"The year was 2019, and I was test-driving a Tesla; while I was ambling off the forecourt, the PR told me jauntily that the windscreen was made of a material that would protect the driver from biohazards. I hit the brakes. You what? What kind of biohazard? Like, a war? She misconstrued me, thinking I intended to go and find some toxic waste site to see if it worked, and said: I'm not sure it's operational in the press fleet."
"That wasn't my question: rather, what kind of a world was Tesla preparing for? One so unstable that an average (though affluent) private citizen would do well to prepare for a chemical weapons attack? What model of consumption was this, that the rich used their wealth to prepare for the mayhem their resource-capture would unleash, while the less-rich prepared slightly less well?"
"Tesla's market share in Europe dropped precipitously in the EU in November, from 2.1% to 1.4% of new cars sold, which is likely to be consumers turning away from what Tesla represents, even the ones that agree with Musk. At an anti-Tesla protest at the side of a dual carriageway earlier this year, we got honks of support from actual Tesla drivers. Nobody buying one of these cars pre-2024 would have signed up to look as though they were supporting the owner's agenda"
Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, renaming it X, and the development of Grok are linked to far-right propaganda and political support for Donald Trump, including a reported Nazi-like gesture. A 2019 Tesla PR comment about a windscreen protecting from biohazards raised concerns about elites preparing for apocalypse and a consumption model that shields the affluent from harms their actions may cause. Tesla's EU market share fell from 2.1% to 1.4% in November as consumers turned away. Anti-Tesla protests received support from Tesla drivers. Chinese brands BYD and SAIC showed strong sales growth, and hybrids accounted for nearly half of sales.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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