So, establishing facts is now “cheerleading” for the US automakers? Mkay then.
The point is that Telsa is not the trailblazer it pretends to be, especially with cars accessible to a larger cross-section of the American public. If they can make useful contributions to a shift to electric cars for a wider cross section of American consumers, then that’s great - I do welcome it. They’ve not really done so thus far. And as far as labor practices, they’ve worked to claw back all the hard earned gains made by labor in the 20th century by the UAW. If that’s the future of working the car industry for the rank and file worker, that’s a huge step backwards.
Maybe they should work WITH the industry and with especially labor, instead of “disrupting”?
And that’s if you ignore the EV-1 in the late 90s! If it had not been strangled by the oil cos, we’d be a lot further down the road to electric cars across the industry.
I can’t get my 18 year old son to focus on driving long enough to finish his lessons. He wants to get back to his iPhone. I predict that an Apple car will be a slow driving fully automatic machine, so that the passengers can give their attention to their devices.
Electrics dominated US and Euro cities pre-1910, especially taxis. Electric vehicles for commercial / industrial / transit applications have been built continuously ever since. Musk just kicked-in the notion that personal EVs could be ‘sexy’.
EVs are great where charging infrastructure exists. The nearest stations in my area are 20 miles downhill so they won’t swarm here soon. Another system-wide PG&E outage would leave hundreds of miles of roads unpowered. Many apartment dwellers lack powered parking spaces so forget overnight charging.
Personal EVs currently are for prosperous show-offs, and suburban commuters with home garages not filled with stuff. We do not qualify.
My intent was not to cheerlead for GM either (and one of the companies I noted was, after all, Japanese). My point was basically the same as @Mindysan33’s. Tesla certainly helped move public perception a bit and helped demonstrate there is a market that was being ignored a bit too much, but they get way too much credit for “inventing” electric cars or somehow “making” them practical. The original Roadster, after all, literally had off the shelf laptop batteries in it. The tech was ready and they showed that. It’s good that Tesla nudged things along, but their market valuation and reputation are so far beyond what they’re actually doing that it’s crazy.
My point was only that, once shown there was a demand, companies like Nissan and GM made cars just as good without too much difficulty. Plus, if you buy a Bolt or Leaf (or eGolf, e500, etc) odds are good you’ll still be able to get parts for it in 15 years. I wouldn’t put money on that with Tesla (and literally didn’t, partly for that reason).
Where I have said that they simply choose not to do those things?
I am pretty aware that the path in education are for the most part on peer and family pressure. Kids aren’t directly forced to seek a path, and when this happen the results are poor. But are convinced that certain study areas are better than other ones. On the contrary at least for what I’ve seen the engineering faculties are welcoming girl to take the path, sometimes there’s the asshole professor, but this is for all universities.
Women are ACTIVELY steered away from these fields, at a pretty young age (girls aren’t good at math and science, etc). The ones who make it through to college get it even worse.
Women who are in the field say other wise. And even if the faculty is welcoming, often the male students make it a nightmare to stay in.
None of this is a secret, people have been talking about it for years now.
If it had not been strangled by the oil cos, we’d be a lot further down the road to electric cars across the industry.
