Oh, but it’s okay - Elon Musk’s attorneys have reassured Twitter employees that they won’t get in any legal trouble… of course, they aren’t representing the Twitter employees and those statements don’t constitute legal advice and they certainly won’t put them in writing…
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Yep. I feel for the Twitter staff, some of whom are at risk of learning the hard way that verbal green lights from management turn red in writing, after the fact.
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or even which country. it’s got to be especially hard on the h1b workers 
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Yup, or those who had work from home arrangements and moved elsewhere who are now being told to “return to the office or fuck off”
But Musk has shown time and time again that he doesn’t particularly care about those who work for him.
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Arriving? Teslas are the fifth most popular electric car in this territory. And it is they who are arriving into a market that Nissan in particular dominated for many years, Hyundai being a more recent large part, and VW doing well after that.
Teslas are, however, the most expensive cars in the electric car top ten. That’s their actual niche: being status symbols.
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At the UK end, the Tesla charging network appears more robust than the general network, as a general Type 2 user.
It’d be better if Tesla was required to make their charger conform to some standard. But our gov has been such a wet blanket on charger deployment - there was money available to bribe places to install chargers, but none to maintain them. Planning a long-distance trip involves a lot of “if this charger is broken, do we have charge to get to the next one?”.
Tesla network chargers seem to always be working, or at least more often than general ones.
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VW is arriving. They spent a lot of time on turbo diesel - my Chevy Bolt was partially paid for by a 2011 VW Jetta sport wagen with TDI… when they went through their corporate soul searching on that I replied to one of their emails with “obviously never buying any diesel cars from you again, and if you don’t have anything electric or at least plug-in hybrid there won’t be anything to pick from.” That was in 2018. So the new stuff that they have developed since was in the framework of Europe jettisoning high efficiency diesel as a possible transitional technology.
Nissan’s Leaf was a less than 100 mile range car in 2017. It’s now comparable to the Bolt and Teslas - if you get the Leaf e+ it is 239 miles - but at the time it wasn’t practical for longer commutes, I think it was like 80 miles in 2017. They have been a leader in the powertrains, though. The main US leader is obviously Chevy. Ford is just getting started.
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The base model 2023 Bolt is about $27k and has a 65kW battery with a 259 mile range. The base model 2023 Leaf is about $28k with a 40kW battery and about a 150 mile range. So they’re maybe in the same ballpark but if you’re on a tight budget and range is a big concern you’re probably going for the Bolt.
Edit to add: apparently Nissan still qualifies for the Federal tax rebate while Chevy does not, so that’s a big factor in favor of the Nissan for some buyers.
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I think the IRA resets the numbers on the Fed tax credit, so the Bolt qualifies again. Also… as I’ve learned trying to buy a plug-in hybrid minivan - a lot of formerly qualifying electric vehicles (both full EV’s and plug-ins) got knocked out by the “north American power train” requirement. So for example, the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in still qualifies, but the Kia Sorento doesn’t.
One happy note - the income limits of the credit effectively knocks them out for most Tesla vehicles. Model 3 buyers are possibly going to qualify, but come January someone buying a $80k EV probably won’t.
On the Leaf, when you don’t live in California these range numbers are “summer range” only. So when I lived in upstate NY on top of a mountain and was driving my Bolt, and we had -10 sustained for days, my 235 miles nominal range was worth 145 miles. That makes a lot of commutes with the standard Leaf (40kWh) pretty risky… that ~150 mi range could be less than 100 or 90 especially if you decide to use the heater while you drive. (I remember driving 56 miles each way from Schoharie County to Clifton Park north of Albany, and deciding to wear gloves so that I wouldn’t have to do the last 10 miles from the highway - with an elevation gain of 1000 feet - watching my range go from 30 to less than 15… at which point the radio turns off).
Also remember these battery numbers are “BOL” (Beginning of Life) so my Bolt’s 235 mi summer range went down to about 205 after I put 60,000 miles on it (happily I just got a new pack 3 months ago thanks to LG Chem’s massive screwups.) So when you think winter + 8 years from now 150 miles is really only safe for a commute of about 30 miles… assuming you need 20 miles of padding for “unexpected detour” or roadwork.
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You may as well ask why someone who isn’t a hard-core MAGAist would work for Trump.
Actually, you might as well ask that. I’d love to see a psychological profile of all the little people – not the Giulianis and them but the personal assistants, contractors, accountants, and so on. Why would you work for someone who won’t ever listen to you, will be an asshole to you, and will probably fire and disparage you tomorrow?
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I am seriously hoping that this behavior makes the wheels fall off at the Tesla division that does power system batteries. I’ve spent years dealing with asshole “disruptive” behavior from that group… “we don’t need a fire detection system because we have magic technology that never goes on fire”.
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So as to sleep inside and not eat food out of dumpsters, pretty much. There’s True Believers in the mix, aye, but it’s the Libertarian seasteads writ large, only folks carry on doing the drudge work whilst hating the why because paycheque.
(Viz: seasteads analogy, there’s something very focussing about ‘without us, you fuckers would all die real quick’, that is missing at the moment living and working in decaying global North empires. Stuff is going to get interesting - for Chinese Curse values thereof- depressingly soon. Mutinies ahoy!)
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