When Tesla started out they had not much competition.

Half the joke of the company was how they stepped in and bought a bunch of the EV-1’s patents and plant infrastructure for a song, then spun around and sold EV production credits to the Big 3 auto companies so they could greenwash the SUV industry. Had GE simply kept turning out EV-1s, they’d have cleaned up during the late Bush Era gas price explosion. Instead, Musk got top dollar to churn out heavily subsidized sports cars while racking in government subsidies and deposits on cars that wouldn’t be built for half a decade.

Musk alienating their customers and the laughable Cybertruck certainly did not help.

Americans have a downright neurotic fixation on big trucks. I don’t think his Cybertruck idea was necessarily all that bad on its face. But he’s so fucking slow, he’s such a shitty product manager, and he was so heavily derailed by the promise of Robotaxis that Ford and Rivian beat him to EV Truck delivery.

Now his brand new flagship vehicle is barely more than a punchline.