Tesla was winning because they had insight and balls to make electric cars that actually looked and worked like normal fucking cars. Everyone else who was making EVs failed to resist the temptation to reinvent the definition of the car, throwing out a century of wisdom and natural selection of features of good car design, to the point that it seemed like nobody wanted to succeed.

As soon as they forgot this, their downfall began.

"Well before this tragedy, Defendant Tesla had received repeated notice that its vehicles were prone to Sudden Uncommanded Acceleration [SUA], explosive fires, whether triggered by a crash or occurring spontaneously, and that such fires were difficult and time-consuming to extinguish. Tesla also knew that its decision to prevent its AEB system from activating would allow otherwise preventable collisions to kill and maim people. Tesla knew that its reliance on electronic door systems created a serious risk of occupant entrapment after crashes. Owners, rescuers, and regulators had documented prior incidents where Tesla occupants survived crash forces but were unable to escape when power failed and fire ensued. Despite these warnings, Defendant Tesla continued to market and sell vehicles including the subject vehicle that predictably trapped survivors in foreseeable emergencies."

"The Dennises were traveling westbound on South 56th Street, toward the intersection with South Washington Street, in Tacoma, Washington, when their Tesla Model 3 suddenly and rapidly accelerated out of control, continuing to accelerate faster and faster for at least 5 seconds before crashing into a utility pole on the northwest corner of South 56th and South Washington streets shortly after 1:00 PM. 9. Video footage from a nearby business shows the Dennis Model 3 rapidly accelerating and swerving to avoid hitting other vehicles as it sped out of control. At no time did the Model 3s Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system engage prior to it crashing into the utility pole.

Immediately upon impact the Model 3 burst into flames, in what was only the beginning of an extremely hot fire that immediately engulfed the Model 3 and would burn for many hours before responders from the fire department were able to extinguish it completely.

Several bystanders ran to the vehicle and attempted to assist Jeff and Wendy Dennis but the Model 3s door handles would not operate by design making it impossible for anyone to open the doors from the outside of the vehicle. Several good Samaritans even attempted to use a baseball bat to break the car windows to help the Dennisses out of the burning vehicle. However, the increasingly intense fire forced them to distance themselves from the rapidly growing fire. They could only watch helplessly from a distance as the severely injured Jeff and Wendy burned in the inferno. The Tesla as it struck the utility pole.

[photos]

Seconds after impact the Tesla exploded into flames."

https://ia801700.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.wawd.3...

Italics are mine

HN commenters sometimes reply to stories about Tesla crashes by asserting that it was the driver's fault, Tesla batteries rarely catch fire, etc.

Perhaps this comment will draw some of those replies

Other cases mentioning "sudden uncommanded acceleration" include

Inkie Lee v. Tesla, Inc. (C.D. Cal. 2020)

Djemil v. Tesla Inc (W.D. Wash. 2021)

Thakrar v. Tesla, Inc. (N.D. Ill. 2022)

Leach v. Tesla, Inc. (N.D. Cal. 2023)

There are hundreds of wrongful death cases involving Tesla fires

Tesla fans are entitled to their opinions

What about the people that were killed because they couldn't figure out how to get out of the fucking car when it caught fire with them in the back?

I’ve considered Elon to be a bit of a bullshitter for almost as long as I’ve followed him. Back when he was an opportunistic Democrat, and now that he’s an ideological MAGA, his public statements always seemed to set off my bullshit detector. It seemed clear to me that his intention was more to manipulate perception rather than to disseminate factual information. While most business leaders are guilty of this to some degree, with Elon it seemed more cynically and nakedly so.

I’ve also come to consider him to be a skilled business person. He negotiated a ridiculous low price for the Fremont ex-NUMMI plant. He secured funding to enable Tesla to survive the GFC. The list goes on. I’d argue that Elon’s biggest wins were business related, not technical. Not that there weren’t technical accomplishments, it’s just that the technological accomplishments were more incremental SV type stuff whereas the business accomplishments were more heroic. I also give Tesla credit for the success of model S. But I consider that to be a function of good execution, not of technology. If that would have flopped it would have been the end. But there were many possible ways for Tesla to die back then.

One of Elon’s key business skills is his ability to sell a narrative. I guess that goes hand in hand with the “bullshitter” thing. He seems to have a magical ability to hypnotize fanboys and investors into believing that Tesla is more than it actually is.

The auto industry is not very sexy from an investor point of view. It’s a mature market, very capital intensive, high risk, low margin. Yet somehow Tesla achieves an outsized market cap.

As humorously noted in the HBO Silicon Valley “no revenue” scene, investors reward you for future promises and punish you on actual delivery. But what if you could promise a future that remains perpetually in the future? And every delivery is not an end, but only a step along the way to this utopian/distopian vision? What if you “promise the moon”, er, I mean Mars? If you did this, then maybe you could have a perpetual pure play that never expires.

So back to the article. Is this the demise of Tesla? I don’t know if Tesla necessarily has “no path forward” as “just a car company”. But I think Elon’s ability to sell the “sci-fi future” is wearing out. Tesla has delivered on some difficult business cases with incremental technology, but the track record on the “impossible future“ stuff isn’t good. Also, the mainstream EV industry will become increasingly commoditized with new Chinese entrants, eroding margins. Tariffs keep you in saturated markets and don’t help you in growing markets. So maybe a bit of a demise for all?

Wasn't Tesla Model Y globally the most sold car in 2023 and 2024. And second most sold car in 2025 (Toyota RAV4 was the most sold model).

Given that, objectively speaking I could not call Tesla irrelevant.

It's literally the best selling car in Norway with a over 50% increase in sales YoY.

Tesla is still trying to transition (heh) to 4680 battery cells. Elon has made the usual statements about Tesla being doomed if they don't make this happen. But it is a serious problem. Powering cars with tiny battery cells was brilliant when Tesla began. Now it's a cost problem.

You were duped. Tesla‘s paint it black video is from 2016 and one the first obvious lies. People called Musk out on his BS 10 years ago, but he successfully managed to keep a "genius" imagine in the media up until COVID-19 hit. Media sentiment changed around 2020/2021 to adjust to reality of Musk being a massive fraudster.

Thai Cave rescue happened in 2018. It should have already made obvious how completely deranged Musk was to everyone, even if they were not paying close attention before and were dazzled by self-driving cars and Mars colonization promises.

When Elon was a teenager he bullied another kid about his father’s suicide until the other kid pushed him down a flight of stairs. He has always been like this. His character was never a secret. Everything was in plain view but you didn’t want to see it.

He had a PR team working overtime to boost his image. Remember he had a cameo in movie Iron Man 3 back in the day.

He meticulously worked on his image for decades.

I thought Musk was pretty cool when he was just the guy making EVs and reusable rockets happen. I didn't even mind his over-optimistic projections, it's hard to be mad at optimism. But then he started becoming more of a public figure. He called that rescue worker a 'pedo guy' just for turning down a bad idea. He started broadcasting his philosophies, and they were mostly gross. He bought Twitter and made it so everyone had to see his dumb tweets. He revealed himself as a big, moist wad of lies and insecurities.

I have a hypothesis that the Hedonic Treadmill[1] can cause actual harm to the human brain; I suspect that over time, in certain brains, extreme wealth erodes the reward centers such that some rich people can't help but be miserable, flailing for ever-elusive life satisfaction. It seems like a fairly serious bug in human software.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

I ran into him and the group of obsessed hangers on in 1997-8 or so. He was a nutjob then.

> Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me?

Yes.

People's true nature reveals once they stop caring about money.

To be fair, he was really good at faking.

You were younger and more gullible, he still had a PR firm and didn't tweet his every "thought".

No. He is the same person. It just happens in a certain time, what he was selling aligned with what you were buying.

He always was an arrogant, over-privileged arsehole. But having an army of "fanboys" will have amplified his character flaws. Ditto his involvement with Trump et al.

I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics.

I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive.

Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races.

Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia.

I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of people you admire is going to be blank.

You may find Musk’s views distasteful but he’s had an enormous impact on EV’s, rocketry, hell space in general. I think it’s pretty awesome.

> I am still asking myself what the fuck happened?

I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well:

"Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security."

I think Biden giving credit to GM[1] and being used as a political football, prior to Musk entering politics in a big way himself, drove him away from the left and (by process of elimination) toward the right. Once you're down the rabbit hole, the rest is history.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646475

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/gm-ceo-joe-biden-elon-musk-t...

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It's childish to want to turn away and bury your head in the sand. He is what he was and looking away doesn't change that.

If you look through the site's article history and you don't see a single positive or even neutral post about Musk, it's clear that the firehose of Musk-sycophancy on his own website has broken your brain.

This is a website that took Hyperloop seriously because Musk casually threw it out there...

You can do that longer than people think, but not forever.

Has SpaceX not delivered?