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.
Well good on you for being moderately wealthy :)
I’m not, by “anything else” I meant something cheaper
Yeah ok, but if we think about this all calculating like… if I sell my car and get a new one, what was the net result? I paid a whole lot of taxes and I paid for the profit margin of the car dealership, and did a whole bunch of additional work orchestrating all this. None of these actions made Elon Musk poorer or really affected his visibility or power in any way.
The only thing I get is a warm fuzzy feeling of not driving a car that’s associated with him. Perhaps avoided the tiny risk of vandalism.
I mean sure, my next car will certainly be from some other manufacturer, but I cannot figure any reason to rush it.
Yeah fair enough. I guess if the market was flooded with used ones maybe they’d sell less new ones, but realistically I can’t think of a way it’d do anything other than give you the warm feeling