6mo ago

Tesla owners react to Elon Musk's controversies: 3 in 10 consider selling their cars

Summary

A survey in the Netherlands revealed that 31% of Tesla owners are considering selling their cars due to Elon Musk’s controversial actions, including his involvement in politics and handling of misinformation on X (formerly Twitter).

About 40% feel embarrassed to own a Tesla, though 51% say Musk’s behavior doesn’t affect their view of the car.

Musk’s leadership of X has also driven users away, with 46% leaving or considering leaving the platform.

Parallel criticism of Mark Zuckerberg for removing fact-checking has fueled similar debates over tech leadership and misinformation.

126 comments

I would sell my car the moment I get a proper offer. But no one wants to buy a Tesla here anymore.
So, keep driving the Model Y. But there is zero chance that we will ever buy a Tesla again. At least as long as Musk is able to profit from it.
- My wife and I were planning on buying a Tesla some day. She has wanted one since before we knew the name musk. But when we had to replace her Toyota Highlander after someone hit our daughter in it, we passed over all of the teslas and went with another Highlander.
  
  Good call going with another Highlander. Musk's stupid, shitty antics have resulted in your getting a superior car.
  
  Highlanders are awesome! It's basically a rav4 with a camry drivetrain. I want one!
- I'm there with you. We bought the first Model S Refresh. We knew he was a piece of shit then, but the same could be said of any automotive CEO. Then he rapidly got worse and now it's my shame mobile. I actually love the car, but I feel so fucking gross driving it.
  
  The EV conversion guys like me are all rubbing our hands together to get our hands on cheap donor teslas to stick in much cooler old cars.
  
  I mentioned this to someone else but think about that and let it sink in. Your car makes you feel gross and yet you aren't able to get rid of it.
  Sounds like cancer
- Yep, this is the reason.
- You aren't willing to sacrifice enough to get rid of something you hate. Let that sink in and then ask yourself why. Might reveal something to you
  (I just think it's interesting, I'm not leading you to something specific)
I, personally, will never buy a Tesla. I would consider buying an EV, but never a Tesla.
- I promise to never fly spacex.
- I'm kind of surprised more people aren't unhappy with their Tesla's because of the poor build quality. I know they go through patches where the build quality improves and is okay. But there have been so many recalls and problems in general with Teslas. Even aside from Musk being a toxic, loud piece of shit, his company's cars are overall just not worth the trouble. And that's not even bringing up the fact that the cyber truck looks like it was designed by a 6 year old on a 386 PC's CAD program.
- Same. Historically they're not even good EVs.
  It sounds like there's even alternatives to Starlink if you can deal with low bandwidth.
  
  They’re fast, and have good range, but everything else about the car sucks ass. So basically the EV Hellcat.
- I'm hoping BYD comes west soon personally. You couldn't pay me to drive a Tesla
  
  A high tech Chinese car sounds like a giant red flag...
I've been perfectly happy with my Tesla, if you just look at the car. When i first got it for years ago, it was a real source of joy to me. Now all the joy has been sucked out of it by Musk's assholery. I want to get rid of it sooner rather than later. Right now there isn't really anything in the market that could replace it, but as soon as there is, I'll jump.
- Just don't buy another one. You're just funding fascism at that point.
  Why isn't there anything else on the market to replace it? Price?
  
  This is my plan. I figure I have at least 5 more good years with my Tesla. By then there will be plenty of alternate EV options available. I’ll definitely be one and done with Tesla.
  
  It's a combination of price, not being forced to purchase through a dealership, and access to the vastly superior supercharger network.
  That dynamic should begin to shift in a few years, with the dealership model being the most sticky. Hopefully the used market will come along.
  
  Doesn't Capitalism dictate that with this much resentment for Tesla another product to compete with it should appear if not many products to compete with it?
  Where are they? Where they capitalism? Do your ducking job capitalism! Or duck right the hell out of there
  
  I don't like SUVs. There just aren't a lot of electric sedans out there. And despite what you may be hearing in the internet, it's a damn good car and a lot of the competition just isn't there yet, especially when it comes to the software.
  
  Why isn’t there anything else on the market to replace it? Price?
  Most of the other manufacturers have honestly been lagging behind Tesla for the longest time, and IMHO still haven't caught up. Tesla's UX is pretty great.
- so true. I too long for an alternative car that features a fart button and a voice changing megaphone and who the fuck knows what else.
- Take a look at Hyundai. They have a similar range and comfort packages, and even use the Tesla chargers now.
  It's probably what my car will be.
  
  I have some hopes for the Kia EV4, but that's not out yet.
- Exactly this. I'm not going to sell my model 3 - I already paid for it, and I do like it - but I'll certainly be looking elsewhere when I need to replace it if Musk is still associated with Tesla.
  With other manufacturers adopting NACS, the biggest advantage of owning a Tesla has vanished.
- Reality is, tesla is the best EV out there.
  I'm not looking to sell and if this crashes and burns, I'll get another one.
  I'm not stopping to eat nestle cereal either. They're the only brand that does gluten free honey cornflakes. Pick your battles, musk will musk no matter if we all boycott Tesla regardless. Fucker got more money than all gods combined.
  
  This is a lot of words for "I don't have any spine and won't change my behavior if it is mildly inconvenient"
The man’s just done a Nazi salute. Even if you can’t afford to go through the new car process, can you afford not to?
Gotta start selling "Bought this before it was fascism"-stickers.
At the end of the day, they are terrible cars. Teslas have the highest rate of of malfunction and low mileage service of any manufacturer in the US by far.
They are beating Ford at their own game!
- Honestly, they're pretty good cars at least in my experience. Reviewers seem to agree with that.
  
  I used to work on them (along with other cars) professionally.
  Saw half a dozen Teslas get stuck in the parking lot during my two years there, usually picking someone up. The cars would just shut down and refuse to move. Sometimes they had to be towed.
  The plastic trim and underbody panels are poorly made and poorly fitted. You will often notice edges cut off of them so they almost fit in place, but often the one on the underside of the back trunk will have a ripple to it.
  The metal body panels are also bad. Uneven spacing between panels is common. Often a quarter panel will have a small gap (as it should) on one side of the car, but on the other side the panels are actually touching. Other times the gap will be uneven along a single seam.
  Nearly everything on the car is held together by single-use plastic push-pins, or metal self-tapping screws into plastic and metal panels. If you are really lucky you will get a metal screw into a nylon backing. Where Toyota or Subaru would use a reusable screw or fastener, Tesla alway uses something cheaper and disposable.
  We also commonly came across loose fittings on connectors on various wiring harnesses, which we could sometimes fix by just jamming the wire into the hole. Not really something we ever saw on other manufacturers.
  I lived in Fremont for a few years, the site of one of their factories. My friends who worked there had so many stories of problems being noticed on the line, and being told to just move it along.
  Maybe they do unusually bad work in Fremont, and the Teslas made elsewhere are better. I've mainly seen these issues on Models S, X, and 3, i left that job before the Cybertruck was available
  Separate from all that, i personally think the touchpad display seems unsafe. All functions of the car to be performed or modified by the driver should be possible without looking. A touchpad requires you to look at it, whereas physical buttons can be felt before being pressed.
  Consumer Reports gave the X and S 30/100 in reliability, among the lowest scores they gave in that category.
- Yup. I never really understood why to buy such an expensive shitty car to begin with.
  And then additionally Musk, of course. He didn't change, this was always him. Buying business building up power recklessly.
  
  I liked the way they looked when they first came out, but now the other manufacturers have copied many of the same ideas while Telsa's own styling has sort of stagnated.
The enlightened never bought one after test driving and hearing rattles in a car with 20 miles.
- Some of us were smart enough to not be making enough to make such a stupid decision.
  
  The proper way to live when it comes to cars
- The build quality is absolute dogshit.
  
  Yup. I wish I could overlook it like most people, but when a car makes noise fresh off the line then it really pisses me off.
Is this the new "maga supporters are thinking of not supporting trump" headline for the next ten years?
Sell it or don't sell it. Who cares? 🥱
buying a tesla in the last couple years is like automotive market darwinism
- Bought mine in 2021. I knew the man was an idiot then, wasn't really expecting the whole fascist playbook at the time. Anyway, want a Tesla?
  
  For free? No thanks.
From my personal observations and conversations with people in the Netherlands this seems about right, and I'd say the 51% are mostly going to be more in the "don't care" camp, with a tiny portion maybe having a positive view of Elon/maga, we do have right wingers here too even if they're different.
I don't know what the CEO of most companies I buy from is like. I don't know how many of them were friends with Epstein or deny the Holocaust or want slavery to be legal, and I fear if I did know, it would be very difficult to maintain all the boycotts. That and Teslas have some wicked acceleration so I don't blame people for having them. Unless it's a cybertruck, those things are ugly af
- Teslas also have some horrific privacy/ownership issues, sub-par build quality, and have regularly locked people inside during fires. They also have shitty door handles that ice over in winter, use software updates as a crutch, and Elon Musk makes other vehicle manufacturer CEOs look like saints.
  Also, you don’t need to buy from all of them. Subaru is a real company that doesn’t do horrific things and actually has proven that they’re honest when they say that infinite growth is not something they chase.
  If the reason you’re afraid to know is because you want to buy stuff and feel good then you have a bigger problem. It’s ok not to know but to essentially refuse to know?
  
  Subaru is a great company: previously my favorite vehicle from back when I used gasoline cars was my Forester. However, they’re late to the EV transition, with underwhelming products so far. Hopefully they’ll be a reasonable choice when I next have to buy a car
  
  My life would get way harder if I had to boycott every bad C-level executive. Keep in mind it's not just the CEOs profiting off the company. Companies are comprised of many people at each level and many are publicly traded. Think of all the bad people that could be profiting off Subaru, there's no way they're all angels. I'd rather not know because the solution isn't to give customers a laundry list of things not to buy
- Yeah, I've driven probably the majority of EVs on the market, and it's hard to match how enjoyable it is to drive a Tesla. It's like driving a spaceship. I probably would have leased one just a couple years ago, but my next car will almost certainly be a Polestar instead.
  
  Honestly, when I test drove the Model S (before the 3 was available) I was left rather unimpressed. It was fast, sure, but it wallowed in corners and just felt heavy. I ended up going for a BMW i3 because it drove like a go-cart. Lower range, and top speed but so much more fun. Never regretted it.
- The instant acceleration thing is a feature of all EVs. Even the cheapest are surprisingly fast off the line.
  If you want something with more sustained acceleration, there are plenty of high performance EVs that will end your Tesla envy.
  
  Yeah, even my Bolt is pretty zippy.
Sounds like an influx of cheap second hand BEVs.
This might require an update
Only 3 in 10. Give it another year and that number will be up
- You sure about that? Look who's being inaugurated tomorrow. I have zero faith in the American people.
- What would selling the car accomplish?
  The same amount of people will own a tesla either way
  
  It will reduce demand for new Teslas. The people who sell their Teslas will buy a different brand and some people who still for whatever reason want to buy a Tesla will buy a used one instead of a new one.
Assuming that they can sell their cars, doesn't that mean that there is an equal amount of buyers considering buying a Tesla?
lol why is it only 3? Are the rest Nazis?
- At least some of them probably can't afford to replace it if they sell it.
- The most rational lemmy.ml user ^
It’s so unfortunate - teslas are really nice cars now that theyve dialed in the quality. Its a perfect size for my needs, has great range for road trips, has features not available elsewhere at any price, and it’s a gadget lovers dream. I really don’t see anything comparable to my Model Y, and so many less capable cars are so much more expensive. Maybe that will start to change this year as other brands start being able to use Tesla Superchargers, but they all really seem a couple years behind in technology, or way too expensive
Ever since musk doubled down on a submarine for rescuing those kids from a cave and clearly couldn’t accept criticism, what has this guy been thinking. I’ll always appreciate his middle career when he helped establish some visionary, inspirational companies like Tesla , SpaceX, StarLink, but he really lost touch with reality. I guess when you have ungodly amounts of money, it’s too easy to see yourself as a god, or something.
- teslas are really nice cars now that theyve dialed in the quality
  Have they really? With all the problems with the cybertruck I don't think so. Also there design issues that make them death traps.
  
  Tesla are "nice" as long as you overlook the fact that they're software data vacuums on wheels that you never actually own, only "license" from Tesla.
  
  Yes, their mass-market vehicles are comparable quality to other manufacturers.
  Also, yes, cybertruck was a disaster in several ways. Personally I think it was another case of Musk not wanting to be wrong. Tesla seemed to have given up on it and the world moved on. Then people started saying where was it, and they eventually delivered …. Something. But yes, new design with radically different technology being forced out. Definitely not a smooth release but it’s always a good rule to never by the first model year of anything, much less something radically different.
  Anyway, cybertruck is like Highlander 2: it doesn’t exist
- I heard that Tesla lies about the range, it's lower than they say.
  https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
  About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.
  
  I don’t see how this is different from any other car
  My previous gasoline car advertised like 350 miles on a tank, but I got about 280 between fill ups. I’m a bit of a lead foot but regularly took the tank down to the last tick on the fuel gauge.
  my Tesla advertised like 330 miles between charges. I go more like 250, but that’s also because I never let it go below 30%
  The biggest difference might be that I’m more comfortable running close to empty with the gas car …. Ok fine, I also the features. My Tesla is covered with snow but I’ll probable stay inside where it’s warm and just click “defrost” on the app
To whom?
- and for how much. lol, there was that ctruck owner that wanted to get his money back, but the price of new ones is now less than what he paid a year ago. Like $20K+ less, but he doesn't want to sell for that low of a price.
  
  If you want to sell, you sell for what somebody will pay. You don't get to control that.
- I don't know, but if they follow through, it must be a damn good time to be in the secondhand market for a BEV.
  
  Hopefully. We need EVs to start having an affordable secondhand market
- probably it would get imported into another country within the EU, it is quite common for used cars in Europe to make their way into the used market in another country.
  Just like used American cars make their way to central and south America.
  
  I'm aware of that but people are not stupid. Tesla is locked behind a brick ton of red tape. I have a tire shop nearby that supplies even high luxury cars and super cars. They won't touch Teslas.
- Kubelwagen enthusiasts?
- I'll take one. I'm planning on getting an EV soon anyways
Who is going to buy them? Hope they plan on taking quite the loss

126 comments