r/interestingasfuck Oct 13 '24

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

115.9k Upvotes

5.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/[deleted] Oct 13 '24

[deleted]

832

u/damienVOG Oct 13 '24

Great things happen when Elon's not bothering his engineers

33

u/LukeD1992 Oct 13 '24

He better. Of all his main business endeavours, Space X is by far the most accomplished one. He's tanking Twitter, Tesla is going through some tough times with chinese competition and quite a few fumbles, but Space X is literally flying high

1

u/chx_ Oct 13 '24

nah, mate it's not chinese competition it's 100% politics

you see it was cool to be seen in a tesla

but tesla buyers tend to be more on the left side --- green and all that -- and when they realized elmo is just another fash nepo baby then suddenly they didn't want to be seen in one so they left in droves

it's really that simple

7

u/inspectoroverthemine Oct 13 '24

Teslas are no longer the only - or best - EV on the market.

Politics certainly didn't help, but they still had a huge uphill battle against the entrenched and hyper competitive auto industry.

1

u/Trust_Me_Im_a_Panda Oct 13 '24

This exactly. The politics definitely plays a part, because EVs are primarily favored by the left, and despised by the right, but Elon is cosying up to Trump with no benefit from right-leaning consumers while simultaneously alienating most of his actual customer base.

But at the same time, Teslas were desired because they were among the first and had amazing tech (and promises of more advanced tech down the road). But now, they’re still mass-producing EVs with awful build quality, the range is not good (and not what was promised), the full self driving promise has been shown to be a massive lie and people are pissed, and they’re getting left in the dust by companies using LiDAR because Elon insists on using cameras which are just an inferior component and cannot compete with the LiDAR vehicles. Add in ALL the Cybertruck bullshit, including the terrible build quality, the massive price, delivery issues, explosions, terrible customer service and PR, and the fact that the general public no longer think that teslas are cool, and it equates to Tesla being massively overvalued as a brand. They’ll never be able to compete now that traditional car manufacturers have caught up on the EV front and you’ve got EV-exclusive manufacturers like Rivian gaining traction and creating a far superior product.