Find me a Tesla owner that doesn't love their car.
Tesla is an engineering led product company first, both for the good of the environment and for making products that people love.
Not many could have built what Elon Musk built, if any others today at the time and survive the Great Recession or get people excited about the product.
Tesla has that excitement that nostalgic leaders like Disney, Ford, Jobs, 'World's Fair' type of innovative excitement had in the past.
He is very likely to persist in claiming both that Elon Musk is not at all an capable of engineering and that Tesla is a marketing company. There is a technique called firehosing where you just keep spewing lies as an influence strategy.
You can look at his other post in this thread to see the degree to which he is willing to have faithful discourse.
I would argue that it is in the interest of China. Everyone is going to have flooding coast lines. The short term solution to curbing that issue and others is fast electrification. China will find a market for its own vehicles, because every electric vehicle is going to find a market. So the United States pulling its own weight in this matter is just helping to get the task done more quickly. Meanwhile, in the long-term, present day technology is going to be eclipsed. It will be easy enough to figure out how the better batteries are made and produce them. Economies of scale can then allow winning on price. Meanwhile, the digital record will preserve the manipulation attempts, making them more obvious in retrospect. This isn't good for diplomatic relations with the many nations who will be damaged by floods. So taking actions which could slow electrification could lead to unanticipated consequences. Meanwhile, advocating for more rapid acceleration won't even harm diplomatic relations with the oil producing countries: many of them are leading the charge in adopting green technology, they understand the dangers. There is good will to be gained in helping the world to electrify its transportation.