Tesla Accused of Environmental Rule Violations In US and Germany (cnbc.com) 127
Rei_is_a_dumbass shares a report from CNBC: Tesla is defending itself in the U.S. and Germany against allegations that it has violated environmental rules and regulations, according to a new financial filing. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency accused Tesla last week of failing to prove it is in compliance with federal emissions standards for hazardous air pollutants. Specifically, the EPA is seeking details about how Tesla handles "surface coating" of its vehicles. As CNBC has previously reported, the "paint shop" at Tesla's main U.S. car plant in Fremont, California, has a history of problems, including fires, improper cleaning and maintenance. Some vehicle re-touching, to fix flaws in paint on the cars, has been done in a tented "paint hospital" at the Fremont factory, employees previously told CNBC. In 2020, Tesla embarked on massive improvements to its paint facilities, Fremont building permits revealed.
Tesla said in the filing Wednesday that the company "has responded to all information requests from the EPA and refutes the allegations." The company does not expect any "material adverse impact" on its business from its dealings with the EPA in this matter. Tesla is also still tangling with local air quality authorities in California -- the Bay Area Air Quality Management District -- over previously disclosed "notices of violation," relating to "air permitting and related compliance for the Fremont Factory."
In Germany, Wednesday's financial filing said, authorities have fined Tesla 12 million euros, or about $14.5 million, for allegedly failing to make public notifications and properly fulfill their obligations to take back old batteries from customers. German law requires automakers selling electric cars to take back batteries and dispose of them in an environmentally sustainable manner. Tesla wrote in the filing: "This is primarily relating to administrative requirements, but Tesla has continued to take back battery packs." Tesla filed an objection in Germany and said that the matter should not have a material impact on Tesla's business.
Tesla said in the filing Wednesday that the company "has responded to all information requests from the EPA and refutes the allegations." The company does not expect any "material adverse impact" on its business from its dealings with the EPA in this matter. Tesla is also still tangling with local air quality authorities in California -- the Bay Area Air Quality Management District -- over previously disclosed "notices of violation," relating to "air permitting and related compliance for the Fremont Factory."
In Germany, Wednesday's financial filing said, authorities have fined Tesla 12 million euros, or about $14.5 million, for allegedly failing to make public notifications and properly fulfill their obligations to take back old batteries from customers. German law requires automakers selling electric cars to take back batteries and dispose of them in an environmentally sustainable manner. Tesla wrote in the filing: "This is primarily relating to administrative requirements, but Tesla has continued to take back battery packs." Tesla filed an objection in Germany and said that the matter should not have a material impact on Tesla's business.
Doubts (Score:2)
I have little doubt the raw materials extraction to scrap yard life time environmental impact of a BEVs and the energy to run them compared to traditional ICE vehicles is a win in terms of total environmental impact.
However when we look with a broader eye than just carbon emissions and start to consider what actually happens vs what was supposed to happen we are going find scale of that win is a lot smaller than people like Musk want us to believe.
Re: Doubts (Score:2)
However when we look with a broader eye than just carbon emissions
Nobody cares if it's not something that plays into the Global Warming panic. Other environmental hazards are largely ignored or written off as misinformation pushed by the fossil fuel industry. There's a general attitude that if China wants to shit up their local ecosystems then let them do it.
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I have little doubt the raw materials extraction to scrap yard life time environmental impact of a BEVs and the energy to run them compared to traditional ICE vehicles is a win in terms of total environmental impact.
Except it isn't because an ICE vehicle is 100% recyclable and currently they are. With EVs nobody is interested in actually recycling the batteries because it's cheaper to dig new lithium out of the ground.
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Reading comp much AC
My point is pretty clear - it s going to take more than just switching for ICE to BEVs as drop in replacements to make transportation sustainable.
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a) We can be very sure that ICEs will never be sustainable.
b) Tesla is working on the "million mile battery", which will be a huge step forwards.
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Re:Doubts (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah so you drive 600 miles and haul a boat every single weekend, that argument? In reality a Tesla works extremely well for the majority of commuters. The numbers show that even when you recharge a Tesla from a coal plant it still emits less pollution than a gasoline engine. I'm not in the market for a new car but I'd love to never worry about stopping at a gas station or have regular oil changes or any other maintenance.
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...without having to play 'where will I be stuck next' charger hunts.
Luckily the car can plan that for you, no hunting needed.
https://www.tesla.com/support/... [tesla.com]
Re: Doubts (Score:2)
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You're forgetting about all the times you won't have to drive out of your way to get gas because you filled it up at home instead.
(Which is what most owners discover after they take the plunge - range isn't the issue they thought it was going to be)
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a) We can be very sure that ICEs will never be sustainable.
Why? There are sustainable fuels, like butanol from algae. And you can make ICEVs very reliable, but that is not the focus. The focus is on maximizing profit.
I think you can make ICEVs sustainable. But nobody is making a relevant effort along those lines, and most of the players who are making any effort are being stymied or are playing a losing game at the moment due to subsidies for fossil fuels.
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These sustainable fuels will never be available in great enough quantities to replace the bulk of fossil fuel use. It's clear* that electric vehicles are the future so that's where all the money is going at the moment. Everything else will be limited to specialist applications.
* I see Toyota is still flogging the dead hydrogen horse.
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GM is also still trying to sell hydrogen vehicles. They are making them for the military regardless (where they arguably make some sense) and would like to maximize their profit.
There's no reason why we physically cannot produce enough Butanol to replace our gasoline consumption. We simply choose to subsidize fossil fuels instead.
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Unless you're those aliens from Signs that die in the presence of water.
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I presume it will produce some soot, and if nothing else will burn some oil, since all engines consume some oil. But it is much cleaner-burning, and it's also carbon-neutral. You can mix in some of the acetone from the ABE process to adjust octane, and it's also very clean-burning.
Ultimately, though, EVs are the way forwards anywhere that emissions are a concern. After all, we could already be running on LPG, sewage methane, and of course sources of methane not yet exploited like feedlot manure.
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But yes, all engines burn some oil.
Water and CO2 are the only byproducts of stoichiometric butanol combustion.
Sub-stoichiometric can produce carbon monoxide, which certainly isn't a "good thing" by any means, but it's so prolific in the atmosphere that being "stuck" with it wouldn't really be that bad, as it's generally harmless at atmospheric concentrations.
EVs are a great solution for personal (and even mass) transportation, but they're a bad solution for industrial scale shipping (particular
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"But nobody is making a relevant effort along those lines,"
https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2020/company/porsche-research-synthetic-fuels-efuels-development-22026.html
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Actually they can be more sustainable, but there are sacrifices that need to be made for now...Converting your EV or ICE to run on hydrogen will emit true 0 emissions. However the range will be cut short, for now.... Batteries on the other hand are a dead technology, the problems with them stem from mining enough lithium in the future (there not 100% renewable), to the weight they bring to the car/truck, there power to weight ratio is not that impressive (before you talk about production cars and how fast T
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ICE to BEV transition helps with carbon footprint (at least where electricity is from renewable sources). It can also reduce pollution (or at least move it away from cities). ...), parking spots, traffic jams, cost of accidents (human/financial/traffic jams), ... remain.
The problems of road construction/enlargement, road transportation infrastructure sustainability (repairing roads, bridges, maintaining semaphores,
Rei_is_a_dumbass (Score:2)
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That's quite a compliment coming from one of the OMBad accounts.
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Welcome to Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Where a person whose account exists only to stalk another user is not blocked, but rather, featured on the front page.
Re:Welcome to Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, come on editors, this isn't on. It's bad enough that this person created an account with that name, but you don't have to let it onto the front page too.
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Conflating the name with the argument is not logic.
The name is a total troll. No doubt about it.
But that doesn't make what he says wrong.
Further, I consider the reality checking of sycophants a public service.
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Ad hominem attack. Even your stalker can contribute noteworthy news.
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He contributed the story. That is both the reason and the practice.
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I complained once and Logan fixed it. I complained recently about it and never heard back. And then there's this one.
All of them were BeauHD and let's be honest, we all know the quality of work there. Just a fucking joke. They're obviously not going to do anything about comments but they could at least pretend to give a shit about what they post.
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/. ownership is extremely desperate.
They've tried everything but hiring competent programmers and editors, and responding to what the users are complaining about and asking for.
IOW they are a bunch of dumbshits who are destroying Slashdot.
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responding to what the users are complaining about and asking for
I've emailed Slashdot exactly once in 20 years - it was about a year ago. I had a specific concern about Slashdot. Within a few hours, Logan Abbott emailed me to explain what had happened, and told me they were in the process of fixing it. Sure enough, a few hours later the problem was resolved. It's fashionable to moan about whoever the current owners of Slashdot are, but if you have issues, why not try sending them a (polite) email? It will almost certainly be more effective than grumbling in the commen
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I don't think that's fair. Maybe people have forgotten what it was like under Dice.
The BizX guys have done a lot. They hugely improved the moderation system and blocked most of the sock puppets that were abusing it. For a while there the broken moderation threatened to drive some long time contributors away, in fact I'm sure many I used to see regularly post here left as moderation deteriorated.
I don't always agree with them, I didn't mind APK although I can see how he might create headaches for them. But o
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Instead of complaining you could simply stop visiting. When I do not enjoy something, I stop spending my time on it.
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I am not most people.
It was the same shit as now, but with a few more spam trolls. Big deal.
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Ah, the old "air permitting" shakedown. (Score:2)
"air permitting and related compliance" is a good way for govt agencies to get money from firms. The air quality norms are so tight, ambient air at any arbitrary urban location fails them. They measure air quality inside a half-bulldozed furnace of a decommissioned factory, that was never lit in the last 40 years and issue a violation for exceeding emissions.
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Re: Ah, the old "air permitting" shakedown. (Score:2)
Literally *all* the things are "shakedowns" to you libertarians.
Including laws against shakedown done by firms.
It's ye olde "You are taking away my freedom to take away your freedom! How dare you?".
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I think you've confused the sides. And you're defending a "law" that was written in such a way that *every* business violates it. There are no "innocent" here, only these who didn't get a visit from the inspector with the sensor. Your granny knitting socks violates it.
Entreprenair (Score:1)
"Move fast and break Earth"
This is Germany. (Score:2)
Nobody cares if you do it, or do the right thing.
All that matters is that you obey the rules without question and fill out ALL the forms to get your permit A38. Even if it is completely counter-productive to the original goal. In fact *especially* then!
Oh, and make sure you always scold and criticize anyone stepping out of line, or, if not available, the entire country. ;)
(Can you tell where I'm from?
Oh, the irony (Score:2)
Oh, the irony of a company whose product is supposed to keep the environmentalists happy being accused of not being environmentally friendly. The EPA might want to read today's Wall Street Journal article on Elon Musk. He regularly tells regulators (see what I did there?) and other useless, overpaid bureaucrats to go pound sand and they usually do.
Re:Slow news day? (Score:4, Informative)
It's Lora Kolodny. If there's ever anything that comes out that she thinks she can spin into an anti-Tesla story, she will. There's a couple journalists that are 100% reliable in this regard.
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Another ad hominem attack. You usually try a bit harder to actually address the facts. Stick to that.
Re: Slow news day? (Score:2)
Though you must admit that, in reality, which is statistical, the likeliness of that is close enough to zero, to default to his assumption.
It's the same reason "prejudice" is such a problematic word. In reality, a neural net, like our brain, naturally always judges based on what it experienced. If I only experience small people with red hair to like tuba music, that's what I got to assume until I see contradicting evidence. The catch is that with that assumption I do not imply hate. Why would I? Yet SJW alw
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Re:Good? (Score:5, Informative)
The source of this news was this quote in the 10-Q, and only this quote in the 10-Q. Emphasis mine:
The German Umweltbundesamt has issued our subsidiary in Germany a notice and fine in the amount of 12 million euro alleging its non-compliance under applicable laws relating to market participation notifications and take-back obligations with respect to end-of-life battery products required thereunder. This is primarily relating to administrative requirements, but Tesla has continued to take back battery packs, and although we cannot predict the outcome of this matter, including the final amount of any penalties, we have filed our objection and it is not expected to have a material adverse impact on our business.
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Just because it is an Allegation then it must be true. Thank for the insight. For a second though I though you were some Tesla hater.
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Re: Good? (Score:2)
Kepp hitting each other like it's Dumb & Dumber...
You two are forgetting that this logic is ternary:
1 Yes
2 No
3 Dunno
Guess what option fits you two. :P
Re:Good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do find it rather humorous whenever any fineable action is even alleged about Tesla, it makes widespread international news. Do people have any clue how often large companies in general are fined? Tesla's last 10-Q has a grand total of three entries under "Legal Proceedings". GM's last 10-Q [sec.gov] has one legal proceeding entry after the next, running from page 18 to page 23. How many of these did you see widespread coverage of?
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Large companies don't sell products based on claims that they don't want to prove.
Sure they do. They all claim their products are the best on the market. By definition, most of them are lying.
Musk has said very publicly that his cars are good for the environment and takes credits because of such, now he should demonstrate that.
That's two separate claims.
Musk mostly says EVs will increase electrical demand, and that they are financially superior to ICEVs. But I'm sure he has said at some point that they are more environmentally friendly, so let's assume that's true.
But he's not getting credits because the cars are good for the environment, he's getting those credits because the cars have zero tailpipe emissions. (Obviously
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The batteries are a problem, but fossil fuels are also a problem. The batteries are improving because people are spending money on them. The credits cause more people to do that. If we want to see the future instead of fizzling out before we get there, we have to create it.
We can either promote good works or we can crap on bad ones, but the latter harms poor people so we do the former.
We can solve the cost of credits problem by simply raising taxes on the wealthy... people like Elon Musk
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So far we have seen no evidence that he hasn't.
Lots of EV batteries, most of them in fact, are broken up and sold on the secondary market to hobbyists. A while back there was a story about how Tesla in the US couldn't get enough packs to be worth operating their recycling facility! And this use case has only become more popular over time, the cost of used EV batteries has gone UP since I started looking at them (to use for RV storage batteries... I'm putting over 1500W on our bus to RV conversion.)
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It is important to make it convenient for people to recycle their dead cells and packs when they are done with them, and I suggest that every town in America ought to arrange for some scheme for getting them to a recycler.
I hope (and fully recognize what that is worth) that we shall settle on a small number of chemistries so that recycling is convenient.
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According to TFS:
Tesla wrote in the filing: "This is primarily relating to administrative requirements, but Tesla has continued to take back battery packs."
"Relating to administrative requirements" is corporate-speak for "we didn't fill out the required paperwork". Tesla's inability to handle the red tape should be unsurprising given Musk's propensity to just forge ahead and fix things later. But they don't admit not actually accepting batteries for recycling, but they are accused of not documenting that they have.
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Any time Tesla takes a breath, they are in the news. Musk's endless attention whoring ensures it. Kinda have to take the bad publicity with the good.
Re:Good? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tesla seems to be very reluctant to push the environmental impact of their cars. They are for sustainable energy, not green energy. Tesla is not trying to brand themselves like Toyota did with its Prius.
The push on how Fast they cars are, how advanced they are, their range, and speed, comfort and over all safety. The fact they don't emit CO2 like and ICE car isn't big on their marketing.
Reality it is impossible to have an overall environmental 0 sum game. Tesla is taring down thousands of acres of trees to build its factories, some of their presses and casting machine need to run on natural gas. There is a lot of energy used in forging metal, a lot of oil used in plastic, and paints are rather toxic as well.
For overall environmental problems CO2 is the big one, and automobiles are a large part of that, and going electric cars even if they are not carbon neutral in production is a good step in overall CO2 reduction.
The posted problems Tesla is having in the US, is mostly around its paint shop (Which I expect other companies have issues like that as well). In Germany it is around battery recycling. While these are important issues that need to be addressed, neither seem like major show stoppers, just an issue that needs to be addressed. Companies and businesses around the world get hit with fines and violations, and most of them get addressed and fixed.
The problem is with Tesla they are a bunch of Haters where Tesla just can't seem to do anything right, and Fanboys where Tesla can do no wrong.
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No car is good for the environment seeing as they all require vast amounts of metal to be mined and refined and and also contain plastics and other chemically noxious items.
The best that Musk can claim for Teslas is that they are not as bad for the environment as many other cars. Then again, he doesn't really give a flying fuck about the environment except insofar as it helps him to sell cars. The purchase of Bitcoin is proof enough of that.
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I think part of Tesla's success is not to base their marketing on CO2 emissions. Instead focusing mostly on performance. They made a car you want to drive even if you don't give a fuck about the planet. And when they mention CO2 emissions, they mostly market it as a way to save money on fuel, benefit from incentives, etc... They probably realized that the "green" argument isn't to most convincing for the kind of people who buy expensive cars.
Of course, Tesla will occasionally mention the environment if the
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You are offered 2 choices of food to eat. Whole Grain Bread, or Cake. Both have carbs that are not necessarily healthy. However the Whole Grain Bread is healthier as the Cake has a lot of extra sugar. So you can not eat at all, and suffer the consequences of being hungry, eat the Cake and make you unhealthy faster, or eat the While Grain Bread, and make you unhealthy slower.
In terms of transportation, we don't have many options to choose from. Picking the better option for our needs is often the best
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And cities need to be 100% self sufficient within their own geographic footprint. No more food or raw materials for you!
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You may be feeding my spoiled fat belly, but I'm also paying your mortgage.
Outside of that business transaction, I'm not sure why I should treat you well.
Care to explain in a way that doesn't present it as farmer's feeding us out of charity?
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Incorrect. Farmers are needed and likely the most important people in the US. Unfortunately the suburbanites/cityfolk treat them like shit and call them rednecks and flyover country. Leave your suburban bubble and find out who is feeding your spoiled fat belly.
The only problem with this statement is it's conflict with your previous statement that if people cared about the environment they wouldn't be driving around in personal cars. As someone who actually lives in the countryside I know first hand you have no choice but to do that because there's no public transport and things like car share simply are unfeasable in a rural community. But if YOU had actually got out of your suburban/city bubble you'd know that.
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Unless you work on a farm, or in some kind of extractive industry, it's your choice to live in the countryside, where public transport isn't avaialble.
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And unless you grow every single vegetable you eat, and grow and slaughter livestock for every morsel of meat you eat, it's your choice to live where you like and lead the life you want too. Stop acting like you're somehow better than people because you live in a place where literally 100% of everything you need to survive has to be transported to you, while admonishing people for also needing transportation.
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No they don't. Most have a lot of respect for farmers.
A farmer doesn't need to rig their trucks for rolling coal. Most don't bother with the Big Fancy Pickup truck, and drive small unassuming cars, because they have Tractors for the utility needs.
Farming isn't a 0 sum game that is all green, but they not wasteful either, as wasting energy for gas cuts into their profits. The farmers in my area, have solar panels, and wind turbines to cut the cost of their energy production. They are careful on how much
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A farmer doesn't need to rig their trucks for rolling coal. Most don't bother with the Big Fancy Pickup truck, and drive small unassuming cars, because they have Tractors for the utility needs.
Right, because when you want to pick up baling twine and fence posts and so on, you want to drive 20 miles in a tractor... It's not uncommon for a farming family to have a utility vehicle that is not a tractor, as well as a small, unassuming car.
Disclosure: my grandparents on one side were farmers. It's not uncommon in the UK for a farmer to have a tractor, an old Landrover or similar and a trailer, and a car.
At one point my grandfather on the other side was a coal miner.
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Dude you need to take a chill pill.
People may care about the environment, but it often isn't #1 on their priority list all the time. They have families, jobs, and other issues in their life that they need to consider as well. I lived in a city for a while, and I moved out to a rural area. Why? I got married and I wanted to go to an area where crime isn't a major issue. I didn't take public transportation because the way it is setup in my area it would take hours to get to a place that would take me 30 m
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And the same thing can be said about all the "pro life" people who scream bloody murd
Sarc? New Speak? I can't tell anymore. (Score:2)
Plannet Parenthood ~ love their nachos. Oh, wait, different place. So because they do other stuff that is good you are saying they should get a pass on something some people think is horrific? We'll come back to that.
maching in the streets and storming state capitols ~ if they drove to the capital or took the bus, that would be okay? That's a very small, albeit disturbed, group. I doubt many of them are reading posts on slashdot. Mobs in general are a problem and mob rule is something I oppose fr
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But since you're going to heap the same scorn on me for any amount of effort between 0% and 99%, you've just convinced me to not bother exerting any effort
Good. Because your "efforts" are just virtue signaling BS noise. If you guys just lived life honestly we would be better off.
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Might be safer sorting Ford or Toyota...
Re:Crap paint (Score:5, Informative)
Independent analysis of Tesla's paint compared to other brands with cars produced in Q1 of this year [youtube.com].
TL/DW: Similar to BMW and Mercedes.
It's long been shown that - contrary to some early claims - the paint thickness and hardness on the Model 3/Y are pretty much standard for the industry. But if you prefer anecdotes, from someone who has to drive on a lot of gravel roads in a place with road salt: first, the car was delivered spotless. I've found the paint to be more durable than on my last car (a Honda), which by the time I sold it looked like it had been sandblasted, but there is one thing on the Model 3 of note: in the stock config (with short mud flaps) that mine was delivered, the front wheels can sometimes cast debris in a way that hits just in front of the rear wheel wells. I have a number of glancing hits on each side that don't penetrate the clear coat (apparently on some other colours of paint these can affect coloured layers, but white seems to not be among them). Only the first batch of cars were delivered this way; they've now switched, for "rugged" locations like ours, to larger mud flaps and/or factory PPF for in front of the rear wheel wells.
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(Also, my understanding is that the debris cast pattern only ever existed with the 3, not the Y)
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It was mostly the older cars that had paint problems, the early 3s and older S/X vehicles. The lawsuit over it in Norway is still going I think.
Part of it was down to poor quality paintwork (in terms of application), and part of it was down to the design of the vehicles not deflecting stones away from it. For example the areas behind the wheels where particularly bad.
It was just lack of experience with automotive paint and design. FWIW paint on BMWs isn't great either. Well applied in most cases but you alm
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Come. The. Fuck. On.
Look at his video list.
You may be right, you may be wrong. I have no specific knowledge of the paint thickness issue.
But the youtuber you just linked is so emotionally invested in the brand it's head-spinning.
This is how you earn trolls.
Re: Crap paint (Score:2)
I truly wish there was a news aggregator, whose comment system would make it impossible, to post anything but verifiable observations, formally verified logical arguments based on that (including fuzzy logic), and hypothetical assumptions that are marked as such, and made less visible. Where ever, observation or assumption that is not shared by the reader, results in all logic based on that being blocked out too.
(This being harder to do than just blurting out knee-jerk crap, preventing many a comment, is a
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