“He completely alienated most of his buying base. It’s going to kill the business.”
Bye Bye Buyers
As Elon Musk throws his weight behind Donald Trump, people who own Teslas are starting to feel some buyer’s remorse.
In a new report based on findings from an analytics firm called CivicService, Yahoo Finance reports that Tesla’s favorability among registered Democrats — who are far more likely to purchase electric vehicles than their oil-loving Republican counterparts — has dropped precipitously from 39 percent in January to 16 percent in July.
Interestingly, the EV company’s favorability is also down from 36 percent in January to 23 percent in July among GOP voters, suggesting that Musk isn’t winning himself any new buyers with his sudden turn of support for Trump and regressive social ideas.
Despite Tesla’s favorability share dropping somewhat among Republicans as well, CivicScience CEO John Dick told Yahoo that the disparity between those numbers is indicative of a larger trend.
“Data has shown consistently that Democrats, more closely than Republicans, associate Elon Musk and his actions with the brand,” Dick said.
Killswitch Engage
Tesla short-seller Mark Spiegel was even harsher in his criticism of the infamous billionaire’s brand, which he said may result in a “terrible” boycott from Democrats if Musk keeps up the increasingly rabid right-wing rhetoric.
“He completely alienated most of his buying base,” Spiegel told Yahoo. “It’s going to kill the business.”
Ross Gerber, a partner at the Gerber Kawasaki investment firm and a longtime Tesla investor, told the site that Musk’s values are now so misaligned from his own that he’s considering selling his car.
“This final stance of Elon has put me in a really difficult moral position,” the investor elucidated. “I’m driving a Cybertruck and now it’s like a MAGA truck.”
Musk’s regressive outbursts have accelerated in recent years. Though he spent a few years making transphobic comments here and there, it wasn’t until this week that he deadnamed his trans child and claimed she’d been “killed” by the “woke mind virus” during an interview with alt-right icon Jordan Peterson. This month, Musk also announced that he’s officially moving SpaceX headquarters from California to the more conservative Texas over his opposition to the Golden State’s support for the rights of trans children.
At this point, it’s hard to imagine Musk ever recouping the liberal-minded EV enthusiasts who used to make up the lion’s share of Tesla buyers — and given that the candidate he’s throwing money at wants to all but destroy the industry, he’s seemed to put himself between a rock and a hard place, too.
“I can’t imagine a single Democrat, or, let’s say, very few of them, willing to buy a Tesla at this point,” added Spiegel, the Tesla short-seller.
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