative and you think only one of them is valid

Not true. I am saying the narratives on HN are mostly one sided, especially the posts that make the front page, some very biased with bad clickbait titles. Comments that counter the narrative properly are sometimes upvoted but a good chunk are downvoted or flagged.

Stories that counter the narrative very rarely reach the front page. You may not even realize such articles exist. From what sources do you get your news from?

Edit:

You haven't addressed why comments saying Daddy Trump aren't flagged or downvoted. Try saying something similar against "the other side".

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I guess you think those comments follow the HN etiquette, if so we are done here. You're just unable to see bias when it's right in your face, or you're being disingenuous, so there's no point trying to have a rational conversation.

> only true within a certain bubble and an echo chamber

> Strange that half the country isnt even acknowledged and are actively downvoted and flagged to stop them from engaging, which works well.

Would you be willing to consider that your bubble/echo chamber is informing this belief?

Oh, I was in the liberal bubble and echo chamber just 3 or 4 years ago. One of the things that opened my mind was how differently Tesla was suddenly being treated in the media/HN/Reddit once Musk turned. I didn't agree with Musk's politics and still don't agree now but the bias has been crazy. Same with SpaceX since the past 8 months or so.

You saw how many liberals and moderates who voted for Dems in 2024 didn't vote in 2024 or changed their vote, even minorities. While liberals expected a big victory because they were stuck in their bubble.

Musk owns 15% of Tesla. He is not Teslas owner. Most of Tesla is owned by retail shareholders and index funds.
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The handle by which you've chosen to go on this site says a lot about you.
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Did you ever wear HUGO BOSS clothes, or use an IBM computer?

Do you know what they did in WWII?

In WW2 is a key factor here. 80 years ago

Driving a new Tesla now especially a Cybertruck is signalling a lot about yourself. To many people it shows at best you don't care at all about politics, and the worst is much worse. I'm sure that won't deter some but it clearly has influenced other consumers especially for a company who's consumer base has been environmentalists

Nobody working there now had anything to do with Nazis or WWII. In fact, a good way to get fired from either company is to be seen throwing Hitler salutes in public.
Well, I mean, no; the clothes aren’t really my thing, and a home AS/400 seems a bit silly.

However, there’s a difference between “this corporate entity supported the Nazis 80 years ago, albeit all humans involved are now dead” (absent a corporate death penalty you’re always going to get this) and “the CEO of this company is prancing around doing Nazi salutes _right now_”. Like, seriously, can you not see that?

> the CEO of this company is prancing around doing Nazi salutes _right now_

> Like, seriously, can you not see that?

If you see him heil, you're reading into it.

Just because you don't like someone, you can't make up stuff about them.

This is what's wrong with American politics. Truth doesn't matter.

I'd expect more from fellow engineers.

Extremely conflicted. Love our Teslas. FSD is incredible. But I helped support Elon becoming what he is now. Not a good feeling. I sold all of my Tesla stocks, though.
I find it a comfortable, fast, long-range, and mostly reliable car. I enjoy driving it. I do not enjoy being associated with Musk. If I could trade my four-year-old Tesla for a four-year-old EV of equivalent comfort, speed, range, and reliability then I would. However, Musk has destroyed the resale value of my car. My biggest fear is now that the company won't be able to survive his behaviour, and I'll be left with the motoring equivalent of a pacemaker made by a startup that went under.