The Tesla Cybertruck is a child’s drawing come to life – a dumpster shaped truck on ugly wheels with weird lights. It costs over $80k, leaks, rusts, breaks down and makes the owner the mockery of neighbors, friends and passerbys on the street. But even that would not have kept people from buying any Tesla en masse. What HAS made people reconsider buying them? The fact that Elon Musk is the face of Tesla.
Since he threw himself into right wing politics – in America and overseas – he has alienated a large group of car buyers. Who wants to buy a car that has come to symbolize right wing hate? Just throw a MAGA bumper sticker and a Nazi flag on it.
Cleantechnica, an independent journalism site focused on green and clean energy, reports that research from JW Surety Bonds found that approximately 1 in 4 Americans “avoid Tesla’s technology due to their opinions on Elon Musk.” That is an incredible amount of Americans that are avoiding electric vehicles – purely because of how toxic Elon Musk is.
Elon is tanking not only Twitter (I refuse to call it X), but also Tesla, because he is hell bent on elevating right wing politicians in America, Germany, UK and Italy. And this is impacting buyers, especially when there are so many other excellent electric vehicle brands out there – Rivian, for example.
Just a reminder that Tesla/Elon Musk is not the first car company to cozy up to right wing Nazis. Ford and GM fought to become the car of choice in the German market during Hitler’s reign of terror in the 1920’s and 1930’s. But, this was before tv, internet and social media, so consumers probably didn’t even know about it.
Back to Musk. He is not the first CEO to have strong political feelings and make them public. The problem is, his ideal consumer is NOT right wing. In fact, the majority of electric car vehicle buyers would lean more left, care about the environment, social causes, etc. And he is alienating them. Elon/Trump supporters are largely blue collar, high school diploma-holding White people. These folks drive trucks – gas guzzlers. Not electric vehicles. (not all, but most).
Since Elon bought Twitter, Tesla has suffered. Sales declined in 2024 when compared to 2023 numbers – for the first time ever. Elon is a weirdo, an angry, emotionally stunted man child. Having his weird personality on display has not been good for the company. But he continues to be rich and successful and thinks he can solve the countries problems as Co-President and head of DOGE.
Someone, please get this guy into therapy so he stops making us all suffer due to his serious mommy issues. It’s exhausting watching his daily, public tantrums.
