Your opinion on Elon is of little concern to me. I was addressing facts alone.

Buy a quick googling, the lawsuit you are referencing is from the late 2010s around the time Eberhard was pushed out of the company. And thus I stand by my earlier statements about the company’s history. As I said, there was no love lost there.

But I am still trying to address your original position that Elon showed up after everything was done and took credit for it all, which I don’t believe is accurate.

I am not debating values, I am debating facts. I would generally agree that debating values especially when it comes to evaluating Elon is a waste of both of our time.

You are well within your right to not like the guy and he has certainly done plenty to deserve your dislike.

However, and this is the point I have been trying to make since the beginning, even if you don’t like him with good reason, even if hypothetically we both agreed that he’s a bad person, that doesn’t automatically mean everything he has ever done is bad. And that sort of revisionist history is my biggest complaint with both your comment and a lot of people who hate Elon in general.

If your position was ‘he accomplished a lot with Tesla and SpaceX but he is now in net negative to the country with how he helped Trump get reelected’ I would have very little to challenge that with.
But when it becomes not only is he bad now, but he was always bad all the time in every endeavor, that any accomplishment he might have had must be minimized, that’s what I disagree with and honestly you should too as an intelligent sounding person.

same to you sir/madam!

I get plenty of good convos here- perhaps even more on a density measurement (% of good vs total) than on Reddit. But the density of bad ones is higher too. Mainly anything involving politics people are much less open minded here than on Reddit. At least on Reddit usually the person will talk to you or say they respectfully disagree, here on the Fediverse I’ve several times had ‘heres the talking points’, I directly refute them, then something like ‘you obviously don’t understand and I can’t be bothered to explain it to you’. And while I certainly accept that I might not understand, this happens in places where their argument is ‘A caused B’, and my response is ‘you can look it up, B happened before A’.

Yeah I miss the Pizza Hut restaurants. There was some kind of fat or oil on the dough that got all crispy and good in the pan… their pizza was just flat out better than most competition.

I wish someone with some vision would buy Pizza Hut or Quiznos and bring them back to their former glory. I think there’s a market for it.

They should have differentiated themselves as the premium sandwich brand because while subway is pretty good, Quiznos early on was a whole other level.

Absolutely this. Subway pre sliced meats and (at the time) lack of toasting was a perfect thing to target. ‘Yeah you can pay $5 for a sub the size of a size ten foot with meats that come from a factory, but you get what you pay for. Here at Quiznos all our meats and cheese are sliced fresh in store, the bread is always fresh, and every sub gets perfectly toasted to order. Try us and see the difference.’ (then show a wimpy subway sandwich next to a cheesy melty meaty quiznos sub).

Really is too bad. Here in CT, Jersey Mikes is expanding- their deal is they slice the meat right in front of you so it’s fresher. They also do fresh grilled cheese steaks on a flat top grill, those are WAY better than the subway ‘cardboard tray of single serving meat’ approach.

ain’t this the damn truth.

FWIW, it’s gone downhill. Steady decline over the last decade or so as the site (like every other social media) goes for quantity and ad revenue over quality. So really good discussions are not nearly as common as they once were.

That said- I get a lot more bad discussions here in the Fediverse than on Reddit. By that I mean people who spout talking points but the instant you challenge them with facts, they go for personal insults.

In short- my facts don’t suit your narrative (ELON BAD EVERYTHING ELON DO BAD) and so you’d rather dismiss me than debate me?

If you think me wrong- then explain exactly what makes it wrong?

Specifically- you said “Tesla was building those things before Musk took over. It’s like the Nazis and the autobahn, these people are taking credit for previous good decisions when they take over.”.

Can you explain what precisely Tesla had pre-Elon-takeover that he took credit for?

Apparently if you screw the franchisees and make it impossible for them to make any money, they stop being franchisees and close their stores.

Unfortunately, this outcome could not have been predicted ahead of time.

Pizza hut should be a fucking textbook case study on how to run a much-beloved brand into the ground.

Quiznos might be slightly worse- they were in financial trouble so their brilliant solution was let’s fuck over our franchisees. I’ll give you 3 guesses how that worked out, but you’ll only need one.

If I wasn’t clear, then allow me to clarify. This is and always was my position and I believe it is supported by facts (which is why it’s my position).

1. Elon was one of the original cofounders of Tesla. He wasn’t on the registration paperwork because one of the original founders already had an LLC registered and they decided to use that rather than make a new one. The LLC had little activity or money before Elon and others decided to make it happen.

2. Elon left Tesla largely to Eberhard at that point.

3. After a lot of transmission failures, Elon concluded that Eberhard was making bad decisions at Tesla. He pushed Eberhard out and took over as CEO.

4. What followed were objectively good engineering decisions- things like deleting the gearbox and upsizing the electric motor. Under Elon the Roadster design was finished and it shipped, the Model S sedan came out as the first real mass produced electric car to hit the streets, followed by models X 3 and Y. The Y became one of the best selling vehicles in the world. During this time, the engineering decisions made by Elon/Tesla have been proven correct many times over.

Do you factually disagree with any of this?

There were of course other people at Tesla- smart people who made lots of good choices.

I’m simply pointing out that your initial assertion (that other people made most of the good decisions, Elon showed up after those decisions were made and took credit) is demonstrably false, given that pre-Elon the company was proceeding down an ultimately failed engineering path.

As an American I hate to say it but there’s merit to what you’re saying.

If I was outside the US, I’d be looking at the US as an unreliable partner, given how rapidly the message is changing with things like wars and tariffs. I’d conclude that the US does not have a consistent policy (let alone an intelligent one) and therefore it’s in my best interest to ensure my success doesn’t rely on the US anymore.

it’s really too bad :(

This is objectively false. Go test drive one and tell me if you honestly believe that golf carts are better vehicles.

I thought it was just a phrase in general circulation. I’ve actually never once listened to Rush Limbaugh. I find most political content unintelligent and uninteresting and generally prefer to just read facts and draw my own conclusions. My brain seems to work pretty well and I prefer not to have my conclusions drawn for me.

Teslas are some of the safest cars on the road. And guys who want penis extensions buy big noisy trucks not silent electric cars.

That’s fair- I encourage you to always vote with your wallet. I don’t think your analysis of the situation is factually correct and I’d encourage you to do your own independent research on each of your assertions. But you should always back your convictions up with action.

With respect- I have been following Tesla closely since the original Roadster was first in development. Your statement is not correct.

When Tesla started, Elon was one of the first, and biggest, investors. A man named Martin Eberhard was one of the team, he was put in charge of Tesla and wrote a blog that I read religiously. The original Roadster, under Eberhard, had a two-speed gearbox- no clutch, just a synchromesh. This would allow one to select either rocket fast acceleration in first gear, or higher top speed in second gear.
The gearbox however became a significant source of problems. Making a gearbox work at 16,000 RPM is difficult, getting one that shifts under load at 16,000 RPM and will last for 100k miles (without costing a fortune) is a real challenge. And while not impossible, it’s not something that had been done cost effectively for a vehicle before. So Tesla went through several gearbox designs and multiple suppliers trying to make one that was cost-effective and reliable. Demo cars were loaned to reviewers, locked in 2nd gear so they wouldn’t shift.

After the 3rd or 4th attempt at the gearbox and a year plus worth of delays, Elon took over Tesla. Eberhard was pushed out. He was salty about that and for a while wrote a blog called ‘Tesla Founders’ which was critical of Tesla. As I recall there was a small legal dispute, it was solved and Tesla/Eberhard went their separate ways.

Anyway, Elon took over at Tesla, and one of his first orders was delete the shifting gearbox, use a simple non-shifting reduction gear (inexpensive and lasts more or less forever if you keep it lubricated), and make the motor bigger to provide more torque. The result was the Roadster. Model S, the luxury production sedan, followed. Then Model X, luxury production SUV, Then Model 3, mainstream sedan, and Model Y, mainstream SUV. All under Elon, as the company grew from a ‘might not make it’ startup to one of the biggest automakers.

I say you’re incorrect because all the ‘good decisions’ Tesla made in the beginning were under Elon, NOT Eberhard.

Go test drive one and you’ll understand. Seriously.

Cars are pretty much the same, EVs are a different animal. No shifting, instant torque, full torque at all speeds. A Tesla SUV can out-accelerate many gas-driven sports cars. You put the hammer down on the highway and you’ve got instant 1st-gear-level acceleration.