Yet booze is legal and marijuana is federally illegal. I hate everything.

That’s exactly how it works. A fetus is a person, or it is not. The law needs to be clear in this.

Then they have to get rid of the anti-abortion laws. Can’t have it both ways.

A fetus is not a baby. It’s a fetus.

The right-wingers don’t care about legal professionals or the laws themselves. Just whatever they think should be how things go. Facts don’t matter. That’s why the US is far behind the rest of the modernized countries in all but military strength.

Elon has a history of jumping into young companies at the right time and riding that momentum. That had also previously given him clout, so that his investments were blindly followed by other investors on name recognition alone. But considering what he’s done with crypto and Twitter and how he’s running his personnel and so on, his name is starting to have the opposite effect and people want to get away. Elon isn’t some brilliant leader or inventor. He’s an investor with a simple physics degree.

Tesla was bound to take off, and I’d argue that it would be a lot further along if Musk had just invested and not interfere with shit.

There’s quite a bit to it, but that is a bold question considering what is happening to Twitter at the moment.

Yeah, you really, really need to think long-term. Big growth for a couple of years doesn’t mean it’s going to last. Tesla having a couple of factories and a couple of upcoming products (not that they deliver on those promises) doesn’t mean shit when you consider that soon people are going to have all kinds of EV options from Ford, GM, VW, and pretty much every other big player in the auto industry. And they’re going to deliver vehicles with much better quality control and much lower prices. Tesla is fucked.

And that’s all before even mentioning that many folks won’t buy from anti-union companies, or that people won’t buy from Tesla simply because Musk is a huge tool, or because Tesla treats its workers like shit.

Save that comment and look at it again in a couple of years. Tesla is going to start declining pretty rapidly. The only way it'll possibly survive is to get Elon out from behind the reins and let someone that actually knows how to run a company take charge.

The genius of Tesla was that it offered EVs before anybody else took it seriously (and this was happening far before Musk ever came along).

But under Musk's leadership, all they had were unrealistic ambitions and empty promises. The quality started suffering. Deadlines weren't met. Blah blah blah.

The other manufacturers are slow to the game, but they're going to offer quality EVs for a hell of a lot less than Tesla does. I would even venture to say that it's not too late for Tesla to stay on top of the EV game, but it's not going to happen because Elon would ride a sinking ship all the way down before actually listening to the intelligent people who know how to run companies.

Ford is somewhere around the middle out of all the manufacturers as far as recalls go. Not great, but not terrible. But if you think their trucks are trash, you either have never owned a truck, talked to anyone about trucks, or read anything about trucks. F-150s are the go-to, absolute best trucks out there. If you treat a F-150 right, you can easily get 300k+ miles on it. With any other truck I've owned, I always started getting nervous around the 150 mark because shit started falling apart in a hurry.

A lot of folks will look at any criticism of Tesla and immediately scream, "SHILL!"

I don't have any skin in the game - I sold all of my auto stocks a while ago - but I'll absolutely state my negative opinions about Tesla when it comes up because they're poorly made, overpriced, and Musk is an asshole.

If Tesla had its shit together and had offered the Cybertruck when they were supposed to, I'd have absolutely ordered one. I'm glad it all fell apart as it gave me time to read into how bad most Teslas are constructed and to see how big of a douche the CEO is.

I personally think it looks awesome, but I'll hold out for something else from someone else down the road. Meantime, I did order a Ford Maverick.

>it's Tesla and Ford

I'm not aware of Ford selling direct to consumer in any state. Where do you see that happening? And I didn't dispute that Tesla does it - I clearly stated that they have issues with it and can't sell direct in all 50 states - and they have to employ a lot of loopholes that will likely soon be closed in order to sell in some of those states.

>Tesla has a markup built in whereas others don't and instead get a markup added at the dealer

Tesla's prices are just needlessly high. When and if the dealership lobby gets put in its place and manufacturers can start selling DTC, do you really think they're going to jack up their prices so they stay the same as at dealerships? Hell no - that would just be sending customers to the competition in droves. Ford's CEO has even mentioned how consumers would be able to save thousands by buying direct. Most manufacturers would likely sell DTC at or near the prices the dealerships are paying.

>This is a discussion about EVs

Fair point, but a $20k hybrid is crazy. A $20k truck is super crazy. A $20k hybrid truck is just not something I'd have expected to see before 2030. And their fully gas models of the Maverick are actually considerably more expensive. This makes me wonder if when they do put out a fully electric Maverick that it might not be even cheaper. But the point is that Ford could have easily set the base at $25k, or $30k, and still gotten plenty of orders.

Yeah, the manufacturers are in it for money. That's how business works. But they're not trying to completely screw the consumers like the dealerships do.

Where in the US do you think manufacturers are selling directly to consumers, exactly? Even Tesla barely gets away with that in many states.

Dealer markups aren’t MSRP markups. Dealerships suck. So do the laws requiring them.

Ford could have sold the Maverick with a base of 30k, easily, but went with a MSRP of 20.

You also tried to paint it as manufacturers marking up high because they can. That’s generally not happening.

Having to wait for orders due to having a ton of orders is a pretty good indicator that as supply chain issues clear up, it’s going to put a lot more of a squeeze on Tesla.

They had to stop taking orders because of low pricing, super high demand, and supply chain issues. They’re not having people wait for orders as some sort of punishment. They offered the Maverick, a hybrid truck, at a base price of 20k. Of course they were going to get flooded with orders.

Any shareholder that didn’t see this coming deserves their losses. Tesla has been overvalued for a long time, is run by an idiot megalomaniac, and has poor quality control and shoddy workmanship. And that’s all just Tesla being Tesla.

Of course other automakers are going to produce EVs. That has been inevitable for a long time. They’ll be more affordable, better-built, and consumers will soon have plenty of makes and models to choose from.

Minks can eat other mammals as large as rabbits? That’s very… creepy.

Kinda seems like the first thing there to mess up the original habitants was Europeans.

I can’t believe that they’re still planning on doing this in Qatar after everything that keeps coming out. I’m also surprised that the teams aren’t boycotting. Hard to respect the institution.

Came here to say this

If he dies, he dies.

It’s basically just a number keyboard and a headset. The call is still going through your cell service and will only work where you have reception.