To be fair, the main reason for this is that the CEO of Tesla looked at "people who buy electric vehicles", and spent the last four years turning himself into a caricature of a villain to those people.

At the best maybe it was some sort of misguided attempt to encourage the American right to buy EVs?

If so it royally backfired and just decimated his own customer base right at the time real competition was entering the market. The Equinox EV roundly beats the Model Y head to head on range, price, AWD, etc. The Ioniq 5 is more expensive but is lovely.

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rconti 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The CT sales are <10% of their capacity, per your wording. Do you think Model Y sales are down 90%?

No doubt Elon is destroying the profitability of his company by being a public asshole, but the Cybertruck is a fundamentally flawed vehicle (almost) nobody asked for, which is why it's a flop. By comparison, (refreshed) 3 and Y sales are not off by nearly as much, and some of that is just because they're just refreshes of existing vehicles people have been buying for many years, and there's a lot more competition in the EV market, and overall EV sales are slowing.

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margalabargala 4 days ago | parent [-]

Not really sure what you're referring to by "per your wording", but Tesla sales were down YoY both Q1 and Q2 of 2025.

Q1 was handwaved away back in April as "oh people are waiting for the new models" but then Q2 was down as well.

	▲	rconti 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry, must have been another thread, not your wording. Someone pointed out CT production is <10% of their planned capacity. So the CT is underperforming by 90%, but I'm sure 3/Y sales are _not_ down by 90%. Meaning the CT is an outsize failure, even if you take into account Elon tanking Tesla sales in general, and overall slowing or at least plateauing EV sales.

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eric_cc 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Equinox EV roundly beats the Model Y head to head

The Y is the best vehicle I’ve ever owned. To me, it took over what the Prius used to be - the best overall vehicle for most people.

You don’t even mention FSD here, I assume strategically. That, to me, is the most important feature. Does Equinox or Ioniq even have FSD?

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dexterdog 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The Y does not have FSD either.

	▲	margalabargala 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I can't reply to the other person because their comment got dead'd, but the Y and the Equinox have similar levels of self-driving available anyway. GM's Super Cruise is comparable to what Tesla calls FSD. I don't think the Ioniq has anything comparable.
	▲	eric_cc 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My car drives me around town unassisted. Whatever you want to call that - does the equinox or ioniq do that?

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margalabargala 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The Y and the Equinox have similar levels of self-driving available. GM's Super Cruise is comparable to what Tesla calls FSD.

I don't think the Ioniq has anything comparable.

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beAbU 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You are responding to a message about the cybertruck specifically, so I assume you are implying musk's behaviour is to blame for the poor sales of the CT?

The cybertruck fell flat long before Musk's true identity was revealed (maga/nazi affiliations).

Even if tesla was headed up by the most beloved CEO ever, I reckon the CT would still have sold poorly. It's just objectively a very bad, poorly designed and even worse built vehicle. And surprisingly, I feel like it's design aged very very quickly. It does not look next-gen or futuristic to me at all anymore.

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margalabargala 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's a lot of reasons the cybertruck is a failure, but I think a lot of it does come down to Musk; not just the cancelled orders because of his politics, but because purportedly he inserted himself into the engineering and development at a far stronger level for this vehicle than the other Tesla vehicles, and a lot of the issues stem from fulfilling his design demands.

At the time the CT was announced there were no other EV pickups remotely close to buyable. If he had stepped back, and let the people who designed the X, Y, and 3 do their thing, it would have been released in 2020, and even with its unique shape would have sold great, and probably would not have developed the reputation for poor quality that the current one has.

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eric_cc 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Elon Musk … nazi affiliations

Do you have a source for this?

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mavamaarten 4 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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margalabargala 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Like the other commenter said, doing something that looks like a nazi salute doesn't make you a nazi, and supporting far right parties does not make you a nazi.

Both those things do however make other people think you may be a nazi, which is all that really matters here.

Whether Elon Musk is a nazi is irrelevant, what matter is that people think he is.

	▲	Tallain 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		He may look like a duck, and he may quack like a duck, but don't let that fool you...

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eric_cc 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So no, you don’t have a source.

Supporting parties on the right does not make you a nazi.

Raising your hand does not make you a Nazi.

	▲	margalabargala 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Supporting parties on the right does not make you a nazi. > Raising your hand does not make you a Nazi. Fine, sure. Certainly there's a philosophical conversation to be had about what it means for one to be made a nazi by one's actions alone, in 2025. But that doesn't matter. All that's needed for Elon Musk's behavior to cause problems is for him to do things that make other people think he is a nazi, which is a much lower bar, and one that is met by supporting far right parties and making gestures indistinguishable from nazi salutes.