thank you for an intelligent comment that’s not just DURR ELON BAD

I’ve driven a bunch of electric cars. In terms of driving feel, Tesla is good but not great. The suspension (pre-refresh model Y) is stiff without feeling particularly sporty, the steering is decent but not amazing, accel is above average, and I like the one pedal driving but some people hate that. The interior (of any of them, including the ‘luxury’ model X/S) lacks some creature comforts compared to many others in the price range. If not for the low CG reducing body roll in turns it’d probably not be nearly as fun to drive.

In terms of overall ownership experience though, it’s fantastic. I like driving, but the few points I lose in not having something more sporty like a Taycan or Volvo XC40 EV (which is super fun to drive) or a Polestar 2 (even more fun to drive) is made up for by everything else. The software is fantastic and it’s continually updated OTA with actual features, unlike traditional automakers. There’s an absolute minimum of bullshit upsells- no subscribing for heated seats for example, only subscriptions are the connectivity package and FSD. The app and phone key work 100%. Unlike virtually every other automaker, Tesla isn’t data mining my driving and text messages to sell the data to insurance companies and marketers.

And quite honestly- FSD is a huge part of the package. I love driving, but I drive a lot and I don’t like having to when I’m not in the mood. If I’m blasting around some twisty roads on a nice day of course I’m driving. But if I’m on the highway for 2 hours, that’s just a boring slog.

Finally there’s service. Tesla comes to me for most things, and I’ve needed VERY little. The service manual is free online. There’s NO upsell.

Speaking of upsell- the process of buying the car was BY FAR the best of any car I’ve ever bought. There was ZERO pressure, just people available to answer questions. And no dealer markup, no ‘market adjustment’, no haggling over price, no four-square scam to get me to pay more than I want to, no page full of dealer options. Here’s the car, here’s the price, put in a credit card and show up with a bank check on delivery day. I’ve purchased a couple of ‘nice’ cars in my life, from ‘good’ dealers who I really like, but I’d pick the Tesla experience EVERY time.

If I wanted an EV purely on how it drives- based on what I’ve driven so far I’d go for a Polestar 2 or a Taycan.

As a practical vehicle- Tesla all the way.

I don’t think Musk made electric cars happen any faster.

Disagree. I watched the EV space for a long time. Read some historical articles- even going back into the 1990s electric cars were always ‘10 years away’. Batteries WERE always the reason. But until Tesla, every car company was focused on large format cells. GM did large format NiMH for the EV1, and it worked pretty good, except the instant they were allowed to they sold that tech to Chevron who only licensed it out to companies not building BEVs. Same thing with lithium- large format lithium had a lot of problems including runaway safety issues that hadn’t been solved.

Elon’s contribution was to make a pack full of 18650 laptop cells, coddle it with great thermal management and armor, and call the result a vehicle battery. He saw that innovation was happening a lot faster in the small cells than in large format cells, so those were what he’d use.
It was one of those ‘that can’t possibly be right… but it seems to work better than anything else’ type things.
So back in 2006, when legacy automakers were saying profitable EVs were not physically possible, Tesla was making money selling Roadsters. In 2012 when legacy automakers were saying a profitable mass market EV wasn’t possible, Tesla was making money selling Model S.
As far as I’m concerned, Tesla essentially embarrassed legacy automakers into building EVs.

charging stations, but hardly alone in saying this stuff, and mostly appropriated government money for these things rather than using his own.

I’d point out that many companies have taken government funds to build EV chargers, none anywhere near as successful as Tesla. There’s 2x more Superchargers than all other DC fast chargers combined. And that’s NOT because nobody wanted to build them.

21% higher than average death rate in crashes (coming in 21st out of 26 compared brands)

Love to see that stat? Everything I’ve read suggests the exact opposite.