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blonder

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There are millions of people living in cities that do not own their own home, that cannot charge every day (speaking as an EV enthusiast that rents somewhere that thankfully has public charging across the street). For those that are able to charge at home, there is definitely a mindset shift that needs to happen. I have seen the lightbulb over my friends heads turn on when I ask them how they would like it if their gas cars could fill up 1 gallon per hour at their house, and if so why would they care how long a gas station fill up takes.

Handling cash costs money too though. I know some small business are credit/debit card only since they do not want to deal with the hassle of cash. Out of everywhere I have been, only one place (some grocery chain in SLC) has accepted debit cards but not credit cards.

I appreciate your rabid optimism, but considering that Moores Law has ceased to be true for multiple years now I am not sure a handwave about being able to scale to infinity is a reasonable way to look at things. Plenty of things have slowed down in progress in our current age, for example airplanes.

Sam has claimed that they are profitable on inference. Maybe he is lying but I don't think speaking so absolutely about them losing money on that is something you can throw around so matter of fact. They lose money because they dump an enormous amount of money on R&D.

I don't think you can confidently say how it will pan out. Maybe OpenAI is only unprofitable at the 200/month tier because those users are using 20x more compute than the 20/month users. OpenAI claims that they would be profitable if they weren't spending on R&D [1], so they clearly can't be hemorrhaging money that badly on the service side if you take that statement as truthful.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/08/15/sam-altman-gpt5-launch-chat...

Stealing a catalytic converter to sell for money cannot be equivocated to shoplifting. Plenty of shoplifters are doing it for the thrill or to obtain things that they wouldn't pay for, no one is doing that with cats, they are doing it to try and survive.

As a (former) huge tesla fan/shareholder, and current model 3 enjoyer, the cybertruck really makes me upset. The millions of dollars and engineering hours devoted to that thing that could have been devoted to a new product that people actually want and use (or even a halo product like the forgotten new roadster) was and is incredibly wasteful.

I would counter your charging anecdote almost entirely with my anecdote. I have never had to worry about arriving at a destination without enough to make it to another supercharger, that worked great in 2022 when I got my model 3 and works great today. I have never had so much as a single issue with a supercharger not working or being out of service and not saying it on the car screen. I don't have any rebuttals for your other points: winter range stinks, and tires wear faster than gas equivalents. EVs really need a battery innovation to add another 100 estimated miles to really push them into the mainstream imo. If we can get to the 450ish range that would help a lot.

Tesla in 2024 is certainly succeeding in spite of Elon. From firing the supercharging team because he had some kind of mental break to the tens of millions of dollars and engineering hours wasted on the cybertruck instead of another practical vehicle he clearly isn't contributing much to what is at this point a matured company that doesn't need a maniac (for better or worse) at the helm.

As an EV believer that happily owns a Tesla Model 3, I grimace thinking about peoples first EV experience being a rental car. When I went on a 4 day vacation that would include a decent amount of driving (going from Fort Lauderdale out to Key West & back) I specifically chose the Nissan Altima in the corner of the lot, rather than the fancy EV Mercedes that wouldn't have cost me any more money due to my status with Hertz. If there was a Tesla I probably would have been fine picking it due to the robustness of the supercharger network, but someone's first EV experience being a Chevy Bolt while on vacation is setting the EV movement back years.

While not giving any energy back, Teslas can now detect when regen breaking is limited, and blend in the regular brakes for you, so that you don't have to change your driving style. It has only come out in the past couple of weeks, but I cannot tell the difference when regen is supposedly limited after enabling the feature. Before it was a little dangerous to have to modify your driving style and watch out for how much regen your car uses compared to its normal amount, since after a week of driving an EV in the summer you don't ever really touch the break pedal.