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Comment by arkitaip | Hacker News Reader

When Musk attacks "liberals" and "leftists" he is attacking many of his potential customers. He is also very loud about his right-wing politics and has become so divisive that people don't want to be associated with the Tesla brand.

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He seems to be going through a similar phase as Kanye West, gotten so big that he believes his own myth and surrounds himself with yes men. Both have flown too close to the sun it seems, like Icarus.

Him stepping down from Twitter is probably to save Tesla's stock but like you said, the damage to the brand may be long-lasting. At the same time, EVs are becoming more mainstream in general as other brands catch up.

Musk is not stepping down, he’s trying to get around the results of a poll that he lost but said would abide. He said he’ll step down when he’s found someone qualified to replace him. That will either be “never” or “a sock puppet”.

He’s already putting ridiculous constraints on the position, that the new CEO must invest their life savings in Twitter to get the job. Hard to tell if he’s serious about that or not because it’s very far from the craziest thing he’s said lately.

I think you're confusing social media attitudes with the general population. I go back home and most people I know don't even use Twitter or even know much about Musk beyond his name.

He’s also attracting a ton of right wingers who never would have bought a Tesla.

I wonder if there’s a strategy there

I am probably stereotyping here.. but the kind of people who get attracted to the right wing conspiracy theories tends to be more rural, non-college educated middle aged white men (and women) who also are likely to come from more rural parts of the country. I do not think the audience for Tesla is there. You need density to build charging infra. You need most of your trips to be short-distance away and your use mostly commuting.

While they might feel happy about elon and kanye sticking it to the other side, they are not in market for an EV.

You are stereotyping. The Jan 6 insurrection was perpetrated in large part by doctors, lawyers, state legislators, United States congresspeople, business executives, etc. The head of the oath keepers, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy, is a Yale educated lawyer.

It wasn’t the uneducated who were sending fake Certificates of the Vote to the VP. They were practicing lawyers and elected representatives of the government. The wife of a SCOTUS Justice is one of the biggest proponents of right wing conspiracy theories. It doesn’t get more elite than that.

Of the people who love culture wars and hate liberals, and yet at the same time also believe in climate change and want to buy an electric vehicle, aren’t they much more likely to buy the new electric f150?

In general this combination of beliefs seems like too small of a segment to build a company with a market cap like Tesla’s around.

You don't have to believe in climate change to buy an electric vehicle. You might believe in energy independence, or you might just think it's going to work out cheaper.

That’s fair, though isn’t the combination of people who believe those things plus also want their car purchase to explicitly signal their socially conservative political views (if we assume that actually is the strategy at work here) still a niche, rather than what would otherwise be valued as the largest car company in the world?

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