Elon Musk’s antics are turning off the most obvious customers for his cars
I have wanted a Tesla ever since the day in 2012 when Elon Musk came to the FT’s London offices to talk about his electric car company.
The sting of jealousy has subsided and so too, I realised last week, has any great desire to own a Tesla. This is partly because Musk’s pioneering efforts prodded other carmakers to lift their electric game and there are a lot of rival cars to choose from, including some cheaper than Teslas.But it is also because of what Musk told his 193 million followers last weekend on X, the social media platform he has turned into a dismal shell of its former self since buying it in October 2022.
G7 governments. Multinational corporations. Nothing has stopped Musk, who apologised for the November post but has allowed X to reinstate a string of divisive figures including Tommy Robinson, the face of far-right UK activism, one of whose posts on the riots Musk responded to with exclamation marks.This will hardly bother an EV giant like Tesla, whose Model Y sports utility was the world’s top-selling car of any kind, electric or otherwise, in 2023.
Also no matter what you think of O’Leary you sometimes have to fly on Ryanair because it’s the best way to get from A to B. Electric car buyers have far more choice, which is one reason some analysts think Musk’s polarising behaviour could spell trouble for his business. Tellingly the falls were steeper among Democrats, who are generally bigger electric car fans, and this was before Musk endorsed Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in July. Caliber’s preliminary August figures suggest Tesla’s scores among Democrats have plunged further.
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