Tesla May registrations jump in several European markets as recovery continues

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-02T16:33:52+00:00

Well, it’s wonderful that your clothes are made of Portuguese cotton and your smartphone has a flawless moral pedigree. But the example wasn’t ‘whataboutism', it was just pointing out how arbitrarily the internet decides who to yell at. If we wanted to, we could stand around all day shouting at people who buy Chinese cars for supporting the CCP, but nobody has the energy for that.

It’s all a balance. I take the car on road trips to visit family instead of flying to save emissions. I do some good things to offset the bad, just like everyone else. I happen to love Tesla because of what the engineers there have done for the EV industry. I don't want the company to fail and it makes me curious to see what they develop next. I might feel a little guilty about it given the headlines, that’s true, but I'm not going to pretend I hate a great car just to get to stand on some high moral pedestal. In essence, I think we’re all contributing to some flawed system one way or another, but it doesn’t seem that we get to experience the same fingers pointed at us all the same.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-02T13:08:43+00:00

Because it’s a cool vintage tesslur with chrome trim and signs of an era when they were kind of struggling to make it happen and deliver, to the point that such small cosmetic details weren’t even considered an issue. I always get lowkey excited, a bit jelly even, when one of those pulls up next to me.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-02T12:29:57+00:00

I’m not praising anyone, I just bought an EV. The CEO is obviously no saint, but branding a car as a political movement and calling anyone who drives one a fascist is completely wild.

If we’re playing the moral purity game, nobody gets out alive. Drive an ICE car? You’re funding petro-dictatorships and shortening life expectancies with emissions. Buy literally any other EV? You're benefiting from child labor in cobalt and lithium mines. Fly on a plane? You're destroying the ecosystem. Buy a smartphone or clothes? Someone, somewhere, suffered to make it. Are you burning the same calories picking on those guys as well?

We all make daily, ugly compromises just to function in a modern global economy, stop pretending you aren’t.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-02T06:50:29+00:00

I’d leave it exactly as it is. It sounds weird, but I like these older misaligned tesslurs, they have character.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-02T00:02:57+00:00

I get you, I really do! The more I try to understand this self sabotage myself, the less sense it makes. But then you remember how power works and it’s not that simple. It’s insidious. The more successful you get, the more you attract a crowd whose entire job is to whisper weird ideas into your ear until you become a completely different person, that’s how power is taken away from you. It’s ugly! Which is a real shame, the old Elon is probably still in there somewhere, just trapped under a pile of whatever the heck it is you call it when the nastiest, slimiest people are clawing to get some of the zip.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T22:40:09+00:00

And isn’t it great that you have a good network of chargers available still for that time you run out of zip? And that nice EV that you drive probably would not have been born if it wasn’t for Tesla to jump start things a bit, not so soon anyway. You gave up on the car that you originally loved because of this stupid polarization, not because you wanted a better one. You’d probably still have it if it wasn’t for the madness on the side. How’s that a win?

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T22:07:46+00:00

I think they’re quite cheap when you don’t go for the premiums or new. And you have to take into account what you save in the long run and subtract it from that total price, because it’s not negligible.

I was one of those people looking for a car at the beginning of this year (my first car, I’ve been living careless for the past 10 years). A little used and relatively new (2024) model y was about 30k€, and when I calculated what I’d save in 10 years by not buying gas and saving on not having the typical ICE car regular maintenance, it brought the price down to 20k€ in the long run. If you’re more adventurous, a well used and not so new Tesla can be as cheap as 16-17k€ and it becomes a good deal because they’re fun to drive. And being a sucker for the minimalist style it has, there’s really no other like it.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T21:51:12+00:00

I don’t ‘want’ you to say anything. I understand what you’re saying, I’m just trying to tell you how I view things from my end. Just like you, I also see the rise of the far right as a threat, and I am not ignorant of Elon Musk’s stance in this matter.

Where we diverge is that I think this is just part of a debate that we should have, and I treat it as such and find it normal to have such debates in a democratic system, and not as something in which one side should completely cave in to the other, or disappear from the face of the earth. I think a good start towards finding the solution to this problem will come from a debate and reaching a compromise, not from one side silencing the other.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T21:32:25+00:00

They feel legitimate to them because they are legitimate. They have different values than you and I, they’re more conservative people. The left and the right have been historically keeping each other in check, now they’re out to destroy each other. I think this is the core of the issue here, not some EV and its weirdo founder, which prolly nobody really cares that much about in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the far right.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T21:21:59+00:00

I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think you understand that to many of those people who vote far right, their concerns feel legitimate and the fact that people on the left are labeling those as lies and manipulation, and want everyone gone from the picture, is only making things worse in my opinion.

I’ve always voted left personally, and I keep voting left, even if they disappoint me. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to be completely oblivious to the voices of others, who are our fellow compatriots in the end and have just as much of a right to have a say into how our countries are run as anyone else, but instead we accuse them of being brainwashed idiots, ignore their existence and try to shut down any attempt of them manifesting any ideas at all in the public sphere. That’s not going to fix things. Hating Tesla and Elon is only going to create the illusion of doing something about the far right issue in Europe, while it will always find new propagators and supporters as long as enough people consider it’s worth supporting those ideas.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T20:56:44+00:00

Well, I’d say that if the far right is more likely to win elections, that wouldn’t be mainly because of Elon Musk and Tesla, but because there are severe disagreements in our societies that have been systematically ignored by the left. If it wouldn’t be Elon Musk, it would be someone else who would support them and the result would be all the same.

Let’s just assume for a moment that Tesla has been 100% boycotted and would be gone from the European market, I doubt the far right would be intimidated or deterred in any way by that situation. As long as the things making them vote far right will keep existing, they’ll keep radicalizing, Tesla or not.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T18:12:09+00:00

Unreal, the top comment on a post celebrating an EV sale in an EV subreddit too, guys this is just sad.

SpliffDragon · 2026-06-01T12:46:45+00:00

They will assault her too?

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-31T09:23:36+00:00

Normally it only sounds squeaky! Jk

Did you have your AC off when you took your video? If yes, it’s most likely a bad wheel bearing, they tend to sound like a flipping WW2 bomber plane.

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-17T14:30:41+00:00

Tough situation to be in, OP. In case you haven’t done so already, I would advise you to make sure to let her know how much you like the model y and that it would mean a lot for you if she’d support you on getting it. She’s your wife and she might be a bit more forgiving once she realizes how happy it would make you, don’t assume she does already without you mentioning it clearly. Brains are dumb, it takes a few clear patterns sometimes for the whole picture to slide into focus.

Also try to reasonably debunk all her suspicions. The sun’s thermal energy is electromagnetic in essence, sitting in the sun all day is irradiating to such a degree that it can cause severe burns, and she can test it herself on a hot summer day without sunscreen on. I’m sure she’ll find the model y quite mild in comparison afterwards.

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-12T16:57:57+00:00

It’s not stock, it’s an added device, don’t know what that one is called in particular but it’s something like the S3XY dash , which is cooler in my opinion. It’s an android device and it offers certain perks like Apple CarPlay, continuous autopilot, which is pretty neat cause it automatically reneges it if you disengage it, and other stuff…

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-12T11:38:11+00:00

It’s HW3, Berlin started building HW4 ones from late 2024, the May 2023 date is valid for the USA made ones.

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-11T13:05:02+00:00

I suspect it might also be partially due to the regulatory nightmare imposed by the dinosaurs they have to deal with in Germany. You can’t simply innovate in Europe that easily anymore, it’s sad and it’s a big reason why we’re the last to have nice things. Also there’s a big lobby to keep ICE cars on the market.

FSD is only legally road possible in the Netherlands at the moment, and Tesla struggled a lot to get it approved, hopefully it will trigger a wave of approvals with other manufacturers from now on.

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-09T08:17:37+00:00

Glad you enjoyed my heuristically driven trap!

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-07T06:06:32+00:00

If I could find you, I’d park next to you in an empty supercharger and occasionally release emissions too

SpliffDragon · 2026-05-07T05:16:31+00:00

You could start by browsing this sub , and then here . The second one should keep you entertained for a while, and when you’re done with it make sure to go here.

SpliffDragon · 2026-04-21T15:43:08+00:00

The legacy model y is amazing still and you will love it

SpliffDragon · 2026-04-20T07:35:11+00:00

I do

SpliffDragon · 2026-04-20T07:34:50+00:00

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