Posted by jdenquin 2 days ago
I mean, I guess I do get it: politics have poisoned people's brains and the fact that they don't like Musk's politics means that they have to have extremely strong opinions on everything connected to him, but it just doesn't seem worth the emotional effort.
And while I personally wouldn't ever buy one, it also is not surprising to me at all that a lot of people are buying them. I have no illusion that my personal tastes reflect the broader tastes of the car-buying public (if they did, then I would find it much easier to find a car that conforms to my preferences).
He must have fired his PR team and gave up on the visionary genius schtick. Many people will hate that he’s revealed his true self to the world and it isn’t pretty.
But the car sucks too.
I do have a model that still has the stalks though, haven’t driven the stalkless type enough to comment.
Normally I'd agree with you, but driving a car brings with it with pretty extreme externalities - it's not the people driving these behemoths that I'm worried about, it's everyone else. Distracting touchscreens, an erratic self-driving AI, and a car made of sharp points. Doesn't bode well.
But I was driving with a non-tech, non-online friend and she blurted out “Wow what an ugly car”, I looked over and it was a cybertruck - so I felt validate in my views
Never could figure out if they actually had really good reasons for it or were just trying to justify having bought an Aztek.
The Aztek had some similar positive properties, but was from one of the particularly bad eras of GM malaise and was highly unreliable. It's had a tiny bit of a cult resurgence recently, but it was never popular in the way the Element was.
They all pale next to the true King of Vehicles - the Minivan.
It feels like the Aztek was ahead of its time and many mid-size SUVs have since caught up with its aesthetic.
But it had all of the stupid GMisms. Every expense was spared. It turned out to be like the malnourished love child of a Nissan Xterra and a Ford Windstar.
You can't even find middling used EVs for sub $20k. They're all just Chevy Bolts people were desperate to unload.
Level 3 charging aka DC fast charging was an option on them, so not all have the extra pins needed for a CCS charger.
I'm pretty happy with my 2017 Bolt which has the DC fast charging option. I wish it had distance-keeping cruise control; it's frustrating because it has the cameras and will even report following distance on the dash, but doesn't have the adaptive cruise feature for whatever reason. I also wish it charged a bit faster; 50 kW max is a little slow for road trips.
Next car is probably a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5, which has has both features and is also pretty reasonable. Prices on the used models are slowly coming down.
It would be wonderful irony if suddenly buying EVs has become trendy among the right-leaning crowd.
Source: https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q3-2024-ev-sales/
Percent of total auto sales is a far better metric.
[0] https://www.coxautoinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kelley...
This to me implies that EVs have peaked and only the market for vanity vehicles remains at this time
Edit: I also have a suspicion that this is primarily due to them filling all the preorders. It’d be good to see a breakdown as to how many new orders people are placing after seeing this POS in real life.
That might be true, if the #2 selling car, and the #1 selling car were not also EVs.
The Model Y is currently the second best selling vehicle of all kinds, and it very likely is about to overtake the F-150 as the most-selling vehicle, the first time the F-150 has been dethroned in 46 straight years.
The sales numbers are saying we have not reached peak EV.
I’m interested in the customer base once that market is exhausted.