Reader Rant: About My Tesla 3 . . .

People who buy an industrial product to ‘stick it to big oil’ and other fossil fuels providers strike me as similar to the folks who worry about buying BPA-free packaging for their food and who won’t use a microwave but then smile and breathe deeply at a new car smell.

You want to make some sort of change in your life for a substantive point, or as a signal to others? Fine, fine. I only ask that you don’t make such an *empty* change. Go full subsistence farm, live up in the mountains off the land. Go nuts! Do whatever you want! But buying a large, heavy, electric car, produced and transported by industrial infrastructure and players, using plenty of hydrocarbons in the paint, fabrics and upholstery, all the plastics, etc., all at tremendous energy cost, is like buying a fast food burger with large fries and then ordering a diet soft drink. It’s contradictory at best, counterproductive at worst, on a spectrum from empty gestures to quixotic tilting at windmills.

Meanwhile, I’ll run my old Corolla until the engine goes, and if everything else is still solid I might even put in another motor if that’s ultimately cheaper than replacing the tough little toaster with something else. I may not pass muster with you that way, but I’d wager it’s at *worst* a wash with the brand-new Tesla, given up front energy investment to produce and deliver as opposed to my “energy-amortised” hooptie, if maintained. Not even like I’m keeping an old conversion van to run around town or something.

if you wanna go independent go wood gasifier and harvest your own lumber.

Buying an electric car does not make one independent of big oil. Just about everything that built that car runs on hydrocarbons. Especially the mining operations to get all the ores and the extraction of the needed elements to make it work that are above and beyond that of an ICE vehicle. Big oil got paid up front. There’s a reason why big oil doesn’t stand in the way of the agenda. Maybe the TM product makes it to break even, maybe not. I just don’t think these are will make it long term even if we assume the battery and drivetrain to be perfect. My reasoning is that TM has intentionally made it so that 99% of owners will give up after the warranty runs out or they have a minor collision with something.

From my causal look at things it seems TM not only not helpful in keeping the vehicles on the road or returning them to the road they are downright hostile to it and use the software to drive that home and the inflated costs for body repair. They want to maintain control of the product after you bought it and make it needlessly difficult for you to keep it longer than they wish. It wouldn’t matter what sort of car they made this alone is enough.

Now for some old car it might be a pain finding parts but I know that the manufacturers and dealers won’t not sell me a part that’s still around. Meanwhile TM refuses to sell parts to owners for current product. If TM is this way with current product what is it going to do when the cars are older?

Those who stick it to big oil are those who convert to fuels they grow and process themselves without big oil’s products or those who build their own electric cars from junk and then run off their own solar, wind, water generation. Notice that these people are generally not celebrated but socially attacked as nutters and legally by government enforcers.