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.
100%. New vehicles have so many stupid knickknacks to pretend to be “luxury” that make them break easily and difficult+expensive to fix.
Planned obsolescence … purposely designing things to break down over a certain amount of time
If I find a vehicle model that lasts a long time, that is a good vehicle to have and hold on to. One of the vehicles I drive is a 2004 Volvo Stationwagon. Everyone pans it and says it looks too plain and dull … but it has 400,000 km and the interior still looks brand new, minimal problems, minimal maintenance and it actually runs great and lasts forever through Canadian winters.
That and the tracking/data collection. My car is a 2007 (pre-black box) and I repaired nearly everything on it to ensure it will keep functioning soundly. I see no personal value in purchasing a new car at the moment even though I can afford it. I am happy to save that money. Another reason is that anything ICE is insanely complicated and EVs still seem to be finding standards that I am still learning about. Even choosing EV, they still track/collect.
There are a couple vehicles that I love the shapes of and I am sure they’d be fun, but I can’t readily accept the dystopian mechanism underneath the gleaming hood.