The following does relate to buying a car, but has to have some political context first.
Trump’s tariffs are causing a lot of problems now. At the very lowest end, companies can’t make any plans on what to do for future growth because they have to continually check what he done from one day to the next.
Tariffs aren’t all he’s done, but among the rest is turning Elon Musk loose to do whatever he wants inside the U.S. Government under the guise of “efficiency”. Is he the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, a non-governmental agency, the kind Trump once despised? Trump says yes, other people inside the administration say no, including lawyers for the administration, others say they don’t know, including lawyers for the administration. Result: Musk goes where he wants, does what he wants, and instead of making recommendations about where to cut costs, he goes straight to forcing the cuts to happen himself.
This is backfiring on Musk and on Tesla. Tesla stock got a bump after the 2024 election, but as Musk uses his chainsaw to rip apart agencies, the stock is tanking. On November 5, it was $251.44. Five weeks later, it was $479.86. As of today, it is $225.31.
Protests against Musk and Tesla are a frequent occurrence now, and vandalism against related to both is becoming more noticeable. Tesla EV charging stations have been set on fire. Tesla vehicles and dealerships have been vandalized. Owners of Tesla vehicles are selling them or buying “I bought this before Elon went crazy” stickers to reduce the chances that their vehicle will be vandalized or just because they’re now embarrassed for doing so.
Trump has said that the vandalism is “domestic terrorism” and feels it should be illegal to boycott Tesla. To show his support for “First Buddy Musk” (or “Shadow President Musk”, as he’s also being called), Trump turned a driveway at the White House into a mini Tesla showroom/photo op and said he would buy a Model S. U.S. Presidents are not allowed to drive vehicles even after they’re no longer in office, so he’ll never be able to drive it, which may work in his favor as that model currently has 37 factory recalls on it.
However, several government departments are now getting rid of the electric vehicles and charging stations they have, so we’ll see how long Trump still likes electric vehicles. He certainly didn’t like them until Musk got involved in Trump’s campaign last year and then they were the bested thing ever.
That’s the end of the political context.
I’ve seen a couple of Tesla cars while driving and didn’t think much about them. Recently, I’ve seen a few Cybertrucks in passing and also didn’t think too much about them. That was until I had a look at one in my side mirror while waiting at a stop light and I realized they’ve got a major design flaw.
I’m not talking the fact that it looks like Musk created the design using Microsoft Paint. Or that the pointy bits that can injure pedestrians more than with other vehicles. Or the fact that after over a year past the start of public sale of them, they still hadn’t been crash tested by the NHTSA or the IIHS. Or that the glue used to attach trim pieces isn’t holding them well enough in cold climates and they’re starting to come off. Or that you have a permanent sun roof with no shading for overhead sun protection because the circled area is the only part that isn’t a window.
Except for the first and last ones, those are mechanical flaws. The design flaw is this is a vehicle that is only meant to be viewed from the sides or at a shallow angle from one of the sides. When you’re looking at the front and the rear, this is what you see.
This is what I saw in my mirror. It was about two places behind and one lane over from where I was and the only thing I saw was a flat surface that is almost indistinguishable from a line drawing. Even though the front and back are sloped, it looks like a single vertical surface. There’s no depth to it. It doesn’t matter if the stainless steel panels are painted or not. It looks like it’s in 2D.
And yes, I did draw this in MS Paint. The fact that the “Front” and “Back” identifiers are in Comic Sans is purely a (very fitting) coincidence since I tend to use PaintShop Pro for my graphics work. It was already set to that font when I needed to label the pictures and I kept it.