I’d buy this car before I’d get a Tesla
I am increasingly feeling that the very rich have managed to pull a colossal scam on the whole world, where the grossly incompetent have rigged the system to make themselves wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Witness the collapse of Boeing, the entire goddamn Republican party, and of course, King Goober himself, Elon Musk. I appreciate this review of Tesla’s masterpiece, the Cybertruck.
As the Bay Area is both a nexus for world-class goobers and the region where Tesla used to be and kinda-sorta still is headquartered, I have seen a lot of Cybertrucks out in the wild over the past few months. They are remarkably fake- and shitty-looking in any context (Is that a big toaster with wi-fi next to me at the exit? Who’s driving the scrap metal assemblage with Bryan Colangelo-esque proportions? Why does every Cybertruck driver I glance at appear to be simultaneously peacocking for attention but also totally embarrassed, haunted by the unexamined knowledge that as a maneuver in a culture war they paid $100,000 for a car that doesn’t work?), though I saw one in the Santa Cruz mountains this past weekend. It looked even more jarringly synthetic and stupid in a truck-style environment, as if 10 seconds on a semi-paved road would undo the whole rickety car. I felt, amid standard-issue disgust and mockery, personal embarrassment to be paying through the nose to live in a place where the coolest thing you can do is cosplay as a 6-year-old’s idea of the coolest guy in the world.
Yep, a billionaire is successfully siphoning off $100,000 chunks of cash from upper-middle-class twits by selling them poorly made vehicles. At least most Trabants were still running a year after purchase, I don’t have the same confidence in the Cybertruck. And yet, after a succession of horrible decisions and running companies into the ground, Musk is still filthy rich.
I wonder why I’m losing any faith in capitalism?
The way it works in this case is that the founders can build up a lot of hype around the product, issue an IPO, and pocket most of the proceeds before the thing goes bust. There are also ways they can continue to loot the company in the interim. The reverse is private equity buyouts, in which the PE general partners use the company they are buying as collateral for a loan to buy it, loot it — often including squeezing out profits by using market power to raise prices, and slashing staffing and quality (it’s often a health care provider) — and then flipping it after a couple of years, leaving the company holding the bag for the debt. Yes, you can do that. Perfectly legal.
Welcome to the club, PZ. The rich have been scamming us with cheap lies as long as I’ve been alive, and I was born a couple of weeks before Eisenhower was elected in 1952. My grandpa used to say the capitalists have been trying to make us think their shit was cotton candy since he was organizing Mexican railroad workers in the 1890s. (They preferred Pancho Villa to the US, he said.) So, you aren’t hallucinating. It’s been a long scam for a long time. It’s just maybe a lot more, umm, obvious right about now. Or they’re just more shameless. Or both.
You may be interested in a YouTube channel called “Gary’s Economics”, in which former Citibank trader Gary Stevenson explains exactly why the already very rich are getting very much richer at the expense of everybody else, and what we can do about it. (Spoiler: tax!)
I don’t think we know that all the very rich are “grossly incompetent”. Some are competent about some things and not others. And some are incompetent about quite a few things. Competent or not they have the money to survive their mistakes, unlike most of us. And, they have definitely been working the scam for a while and with the weasels in government they’ve got things pretty much going their way it seems.
By the way, I’ve now seen a couple of CyberTrucks on the road in the last few weeks, one crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn’t catch a glimpse of the drivers, but I would say the truck looks dull and awkward. If anything, a pick up truck is a utility vehicle and the CyberTruck gives the impression of limited utility. If I had the money to buy a new truck, the CyberTruck wouldn’t even be on my list.
I was just reading yesterday about the latest little issue with the Cybertruck. The genius truly is in the details.
My problem with our economic system is the fact that it bestows some of its greatest rewards on those who come up with ways to save corporations money and increase profits. It has built in to its very structure a financial incentive to cut corners, often at the cost of safety protections. With so much economic activity built around food, travel and health care, this seems like one of those organic flaws that can never really be rooted out.
Combine that with the Republican ideal of eliminating government oversight and neutering regulatory agencies, it seems we can all look forward to a scintillating future of food poisonings, defective vehicles, train derailments, plane crashes, and pandemics and other adverse health care outcomes.
At the DDR Museum in Berlin, I learned that Trabants were built under the unofficial slogan “the fewer things we put into them, the fewer things that can break.” :D
This is the latest headline.
Tesla isn’t doing so well these days.
In fact, while the US economy is doing well, they are laying off 10% of their work force.
Two years ago, I had barely heard of Elon Musk.
I’ve seen enough of the right wingnut Nazi-like white supremacist that I will never buy anything even remotely associated with Elon Musk.
Why should someone who hates people like me get some of my hard earned money?
Not going to happen ever.
Yeah, so Elon Musk doesn’t get my lunch money.
No big deal.
Until you realize that Elon Musk hates tens of millions of people in the USA and doesn’t make any secret of it.
They aren’t buying his products either.
It’s known that a lot of people are avoiding Elon Musk associated products because they are…Elon Musk associated products.
Or a Tesla car either.
There are a fair number of Tesla cars around where I live.
I’m not impressed with their styling at all. It’s very generic and I would never notice them unless I see the T logo on the back.
This is OK for a family car but you could expect more for what the Teslas cost.
I’ve also seen a few Rivian EV pickups around.
They actually look pretty good, for a pickup anyway.
I was going the 60 mph speed limit on a highway and a Rivian pickup passed me with no trouble.
The elongated muskrat has become as prolific a bullshitter as tRUMP!
at space.com › spacex-launch-astronauts-mars-2024
SpaceX’s 1st crewed Mars mission could launch as early as 2024,. . . Company founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Dec. 1)
And, I read that tesla’s promised $25,000 EV project has been abandoned in favor of expensive and MORE PROFITABLE taxis.
I value the many honest, worthwhile products and services that decent companies produce. But, all the deceit these billionaire types push at us just so they can wring the last dollar from us is only one of the many reasons that CRAPITALLISM is an obscenity. Home prices? Corporate Greedflation? Even realtors: 6% of $450,000 is $27,000 for just a few hours of listing, showing and signing! I wish we could ‘pump and dump’ all these vulture crapitallists.
For me, my journey towards atheism was deeply intertwined with my eventual rejection of capitalism. Once I had to start developing a personal ethical system that wasn’t simply based on whatever the church arbitrarily said was good or bad, I had to conclude that I couldn’t in good conscious ideologically support a system in which exploitation is not just an unfortunate byproduct, but rather a fundamental, necessary part of what makes the entire system itself function.
And, hey, how about musk’s (aptly name, effectively dead) boring company’s underground super-fast transit systems in all the major cities has benefited us all (SARCASM, much)
@10 Wobbly Good for You. I appreciate your real, objective, analytical, ethical thinking!
shermanj did you see where his Boring co almost took out the foundations for the Las Vegas monorail. One way to take out your competition.
Almost accurate but sadly partisan. Both dominant political parties and their affiliated scoundrels are part of the problem. Don’t turn a blind eye to the Democrats – they are also not your friends!
Were you short on topics to post today, so that all you could think of was to dump on Tesla by highlighting one bad review?
I just did a google search, and https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck gave it 4 stars out of 5, while https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/cybertruck gave it 8.5/10.
Personally I don’t care for the look of the Cybertruck, so even if I could afford one I wouldn’t buy one. However a relative was in San Francisco recently, and reported seeing lots of them, so obviously some people like them.
I will admit that I do have a Tesla myself. It will pay for itself in gas and maintenance savings in less than 7 years, plus the convenience of being able to charge at home is great. I’m not a car nut, but it is easily the most fun car I’ve owned, and the designers have a sense of humour (eg. There are nods to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and amusing toys built into the software). Just as the antics of the CEO of Black & Decker will not influence my decision to buy their toasters; I really don’t care what Musk says when I make my car buying decisions (I’m about practicality).
BACONSQAUDgaming @#15
There are plenty of other electric cars available which will give you the same benefits without the need to support a racist, misogynist, fascist, but I repeat myself. Or there are in the UK, maybe the American market isn’t as advanced?
If you want a good EV pickup, the Rivian is rated number 1 by Consumers Reports.
Get a better pickup without helping the nazis who want to wreck our society.
In a reasonable world, Elon Musk would be deported back to South Africa (he isn’t an American except by naturalized citizenship).
Deported as an undesirable alien.
Jokes aside, I still see people driving Trabbis today from time to time. Say what you want about the quality of their materials, these cars just work.
Jazzlet @16: There are other electric vehicles available besides Tesla in the US, and most of them don’t have Tesla’s reputation for bad quality control, their get the same or better range on much smaller batteries, and they don’t have issues with the manufacturer forcing you to pay subscription fees or have your battery’s range arbitrarily reduced.
Has anyone else read Oreskes and Conway’s The Big Myth? It goes into detail about how a propaganda campaign by corporations and the rich convinced far too many people that rigid free-market economics is necessary for a free society. I do recommend it.
We’ve been seeing a couple of those Tesla trucks here on the Monterey Peninsula lately.
According to the chatter on NextDoor, many in the community were highly amused when one was stuck in the sand on one of our lovely beaches. The beach patrol had to tow it out of the sand and then ticketed the driver.
The picture that was posted showed the truck partially obscuring a sign saying “NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES ON THE BEACH”.
Obviously, common sense and reading skills are not needed to buy a Tesla truck.
We love, love, love our 2020 Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid!
We have solar panels on our roof, so when we use it in EV mode, we’re powering it off of the sun.
The car gets 25-30 miles on each charge, which is plenty for local trips.
When we make a trip to San Francisco for doctor appointments, we don’t have to worry about running out of charge or looking for a charging station because the car automatically switches to the gasoline engine. Before returning home, we can charge up in the hotel parking garage for those first 25-30 miles, then use gas for the rest of the trip.
According to the car’s computer read-out, she’s averaging 93 MPG since we bought her!
BTW, our 2008 Prius hybrid is still reliably chugging along after over 150,000 miles. That car has only required minimal routine maintenance and the occasional new set of tires or battery.
Toyota beats Tesla any day!
raven @ #8 — I wouldn’t buy a Tesla car, either, partly because the sporty one would be useless me and the bigger versions are bulky and ugly looking. And, of course, I would not give any of my money to Musk. I understand that the CEOs of other auto makers are probably just as awful, but at least their ego’s don’t drive them to be in the limelight constantly.
Its not an East German Trabant but an early Top Gear motoring program took the Russia equivalent, a Lada Riva and handed it to Lotus to turn it into a decent car. 1000 bours and 100,000 pounds later they had a really good car.I wouldn’t recommend this approach for the Muskrat’s cyberdumpster. https://www.greatbritishsportscars.net/lada-lotus/
Yo, Drew, care to tell us which Democrats, specifically, are overt nazis like #QElon, Thiel, Trump, Bannon, Flynn, etc.?
Trabants ran for decades and provided cheap transport for the masses.
microraptor @19
Thanks, it did seem a little unlikely that Tesla was the only choice.
I am pretty sure the design inspiration for the cybertruck came from Atari Battlezone. It probably was (and probably still is) Lone Skum’s favourite game.
I was looking for an electric car about a year and a half ago. Thought about Tesla, but I decided early on I didn’t want to give Elon any of my money. Bought a Kia EV6 instead. Looks sexier, charges faster, and doesn’t subsidize neo-Nazis!!!
Most of them ran a lot longer than a year. They had to, production never kept up with demand.
The problem wasn’t that they were bad cars – they weren’t, for the time they were designed, the mid-1950s – it’s that for political / stupid reasons the design wasn’t updated in any meaningful way since the early 1960s. So when unification came around they were hopelessly obsolete.
To be fair, that’s a solid design principle, if your priority is longevity.
Nowadays things are designed like some kind of cut-rate Swiss army knife: “Put more stuff in there. If it breaks, that just means they’ll have to buy a new one. Cha-CHING!”
@16 @17 @23 @29 You won’t buy a Tesla because you don’t like Elon? Yet you are happy to post here using technology from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Lee Jae-yong, etc. and I suspect occasionally buy stuff using Jeff Bezos’s Amazon??? My point is not “whataboutism”, but rather it is silly to refuse to buy a product simply because the CEO has opinions you disagree with. It is the same type of thinking that has caused the political divide in the U.S.
reply to @32 BACONSQAUDgaming. CHARACTER MATTERS. At least to us. Everyone in my organization avoids products and services that subsidize dishonesty, bigotry, abuse and other irresponsible actions. We use responsible domain registrars, hosting services and use FOSS and Linux, avoiding WINDOW$, AAAAPPle, AMAZ0N, G00GLE. Following our principles means we don’t give a rodents rectum about the ‘political divide in the U.S’. We care about supporting people and organizations that are honest, caring and rational.
p.s. we would love to have an EV. And, we respect the original owners and engineers at tesla, but won’t touch anything that benefits the elongated muskrat as a matter of principle.
Why? Why is it “silly” to avoid funding opinions you disagree with, if other options are available? If I can buy equivalent products from either a decent person or a raging asshole, why is it silly to prefer the decent person?
No, it’s not. Prove me wrong.
ad hominem imho is incompatible with free thought
3 examples:
— “King Goober himself, Elon Musk”
— “billionaire”
— “filthy rich”
there is a plethora of undeserved vitriol directed at Elon Musk
many will state that Elon Musk is the Anti-Christ;
they will mostly regurgitate untruths they heard from Elon Musk’s haters.
in that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
sure, dislike the Cybertruck.
We have 2 on order but there are over a million orders ahead of ours.
Crowds that swarm Cybertrucks are mostly impressed.
The Cybertruck, love it or hate it, is an engineering masterpiece.
as vehicles go, it’s probably worth its significant price.
The Cybertruck outperformed a Porsche 911 in a drag race while the Cybertruck was also towing a Porsche 911.
yes, in the earlier models coming of off the production line,
there will be faults.
videos i’ve watched show a Cybertruck having bullets bounced off of it;
haters will focus on the much higher powered ammunition that penetrated the door.
Teslas in general have a decent level of quality.
We bought a 2023 Tesla Model 3 about a year ago.
it’s been upgraded frequently OTA (over the air).
with supervision, it drives itself and parks itself.
a father tried to kill himself and his family by deliberately driving his Tesla off of a cliff; he and his family all survived.
Teslas are good value for their cost.
They do not destroy our fragile earth environment.
Elon Musk is Tesla, SpaceX, Neurolink, The Boring Company, and X.
His “Powerwalls” will help their owners get through blackouts.
Elon Musk allows Free Speech on X.
He innovates at X by allowing the community to challenge posts.
His rockets are reusable; because of Elon Musk,
the U.S. is back in the space race.
SpaceX will likely be a major contributor to colonies on Mars.
this is my first post on Freethought blogs.
i am 76 and can not afford to retire;
i will not blame Elon Musk for my situation.
The doctor who manages my Type II diabetes
has been driving his Tesla for very many years
and saving thousands of dollars in the cost of gasoline.
Spoiler alert:
not everybody hates Elon Musk;
— Times Person of the Year 2021 on December 13th
On the subject of economic systems, I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that it’s about more than just economics. The type of system you operate under affects your psychology. Just like the soviet system conditioned people to give up hope for anything better, the capitalist system conditions people to treat the rich like saints.
Under capitalism, there’s no higher virtue than wealth. Everything eventually boils down to money and if you have enough of it, there’ll be an army of sycophants ready to defend every decision and conveniently forget every mistake. Some of them even manage to get to age 76 without ever learning the difference between an ad hominem fallacy and a simple insult.
@35 fudaway wrote: ad hominem imho is incompatible with free thought
3 examples:
— “King Goober himself, Elon Musk”
— “billionaire”
— “filthy rich”
there is a plethora of undeserved vitriol directed at Elon Musk
I reply: factual criticism is not incompatible with freethought, it is compelled by it. I see your cheerleading as completely one sided and very biased. My comments, @9, read them carefully, and those of some others, were not attacks on his personality, per se, they were a factual pointing out of his many lies and deceitful business practices that have cost people dearly. Idiots that took a nap while using ‘full self driving’ causing massive damage and his boastful, deceitful published words have likely led many to invest money they shouldn’t have if they objectively examined the whole situation.
AND, as I wrote: ‘we would love to have an EV. And, we respect the original owners and engineers at tesla, but won’t touch anything that benefits the elongated muskrat as a matter of principle.’
The elongated muskrat has become as prolific a bullshitter as tRUMP!
at space.com › spacex-launch-astronauts-mars-2024
SpaceX’s 1st crewed Mars mission could launch as early as 2024,. . . Company founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Dec. 1)
And, I read that tesla’s promised $25,000 EV project has been abandoned in favor of expensive and MORE PROFITABLE taxis.
I value the many honest, worthwhile products and services that decent companies produce. But, all the deceit these billionaire types push at us just so they can wring the last dollar from us is only one of the many reasons that CRAPITALLISM is an obscenity. Home prices? Corporate Greedflation? Even realtors: 6% of $450,000 is $27,000 for just a few hours of listing, showing and signing! I wish we could ‘pump and dump’ all these vulture crapitallists.
@34 If you have the time to research the CEO of every product you want to buy to ensure that they agree with you on every issue that is important to you, then power to you. I don’t, and I am of the opinion that nobody is perfect. Look closely at any of your heroes, and you will find a flaw that will annoy someone. (Enjoy breakfast cereals? The founder of a major one major company created a famous cereal because he thought it would discourage masturbation!!) So I do think it is silly to waste your time like that, since judging whether to buy products on that basis would easily remove most of them.
When I switched to electric cars, I was originally going to buy a Nissan Leaf, partly to reward Nissan for being the first major car company to actually sell a practical electric car. However, while looking at the electric cars available at the time, the Leaf just didn’t compare to the Tesla model 3 in terms of what you got for the difference in price. Now you can buy a Model Y for about the same price as what I paid for my model 3 in 2020. There is a reason they are the two most popular cars in North America.
FFS, I’m not talking about random ideas held by long-dead people or achieving the platonic ideal of the ethical consumer. I’m talking about objecting to being told that it’s silly to be concerned about funneling hard cash directly into the pocket of a guy who is actively spending that money making the world worse.
Sure, the world is big and complicated and “nobody’s perfect”, and if your response to that reality is to throw up your hands and stop trying, I can’t stop you. Just do me the favor of giving up quietly.
After all, according to you, it doesn’t matter who you buy from. Right?
this leaves me sad;
although also impressed
my friend shared his top search result with me:
“Cybertruck towed a Porsche 911”
it appears that is subject of this article is click bait.
“Every time I think about our economic system, I shudder”
in a perfect world, there would be a connection between an article and its subject.
.
this article concluded with “I wonder why I’m losing any faith in capitalism?”
i fail to see the apparently missing sequitur.
subject
— the rich are scamming us
— the rich are “grossly incompetent”
— Tesla succeeds at selling poorly made vehicles
conclusion
i do not like capitalism,
regardless i have failed to come up with a better, significantly large extant system.
anarchy, aristocracy, autocracy, dictatorship, sharia law, theocracy, none of these tend to be better
my point: on reading the OP multiple times,
missing is a logical conclusion or consequence of facts.
instead we have red herrings:
— Boeing
— GOP
— Elon Musk
— Cybertruck
— Trabant
END
In summation of my comments:
@38 wrote: If you have the time to research the CEO of every product you want to buy to ensure that they agree with you on every issue that is important to you, then power to you.
I reply: None of us have time to do precisely that. However, when considering a major purchase, I don’t want to further the cause of a CEO who prove themselves by many highly public words and actions to be an execrable person.
@38 wrote: Look closely at any of your heroes
I reply: There are people of positive, honest, caring character that I respect and admire. But, I don’t have heroes and I don’t admire pop culture cheerleaders.
I strongly agree with @39 LykeX who wrote: I’m talking about objecting to being told that it’s silly to be concerned about funneling hard cash directly into the pocket of a guy who is actively spending that money making the world worse.
I don’t have enough money to waste it on dishonest, bigoted people and their corrupt destructive causes, products and services. So, I do spend a reasonable amount of time researching the quality of character behind the (often misleading) headlines.
From careful reading, I think PZ accurately ties the title to the subject.
And, while not strictly socialists, our organization supports the egalitarian aims of it. So, we CONDEMN crapitallism as a con by the rich and powerful to deceitfully impoverish the populace.
After watching the cybertruk vs. porsche vid (which is quite even handed and very complete in its presentation) I found this:
Maybe it wasn’t a race. Maybe it was just ‘unintended acceleration’!?!
Tesla Recalls All 4,000 Cybertrucks Delivered So Far Over Problems With ‘Trapped Accelerator Pedal’
https://www.mediaite.com/news/tesla-recalls-all-4000-cybertrucks-delivered-so-far-over-problems-with-trapped-accelerator-pedal/
@41 I’m not going to try to speak for PZ as to his personal intention with this article, but I do just want to point at that the argument; “capitalism is bad, but there’s nothing better!” is just tiresome sophistry, espicially when you’re list of alternatives to capitalism are primarily made up of systems that basically no serious anti-capitalist proposes as an alternative
@44
so, perhaps you can share some “alternatives to capitalism” that serious anti-capitalists might propose?
@45
I could, but my intent is not to hod your hand through information that is easily disseminated through, say, the internet. My point was to highlight how absurd is to try complain about supposed non-sequiters while at the same time claiming that there is nothing better then capitalism because Sharia Law is bad.
@45 fudaway asked @44 wobbly for “alternatives to capitalism” that serious anti-capitalists might propose?
I can’t speak for @44 wobbly, but I would like to offer my informed opinion. My comment @42 indicated our position. My organization (involved in community benefit projects since the late 1960’s) has spent over a decade researching societal structures and governance systems and still we don’t have a simple practical answer for a better system of governance. That is mostly because ANY system you put in place will be subject to someone (or group) gaining enough power to fully corrupt and destroy it (ref. democracy which has become purely a money controlled system). Our goal is to find an honest, egalitarian system of governance that puts the welfare of the populace first. But, defanging crapitallism whenever it tries to poison our society is a start. Pure socialism isn’t the answer, since we do support reasonable, honest private ownership of property and support honest private businesses that don’t desire to become abusive behemoths.
As I said, while not strictly socialists, our organization supports the egalitarian aims of it. So, we CONDEMN crapitallism as a con by the rich and powerful to deceitfully impoverish the populace.