I have been struggling about what to do with Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla. What makes her free, and salvage, is a long and complicated story that I will tell in the future. For now, though, I’m grappling with what it means to own and drive a Swasticar.
For years, I’ve told anyone who asked about the car that it’s a wonderful car, but that I would never buy anything from Tesla again. They’re a despicable company, apart and aside from the current political antics of the CEO (though, I suspect, the rot starts at the top). I was comfortable being seen in Joulee, for a couple of reasons:
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She’s a 2015 — ten years old. Ancient by tech standards! Back then, Elon Musk was a curiosity, but he took an active stance against climate change and in favor of workforce diversity (reference apparently scrubbed from Twitter). There was no reason to think he was any worse than other automobile-company CEO’s, though he was already somewhat more visible.
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In the 2010’s, if you wanted an electric car that you could take on road trips, Tesla was the only game in town. While I don’t think that electric automobiles are the answer to climate change, I think electrification is a fabulous place to start: practical, palatable, and effective. I didn’t want to drive another mile on gasoline if I could avoid it. Yes, I also installed a solar energy system on my roof, and started driving on sunshine. I believed then, and believe now, that de-carbonizing transportation is a Very Important Thing.
Now, alas, it’s 2025 and Musk is no longer a curiosity but is very publicly behaving like a spoiled child and hurting a lot of folks in the process. So is it time to sell Joulee?
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I drive very little and live in a sparsely-populated place. If the concern is that every Tesla on the road implies an endorsement of Musk and his antics, well, selling Joulee would likely give Musk more exposure.
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Replacing a car before it needs to be replaced is an environmental catastrophe.
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I would hope that driving a Tesla with a “muck fusk” sticker would send a clear message that “hey, there’s someone who believed in the dream and has now awoken to the reality” and might encourage one or two folks to actually think about what this all means.
—2p