Three things are no secret: 1) Elon Musk benefits more than any other individual from Tesla’s success, 2) Elon Musk has gotten extremely involved in political matters (emphasis on “extremely”), and 3) many people won’t buy Tesla products because of those first two facts.
New research from JW Surety Bonds finds that 1 out of 4 Americans “avoid Tesla’s technology due to their opinions on Elon Musk.” That’s a full quarter of the US public that won’t consider great electric vehicles, including the best selling vehicle in the world, because of Musk’s highly abnormal involvement in US politics.
Before we get to more of the research, it should also be noted that Musk has been getting more and more involved, including in highly abnormal and extremely right-wing ways, in European politics — in the UK, Italy, Germany, and other major auto markets. Without a doubt, this is starting to impact consumer behavior in Europe as well.
I can’t think of anything else as significant in consumer product sales. Yes, there are some other highly politically engaged business people, but they aren’t so directly involved or tied to significant mass-market products. (I’m not counting the MyPillow guy, for example.) There are founders and CEOs of major corporations who are known political actors, but not so openly and loudly that they draw widely significant scrutiny or tarnish the brand they represent.
Finna go to Mexico just to import a BYD or Nio
Yeah I’ve been pissed off with elon since he turned project redwood into a cash grab… $37500 is a goddamn ripoff.
Open source self driving tech is out there and works in cars from toyota, honda and many other domestic and foreign manufacturers.
Tesla is shit.
If you are not self aware enough to be embarrassed that you are driving a cybertruck do not worry, everyone who sees you driving it is embarrassed for you.
Cybertruck drivers must truly believe that everyone around them is so happy and impressed. As they look in at all other drivers on the road, they all have huge, incredulous smiles on their faces… Of course it’s fully because everyone they are seeing is mid laugh when they see the jackass that dropped over $100k on that divorced dad tramp stamp of a car. So people burst out laughing at that rusty death machine that permanently breaks if you take it through the carwash. The owners have trouble reading emotion in faces though, so they must just feel like a million bucks as they arrive home, grab the items they went to pickup at the store (ED meditation and father’s day greeting cards they are forging to send to themselves) and the trunk severs their coke pinkie with the long fingernail.
I’d have been game for a cybertruck at $40k, but then he turned it into a rich person toy
“Turned it into” buddy, it never was going to be. Elkins bullshit is just that, bullshit. Was always a bait and switch.
“Just 2 more years…”
Fair - if it looked like that because it was cheap I’d actually find that pretty endearing
The best way to fight the oligarchy is to stop paying them.
Yeah at this point I’d rather get rid of my Tesla, but unfortunately I’m not rich enough to just willy nilly change cars because I don’t like the owner of its manufacturer.
Car manufacturers are a weird bunch. Like take Henry Ford for example, total nazi sympathizer. Or Volkwagen, from none other than Mr. Hitler himself.
I’m sure you could sell it and get something cheap and somewhat reliable in its place if you wanted to
I mean, there’s also the fact that his cars are expensive, and shit.
Also include Tesla solar on that list. If Tesla can access my cars data and cameras at will, what is keeping them out of my power system?
Their solar systems are also like triple the price of anything else.
Opinions of him are negative here in the UK as well. In April 2022, 40% of Brits had an unfavourable opinion of him. By August 2024, that had risen to 64%.
I can’t even imagine how that he tried to @ the king
75% of americans are selfish assholes.
I legitimately used to want a Tesla car, long long ago.
My (now) wife had a poster of the Roadster in her bedroom when it was a concept car and she was in her teens. Her parents eventually got a Model S but now they talk about how embarassed they feel driving it around. She must’ve had that poster from back when Elon was just that balding kid from Paypal lol
Right. Because that’s the ONLY reason we aren’t buying Tesla shit. It has nothing to do with the cost of everything sky rocketing.
You can still blacklist Twitter and any lazy ass ‘journalists’ that make an article based on a Twitter post and hotlink to said post. Many ways to say fuck Elon Musk
Edit: also Reddit. Fuck spez
Edit: also Facebook. Fuck Zuck. Glad he can finally afford to put pubes on his head tho
Then that is the reason that you are avoiding them. They know you aren’t buying. What’s important here is the people that can afford a Tesla but are choosing to look elsewhere because of Elon. This includes repeat customers as well.
How many of those are the target demographic for Tesla?
I would not buy a Tesla because of musk, but also because I don’t have the need for a car or the income for one.
I was looking at an electric car, decided against it because they are way too expensive. But during my research Tesla was completely out of the question for me because I will never support that piece of shit.
My SO always reminds me how I wanted to buy a Tesla around 2018 and was a big fan of Elon Musk having read his biography. Fortunately or unfortunately he decided to not keep his mouth shut lol. I won’t consider buying Tesla for any reason, even if they start ranking as the best quality built car.
just bought a kia instead of Tesla, also my house came with level 2 CCS
I’ve had one for over 5 years. I’m not buying another car for about 5 years but its not going to be a Tesla.
Plenty. Like, it’s only anecdotal but I could buy a Tesla, and am in the market for an EV. A Tesla just isn’t even an option to be considered, if for no other reason than how I can’t bring myself to give money to the guy.
That’s a full quarter of the US public that won’t consider great electric vehicles
This is subjective.
including the best selling vehicle in the world
This is distorted by the fact that they have fewer than half a dozen models. They aren’t even in the top 10 brands world wide. BYD is in the top 10 and they sell twice as many vehicles.
Tesla isn’t growing and as the foul Musk spread through global politics the brand will fall more. He wasted his first mover advantage. It’s just a waiting game on how long the market will remain irrational with the stock price.
Exactly this, I would’ve bought one eventually if he’d just shut up, a lot of would.
But why would I support an openly racist, fascist, fuckhead trying to buy his way into power? Toyota, Honda, Kia, and all the other corpos are plenty evil and have the manufacturing and support experience an auto maker needs.
The idea of a generic parts “libreauto” is cool. A frame/chassis designed to accept drop-in parts from other established manufacturers so you could part out wrecked cars and assemble them into your own frankencar.
Oh yes, 3 ton chunks of metal speeding down the street build by the local methhead of of parts of wrecked cars. Seems very idyllic.
I mean, shade tree mechanics, modified cars, kit cars, and cars restored/rebuilt by amature mechanics, etc have all existed about as long as cars in general. If your local government does vehicle inspections those will still apply when the kit cars become electric. And if it doesn’t you’ll be in no more danger than you already are.
Salvage is already a huge part of car repair and restoration, and certainly isn’t the exclusive domain of methheads.
What, do you want them to explain what’s wrong with modular interoperability by learning about it and engaging with the facts of the issue? That’s haaaarrrrrd!
It’s way easier to just invoke culturally-ingrained prejudice against drug use that was inserted into our heads by some assholes who were cynically manipulating the narrative for political gain.
I also really don’t like the implication that people without an addiction should somehow be ‘above’ reuse, salvage, or diy projects. That consuming products and filling landfills is somehow safer or more dignified. It feels like marketing at work and it’s an attitude I sometimes get from some conservative relatives who see fixing old things as poor people behavior and don’t understand why I wouldn’t just buy something new if I could afford it. I love fixing things, making things, and finding interesting ways to reuse or repurpose parts. I think this idea that buying products, especially new, should be the default or only way is wasteful and damaging. Especially when those products are deliberately made worse so you’ll buy them again and again.
I’ve done some car work over the years and easily half the parts I put in came secondhand off eBay, undoubtedly from a junkyard in some other state.
I’d like to switch to an electric vehicle but I’m deeply skeptical of the built in surveillance and overreliance on internet enabled software. I kind of wonder if my best bet for a car I trust to not spy on me or get hacked will be some kind of kit car situation in a few years.
People don’t realise what they’re missing when they can’t or won’t repair something. The moment I open something and fix it myself is the moment I feel like I truly own it. Prior to that I merely possessed a physical instance of something that belongs to someone else.
Maybe talking about it in those terms, calling into question whether they really own something just because they paid for a copy, is useful rhetoric for conservative types. They care so much about property, undermining that and telling them that proprietary designs are robbing them of having true ownership of their stuff, might make them care about it.
I would honestly love to retrofit my car with an electric system, but I can’t afford to not have it working. Maybe one day I can grab an empty chassis for cheap and retrofit that. I’ve already tinkered with torque-vectoring software so putting that in a real car would be a blast.
The idea there is to take the parts off of the wrecked vehicle that arent destroyed/damaged and allowing them to be slotted in elsewhere much more easily
You avoid Teslas because of Elon Musk. I avoid Teslas because of security, privacy, and proprietary tech concerns.
We are not the same.
/j
I avoid teslas because I have a white car and I don’t want them to crash into me.
I avoid them because they keep bursting into flames/accelerating out of control.
