[chrisg23]

It’s not cool anymore.

To add to that, I was shopping for a car last fall and did research to compare small suv type cars and I found Tesla’s to be surprisingly affordable - or another way to put it I was shocked by how expensive new cars are today in general. I was going to get a conventional vehicle but it wouldn’t have been that much less. With notably inferior performance and lacking the tech, some of which I find really useful.

I looked at other ev manufacturers in the USA and saw no one is competitive with Tesla on price and performance and ended up getting a model y. If I was someone that lived my life attempting to align my purchasing choices with my political identity I see how I could be discouraged from buying any ev in the USA at the present time.

I gotta add that when I bought the Tesla the price of BYD’s cheapest model, the seagull, was 12,500 at the lot in South American countries. If that model was available in the USA (thanks, auto industry lobbyists) I would have just bought that as a beater instead. But it isn’t. So I got the expensive but hopefully long term reliable more expensive thing.