My husband has been wondering if he should get formally diagnosed for ADHD now that our kid has been. (Talk about a carbon copy of a parent, this kid, geeze.) This explains a lot about the way he cooks. He always says it’s because he “needs more practice” but all I see is a chaotic stressful experience, and of course if I try to help him I just get in the way and make him irritated that I seem to think he can’t manage it on his own. Anyway all I’m saying is that it’s interesting to read your comment because I wonder if that’s my husband’s trouble, too.

We did that with PG&E. Except we did get something in return: lots of dead people.

I get that. I had already been burned by VW with the TDI scandal, so I was pretty frustrated with car companies in general. Are any of them truly ethical or consumer-focused? We saw that Tesla was at least trying to make the electric car thing work and we wanted to support that movement—not because we think electric cars are the endgame solution, but because we think they’re a step in the right direction and we wanted to encourage the market to follow their lead.

And buying a car is not an investment. It’s not like we own Tesla stock.

One thing I did really, really like about buying a car from Tesla is that they don’t use a dealership model. What a breath of fresh air! I never want to buy from a dealer ever again if I can help it. But I think the next time we’re in the market, we’ll buy used anyway.

I’m in a different position financially than where I was six years ago.

Flooding the used Tesla market is not a strategy I had heard before you mentioned it, actually. Maybe if I was in the same position that I was six years ago financially, I would be making different choices. But I’m not.

As for my soul, Lemmy talks a big game about focusing on the class struggle, but whenever I admit to having a Tesla, everyone piles on like I am the worst person ever. I got flat out scammed by VW and I certainly didn’t fucking know that Musk was quite as massive a tool as he has shown himself to be now. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. But all I’m saying is that I’m not the real enemy here.

I guess I see what you’re saying about not trusting Elon Musk because he had promised something that thus far had not been delivered. And you’re right, we didn’t trust him and didn’t purchase the option. But we thought the car was still okay. I still like the car, for the most part. Does that make sense? The car and the full self driving option were two separate purchases, one of which we did not make.

We did not purchase full self driving. My husband rightfully thought that it was a bit of a pipe dream. I’m too much of a control freak to allow a car to drive for me. Also six years ago was 2019 so if you think I fell for “full self driving by 2016” then I think you can’t do math.

Any car is sold at a loss. As someone who recently paid one of these off, I can’t stomach a new car payment in the face of our melting economy because six years ago I didn’t foresee the head of a car company turning out to be a freaking nazi.

Considering my Tesla replaced a VW TDI, I’m feeling particularly salty and completely disillusioned about ethical consumption under capitalism, etc. etc. I wish people on Lemmy could have some empathy and not just assume that everyone driving a Tesla is sanctioning anything that Elon Musk does.

Could be something intangible, like people associate this uplifting news with Tesco and thus are more likely to patronize Tesco.

You could say we bought our Teslas “for the environment” in a way, though a bit roundabout. When we bought them (2018), it was after having previously leasing a Leaf which had shit mileage and poor performance over 40mph. We wanted to signal to the industry with our dollars that we wanted the EV movement to succeed. Because apparently money is the only thing they listen to. We knew full well that EVs were only a step toward a greener future or whatever but we wanted the industry to take that step and understand that being environmentally friendlier was important.

I don’t remember exactly when I did but it was around then. Sooo much happier honestly.

You think some of the right-wingers who decry climate change will adopt EVs via Tesla since Elon sucks up to their guy now?

We just did. Only reason it took this long is because it auto-renewed this time last year for a year slightly ahead of when we thought it was gonna do that. Oops.

Some of us Tesla drivers refuse to use any of their bullshit auto-driving software (I don’t even use lane assist anymore) because of bad experiences so hopefully most of them are just driving normally. Which I do admit may not spark much confidence given how terrible some drivers are.

My gen alpha kids got it in 3rd grade. Or rather one did and one is about to.

That’s not what they’re saying. It’s essentially a “door ajar” warning. The sensor is what’s failing, rather than the physical part.

I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)

Yes! This is my dad to a T. Meanwhile, my husband and I (oldish millennials) “cut the cord” fairly early on but more importantly, we actually have the TV off occasionally. That only happens in my parents’ house if my dad isn’t home. When I was a kid, he’d be working in the garage — where he had a TV — but we weren’t allowed to change the channel in the living room because he’d go back and forth and didn’t want to miss anything.

It’s a hard balance, being parents right now. I’m going to make an assumption and guess you mean you see them in public, yeah? The thing is (I say this as a parent of currently 9 and 7 year olds), our society — at least, my society in the US — still feels a bit like it expects children to be “seen and not heard” while in public. If even seen, to be honest. I don’t see it as much here on Lemmy but I saw anti-kid posts on Reddit all the time. I don’t mean childfree; I mean they constantly complained about other people’s kids. Yes, sometimes that can be due to a lack of structured parenting, but kids are also just little socially-inept, impulse-driven creatures who are still figuring the world out. The urge to hand them a magical little device that will occupy them and keep them “seen and not heard” while you are out somewhere is perilously strong.

All that being said: just last week I was sitting to the side at my son’s martial arts class, and next to me was a mom on her phone who had a young girl, maybe 3 or 4, next to her. The girl was squirmy but quiet. I could not help noticing that the mom barely looked up from her phone the whole time. I felt really bad for the girl.