Elon Musk ruined the Tesla brand for me.
Two years ago Teslas were cool. Now they aren't.
Bumper strips available to put on a Tesla:
Teslas used to be a mix of luxury, innovation, super-high performance, safety, environmental sensibility, and leading-edge technology. I knew that they were selling like hotcakes in Silicon Valley. I heard about Teslas from enthusiastic friends who told me they nearly drove themselves and that the company kept sending improvements to the navigation in free downloads. There was buzz. I test-drove one and loved it.
I would have bought one, but I liked my current car, a Toyota Avalon hybrid too much. I was waiting for something -- anything -- to give me an excuse to sell it and trade up. I considered a Tesla moving "up."
An added bonus was that Republicans were badmouthing electric vehicles. People like Ted Cruz were saying that gas-guzzling polluting cars were the All-American way and that electric vehicles were just another California affectation, like hot yoga, vegan diets, and zero-emission goals. If Cruz hated them, they must be good. Trump promised to end the green energy subsidies for EVs inside Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. Trump was the drill, baby, drill candidate, the one who said wind turbines cause cancer and smashed birds. Trump's blanket condemnation of EVs was another plus for me.
Then things started to go wrong in the brand ideas that surrounded Tesla.
First Elon Musk bought Twitter. It was always a raw slugfest site, but after Musk Twitter got worse. It moved politically right and it wasn't subtle. Somehow the algorithms that shape my feed makes it so about 60 percent of what I get fed is anti-immigrant, MAGA tweets and re-tweets. It became Fox or Newsmax.
California, as always for Oregon, is the leading indicator of West Coast trends. New car registrations for Teslas in California fell for three consecutive quarters, and the drop-off is accelerating, falling another 24 percent between April and June 2024. Tesla's share of the market is dropping; Rivian's is up.
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| The New York Times |
Elon Musk, the face of the Tesla brand, isn't being subtle. He doesn't give Tesla-ready buyers like me a way to avert our eyes. He was literally jumping up and down on the stage with Trump Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk said that "Trump must win to preserve the Constitution." If Democrats win, he said, "this will be the last election." This morning my X home button brought me directly to an Elon Musk post offering me $47 for each person in a swing state that I refer to him and who signs a petition he sponsors.
Trump has trained Republicans to dislike EVs generally. Musk is training Democrats to avoid Teslas, the brand. It is lose-lose.
The vehicles themselves -- stripped of their brand associations, if such a thing is possible for an automobile -- may sell themselves. Friends who own them say they are great cars--and then they grimace about the Elon Musk taint, as they assure me they bought before Musk went all-MAGA. Independent voters -- frequently a proxy for people who are simply less engaged -- may be happy to drive Teslas.
But cars are now, and have always been, statements about the owner. There is, in effect, a Trump or MAGA bumper strip attached to every Tesla. It is like a watermark, always there in the background attached to the brand. It isn’t something I could explain away.
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Maybe if you have a Tesla, you could get a bumper sticker that says, JACK SMITH FAN.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t buy one for $20 k because of Musk. I’m guessing the board of Tesla will figure out how toxic Musk has become.
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing more of them around, there's even one somewhere up Sardine Creek and several in Gold Hill proper.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a couple of the mobile dumpsters called CyberTruck around, but the guys driving them looked like they were trying to hide their faces.
Elon is incredibly obnoxious, but I wouldn't *not* buy a Tesla on his account. The bigger issue is that legacy automakers have caught up and are now making better, more reliable EVs at more competitive prices. The one advantage Tesla still has for the foreseeable future is its charging network, but that might have been the game all along.
ReplyDeleteI think it's time for Tesla to rebrand. There's a relevant example from Japan. The Japanese car company Datsun used to produce and sell underpowered, heavy cars in the US. The company's leadership in Japan then made the decision to exit the US market, revamp their operations, redesign their vehicles, change their name to the parent company, Nissan, and rebrand their entire line of vehicles. I am worried that Elon Musk may not be open to allowing Tesla's board of directors to take the necessary steps to rescue the company. It seems that a new car company might need to emerge free of Elon's influence, or at least with his involvement not immediately apparent. The history behind Nissan reveals involvement with the Japanese Second World War manufacture of vehicals for the Japanese Army. So, even a stain that deep in the American conscience, rebranded Nissan, came out with a successful product line for the US market.
ReplyDeleteAs Tesla sales continue to follow Truth Social into the dumpster, I understand sales of Tesla rival Rivian are increasing dramatically.
ReplyDeleteElon Musk also gave us SpaceX. That achievement way overcompensates for whatever political sins you might think he committed.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't give me SpaceX. But even if he did, I would gladly trade it for a Republican Party that respects our Constitution and the rule of law.
DeleteBoth can be true at the same time. Because while most everyone would agree (myself included) that what SpaceX has accomplished as a private space company has been a resounding success, thanks in no small part to Elon's foresightedness in this regard, his personal politics have drifted significantly from the days of him being a full-bore capitalist innovator type to, well... whatever MAGA kind of craziness he subscribes to today would be called.
DeleteReading between the tea leaves, I'd guess that Trump has verbally promised Elon a tax break or two that would greatly further Elon's personal goal of becoming the world's first trillionaire.
Just my 2 cents on this because again when it comes to being a forward-thinking capitalist, Elon really has been great.
As I understand it, our Military is depending on Starlink for much, if not all it's cyber communications. Will you still be enamored of Musk if his panties get all bunched over some imagined slight and shuts down the the Starlink channels used by the US Military, like he did to Ukraine ?
ReplyDeleteThat’s not exactly what Elon Musk did with regards to Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteHe drew a line on allowing StarLink to be used for precise real-time targeting for weapons used against Russia. He didn’t want to be involved in the war to that extent.
He is continuing to provide access for Ukrainian military communications.
Cool, an autistic Narcissist is controlling Communications and War Strategies for Sovereign Nations. If you don't see a problem with that, you're blind.
ReplyDelete