Why do people still buy Teslas? Serious question

I’m only answering because you sound sincere in your desire for the opinion of others. I’m not a Musk fanboy (years ago I was, admittedly). I’m not looking for a fight. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, here is mine because you asked for it:

Other EV brands are shockingly (no pun intended) behind in technology or implementation. Most other EV manufacturers are making cars today that are closer to what Tesla was making 5 or 10 years ago, including lots of design or construction mistakes with those other manufacturers. Add to that, I know the idea that Tesla cars are expensive in still in most people’s minds, but Model 3 (available now at $31k USD) is one of the least expensive EVs on the road today with the tax credit from its fully domestically built battery. Non-Tesla charging infrastructure (in the USA, and even in Canada) is a joke to try to depend on it. Its also nice to be able to buy a car that supports the American workforce. A Tesla (bought in the USA) is the most American car you can buy! The top 4 “most American made cars” are Y, 3, X, and S. The number 5 slot is the Honda Passport.

Lastly, at least in the USA, buying a car from any other brand (except maybe Polestar now) means having to go through a local dealership, which is a horrible and exhausting experience. Buying a Tesla is refreshing in how transparent and low pressure the sales process is. No surprise fees, no dealer markup, no high pressure extended warranty or service plan sales.

I despise Musk’s childishness and politics, but the product and buying experience tops every other EV on the market today. The other brands have need to mature very quickly. However it doesn’t appear that Tesla is slowing down its growth either.

TLDR; Tesla makes the cheapest, most domestically produced, highest performance, most charging supported, best buying experience, most advanced mass market EV on the road today by a large margin.

I bought mine in 2019 before I knew Elon is a lying turd. I bought FSD because I like tech stuff and I was doing a lot of highway driving at the time. My opinion of Elon and the car might be less negative if I didn’t feel like I got scammed out of $6000 for FSD. It’s been a good car otherwise, but I wouldn’t buy another one.

With all of their flaws, they remain one of the best EVs on the market. And at least for the very short future, they are some of the few cars that can use the only charging network that doesn’t suck. Though, that very notable advantage will be gone in about a year.

From an Australian perspective, I wanted an ev and I wanted to be able to take it on road trips. The supercharger network is the most comprehensively built out infrastructure here and frankly the only way to reliably make long road trips.

The minute they open it up to other manufacturers that advantage disappears; similarly if we had any genuine effort from any corner to build out competing infrastructure.

It’s easy to shit on Tesla because, well, , but in some markets they still hold a distinct and compelling competitive advantage.

Meanwhile my anecdotal n=1 stranger on the internet story is that I’ve not had any issues with my model 3 so far: for me, it’s been a great car. When I purchased it, the decision came down to the 3 or the polestar 2, and at the time polestar had zero service capability here: based on 12 months of driving I feel I made the right decision.