alt Hacker NewsThe consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
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Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.
Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.
What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.
Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.
You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
Tesla owners aren't that young.
This site claims the average age of Tesla owners is 48 (updated for 2025):
https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demograph...
Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do.
A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer.
Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
That's my impression too. You'd need to be 80 years old to be excited by a toyota.
That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group.
The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.