The problem:
Have you ever walked past the commuter lots on campus or waited for an Uber outside of Midtown, and realized that every car looks… exactly the same?
I was thinking about this recently while reflecting on how much I miss the days when a car was a true extension of your personality. Growing up, cars had distinct faces, quirks and interiors that felt crafted. Now? We are living in the era of what I call “Teslafication.”
If you haven’t heard the term, let me paint the picture. Teslafication is the automotive industry’s obsession with trading tactile craftsmanship for sterile, giant touchscreens. It is the absolute homogenization of design. Instead of wood grain, analog clocks and physical buttons that you could press without taking your eyes off the road, we are getting iPads slapped onto dashboards.
Take Mercedes for example, the classic luxury car. Mercedes used to be the gold standard of tactile luxury and distinct heritage. When you sat in one, you knew exactly what it was. Today, their electric models boast things like the “MBUX Hyperscreen,” a massive 56-inch pane of curved glass that stretches door-to-door and essentially turns the entire dashboard into one giant, glowing screen. Sure, it is high-tech and uses artificial intelligence to learn driver routines, but it completely strips away the brand’s iconic personality. It trades a century of craftsmanship for something that looks like it belongs on a desk in an Apple Store.
Shaping identity:
But this isn’t just about cars. The Teslafication of the auto industry is a glaring mirror for a much bigger issue: the slow, creeping loss of individuality our generation is feeling right now.
Think about it. We are trading quirky, vintage and unique for sleek, minimalist and uniform. We see it in the fast fashion hauls where everyone is seemingly dressing exactly the same, the beige aesthetic dorm rooms and the perfectly curated Instagram feeds. When everything is optimized for maximum efficiency and a “clean aesthetic,” we lose the friction that makes things interesting. We lose our identity.
A car used to be the ultimate domain, a little metal bubble of ‘you.’ The tactile feeling of turning a physical dial to crank up the AC or the volume on your favorite song required muscle memory; those buttons were designed for the human hand. Now, everything is buried behind three sub-menus on a touchscreen, making us feel more like passive tech consumers than active drivers.
As college students, we are at a point in our lives where we are supposed to be figuring out who we are. But it is incredibly hard to carve out a unique identity when it appears the world around us is obsessed with looking identical. The Teslafication of everything, from cars to apartments to our digital lives, leaves us craving authenticity in a world of screens.
So, how do we fight back? Maybe we can’t all go out and buy a vintage car with hand-cranked windows and a cassette player. But we can start rejecting the pressure to look and consume just like everyone else. Let your space be a little cluttered and buy the weird vintage jacket instead of the viral TikTok sweater. Keep the quirky things that make you an individual. Because frankly, a life without physical buttons and a little bit of messy craftsmanship, is just a giant screen. And we have all had enough screen time.