Benjamin O'Carroll

People seem confused about why Tesla is getting so much backlash over its new "flying Roadster." For those of us who were once genuinely enthusiastic about Tesla, this isn't about hating innovation. It's about a long history of broken promises, misleading expectations, and increasingly absurd marketing. Tesla unveiled the second-generation Roadster in 2017, took customer deposits, and promised deliveries in 2020. Six years past that deadline, it still hasn't delivered the car. Instead, it's demonstrating an even more outrageous version with features that will likely never make it into production. The original 2nd gen Roadster would still be an amazing car today. Why not just deliver what was promised? Then there's Full Self-Driving. Tesla marketed the idea that Model 3 owners could turn their cars into income-generating robotaxis. That never materialized. Even if the technology eventually gets there, the opportunity has already passed for many early buyers. Timing matters. Delivering something a decade late isn't fulfilling the promise you sold to customers. And then there's Solar Roof. Unveiled in 2016 as a revolutionary approach to residential solar, it struggled with costs, installation challenges, and adoption far below expectations. After nearly a decade, Tesla discontinued it entirely in August 2026. Another grand vision abandoned, leaving existing customers with a discontinued product to maintain. Then came the Cybertruck, marketed as a nearly indestructible, revolutionary truck. Instead, we got a vehicle with questionable build quality, numerous recalls, expensive repairs, disappointing results in several real-world off-road tests, and specifications that fell short of the original promises. It literally looks like a dumpster, but aesthetics aside, the collapsing demand speaks volumes about the reality of what Tesla delivered. Another heavily hyped product that fell dramatically short of expectations. This is how consumer trust erodes. Not through one disappointment, but through years of accumulating them. And this is part of the reason why many people who were once enthusiastic about Tesla have become critical and cynical about it. But there's something even more fundamental here: Tesla has completely departed from the grounded, practical vision that made so many of us enthusiastic about the company in the first place. Electric cars were ambitious, but the idea was grounded in reality. People could charge at home, infrastructure could gradually expand, technology could improve, and millions of ordinary people could eventually benefit. There was a realistic path toward mass adoption. What the hell does a flying Roadster powered by compressed-air thrusters have to do with any of that? It's an expensive, impractical engineering stunt with enormous packaging, safety, and regulatory challenges, and no credible near-term path toward mass-market usefulness. Modern electric cars already achieve ridiculous acceleration without this nonsense. What practical problem does it solve? Who actually needs it? When will ordinary consumers benefit? And watching Tesla fans compare this experimental prototype in a Roadster-shaped shell to actual production vehicles people can buy today is ridiculous. What's especially infuriating is the cult-like mentality surrounding all of this. You can't point out the history of failed promises, question the practicality, or demand realistic timelines without being accused of being a "hater" or having "Elon derangement syndrome." Tesla deserves recognition for helping make electric cars a reality, but that success doesn't give it a blank check to keep marketing increasingly fantastical promises while failing to deliver on previous commitments. This isn't hatred. It's disappointment from people who once believed in the company, watched it accomplish extraordinary things, and have since watched it increasingly substitute practical innovation with spectacle and promises. Elon fanboys are also ignoring a bigger pattern that goes beyond Tesla. What made many of us enthusiastic about Elon and Tesla and in the first place was a grounded vision of technological progress that could genuinely improve millions of lives. Electric cars were ambitious, but practical, achievable, and useful to ordinary people. Now we're supposed to get excited about flying cars with compressed-air thrusters that have no credible path to mass adoption and solve no meaningful problem for the average consumer. It's the same kind of thinking behind marketing the colonization of Mars as some urgent necessity for humanity's survival. There's nothing wrong with space exploration, but Earth isn't about to become uninhabitable because of the Sun. We're talking about geological timescales, while humanity faces enormous problems RIGHT NOW: poverty, hunger, access to education, corruption, abuse of power, wars, and a lack of government accountability. We have plenty of very real problems to solve before worrying about humanity's survival on another planet. And then there's DOGE. I was genuinely excited about the original idea of making government more efficient, reducing waste, and increasing accountability. Instead, we got questionable savings figures, inexperienced people making sweeping decisions, serious concerns over access to sensitive personal information, and an initiative that ultimately fizzled out without delivering its grand promises. Another enormous narrative that fell apart when confronted with reality. That's what makes all of this so frustrating. It's not that we stopped believing in technological progress. It's that we've watched someone who once pursued grounded, transformative ideas increasingly embrace fantastical promises, political spectacle, and questionable narratives disconnected from practical reality. And somehow, pointing out this history of disappointment gets you labeled a "hater" or accused of having "Elon derangement syndrome." The problem isn't dreaming big. It's repeatedly selling people those dreams, failing to deliver, and then expecting everyone to applaud the next, even more ridiculous promise without asking what happened to the last one. The world doesn't need more spectacular promises. It needs practical solutions to real problems, honest expectations, and accountability for what was promised. That's what made Tesla exciting in the first place, and that's what so many of us feel has been betrayed.