Tesla cars are shoddily built pieces of shit liable to fall apart and malfunction in dangerous ways at inopportune moments. No, this is not a blog from 2012! It is also not a blog from 2015 or 2018 or 2022. It is not even a blog from two weeks ago about Tesla’s self-driving systems killing […]
It pretty clearly states in the first paragraph that it’s a blog. It’s okay to post blogs. Moreover, the author specifically encourages reading the quoted Reuters report:
The Reuters piece is quite long, and earns its length with an incredible wealth of damning receipts, including internal Tesla communications making clear that the company has known about its own shoddy work for a long time, even as it deceived investors, regulators, and drivers. I urge you to read it for yourself.
Probably the best line I have read in any article this month:
I drove back and forth to a bookstore job in an ancient Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais so apocalyptically derelict that when I got pulled over for a busted taillight, the lady cop fixed me with sad eyes and asked "Is everything OK with you?"
The reason those companies, and not Tesla, know how to build cars that (in general) can drive from here to there without dropping a wheel or bursting into flames is not that they are staffed by a bunch of centenarian Lore Wizards who learned the secrets of auto manufacture back in nineteen-aught-dickity and now hide this sacred knowledge in a walled mountaintop abbey.
The bloom was off the rose pretty early with people that know about cars. I remember seeing a video of an engineering team disassembling one a few years after they launched and finding all sorts of crazy assembly problems that you’d think would have been worked out by then. I’m talking about bad welds, some not in the correct place, and random bolts rattling around in door panels, that kind of stuff. I give them credit for capturing the collective imagination on what an electric car could be and championing them as cool. But they still have a lot of work to do to catch up in the quality and reliability realm compared to established car companies. The fact that they have significantly less moving parts yet still haven’t been shown to be more reliable than a lot of ICE vehicles says something.
IDK, even since Fight Club we know that cars have defects that kill people and the car companies send Edward Norton to check if it's cheaper to pay to the victims or go to court. This is nothing new. I wouldn't get to worked up about it until I've seen some statistics saying that for example Tesla drivers get into more accidents than other drivers or something. O, wait...