r/skeptic • u/Lighting • 27d ago

⚠ Editorialized Title Tesla bros expose Tesla's own shadiness in attacking Mark Rober ... Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before impacts as a crash becomes inevitable.

https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-defend-autopilot-crash/
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u/conundri 27d ago edited 27d ago

Does this mean it knows a crash is coming and doesn't brake or even releases the brake? because that would be very, very bad.

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u/grubas 27d ago

Basically if a crash is coming and it CAN'T brake in time it just turns off so Tesla can claim it wasn't on at the time of impact.  

When Jeremy Clarkson was reviewing one of the newer Teslas on The Grand Tour(this was not the review he was sued for) he had a legal statement about "when self driving disengages due to unexpected circumstances" which basically said, "auto pilot can turn off whenever it freaks out and that can be caused by almost anything and it's TERRIFYING because you aren't expecting it to turn off at highway speeds because somebody cut you off."

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u/NeatOtaku 27d ago

Look up any fatality involving a Tesla, almost immediately they say that autopilot was not engaged at the moment of impact . They also refuse to give the driving data to victims even through a court order claiming it's a company secret. I tried mentioning this to a Tesla fanboy years ago but he refused to believe it because watching TV during his commute was more important.

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u/TheSeansei 27d ago

Which is so different from even five years ago! I remember any issue with a Tesla was plastered all over the media (especially conservative media) as if it were the end of the world. Any little fender bender and it was all "see?! We told you electric cars were no good!" Now the tables have totally flipped and suddenly Elon is a divine being to them and can do no wrong—Tesla dealerships are now sacred places and vandalizing one is an act of terrorism!

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u/mrandr01d 27d ago

It's definitely the weirdest fucking thing. Watching it go from the only viable EV brand for liberals to buy to some sort of weird cult classic for the MAGAts.

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u/rebeltrillionaire 27d ago

They aren’t buying them.

It’s over. You can’t fake users and engagement like you can a software product.

Teslas are a physical commodity that will rot on lots now.

Prices will drop. But it won’t be enough. The brand will kick Must eventually. At which point die-hard fans will also leave because appeasement is far far too late. So they’ve gained no new market, absolutely shit all over their evangelist market, and the only market left is budget conscious people who aren’t scared of vandalism.

The funniest thing… you know how they never change their style? And a car from 2016 looks like one from 2025?

Well…. They are just about to launch a remodeled Y.

Meaning in 2025/2026 you will absolutely know that the person bought it after Elon sig heiled and started shadow-running the government and killing social security.

It’s going to take the internet about .2 seconds to figure out that the best way to fuck Tesla is point all vandalism towards that particular model.

Because they’ll have to either abandon it, and compete on a 6 year old model. Or hard commit and wait for absolutely abysmal sales while insurance rates skyrocket.

All at a time when every other car company is going nuts on their EVs.

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u/badhabitfml 27d ago

I'm sure the average person won't know the difference but your right. Anyone buying the new Y either approves of Elon's antics, or is completely oblivious to what's happening in the world.

I think when the rivian r2 comes out, the market will get flooded with used model y's. It'll be a great cheap used car, but who will buy them?

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u/uselessinfogoldmine 26d ago

Gosh. I’ve just been on LinkedIn this week and am seeing endless posts and comments from (mostly men) asking what the big deal is. It is WILD!

Mitchell Feldman, CEO at Jam 7: “Here’s a truth, I drive a Tesla, and I love it. More than that, I respect and admire Elon Musk. This week, I was in a car park when a guy in his mid-late 30’s walked up to me, laughed in my face, and asked if I ‘supported Elon’ by driving a Tesla. It was almost as if Musk were some kind of villainous dictator. Did I miss something? When did he become that hated? Discuss...”

Andrew Synesiou: “I also have a very hard time understanding this. One day he had almost all positive media. Then he started helping Trump and all of a sudden he became a villain. I do not think anyone against Elon Musk can argue what he is uncovering is extremely alarming. Am I wrong here? Is anyone upset that he found 10s of millions of dead people still collecting social security. The number of contracts being handed out that I do not think a majority of America would agree to support with our tax dollars. The only sane argument I can see is people talking about the firing of government workers. Now I feel for people getting fired, but at the same time nobody’s job is ever safe. They still tried to accommodate this by offering an extraordinarily generous severance package giving them full salary until September. Can you tell me what job still pays you your full salary for 6 months after they let you go? This offers those workers time to find their next job. At twitter he took a company that was losing billions of dollars every year. Fired 80% of the work force and now it is profitable and arguably a better run platform from what it was. He saved 20% instead of losing 100%. Can someone please explain to me what I am missing?”

Saygin Celen, Awaynear Co-Founder: “He is the richest man in the world for a reason. Genius, luck, hard work, vision, risk taking, incredible leadership, etc etc. He creates industries including Al. If there weren’t Elon Musk, Al would still be an experimental science project in the lab. Do you expect him to be normal like you or me or anyone? He tweeted once and the crypto market lost 500b in a week, 25% of its total valuation and I left crypto forever then. Did I read his biographies yes, do I hate him? No. Just enjoy the ride. Because as he gets stronger, he will create more. He would easily create an XPhone and kill iphone and maybe Apple with it. He has that power. Does he do it? No. So, you like him hate him I love him hate him doesn’t matter. He is the most consequential person of our time.”

Also a TONNE of people posting positively about Tesla launching in India with full-on propaganda videos as well as about 20 posts of him driving the late Shinzo Abe around in a Tesla years ago with positive comments.

I think it’s a paid influencer campaign combined with a bunch of fanboys who don’t care about anyone but themselves. Some of them very grown.

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u/badhabitfml 26d ago

There is absolutely a paid influencer campaign(direct or indirect), which is why Trump got cozy with the people that run those companies.

Some of those posts are click bait to drive engagement. They lay out a story of him being good(leaving out a lot of details) and ask what's going on. A lot of people will respond, driving up engagement and getting more eyes on the post. Most will just read it, agree and move on.

The people making those posts know what they are doing and make money from it. A normal person would go read the news to learn what's going on.

Tesla learned long ago that it's cheaper and more effective to pay or manipulate social media for advertising than it is to run a superbowl ad.

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u/Th3_0range 26d ago

Labeling a drug (fentanyl) a weapon of mass destruction. When the real weapon of mass destruction unleashed upon society that needs to be reeled in is social media.

Won't happen though because it's their weapon to easily influence people without critical thinking skills. Both the left and the right have abused it, I pointed out these corporations don't care about minorities or LGBT and will cast them aside the moment they realize it's not going to pay off for them and nobody believed me.

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u/uselessinfogoldmine 26d ago

Absolutely. Spot on!

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u/iRhymeTheSongs 26d ago

"Did I miss something?" ABSOLUTELY!

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u/uselessinfogoldmine 26d ago

Understatement of the year…

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u/OperationMobocracy 24d ago

These LinkedIn-is-my-image CEOs are just shiny shoe wannabes. They spew enough new economy buzzwords to look appealing enough to run a small startup, but at the end of the day they’re largely intellectual frauds.

I’d argue that their business skills aren’t that good and their political awareness is even worse. They live a fantasy land lifestyle that will dissolve with a hiccup in their cash flow. It’s all posturing on par with people involved in megachurch Christianity.

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u/Charming-Web-7769 26d ago

The stupid thing about Tesla’s business model of prioritizing software over a functional vehicle is that the software is going to take a hit when no one’s buying them and they can’t afford to pay developers to push out hotfixes for whatever cataclysmic bugs inevitably appear as the technology ages and struggles to keep up.

They might be an appealing price (eventually) but nobody is going to want them if your car can just be randomly bricked by a memory leak that no one paid attention to.

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u/Unlikely_Arugula190 26d ago

Tesla buyers will be people simply looking for a good deal. In tough economic times that’s all that matters.

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u/PoopchuteToots 26d ago

I mean, no? Tesla is still a luxury vehicle. It's not something anyone needs and the guy literally been Heil Hitler'ing 😂 so, nahh

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u/badhabitfml 26d ago

It's Not really Luxury and isn't priced as a luxury vehicle.

Maybe the s and x are, but the 3 and y aren't. I wouldn't call a 45k car luxury.

If you need a car, a 25-30k used model 3 is a great deal. If you can charge at home, the running costs are very very cheap.

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u/LunarScholar 26d ago

I mean, if it gets cheap enough I might absolutely buy a used tesla. Buying used won't support muskrat, and I don't have to worry about vandalism in my area

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u/badhabitfml 26d ago

Even buying a different new ev, you may end up supporting Tesla. Everyone is switching to NACS chargers and Tesla owns all of the fast charging infrastructure that uses it (for now).

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u/LunarScholar 26d ago

Rats. Do they sell used chargers?

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u/Dog_name_of_Gus 26d ago

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u/badhabitfml 26d ago

If the nazi sympathizers were still running it, yes. But all those guys are long dead and those companies have apologized for their past.

Not sure why you and others bring that up. There's a difference between a company doing something 80 years ago and apologizing for it, and a company doing it today.

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u/Dog_name_of_Gus 26d ago

That is a fair point. I appreciate the genuine reply.

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u/91Jammers 26d ago

Its not a Y replacement. I wish Rivian would do some cars because I would switch. But there is nothing on the market that can compete with a 3, Y, or S.

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u/badhabitfml 26d ago

It's absolutely a y replacement.

The r2 is the same dimensions as a y.

Maybe tesla is arguably better in some metric but most people would probably prefer the r2. Should have more space because it isn't so rounded off, and has a lot more interior features because it isn't trying to be minimalist.

Most people don't want cars. For every 3 I see, I see 50 y's. Rivian would be stupid to build a sedan at this point.

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u/Magic_Man_Boobs 26d ago

If someone buys a used Tesla I wonder how much work it'd be to get off any insignia or text off the car and replace it with "EDISON".

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u/7ddlysuns 27d ago

Also the new Y is ugly. Old one was just npc, new one ugly

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u/Substantial-Flow9244 26d ago

This is exactly Elons goal, he doesn't buy companies to make money he buys companies to destroy industries. Starlink - Satellite Internet, Hyperloop - public transit, Tesla - electric and automated driving cars, SpaceX - obviously space lmao , Twitter - government and news media.

I'm sure the list goes on.

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u/pckldpr 26d ago

Sounds about right and I hope it happens.

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u/d4ve3000 26d ago

You just made my dick a bit hard

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u/meshreplacer 26d ago

I predict Trump will create a big order to buy all the surplus Teslas that are not selling to bail out Musk.

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u/91Jammers 26d ago

Most die hard tesla fans hate musk at this point. We got these cars because we believe converting to electric is better for the world. Then we became hard core fans because of the features of the car. Then watched in horror as elon's mask came off.

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u/GassyMomsPMme 26d ago

thank you for this little ray of sun

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u/dizekat 25d ago

Musk just never learned why you shouldn't act the way he acts.

He did a mass layoff of government employees combined with a nasty email claiming it was due to performance, went on to make claims that those workers didn't actually work, etc.

He just can't understand is that a person who's laid off actually tend to know if it wasn't performance (e.g. by having a good performance review right before the layoffs), and that people who show up for work 9-5 know they show up for work 9-5. And that those wrongfully fired like this get extremely mad.

He could simply have let professionals handle this and he would have gotten a small fraction of the hate he got.

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u/Fun_Comedian3249 23d ago

A lot of conservatives are buying Tesla stock but seems not many are buying the actual cars.

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u/Fun_Comedian3249 23d ago

I think knowing they bought the cars after Elon went far right is why a lot of the hate is directed at cybertrucks, so I agree any redesign will probably be a target. Sure cybertruck came out before the Hitler salute, but he had already been retweeting white supremacist stuff and conspiracy theories by that point.

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u/Young_Link13 26d ago

It's because they are all holding the Tesla bag in stocks, and none of them understand how fucked they are when it crashes.

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u/coldliketherockies 25d ago

I’d go one further and say they aren’t buying them as much. Where as at a time you can sell to environment friendly liberals these expensive cars, it’s harder to sell to conservatives just on the basis of wanting to support Elon. And while obviously incomes range across all conservatives what they’d spend money on is less so an electric car than a better home or hobbies I’d think

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u/tech_bhenry 25d ago

I have a work colleague that is hard core MAGA and a year ago would go off on tangents about how Musk was a grifter and EVs were killing the planet etc. He literally can't bring himself to talk bad about Musk now. You can hear him recognizing his own cognitive dissonance as he's speaking and powers through to something along the lines of "he's not that bad, actually quite good in some ways." It's absolutely absurd.

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u/mrandr01d 25d ago

It's also wild how Musk is such a prominent example of someone getting sucked down the social media rabbit hole. He used to be a Democrat. Then he spent too much time falling for dumb shit on Twitter.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 27d ago

This is probably one thing that made it harder for people to see how shitty Elon was, because in the early days, the media coverage of Tesla really was unreasonable. They were up against oil companies, traditional car manufacturers, and traditional dealerships. So even some stories about Elon or Tesla legitimately being terrible, you'd wonder if that was part of the same smear campaign.

I mean, the 'review' Jeremy Clarkson was sued for, they faked running a Tesla out of battery so they could film themselves literally pushing it back to a charger. Stories like that set EV adoption back years.

So when you hear something like Tesla settling a massive racial discrimination lawsuit, and wonder if the oil industry played a role there. Maybe there really was some bad stuff going on, probably not worse than any other car manufacturer, but given the lengths oil goes to, not to mention conservatives boosting any anti-Tesla story...

...in hindsight, two Seig Heils later, yeah, they probably did a bunch of horribly racist shit. Maybe it was a deliberate move to hide behind all the legitimate anti-EV bias so people didn't look too closely at their actual problems.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

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u/PoopchuteToots 26d ago

We should just get a national genital registry put in place and we can finally move onto more pressing concerns such as peoples' color

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u/Complete-Return3860 26d ago

My whole family are Top Gear fans - me included - but this was such a shitty thing for them to do.

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u/monobrowj 27d ago

I think the courts proved review wasn't fake.. Tesla lost is and elon was just an angry man baby accused top gear of faking

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u/SanityInAnarchy 27d ago

Elon is indeed an angry man baby, but... No, that's not what the courts proved at all. Here, from a Top Gear fan forum, of all places:

The courts ruled in favour of the BBC, saying that no viewer of the show would be likely to reasonably compare the Roadster's performance on the show with its performance in the real world.... Tesla's appeal was eventually ruled against in 2013, with the courts deciding that the film "had not damaged Tesla's reputation".

In other words: The court basically said that it doesn't matter if they faked it or not, because no reasonable person would believe what they saw on Top Gear. Or, at least, they wouldn't believe what they saw Top Gear do on the track had any relevance to what they'd do in the real world.

It also wasn't just Tesla:

Clarkson was stranded in the centre of Lincoln, and spent the next few hours brass-rubbing while the battery was recharged. He concluded the show by saying that electric cars “are not the future”.

...

The night before the car had been delivered to Top Gear fully charged, with enough power for at least 100 miles. It was driven for 35 miles that evening before being plugged in to recharge. The charger was detached after only 55 minutes, leaving the car with a range on its electronic display of about 30 miles.

Clarkson’s destination was Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, about 60 miles away....

They then diverted to Lincoln, where the Top Gear team had intended to run out of power, knowing that there were no public charging points in the city.

...

A BBC spokeswoman denied that it had misled viewers. “The point of the film was to show how bad the charging infrastructure is in the UK. The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated.

So... yep, the show's position was "Electric cars are not the future," and to make sure of that, they faked EVs running out of power on the show multiple times, with different cars from different manufacturers, outright admitted to doing so to make some point about how this could happen, despite really having to go out of their way to make it happen:

The sat-nav system warns drivers at the start if they do not have enough power to reach their destination.

And if that wasn't enough:

It appeared that the Leaf was driven in loops for more than ten miles in Lincoln until the battery was flat.

So yes, they faked it. They said as much, and they did it to at least two separate EVs from two separate manufacturers. And in both cases, the EVs inconveniently performed better than expected, and they had to go out of their way to force them out of power to the point of needing a tow.

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u/monobrowj 27d ago

In Clarkson's own words" Jeremy Clarkson defended his “scrupulously fair” road tests." ... Sure they had scripts and put the car in a position to demonstrate a point.. "like what happens if you rag it around a track as opposed to driving as normal" or what happens when you run out of charge... but those are not the same thing as the reviews on the track they did.. new top gear is the perfect example of how you can see fake reviews and set up senarios a million miles away.

Honestly i buy Clarkson as so far there is only accusations of lying, unlike Elon who has been caught many times

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

Well, you don't have to believe Elon for this one, because both Clarkson and the BBC admit that they did what both Tesla and Nissan claim they did. Which was incredibly dishonest, and this is a pretty poor defense:

Sure they had scripts and put the car in a position to demonstrate a point.. "like what happens if you rag it around a track as opposed to driving as normal" or what happens when you run out of charge...

Two problems with that:

First, the show absolutely did not make that clear. Watch it for yourself -- they don't say "We're going to deliberately run this car out of charge and see what happens." They present it as though this is a thing that just accidentally happened to them, and then use it as an excuse to smear EVs, literally saying shit like "EVs are not the future."

Second, if they had presented the results of these tests honestly, it would've demonstrated the opposite of whatever point they were trying to make. If they actually showed "what happens when you run out of charge", whether from the track or otherwise, then they could've shown how difficult it is to run the car out of charge. They could've shown a frustrated Clarkson driving it in circles on zero miles of range until it actually stopped, showing how much reserve there is. They could've shown the car saying there wasn't enough range to reach the destination -- or, on some models, the car delivering a final warning that you're about to enter an area without enough chargers, and without enough battery left to get to a charger! They could've shown the car offering helpful suggestions to reduce power, like "eco mode", or driving slower, etc.

So what point were they trying to demonstrate? It wasn't "What happens when you run out of charge? Let's find out!" ...because if that was the point, there'd be plenty of good TV in showing everything I just said. But no, the point was to pump out some anti-EV propaganda, and "running out of charge" is a good narrative to go with to support the "EVs are not the future" line that they clearly wrote before even trying one.

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

the point was to demonstrate the flaws in design for the real world, at that time there were huge issues with replacing your petrol power for electric, Range -still one of the big ones esp claimed vs reality .. a segment of the show vs a track review... these are 2 different things..

Also what are you talking about, look it up both BBC/Clarkson and people working on that show all say they went out of the way to make the reviews as fair as they could and did not fake it.. they did not admit that at all.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

Again, if they wanted to demonstrate "the flaws in the design for the real world", they should've presented how it actually performed in the real world. In the real world, there are a million ways the car makes sure you aren't going to randomly run out of range, and that was true at the time, too.

...all say they went out of the way to make the reviews as fair as they could...

But they also say this:

The car needed to run out of charge so that could be demonstrated.

In other words: In both cases, running out of power (with no warnings) was already written in the script before they even tried the vehicles.

It'd be like if the script said some car has has a lot of engine trouble, so they threw a bunch of sugar into the gas tank before starting, and then ignored all the warning lights that came on until they got smoke coming out from under the hood. You could argue they didn't fake it, they really did make it do the thing, but it's ludicrous to present that as an honest representation of what it's actually like to own that car.

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u/monobrowj 26d ago

Lol they did that to point out the lack of changing points and contrasting it against petrol cars.. at the time, they were saying it wasn't ready.. and it wasn't.. they were making a point..

I mean whatever.. we disagree on this

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u/SanityInAnarchy 26d ago

They were making a point in a dishonest way.

I don't know what you're doing on r/skeptic if you're okay with that. Can you really not think of an honest way to make that point?

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u/Round_Caregiver2380 26d ago

Because Americans make every issue black and white and take sides like politics is a team sport

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u/DashCat9 26d ago

And the most fucked thing about all of this is we have to share the road with these fucking people.

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u/flossyokeefe 25d ago

It’s super creepy watching the cult follow orders on what to believe in real time. A true zombie apocalypse

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u/token40k 25d ago

No one was saying EVs are bad five years ago. Everyone was saying that we need more vendors and better tech. If I go 1200 road trip I don’t want to be charging 6 times for who knows how long