Anyone who is remotely online is basically forced to have extremely strong opinions about Tesla because Elon can't help but put himself in almost every piece of discourse, making him and Tesla objectionable to many people for many reasons.
The cost seems to be turning into less of an issue - the Model 3 was for a while the best priced EV here (Australia) but now there are several Chinese options that are more affordable for not much less on the feature side, and without any of the dumb stuff like no stalk for turn signals.
Yes we too have Chinese cars in NZ. They are pretty well built, albeit lame tech. The cheapness comes from the fact they are much smaller. Thats the market segment BYD is winning, they are not even competing with Tesla.
The cost seems to be turning into less of an issue - the Model 3 was for a while the best priced EV here (Australia) but now there are several Chinese options that are more affordable for not much less on the feature side, and without any of the dumb stuff like no stalk for turn signals.