Paul KrugmanWhat my friend Invictus is talking about is the fact that Tesla buyers are overwhelmingly in Dem districts, which he documented recently 1/ https://twitter.com/TBPInvictus/status/1607852684601704448
Here's his original evidence, with further stuff from the inimitable Charles Gaba 2/ https://ritholtz.com/2022/12/owning-the-libs/
Thoughts On Owning the Libs - The Big Picture
@TBPInvictus here. (Also on Post and Mastodon). Happy holidays to all, and the best for 2023. It’s been a hot minute since my last post, hope I remember how this thing works. I’ve been a huge fan of Twitter for well over a decade. It’s a fire hose of invaluable information from countless reliable…Read More
How I think about it: many people make a statement with the car they drive, maybe more than with any consumer good 3/
A Tesla is an expensive luxury car, but zero-emission, and until the other day Elon Musk seemed like a cool guy who does space travel while hanging out with singers and Westworld actresses 4/
So owning a Tesla was, to be crude but I think accurate, a way to say "I'm rich but I'm woke". Lots to criticize and ridicule there, but it was the marketing strategy 5/
Apparently, however, Musk didn't get his own memo. Instead he's gone full MAGA, turning off exactly the people who might buy his cars. Stupid? Unable to control his impulses? Probably both 6/
Sasha Fox@pkrugman Also his cars suck and keep trying to murder their owners.
Eight-car Thanksgiving pileup blamed on Tesla “Full Self-Driving” software
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/12/eight-car-thanksgiving-pileup-blamed-on-tesla-full-self-driving-software/
A Tesla driver watched in horror as another Tesla burst into flames after hitting a barrier
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-driver-watched-in-horror-tesla-crashed-burst-into-flames-2022-12
NumbCat9 💜s trans folx 🏳️⚧️Truth: EVs are *much much* safer than gasoline cars when it comes to fires. Beta testing FSD on real streets is dumb, tho where are state legs on that?
Musk is an evil fuck, but claiming EVs set themselves on fire at anywhere even approaching the rate that fossil fueled vehicles do is just Big Oil propaganda.
Don’t let that evil fuck destroy your judgment and perspective.
EVs: *great*
Musk: Terrible
Source: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involved-in-fewest-car-fires.
Orcyou are stating something as fact that the available evidence does not support.
Teslas: ~5 per billion miles driven
All vehicles: ~56 per billion miles driven
I mean I guess Tesla could’ve misstated by a factor of 10 but then they’d only be average.
You’re not speaking from a position of facts. That doesn’t help anyone.
Musk is a fucking dick, don’t let him make you take leave of your senses!
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman I don't think anyone is saying that electric vehicles are the problem. It's that Teslas are bad. They're poorly put together. They are actively dangerous because they will do things like turn into oncoming traffic and not brake for children.
Teslas do things like automatically lock all the doors and windows during a fire and turn off manual control for the locks so the driver is trapped inside. After the car took control and drove into a wall.
That's why people are saying they're not safe.
Everyone here thinks electric cars are better than gas powered cars.
The available data do not support your assertion, and I would eagerly welcome data that did. I’m perfectly happy to be wrong. But you’ve provided no data to back your assertion. I’ve linked mine.
Bag on Musk. He’s a shithead who deserves what he gets.
It seems I am going to have to accept that Musk haters are going to negatively affect the overall EV market and hope I’m wrong about that.
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman You're only looking at vehicle fires. I"m saying that is leaving out the issues with Teslas actively attempting to murder their owners.
For the 4th time, nothing about this is representative of electric vehicles. It's that Musk is doing a bad job manufacturing Teslas because he keeps trying to cheap out on production and keeps promising features they can't deliver, and putting out a dangerous substitute instead.
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman Tesla is facing a criminal investigation because Musk keeps lying about what his cars can do, and people are getting killed because he lied to people.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/exclusive-tesla-faces-us-criminal-probe-over-self-driving-claims-sources-2022-10-26/
https://www.reuters.com/legal/exclusive-tesla-faces-us-criminal-probe-over-self-driving-claims-sources-2022-10-26/
Exclusive: Tesla faces U.S. criminal probe over self-driving claims
Tesla Inc <a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/TSLA.O" target="_blank">(TSLA.O)</a> is under criminal investigation in the United States over claims that the company's electric vehicles can drive themselves, three people familiar with the matter said.
Look I can tell you’re not available to incorporating new information but I urge you to watch the movie Tucker to understand what’s going on with Tesla and EVs broadly.
Musk is an awful, execrable person. Please focus on that instead of unintentionally doing favors for Big Auto and Big Oil.
But more importantly, do whatever the heck you want. I’ve said as much substantive stuff as I’m going to.
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman Also the "big auto" complaint seems weird to me because like, all of those companies are moving over their production to electric vehicles in the future.
It doesn't make sense to think they would want to undermine confidence in their own products. Most big car companies are planning to be fully electric over the next 10 - 15 years.
https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/automaker-ev-plans/
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman Why would they be trying to demonize electric cars when they're all electric car producers?
Doesn't it seem more rational that Elon's habit of drawing attention to himself and lying about everything have caught up to him, rather than believing anyone would need to do any work to make him look bad?
Like, he just took over the company, pushed out the founders, and is trying to manufacture the product so cheaply that it's incredibly flawed.
That doesn't require any conspiracy. It's just the actions of a shitty person with too much money.
They aren’t. Big Auto are trying to demonize Tesla, a competitor they want to destroy.
Big Oil wants people to be scared of EVs broadly. They won’t survive it if everyone buys EVs. Fuels for pax vehicles & trucks are just too large a segment of their market. It’s existential for them.
Things get complicated IRL. Lotta knowledge to hold on to just to try to understand the market even a little.
@sashafox @orc @pkrugman and if you’re over here claiming that suggesting Big Auto and Big Oil don’t fuck with all kinds of political stuff, again I’m going to request your data.
Mine are court cases & actual historical events, like what they did to Tucker, or how they refused to put seatbelts or airbags in cars until they were forced to in 1983. They’d resisted since 1967. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/25/us/high-court-backs-airbags-mandate.html
Tesla isn’t evil. Musk is evil. You are confusing the two. Tesla are fucked tho. People can’t tell the difference.
My concern is that regular consumers won’t make that distinction either. Between Teslas and all of the other EVs.
We’ll find out one way or another. No way to predict for sure.
@sashafox @orc @pkrugman Fuck no. That would be an idiotic move. Have you seen that stock? Christ. No I would never invest in an auto company anyway. You can’t beat an S&P 500 tracking fund reliably so storing money there is about as safe as it gets at the Big Dogtrack on Wall Street.
No I care about fixing climate change as soon as possible and so I’ve spent like an hour trying to educate people to stop impeding that progress. Failing, of course
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman Clearly things are going great.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stopped-reporting-autopilot-safety-statistics-online
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stopped-reporting-autopilot-safety-statistics-online
The Bolt has the risk. Not the Volt. Bee not Vee. They actually designed the Volt and marketed it specifically for the Active Cooling System for the battery pack.
And no, I have done none of those things. You’ve presented them as things Tesla is doing that the other companies aren’t. I’ve pointed out many other auto companies also use those same suppliers. All of them are wrong for this.
Are we into personal attacks now?
No it’s a personal attack to falsely suggest that I defended Tesla for engaging in the same exact shitty labor practices (here, Uighur slavery) that GM did. I didn’t. I used that fact to show your criticism of them as being unique because of Musk just isn’t valid. They’re like GM, a well-established market leader in US automobile manufacturing.
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman These problems are not the same.
"The Tesla Autopilot crash numbers are far higher than those of similar driver-assistance systems from General Motors and Ford. Tesla has reported 516 crashes from July 2021 through November 2022, while Ford reported seven and GM two ... To be sure, Tesla has far more vehicles equipped with driver-assist systems than the competition ... All else equal, that would imply Tesla ought to have a NHTSA-reported crash total of 70 since last summer to be comparable with Ford’s rate. Instead, Tesla reported 516 crashes."
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-27/tesla-stopped-reporting-autopilot-safety-statistics-online
yep. it’s why **none of them** should be testing on public roadways. But in December of last year we find that 108 of them were. Not unique to Tesla. Yet you’ve suggested that these things *are* unique, or worse, because of Musk. He is a fuck. A miserable piece of shit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/business/tesla-self-driving-regulations.html
Here’s an *actual* example of Musk’s intransigence in meddling with Tesla:
Musk *refuses* to add LiDAR assistance to their AI’s suite of sensors. It could really help, but he’s steadfastly refused to adopt it even just to make buyers and the government feel safer.
That’s going to fuck them in the long run if they can’t make FSD work without it. No telling who’s right, long run.
For instance.
People are already skeptical of EVs. I do not think they will make that connection. I doubt it, even.
And the LiDAR thing is about engineering choices, not engineering *quality*. None of the LiDAR teams have cracked the code yet either. I just think it’s a dumb decision he’s making for personal stubbornness reasons when adding it would be cheaper and make investors and buyers happier. Because he’s a narcissist.
@numbcat9 @orc @pkrugman Yes. That goes back to me believing that things like a 700% higher crash rate make people view Teslas as being unsafe, and you believing it's the result of a smear campaign. That's not something either of us has the capability to prove to any reasonable basis.
It could be entirely because Musk is a douche on Twitter, as Krugman suggests.
I appreciated the good faith discussion.
Musk is an evil, evil person. Deeply malevolent in some very dark ways. Exactly like Thiel but on a delay.
And climate change requires EVs take over the entire vehicle market as soon as possible, not as soon as politically feasible. Any action is late. We’re fighting a losing battle. Yes, I oppose climate change *and* Musk. Which is why I am here still tooting.
Tesla should not be the model for car companies if we want to defeat the climate crisis.
Tesla is making that battle harder by backing far right politicians, manufacturing their products cheaply, and pushing for slavery when they can get it, and as close to slavery for worker conditions as they can get it.
Car companies that have unions are better companies than union busting ones who use slavery.