From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Both electric cars and spacex are government subsidized industries. He’s not competing on the free market. Elon excels at getting the government to make his business for him.

    • krische@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      He’s not competing on the free market.

      Those subsidies are exclusively available only to Elon’s companies?

      Come on, he’s a massive douche; but Tesla/SpaceX are in the same market as all their competitors. They’re not special, they just chose to do things others weren’t. Why didn’t GM build BEVs sooner to suck up all those subsidies? Why didn’t ULA land their boosters to reduce launch costs and secure more launch contacts and grants?

        • krische@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And that’s a bad thing? Isn’t the entire purpose of that government money to spur development? Seems like it is working as intended then?

          There’s no shortage of reasons to hate Elon, but using government subsidies for their intended purpose seems like a strange one.

          • Alimentar@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yes it’s bad. Competing for market share should be balanced and free of government intervention. How does a company (small or large) hope to compete against a company that is being subsidised.

            Tesla can then undercut their competitors as they don’t need to make a profit. They’re subsidiesed.

            Then the government has also imposed regulations for car manufacturers, that if they don’t sell enough EVs in the year, they have to pay a penalty by buying carbon credits.

            Well Tesla sells those carbon credits. So they can undercut their competition, entice consumers with lower prices and recoup the losses through subsidies and selling these credits. All thanks to government intervention.

            Basically screwing competition and screwing you. As these have knock on effects.

    • Toto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Totally agree but they would have been subsidized for anyone. It was Elon who did it

      Reminder: I really hate him

      But people saying that anyone could have done what he did IF they were born with money or IF government subsidies could somehow apply to them too. Plenty of born rich people out there who didn’t.

      He’s a smart guy. Emotionally a child, sociopath and narcissist. But he actually deserves some credit.