Putting aside the ethics of buying a Tesla in 2024, who buys a car brand legendary for unreliability and ridiculously long service times in a country that doesn't even have a dealership? Some people like to live dangerously.
They say they bought it on the foot of blog advice, which seems to have convinced them it was reliable. Tesla has a host of weird superfan online defenders; if they went down the wrong rabbithole it’s possible they simply didn’t know.
If the purchase goes well, the vehicle is reliable, spare parts are easily available, and nobody has to resort to legal action? No problem.
On the other hand, if I buy a car in Holland, get it serviced in Austria, and register and drive it in Slovakia - which legal system governs the transaction? Which country's consumer rights protections do I get?
It would be jolly inconvenient if the manufacturer ripped me off, and my only option for redress was a court 1000km away, with the laws written and courts operated in a language I didn't speak.
Or does the EU have some mechanism that avoids this problem?
Consumer protection follows the place of purchase and they are quite strong and very similar in the EU.
I mean if I was super worried (as a Slovak) I could buy the car in Czech Republic which has pretty much identical consumer protection laws (and all Slovaks understand Czech well and vice versa).
I bought mine in Slovenia. I understand Slovenian somewhat as well, but that didn't influence the decision.
Fortunately I had zero issues in over 3 years and the car works great, but of course I could have been less lucky – I know that.
Do the remote service teams travel across the border? That would probably be more impactful than the physical distance if e.g. there was some minor recall that travelling repair men could take care of while the car is parked at home or work.
No, but do other brands even have remote service teams? I have never heard of anyone using such a service on any car in Slovakia. (Other than the assistance you can get from an insurance provider.)
That's the part I didn't understand either. If the car isn't even sold in the market you are asking for trouble. This isn't some super exotic oldtimer sports car whatever, which you can just tinker with and don't mind to lose a lot of money on.
This is your average run of the mill vehicle that needs servicing. Madness to have to drive all the way to Budapest for that.
Yeah honestly that's a completely insane part. I'm from a country that also didn't have an official Tesla presence until very recently and only extremely rich people bought Teslas, basically with the assumption that anything goes wrong you put it on a trailer and take it back to Germany where there is official Tesla support network, you have 5 other cars to drive to it's not a big deal.
For someone who is "not a car guy" and for whom this is their only car....that's insane.
I think it is unnecessary to say "Putting aside the ethics". This is a very personal thing, for you it would (presumably) take putting aside your ethics, and maybe it would for me. But that is not the case for everyone.
I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience. Actually it is degrading my whole internet browsing experience nowadays. There is too much "btw, you should feel bad when you do X". It's divisive, the US could use less divisiveness or anti-divisiveness.
And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
Correction: You think that is useful. There are also people supporting Musk, should they add their statement to all of their posts? Is it really relevant? Don't you think people can't think for themselves?
I follow the news, I'm pretty capable of deciding if I want a Tesla or not, people adding to all their posts that I should not doesn't change anything other then make me annoyed. Perhaps some like it, probably when it echoes their strong believes? So it's that? You signal you are one of those people? Well great for you! Now let's get back to discussing the article.
I think there are lots of sort of tuned out but generally nice people who might shy away from buying a tesla if the perfidity of Musk is mentioned whenever tesla is discussed.
It always helps indeed, to change people's minds when you tell them "You are probably beyond help" or "You should feel bad if you do X". It's been great for my relationships!
In fact, I'm gonna write a blog post now: "Things I wish someone would have told me before I went online and started sharing my opinions"! It's gonna be a guaranteed front-pager!
"Probably beyond help" means they're not going to change their opinions no matter what, so trying to find phrasing that helps change their opinions is a waste of time.
Being a musk supporter in this day and age isn't a simple difference in opinion, unless you're a good person who's been living under a rock, in which case a mention of musk being pretty awful could actually help you.
Please re-read my comments. I don't state anything for or against Musk, I make it a point not to. I try to stress that things are not as one-sided as this comment-thread tries to make it out to be. I believe that that is a good thing.
Is it not amazing to you, that you have just labelled someone that tries to argue against divisiveness as a Nazi supporter? My country, my grand parents suffered greatly under the Nazi's. I know what divisiveness does, I know what labeling another group of people as less-human, and stopping all attempts at conversation with them, can do.
Fixing your country's politics is not done by working hard to increase the divide. Sure, be against Trump/Musk, but at the very least try to understand their supporters. You'll find that most of them are kind.
You aren't arguing against divisiveness, you're arguing against bringing up politics, the politics of a man who is actively utilising his vast amounts of wealth to divide multiple countries. A man who is seeking to deny human rights to marginalised peoples. A man who stood in front an audience of millions and threw out a Nazi salute clear as day.
My biggest issue with Tesla is not Musk, my biggest issue is owning a car that can be remotely tampered by Tesla and or the US government.
On paper I am supposed to live in an allied country but Trump unilateraly decided that USA is at wars with everyone except Israel so I can't expect to be treated with respect by an US company. For this reason I have to remove all commercial ties with US companies and not buy anything from them unless it is an object/appliance I can certify doesn't connect to anything without my consent.
I think the downvotes is for essentially doing what you are criticizing when you point out a certain thing someone said that hurt you.
They were making an effort to stay on topic (reliability issues with Tesla's cars). You're making it about divisiveness.
The ethical considerations around Tesla are pretty bizarre. It gets political, since the owner of the company is so deeply associated with both the cars and politics.
I don't think your comment comes from a bad place, I understand the fatigue and the desparation. However, when someone in power does something "divisive" (quotes, because its the understatement of the decade - you can probably come up with examples) and people who mention it, even by not mentioning it, are told to be quiet because they are being divisive - it can come off as trying to silence people and ensure no criticizism can be raised.
Again, I don't think that was your intention but it has that effect either way.
I would read that as "I'm specifically excluding talking points and discussion on ethics in this subject and focusing solely on the talking point at hand"
That doesn't generally mean they have an ethical take, just that they recognise such things might exist and they specifically don't want to get in to it.
Is that not what you want ?
> And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?
I'd assume it was because you were claiming divisiveness when the cause of such divisiveness was specifically excluded.
Actually I'm curious if there is some kind of representative poll among Tesla owners about whether their personal ethics still align with the company's (or rather, its owner's) ethics. I mean, this is the guy who as recently as 2017 quit as an advisor for the first Trump administration because of Trump exiting the Paris climate agreement (https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/01/news/elon-musk-resigns-trum...). Now I'm not sure which of the two alternatives is worse: that he has had a complete 180° turnaround of his moral compass, or that he was just pretending to care for the environment as long as it suited him?
So they’d want more Musk fans to buy Teslas and support him, right? If they really felt so strongly about doing something, then they should junk the cars.
Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them. Musk’s fans are not going to go away, Better to let them keep the Teslas in the family.
> I for one don't like it when people online, with every statement, signal their personal ethics. It gets to be very tiresome and degrades my HN experience.
Ironically, buying a Tesla is nowadays a very visible political statement.
Again an opinion, Musk said it was not a Nazi salute, he didn't repeat it, he has many Jewish supporters also saying it wasn't. Just stop, please, I'm really about to give up on the comment sections here.
I’m out of the loop here. Has Musk done anything related to nazi symbols (besides that weird gesture that some people say is a nazi salute), or funded Nazi organizations?
AFD is indeed a far-right party and the optics of Musk supporting it are to put it mildly bizarre, but it is also one of the largest political parties in Germany, not a "Nazi organization". They advocate halting immigration, not genocide.
The AfD goes beyond just opposing immigration and they struggle to shake their Nazi links. Talks of deporting immigrants, getting into minimising SS culpability for Nazi crimes, use of Nazi slogans, links to convicted Nazis and banned Nazi parties.
As a Jew there’s no difference to me between those who knowingly repeat Nazi slogans (i.e AfD) and “real” Nazis. It’s very easy to not be a Nazi, it’s unnecessary to make excuses for those who know what they are doing.
Germans (i.e. ethnic German citizens), should be held to a higher standard, because they are educated on this, there’s no excuse.
Israel supporter and antisemite aren't mutually exclusive[0]. In the past it was to get the Jews out of Europe (be it to Madagascar or Palestine), now it's because they hate Muslims more than Jews and see Israeli society as a template for a similar far-right Christian society.
Obviously most AfD supporters are not everyday antisemites, but they are casting their votes for antisemites. I don't care to split hairs. Germans know better and do not get to plead ignorance.
Musk could perhaps have been given the benefit of the doubt, he doesn't seem to understand European politics so it's possible he could have confused AfD as being the German equivalent of Reform UK or RN (neither of which want to be associated with AfD) ...that is until he made that salute.
[0] nor are anti-Zionist and Jew mutually exclusive for that matter. Before WWII the creation of Israel was the subject of debate within the Jewish community. The Holocaust and happenings in the Soviet Union obviously shifted that debate firmly in one direction. In some sense the Palestinians are victims of the European far-right and far-left by proxy, though I am not shifting blame.
After doing the "weird gesture", rather than apologising for doing something that many people interpreted as a nazi gesture, he made a load of crappy puns about it involving the names of various high-ranking nazi leaders
You don't need to apologise for every accusation you get. You should probably address a widespread belief that you are making very offensive gestures, clarify what you meant and apologise for the confusion.
Also could you define "wokeism" for me? Everyone seems to be using a different definition so its hard to know what people actually mean when they say it
Question is why media decided to continue spinning the same narrative despite looking like idiots? Is it clicks, political agenda or journalistic integrity? It's not hard to see...
I think the downvotes might be from your repeating the "weird gesture" phrase that is currently being used to sane-wash what actually happened. Anyone who doesn't think what Musk did was a Nazi salute, I encourage you to go into work, do it in front of your manager, and see what happens.
Sure, I agree with you, it just depends on what you want HN to be. I am an outsider to the US, I see your country as deeply divided. Families torn apart because of how they vote. Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over there up until 10 years ago. In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.
It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people, is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost. Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
Remember that the division you see is amplified by polarizing voices that are naturally amplified by the medium that is the Internet. If you actually traveled to the US, did a long road trip across the country and sat down and talked to actual Americans, I expect you will find that the vast majority don't have strong opinions about who runs the country. They just want to afford rent and groceries.
Also if you think nerdy people who hang out on HN are immune to being "belligerent, closed-minded and judgy", you haven't worked with many nerdy people. We technical/intellectual types tend to be very logical and rational, until we're not.
Is it more frightening or less than being legally banned from existence? You don’t have to know much about history to see why people start cutting abusive relationships.
Welcome to the downfall of civilization. It happens precisely because one side (or one player on one side) decides to stop playing infinite games, and start playing finite games instead. They weaponize your civility against you. The incentives for both sides shift, and we enter a downward spiral.
I'm not sure I've said anything that would indicate that i am , but I'm not from the US.
> Families torn apart because of how they vote
That's reductive in my opinion, I'd consider it a misrepresentation of the situation, at best.
Given your other comments i'd lean towards it being intentional misrepresentation, but i could be wrong, either way i doubt we'll come to an understanding on this point so i'll just leave it there.
> Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over their up until 10 years ago.
I doubt this is true, but if you genuinely think it's just a box ticking exercise and not a representation of ideology and perspective then it's possible we just have a fundamental disagreement of what's actually happening, so of course we'd disagree on interpretations.
> In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.
This i can see though.
> It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people,
"Intelligent" people aren't inherently apolitical in my experience, they are also significantly less likely to not call you on something they see as bullshit.
If you are looking for a place where you can define a perspective or opinion and not be challenged on it, this is absolutely not the place for you.
> is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost.
I'm genuinely not sure how to address this level of cognitive dissonance.
Either it's intentional, in which case no amount of discussion will be productive or it's unintentional and i don't know how to begin to address it.
> Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.
You literally rocked up and replied to a thread with judgement based on a non-standard interpretation of a statement and then proceeded to say, multiple times, how disappointed you were that people expressed opinions different to your own, so much so that you expressed that you might leave if they didn't stop.
As i said elsewhere, you don't have to (and IMO shouldn't) stay in a place you don't like, but if you're going to be upset by responses with differing opinions to your own i doubt this is a place you are going to enjoy.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The entire world knows it is a nazi salute, and people defending it do too. They would never put themselves on camera doing this because they know it is indefensible.
> Again an opinion, Musk said it was not a Nazi salute [...]
Has he actually said it wasn't a Nazi salute? My last update was that he responded to questions about this by making Nazi jokes, I haven't seen any actual denial. Could you share when he did so, so I don't spread inaccurate information? Thank you.
I’m not sure that you can reasonably expect people to ignore this particular elephant in the room just for the sake of your psychological comfort, honestly.
