https://www.autoblog.com/news/94-of-germans-wouldnt-consider...
> T Online has now reported that bots manipulated the survey, with 253,000 votes originating from just two U.S.-based IP addresses
Also fascist WW2 tanks rolling into Ukraine is somewhat reminiscent of the phenomenon of modern fascist tanks rolling into Ukraine.
I might even say it's suspicious.
or would you say these were ordinary people or more the kind of people paying attention to international events? (genuine question).
I get that to an american it's contentious, but imagine not buying a toyota car or samsung phone because the powerful head of that company gave huge amounts to a conservative politician in their country. That's how I look at elon/trump in the us, and given I never hear normal people (not reddit/hackernews/guardian) talking about ANY of this stuff, I'd guess I'm not alone.
Same applies to some friends in France.
I assume the topic comes up more with me because I lived in the US for a long time before moving back to Europe, but I'm guessing their opinions are there even if the topic doesn't come up as often in conversations with other locals, for example.
I don't think the Toyota CEO is trying to have anywhere close to this much influence over most European countries, and I'm honestly not aware of anyone else doing so. For years, Musk has been behaving like a literal Bond villain.
Do I know who the CEOs of all car companies vote for? No.
But also none of them spent so much capital electing Trump and threatened to destroy Canada’s sovereignty so I guess I make my consumer choices with the info I have.
From January to October this year, BYD has already sold nearly 140,000 units in Europe, an astonishing increase. Even setting aside people’s personal feelings about Musk, the main reason is probably that Tesla no longer has much competitive advantage. The BYD he once openly mocked with “have you seen their cars?” and laughed about by end up completely defeating Tesla in the European market
Personally, the one I most want to buy in the future is the Yangwang series, even though it’s very expensive. Or the series that comes with the drone feature.
Yep, I think Tesla simply squandered its clear advantage and slowed research and innovation, while everybody else was accelerating.
I sat in one of the first BYD a couple years back, and for all the mocking of Tesla quality standards, it was a rattle fest, I thought I'd never buy one for sure. But if there's one thing I really appreciate about China is the ability to iterate stupid fast and make it totally about business, zero emotions. Car rattles too much? We'll fix it.
Forward to last year when I took an Uber in London which was a BYD Seal: dead silent, spacious and good looking, and they keep improving the hardware. The brand is back on my possible next-buy list.
- their cars keep on "deprecating" controls, such as turn signal and drive select stalks, mechanical door releases, defog, dashboard and other critical controls. unsafe and a cheapo move.
- the model y looks ugly now, especially lighting. the older version looks nice, and was a best-seller.
- cybertruck
all of this just hands market share over to the competition, which has appeared.
Can't speak for defog or mechanical door release, I haven't noticed either, but would be shocked if they are gone as they both seem like they'd be legally required. Defog in particular would be bizarre to remove from a car, especially given it's just a mode of the A/C.
my opinion: a decent car would have a decent set of stalks with dedicated controls at your fingertips, like various light controls, various wiper controls including non-ai interval, turn signals, drive select. and a dashboard for status, and other settings (not critical controls) on center screen.
I still won't buy one, but not because I think it's ugly.
The problem is that a lot of its supporters and investors cannot distinguish between solving complicated problems (the ones Elon Musk excels at) and complex problems (the ones Elon Musk is trying solve now: FSD, robotics, etc...).
For reference, a complicated problem is one that you can break down into pieces and solve each individual piece within some tolerance and as a result solve the whole problem. For example, how do I build a rocket that can get X kg of load at a given orbit or how do I design an electric car to transport 4 people 200 miles.
Complex problems are problems you cannot break into pieces and plan for before hand, usually because you have unknown unknows and you have a lot of feedback loops (when you change something it changes something else you though you had already solved). This are the types of challenges Elon is taking on now: FSD, robotics, etc...
And starlink is nothing but an evolution of many networks that already exist, most famously Iridium, but couldn't make it work commercially due to satellite cost.
Meanwhile the Blue Origin launched ESCAPADE satellites will establish a 24/7 telecommunications link between the Mars surface and Earth, in addition to their research goals, in September 2027.
I just can't get myself into a mindset where that makes sense.
I think there are other people that can do Elon's role but definitely rare.
(Apparently they’re looking at addressing that particular issue: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/573575/tesla-is-looking-to-...)
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Q...
At a time when the overall EV market share is growing in Europe:
https://www.acea.auto/pc-registrations/new-car-registrations...
