They hang out here because America is currently one of/the best wealth engines on the planet and they can afford to avoid the shit parts. Once either of those stop they’ll go somewhere else that’s nicer

Look, I’m with you most of the way in theory, but a lot of rural areas don’t have plumbing and drinking water from public utilities, they have their own septic and water wells. I know it’s pedantic but a lot of parts of the world are so rural that it probably doesn’t make sense to have fully public transport, like it doesn’t make sense to have centralized water. The scope needs to be great systems within towns and cities and lots of park and ride hubs around the perimeter

I don’t buy it, tbh. I’ve been hearing some variant of “Tesla isn’t growing more and the stock is overvalued” or in the last five years “Musk is an idiot and is going to tank the stock” since I started paying attention to the markets circa 2012. Musk is a fascist piece of shit, but he does have some quality–and it may just be having more money than God and thus having a sort of wealth inertia–that keeps the stock merrily tripping its way upwards. I bought three shares several years ago on a whim, and between the upward growth and the stock splits I’ve sold my initial investment amount 3x already and could sell it three more times today and still have Tesla stock leftover

The other factor not yet mentioned is charging time/range. There are EVs with more range, and EVs with faster charging times, and EVs that are cheaper, but there are no EVs with a comparable long-range driving ability as Teslas for less money. The Hyundai ioniq 6 is comparable now but it’s new, untested, and doesn’t really have a used market

For many of those years it was the only electric pickup truck being advertised. And also, yes people do like the Tesla name. Musk and growing competition has done a ton to tank the reputation lately, but until just a couple years ago Tesla was far and away the best and most advanced electric car, and depending on your criteria the most advanced/best car period. Perception shifts slowly outside of well-informed groups, and the Musk hate is really only affecting well-informed left wing groups right now, so a lot of libertarian Musk fanboys are still fully on the Tesla train