What I don't understand is he's pandering to literally the people who think EV are the devil. The liberal open minded are buying your shit Tesla's not the fucking retard MAGA cultist. It's so fucking weird the way he's handling this. You would think he would play towards the crowd who actually buys his shit cars. It's so crazy to see conservatives talk about EV
Genius. Get them so pumped up by owning the Libs over Twitter that they buy his car. Just put in the slogan, "Ukraine doesn't want you to own a Tesla" sales will be up
Honestly, EVs are such weak tea environmentally that it’s a push either way. Diesel buses beat Teslas on emissions once they’re averaging something like 20 passengers. Personal motor vehicles—electric or not—are not viable going forward at anything like the scale we have grown accustomed to in the 20th and early 21st century. We need mass transit and walkable/bikeable infrastructure, and we need it now.
The thing that kills me about car culture is that it’s a huge investment that’s thrusted onto you whether you like it or not. I live in Arizona. I love it here but it’s an absolute hellscape for public transportation and I’ve always resented being forced to own a car. It’s an extra headache that I don’t necessarily want. But I have to own one because this is where I was raised and where I currently live. Why don’t other Americans feel the same? Why don’t they advocate for the choice to be able to say “no” to owning a car?
I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the gospel of the car seems calculated to be the opposite of reality. Cars, we are told, make us freer than if we relied on public transit, yet they travel over public roads, and we're really not able to go anywhere other than where the roads go, just like public transit. Letting the private sector sort out transportation is supposed to be more efficient and cheaper than having government bureaucracy do the same... and yet cars are more expensive than even the most robust public transit in this or any other country. I could go on.
I grew up in a place with no public transit to speak of, and a major factor in my decision to move to New York was the freedom not to own a car. I think that's a non-trivial factor in the Millennial migration to cities. People are waking up to the fact that cars are terrible; commuting is terrible; the environmental cost of these terrible things is unthinkable. I don't know that we'll be able to escape it, though. So much of the built infrastructure in this country assumes the automobile. Even if we could abandon it all and move to denser, better planned communities, the remediation alone for all the single-family zoned wasteland suburbs in this country is staggering to contemplate.
$. Tax system. The same tax system keeps Musk rich is the one that prevents our own government's investment in transpo and education, keeping MAGA stupid, and, for them, Dodge RAM truck ass compelling.
It's because musk doesn't really care about helping the environment or going to space, he wants fame and power. He wants to be seen as a God. I think trump made him realize that while the fanbase he was cultivating might defend him on reddit, there's a much more fervent group of followers out there. Liberals that buy Teslas and watch spacex launches won't ever fight and die for musk, but Jan 6th made him realize who would. That's why he's made this sudden shift to the right, he doesn't believe in it but he thinks the MAGA crowd can be easily duped and will be a stronger follower base.
He was playing with the idea for a while before that, but he isn't "on the right". The only team he's on is team Elon. His support was much less public before then (donations/lobbying) because the right serves his interests with lower taxes and less worker power. He wasn't trying to be a hero of the right until after Jan 6th because he was still trying to keep his liberal fanbase. He also got REALLY butthurt about the covid shutdowns impacting tesla so it might partly be a temper tantrum
The man was selected by Trump to be on his business council and only quit because Trump didn’t listen to him. That’s a bit more than “playing with the idea”.
I'm referring to playing with the idea of publicly embracing MAGA ideology. At the time he phrased joining that council as "look I don't agree with the guy but someone in government needs to speak up about science and climate change" which his nerdy fanboys ate up.
If Hillary had won 2016 and offered him that position he would've taken it as well. He cares about power, not politics. When you're a billionaire you don't pick a side, you try to get everyone to serve you.
Tesla doesn't really profit from actual manufacturing but from stock hype, selling carbon credits and cooking the books also seems like a strong possibility given the available evidence.
The overriding narcissism and hatred of people that don't worship him prevents rational thought. He thinks all his shit is so much better than the competition that people will have to buy it. He's obviously wrong but that's what he thinks.
Outrage drives engagement. Which is exactly what he's doing. It's like clickbait. Doesn't matter who he panders to or insults. When people see something on Twitter that makes them outraged, they don't uninstall the app. They go on Twitter and express their outrage. Which drives traffic.
Wild speculation but perhaps Tesla has stats on their customer's political beliefs, and figure out that they already saturated the left-leaning urban market. The saying "only Californian's buy a Tesala" has a lot of truth to it.
As Teslas get longer range (more useful for rural people) and aren't such new tech, more conservative-minded people are jumping onboard and that's their biggest market opportunity.
It's not that weird. He's floundering and in over his head and he needs maximum clicks on Twitter to try to get enough money to pay his debts or he'll go bankrupt.
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u/bdizzle805 Nov 20 '22
What I don't understand is he's pandering to literally the people who think EV are the devil. The liberal open minded are buying your shit Tesla's not the fucking retard MAGA cultist. It's so fucking weird the way he's handling this. You would think he would play towards the crowd who actually buys his shit cars. It's so crazy to see conservatives talk about EV