I don’t think this is having a meaningful effect. Tesla’a biggest marketplace is China, and I doubt they care about American politics. It is more likely that China is discouraging people from buying Teslas due to American threats to ban Tiktok.
A few very vocal people here think it is a problem, but I agree, or at least that these are merely a few opinions. No facts
Personally, I loved it when Musk acted as if he were an engineer, showed his companies’ ideas with all the details. I loved it when he said he wanted to build the future many of us dreamed of, when other corporations were too caught up chasing quarterly profits to follow a long term strategy. It was so cool when he was rebelliously nerdy
Then everyone started hanging on his every word, and there was no one left to tell him no …
I still recently bought a Tesla, because it was the right car for me, and I still believe in the dream for the future, that legacy manufacturers are still pushing back against. I wish the guy would shut up, but don’t care about his general opinions, unless it affects long term support for my vehicle
There are a lot of problems with him heading Tesla that aren’t related to his politics but rather his personality in general. The long history of broken promises like “In November or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York with no controls touched in the entire journey.” That was 2017. Or the “robotaxi” thing, which fooled a lot of people into thinking they could buy a Tesla and get it paid off by renting it out.
From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year – maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure – we’ll have over a million robotaxis on the road.”
“The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update; that’s all it takes.”
Or more directly related to the personality he’s been displaying lately, the allegations and lawsuit about severe racism at the factory. Even if you don’t care about that, a hostile work environment does affect the quality of products…
The suit also alleges instances of racist taunts and threats, including death threats written in the bathroom and racist graffiti on “vehicles rolling off the production lines.”
Black employees who complained to supervisors about the behavior were subject to retaliation, including reassignment to unpleasant jobs, reschedulings and firings
It further charges the racial misconduct was “frequent, ongoing, inappropriate, unwelcome and occurred across all shifts, departments, and positions”.
And then there’s shoddy things like how their software is considered one of the absolute worst for privacy.
Even in a sea of privacy violators, the most valuable car maker was also the blackest of sheep. Tesla failed across all criterias of assessment—data use, data control, track record, security, and AI. It was the only carmaker that got an “untrustworthy AI” label from Mozilla.
His stingy arrogance also comes out in other practices the company, like how when people get into accidents using FSD, Tesla claims it wasn’t active… because it disengaged 1 second before the collision.
Or things like the steering wheel falling off or a wheel-wheel falling off (far from the only story of disintegrating suspension - there was one guy who had a wheel fall off a brand new Model Y he’d had for less that 24 hours, and Tesla blamed it on him).
So, Musk’s leadership is a real problem. I wouldn’t buy a car from this con artist.
Oh man, I remember that robotaxi presentation. He flat out said that tesla vehicles would be an appreciating asset.
Don’t they actually have horrible depreciation?
