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"'I don’t like that he made this donation' — Mullvad CEO reacts to co-founder’s donation to controversial Swedish populist party" (www.techradar.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 45 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

gonna get downvoted to hell here but making EVs and charging infrastructure is a good thing. also rooftop solar and batteries.

still, fuck nazi elon.

edit: this isn’t even about “credit” for developing the tech or whatever. even if we all agree this stuff was going to happen with or without elon, the Tesla business is still putting these products on the market. That is good, just like Mullvad and VPN. They didn’t invent VPN or anything, they are just one (good) provider.

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  • [–] [S] 45 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    The only issue with Tesla is that the quality of their cars is mediocre at best, while you're paying premium, and that Tesla is the most childish and obstinate company to work with.

    We have something called Råd & Rön's Blacklist, which is respected Swedish consumer magazine's list of products to avoid. Tesla is one of the brands that's listed there. Partly because of the poor quality of the cars and partly because they don't follow the rulings from the National Board for Consumer Complaints here in Sweden.

    And they don't give a **** about insurance companies either. If something happens to your Tesla, you're on your own buying a new one yourself. You can forget about getting any sort of help from Tesla.

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  • [+] -22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    The cars since 2020 have been decent quality. What you are paying for is an EV with good range and good power. Tesla definitely pushed the U.S. ev adoption ahead by a number of years.
    I'm curious about how that board works - is it a judicial system that other car manufacturers follow? What kind of rulings have they made against Tesla? I found that Tesla follows their own warranty quite well, and after that I don't think any a car manufacturers will fix stuff for free.
    And what support do you expect to get regarding insurance? You can buy a bew car like anyone, can't you?

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  • [–] [S] 15 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The cars since 2020 have been decent quality. What you are paying for is an EV with good range and good power. Tesla definitely pushed the U.S. ev adoption ahead by a number of years.

    I guess everything is relative. Tesla is still a crappy car in terms of quality here, with tons of unresolved issues with faulty cars that Tesla refused to help their customers with.

    I’m curious about how that board works - is it a judicial system that other car manufacturers follow?

    Råd & Rönis is an independent, non-profit consumer magazine owned by the Swedish Consumer Agency. Their funding comes from subscriptions and government grants (no advertising and no corporate money). They test products, expose bad companies and protect consumers. Their "Black List" (Svarta Listan) is highly influential, and being on it can destroy sales completely.

    Customers can file a complaint at The National Board for Consumer Disputes (ARN), a government-run arbitration(?) service. Their decisions are not legally binding, but companies that ignore them get publicly shamed (and often blacklisted by Råd & Rön). Tesla has ignored basically every single case. Any remotely serious company here in Sweden comply with ARN. We take ARN very seriously here.

    What kind of rulings have they made against Tesla?

    Our law is equal for everyone. We don't care if you're some local dude selling hotdogs or Elon Musk selling Teslas.

    I found that Tesla follows their own warranty quite well [...]

    That's the issue. Their warranty basically means that they ignore you and will fuck you over, even if the issue is their own fault. People have ended up with repair costs close to what a new car costs, and even if it's Teslas fault, they refuse to do shit.

    [...] and after that I don’t think any a car manufacturers will fix stuff for free.

    Of course they have to, if the issue is their own fault.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Sounds like a good system. But I guess it only works if people pay attention to the blacklist so it's a good threat since it's not enforceable. I haven't heard of Tesla not honoring drivetrain issues under warranty here in Canada. They wouldn't do a second windshield replacement on my wife's T3 because what they said was evidence of a rock chip, but that was kinda fair.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago

    I'm glad you have a better experience with them! :)

    Here's some reading (in Swedish) if you would like to read about it:

    I didn't have to look hard to find these. :/

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    The cars since 2020 have been decent quality

    https://www.adac.de/news/tuev-report-2026/

    German source, since murica doesn't have mandatory safety inspections. Literally no other car brand has a higher failure rate than Tesla, and the car with the highest failure rate was the Model Y, which released in 2022

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    Interesting. Seems that most the failures are the breaks because the pads get rusty with non-use because of the regenerative breaking. The Tesla manuals say to use the breaks fully every once in a while, but of course people don't read the manual. And it just make then grunchy - they work fine. The suspension issues are real and I think the problem is that they start to go but it's not obvious. Tesla will change them in warranty no problem but you have to notice the extra play and sounds, which is quite subtle. I wish we had annual safety inspections in Canada, they only do that for older cars.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Rooftop solar is definitely not something Musk can take any credit for.

    EVs maybe, but charging infrastructure that he made proprietary rather than using the open standard is not especially worthy of praise.

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  • [+] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I mean yeah, obviously. But Musk is very obviously excellent at marketing, and there's an argument to be made that it was thanks to his marketing that Tesla became as popular as it did, and that that helped pull up the EV market more broadly.

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  • [+] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Not even EVs. The work was getting done by researchers improving electric motors and batteries. As soon as the technology was viable Elon jumped on it and marketed himself as the person behind it all. Same goes for PayPal which he stole credit for, rockets that people already worked decades on, tunnels that are just bad metros, and machine learning (AI) that people were already doing since the 70's and only recently had breakthroughs because of the increased ability to feed it data en masse.

    The only credit he should get is having the power and charisma to capitalize on the work of others. He's a Thomas Edison and not a Nikola Tesla.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago

    Calling him Thomas Edison is giving him far too much credit. Edison may have been a self aggrandizing asshole, but he also did have a few accomplishments to his name. Musk is a glorified venture capitalist, only instead of just taking a chunk of the profits he buys the whole company so he can steal credit for the company's achievements. Elon Musk has never created a single thing in his life. He has in fact been a net negative as every company he has ever been involved with would have been better off without Musk's "help".

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    He didnt make shit. He saw there was opportunity and ran with it, now that he has it sustainabikity is nowhere close to his goals.

    The solar tiles suck The battery is a whitelabelled product The boring company was strategic interference to stop public infrastructure development.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago

    Elon is just a propaganda machine (see his "in 4 or 5 years we'll have datacenters in space" bullshit, or all the other things that he promised but it didn't happen), a shame so many people fall for it.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago*

    I mean, to be fair, it was the engineers and founders who have done a lot of the work. They deserve the credit for making good products. Not Elon. He just profits off of them and the labor of the engineers.

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