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I’m an old guy (born 1956). So I’ve had a few cars, though not a large number, because I keep each car for a long time. I like cars.
Today (Saturday, April 6) I was reading a car review in a large circulation business publication by a guy who injects a strong personality into his car reviews (so I get that reading his reviews I’m getting more than a strict car review). He openly says electric cars are superior in every way.
Why he is wrong on the universal superiority of electric cars is not why I’m posting this. I am posting this because I thought interesting some of the assumptions built into some parenthetical comments he makes along the way during his review.
Anyway, today’s car review was of a Tesla Model 3 (an all electric sedan) base trim level, the reviewer’s sister had recently acquired (i.e., a consumer car, not a review car supplied by the manufacturer). Two features of the review struck me:
- The reviewer referred to the base model Tesla Model 3 as “weighing a trim 3,841 pounds . . ..” 3,841 pounds is “trim”? In 1992 my then-new (remember, I’m an old guy) large Infiniti Q45 v8-powered luxury sedan was considered somewhat porky at about 4,100 pounds. My recently acquired 2024 VW Taos weighs about 3,200 pounds. Maybe in electric car land 3,800 pounds is "trim," but not in gasoline car world.
- The reviewer made several comments about his sister’s objections to Elon Musk’s current opinions (Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla). The reviewer himself referenced issues about “Elon’s latest reprehensible post” and his “hard-right rhetoric.” I don’t keep close track of Elon Musk’s activity, but it seems that most of his recent public statements are about free speech and allowing people to hold opinions that are not pre-approved by designated authorities. Certainly Mr. Musk does not consider himself "hard-right," and few people on "the right" count Mr. Musk as representative of their overall views. But apparently now free speech is “hard right rhetoric” and encouraging people to express their actual opinions is “reprehensible.” I’m so old I remember when free speech was a left-wing concept (like when I was in college in the mid-1970s). But I guess today free opinions and free speech are now reprehensible hard-right ideas.
Discussion (27)
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Amazing how things change, isn't it? And I believe Mister Musk would consider himself a libertarian or liberal.
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Do you think you are old Mr. Tabby? You are a babe in the woods. And speaking about Free Speech. That is what the far-left socialist Mario Savio called his Free Speech Movement as they rioted on the campus at UCAL Berkley in 1964...one solitary year before I started my freshman year in college. Then came the hippies and Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, right across the Bay Bridge from my dormitory. Back to your point, that was an example of when the left believed in free speech. It was also an example of what they did when they didn't get what they wanted.
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I think I have read that that Mr. Musk certainly does not consider himself anywhere on the "right-wing" side of any political scale.
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A very old leftist tradition: Anyone who supports free speech rights for non-leftists "fascist".
That was back when leftists were a minority. It was inevitable that they would discard their pretended love of free speech when they acquired sufficient power.
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Practically all new cars today are substantially heavier than the equivalent cars from 25-40 years ago. Part of it is more strident safety requirements, part is that there are just a lot more luxury features. I was surprised that your brand new Taos only weighs 3,200 pounds. Well done, Volkswagen! The 4-wheel drive version weighs about 250 pounds more.
On the free speech thing, yeah. Some people just cannot get the concept of supporting the right of people to say things that you vehemently disagree with. They want speech they disagree with suppressed and assume everyone else does, too. So if you say that someone should be free to say something, that must mean you agree with that something.
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