Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

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Whether intentionally or not, I think he instinctively has been trying to disassociate "his brand" from the rest of the green or progressive movements overall. The electric car industry suffered for decades under the NPR and kombucha crowd. But if there is one common thread to his success, it has been to completely ignore the existing identifiable market and make your own (Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla).

Musk wanted bros and rednecks and meat-eating red-blooded Americans all alike to think a Tesla is cool. Actual environmentalists would follow suit regardless as a captive market - waste no effort on them.

And I think he sees Twitter the same way. Twitter's core demographic is a captive group of left-leaning educated users. If he can successfully flip a switch to appeal to everyone else in America, and hold on to enough captive current users in the process, he will have successfully grown the pie.

I don't actually know if this is Musk's blatant strategy or if he is "crazy like a fox". But Musk has engaged in conservative-leaning flame wars for several years at this point. However, he just recently admitted to casting his first vote for a Republican this election cycle.

That means during all of those years he was saying flamboyant things and meeting with Trump etc, he was largely saying one thing and doing another.

So I'm leaning towards the idea that he is a bit more coy than he lets on and sees political drama as a sort of business asset.

It would be quite amazing if this was all a ploy to actually gain a larger market for Tesla. During the pandemic, the techies had all the disposable income and were the key Tesla market. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and the energy sector and more traditional businesses have seen a resurgence. Makes sense to increase appeal to that more conservative-leaning demographic.

There's definitely some merit to this view. It's much like how in a political primary all candidates pander to the extreme so that they win and then immediately ignore them and pivot to the other side to scoop up votes from the other party. If you are true left or right you are a captive audience of your respective center left or center right party. It's cynical and dishonest but it works.

There's no reason to think that Musk isn't as single minded about his own goals as those parties are about winning. This is the best case for his behavior.

Unless hydrogen takes off and captures the environmentalists, they have nowhere to go but EVs. Watch him pivot back fast if that does happen, and push further into the 'rolling coal' crowd until then.

I still wish him success but I no longer like him. I doubt he cares.

The environmentally friendly option isn't electric or hydrogen powered cars, it's efficient transportation and efficient communities. Things like electric bikes and trains fit that bill much better

I definitely agree with that but it's a whole other thing. It's a travesty that we don't have walkable cities and we are all hostage to cars and parking to get anywhere. All us 'New World' countries like the US, Canada, Australia, NZ had our cities emerge in the age of cars so they were never built for humans to begin with. Europe and Asia feel more like they made space for cars but didn't design for them.

The change will be radical but we need mixed use areas where we can live, work, shop and play all together and not commute all over the damn place.

Not sure, I'm more curious about the average wealth of republicans vs. Democrats to make a better assumption.

To me, i don't think that would work.

I just think it's tax motivated => profits. Sometimes the simple answers are the correct ones.

Fyi, take into consideration he just severely overpaid for Twitter...

this is one of the only good takes I have seen on Musk and the issue of how he is steering his brand. I think he is really foolish and truly dangerous but he is no dumber than any other successful business guy when it comes to making big decisions. I am not that interested in how many D chess he is playing or if he is like Richard Branson and jut does things by feel. Branson is the brash marketer of past decades who I feel Musk most resembles - the brand is a direct extension of the person and the name goes on various different business. Dyson is another in a slightly similar vein and our former president is an exemplar of the style as well.

Honestly, Musk kind of reminds me of turn of the century industrialists (Ford, Edison, etc).

No formalized business training, no PR teams, no market analysis. They just had super brash (and often foolhardy) visions of what consumers would buy, took huge risks in bringing them to market, and brought in investors by charisma alone.

And I think you have to be born with the exact level of EQ to be smart enough to know what's possible and what customers would want, but be dumb enough to still throw yourself into the problem and ignore every reason previous attempts had been unsuccessful.

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