So, in case the title hasn’t already been obvious, I am now the owner of a 2025 Tesla Model 3 Highland. Yeah, i know, in this day and age, that’s a hard thing to admit, especially considering the… Frankly abhorrent actions of the current (as of the time of writing, hopefully) CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk.
I am just going to come out and say it. Elon is a liability for Tesla. His recent actions, being seen right alongside Donald Trump at a frequency that is borderline annoying, seeing him jump for joy at a recent Trump rally, throw up blatant Nazi salutes, and campaign for parties in Europe and the UK, such as Reform and AfD, when just a year prior, he was actively campaigning for Ukraine during its ongoing struggle against Russia, and another year prior, he basically told anyone who was Homophobic to simply not buy a Tesla, should absolutely ring some extremely loud alarm bells for you.
The truth is, Elon’s not alone in his acquisition of Twitter. Part of the reason why he has made this massive shift towards promoting Trump, Russia and far-right parties in Europe predominantly lies in the fact that a Russian Oligarch now has a significant stake in Twitter. Likewise, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent shift to the Right has a lot to do with that same Russian oligarch throwing his hat into the ring of that company as well. I do not participate on pretty much any social media apart from this website and perhaps Discord, but i consider Discord to be a modern interpretation of IRC anyway, it’s more of a chatroom app than it is a social media platform. I’m a huge fan of the idea of not being a part of any social media, as it encourages the most impulsive, knee-jerky responses out of everyone, and social media at large relies on outrage, scandal and anger to survive. I just don’t feel I want to get involved with any of that shit to be honest.
As a long-time Tesla fan, I care more about the company itself than its CEO. I’ve been a huge proponent of electric vehicles ever since i was a young lad in high school. My sketchbooks were filled with concepts for EVs and Hybrid powered cars. I remember when I was like, 15 or so, i drew a concept for a sports car which featured a turbocharged, supercharged four cylinder engine and a plug-in system which would use a large-size Lithium Ion battery to provide motor assist around town and when accelerating. I called it “Triboost” at the time as it had three ways of boosting the engine’s performance. Nowadays, Hybrid systems are kind of mainstream, which is actually incredible in my eyes, and Electric cars are the new cutting-edge hotness.
I remember working with a colleague at a hobby shop a few years ago. He was one of those “Elon Glazer” types. Basically believed every thing that came out of that man’s mouth as if it was gospel.
“you know, Full-self-driving is going to be a thing by 2017, you wait, you can buy a Tesla and have it drive you around and also drive others around too, so you can make money when the car’s parked”
Y’know, that kinda bullshit. It’s 2025, and FSD isn’t even at L3, it’s also only just eeking out to be a L2 system. But, i responded with a mere “Yeah, that’s kinda bullshit and all, but the idea of an Electric car is fantastic.”
So colour me shocked when I bought a Model 3 in late 2024, that FSD isn’t even legally allowed in Australia, so it’s not able to be activated as yet. EAP is allowed, though, but in my opinion it isn’t really worth the almost $5000 upgrade cost. The camera systems in the car are decent enough so that Autopark is just a cool gimmick, and lane changing on Autopilot can be hacked in with a simple mod from Enhance Auto that adds features that even Tesla themselves have refused to put into their cars for a couple of hundred euros and a little elbow grease.
So why this long, ranty tangent? Well it’s simple. If you want to buy a Tesla in 2025, my suggestion is to love the car, and hate the man. A Model 3 is a wonderful car. I’ve owned mine for the past month and it has impressed me in pretty much every way. The engineers, designers and assembly teams have made a wonderful vehicle, backed up by an excellent customer service team that has only ever been bested by the experience I got when I went to a Lexus dealership to look at a Lexus UX300e.
Buy a Tesla for its merits. It’s reliable, quick as all hell, convenient, and is backed by the single largest charging network on earth, as well as every other charging network out there. The CEO’s an arsehole. Every CEO is an arsehole though, because there is no such thing as a good billionaire.
The truth is about Elon, unlike other billionaires, he puts his money where his mouth is. More importantly. He says exactly what other billionaires think, and knows that the public will find those opinions extremely abhorrent. He does this purely to keep his name in the spotlight, to keep people talking, tweeting, posting about him. Truth be told, I’m talking about the cunt now, that’s how good the dude is at trolling you. Most billionaires hide their power levels behind a team of PR agents and social media experts, whereas Elon fired his PR team many years ago, and has just been letting loose on social media ever since.
The man basically plays the trolling game so well, that he is the reason why people get into arguments and fight over stuff. Remember that Trolling isn’t the act of saying mean things, but it’s the act of making inflammatory statements that cause people to waste time arguing in the comments, bringing in more and more people into the argument. It’s a term taken from Fishing, where a baited line is dragged behind a fishing vessel, in an attempt to lure fish into much easier grounds to fish them from.
So how do you beat a troll? Don’t take the bait. If you feel that you cannot buy a Tesla because of Elon? I completely understand and will actually support your choice, because there’s a lot of great EV options out there that in my opinion, could be better suited to you than a Tesla. Kia’s EV5 comes to mind for Model Y buyers, as it’s more of a conventional boxy SUV with conventional controls. Likewise, a Kona or Niro EV, BYD Seal, BYD Sealion 7, and the newest offerings from Zeekr, Geely and Volvo spring to mind too. All of those are excellent choices if you want to avoid giving money to that guy.
But if you do end up behind the wheel of a Tesla, keep these things in mind. For one, Elon only owns about 15-20% of Tesla. The rest is owned by shareholders, index funds, hedge funds and so on. He is the biggest single fish, sure, but he is not the only fish in the pond. This should provide some hedged risk against any Elon-level bullshit he may try to pull.
Tesla is also thriving still because Elon doesn’t have total control of that company, and retail and fund investors see it as a viable company for producing EVs still. As seen with Twitter, he cannot run a business successfully without someone hedging his decision making. Twitter is predominantly owned by him, and his actions have resulted in a mass exodus away from that company due to his allowance of unmitigated free speech on the platform. Advertisers, government departments and people have been fleeing Twitter in droves for other social media platforms. People have really been gravitating to Bluesky, a startup run by Jack Dorsey, you know the guy who actually started Twitter back in the day, with Bluesky beginning as a project within Twitter to form a sort of “new Twitter” to help improve transparency and moderation.
There is also a fiduciary responsibility of companies to continue making profits. As a public company, if Tesla goes downhill, Elon has a responsibility under law to do what is best for Tesla, lest he gets sued for serving himself. Unless he say, forcibly takes control of Tesla, He has to do what is within the interests of that company. If he wants to make Tesla private, that’d mean he’d need to quite literally be the world’s first multi-trillionaire if the current market cap of Tesla has to say anything about it. Elon had to sell Tesla Stock and sell his soul to the Russian devil to raise the funds to buy Twitter, and as a result he holds less Tesla stock than he did previously. This means that with enough pressure, he could be forced out of the CEO’s position, or better yet, kicked out of the company entirely. Recent sales in Tesla have begun to slump with the primary drivers being Elon’s actions and increased international EV competition. If competition becomes too hot, and Elon’s actions drive more people into BMWs, Mercs and BYDs, the company has no choice but to kick him out, even if he has stock in the company.
So in this case, if you were to say, buy a Tesla, be ensured that you likely won’t end up in a Saab or Holden-like situation where you’re buying into a dead brand. Chances are, Elon getting booted out of Tesla would be the best thing that ever happened to the company by a country mile. You’d see a big spike in sales profits, I bet.
So in short, as a Tesla owner… Do I like Elon? Fuck no. Never have, really. I love the cars though. They’re fun, well built, reliable and convenient as all frig. I love the company, but hate the guy who runs it. In fact, a large bulk of Tesla owners honestly feel the same way. We all just want a reliable car we can charge for free off of our solar panels, and have that car be smooth, comfortable, quiet and reliable. That’s it.
Love the car? Hate the man.
Beano out.