“I used to think that when people interrupted me it was because I was in a fancy car. These days, when someone cuts me off, I wonder if it’s because of Elon.
My brother-in-law Brandon Luce sounded slightly paranoid when I spoke to him recently following the Elon Musk takeover Twitter. But in the days that followed Musk made the controversial purchase and vied to become perhaps America’s most polarizing man, many owners of their beloved Teslas are in a similar emotional dilemma.
Brandon was one of half a dozen Tesla owners I spoke with to see how much, if any, their opinions of the man so closely identified with their car have changed recently and how that has had a impact on their Tesla ownership experience.
Almost everyone started not by venting Musk’s recent tweets, but by expressing his intense love for his Tesla. Many of them added a gushing admiration for Musk himself, at least when they first bought the car. Luce, my brother-in-law, saw Musk as a genius – and a humble one at that – when he bought a Model 3 a few years ago.
Now, he says of Musk, “He’s become like an outcast. He says things that don’t correspond at all to my way of seeing the world.
So that the rating of the CEO of the company becomes a factor when a person buying a car is obviously unique. People don’t routinely pay attention to everything auto CEOs say, unless maybe they follow auto stocks or are an avid reader of MarketWatch.
But Musk is clearly different, and since taking over Twitter he’s embarked on his own kind of “ridiculous fashionHe gutted the staff, made it a platform more accessible for hate speech, told his supporters to vote Republican this last day of the election and invoked QAnon as he baselessly implied that his former right-hand man is a pedophile – which in turn is forced this man to flee his home – and more.
So what’s a liberal Tesla owner to do? Are you throwing away your $100,000 car in protest?
Berkeley’s James Murakami has no intention of getting rid of his Tesla. But he is well aware that Musk has become a factor in owning one. “[Musk] He wasn’t a savory character before, but now he’s even less,” he said.
These days, Murakami describes living with his Tesla as being in a state of “cognitive dissonance.” He loves driving the car, but when Musk attacks Dr. Antoine Fauci and Marjorie Taylor Greene encourages himit is something “that must be compartmentalised”.
“When buying the car, my main question was whether it ticked the boxes. Is it EV? Does it have the range? Does it fit my family? boxes.
He added: “One of the questions was not ‘what is the integrity of the CEO’.” Now he says that may be the case, but “the ship has already sailed”.
Chicago’s Alex Applegarth doesn’t see the Tesla CEO’s integrity as something worth worrying about. He calls Musk a “total jerk” but says, “I’m in the car. It’s fucking awesome. I separate the brand from Elon. I could give f—k about Elon.
There is no doubt that thousands of Tesla owners and potential buyers agree with this perspective. But as Musk keeps getting louder and sharing conspiracies of fake far-right news sites, pretending he’s not there is getting harder and harder.
These days, as Murakami points out, “it’s getting hard to throw your money behind something that doesn’t fit your policy.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk gestures during the delivery ceremony of Tesla’s China-made Model 3 on January 28. 7, 2020, in Shanghai.
STR/AFP/Getty ImagesTo Chris Peterson, newsletter author Red and Blue Customers“The question is whether the interest of the liberal market will stem from Elon Musk’s political engagement, transforming Tesla into a more conservative brand for the conservative market.”
“There’s an interesting tension here,” Peterson notes, “between a brand that’s futuristic, naturally appealing to urban, liberal customers, and a CEO who loudly espouses conservative values. Over time, Tesla might be perceived more like a Lexus or Lincoln, which is very conservative.”
An important factor that will prevent liberals from fleeing is the car itself. In May, the first three electric cars in the United States were all Teslas, and “It’s not even close.” And, it bears repeating, the people I spoke to expressed gushing adoration for their car. The first thing Chris Hua, a Chicagoan who just sold his Tesla, said to me was, “I miss it. I liked it. It was awesome.”
Luce prefaced everything negative he said about Musk by saying, “This is by far the best car I’ve ever had. It’s a pleasure. The car is amazing.
But in our polarized world, Musk might still be able to single-handedly turn Tesla into a brand for conservatives. To what extent remains to be seen. Tesla is unlikely to become the MyPillow of auto brands because it’s so far ahead of the EV competition, but again, if the CEO continues to invoke far-right conspiracy theories, all bets are off. open.
“I just feel like there’s a time when you can tempt fate for so long,” Hua pointed out. “People will turn against you.
Signs that Musk is engaging in a Tesla reaction are already beginning to appear. A YouGov report, a research firm that has been tracking market approval for Tesla since 2016, reported that the brand recently fell into negative territory in terms of consumer perception for the first time. A Morning Consult poll backed the negative perception, finding indicators that he sits along a political dividing line.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduces the Cybertruck on November 2. On February 21, 2019, at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, California.
Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressAnd this week, UCSF’s Bob Wachter announced that he would stay on Twitter because he has yet to find “a forum to provide accurate scientific information to the public that fits Twitter.” But, he added, “I decided I will never buy a Tesla. If a lot of people make that choice, it should send a powerful message. »
Of those I spoke to, Luce said he ordered a second car and it was a Chevy Bolt.
“I don’t want to invest more money in Tesla right now,” he said. “His behavior definitely impacted us negatively on the idea of buying one for a second car.”
Luce stopped to consider her car. “I haven’t seen the CEO of Chevy say any weird stuff on Twitter,” he added. “In fact, I don’t even know who the CEO of Chevy is.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks to the media on September 29. On February 3, 2020, as he arrives to visit the construction site of the future American electric car giant Tesla in Gruenheide near Berlin.
Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
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