The electric car brand was once a liberal favourite – but the CEO’s embrace of Trump has led to an angry backlash

Summary

Elon Musk’s vocal support for Donald Trump and promotion of far-right conspiracy theories has alienated many Tesla owners, who now express embarrassment over their cars.

Sales of anti-Musk stickers, such as “Anti Elon Tesla Club,” have surged as owners distance themselves from Musk’s politics.

Once admired by liberals for his environmental advocacy, Musk’s alignment with Trump and leadership in his administration have sparked backlash.

While Tesla remains the dominant EV maker, analysts warn Musk’s polarizing image may impact sales as competition grows and Trump plans to cut EV tax incentives.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    1·
    18 days ago

    This is not true, Tesla did a lot of things that were new. They used Lithium batteries, made an electric car that was fast sporty and had long range, instead of the typical “city” electrics. And they built a charging network.
    To say the Tesla wasn’t new, is like saying iPhone wasn’t new, because smartphones already existed.

    • A7thStone@lemmy.world
      3·
      18 days ago

      Funny you should mention iPhone, because it was the same thing. Yes the whole package didn’t exist in that form, but all the parts were already in use. They both got lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

      Lithium batteries hadn’t been used before because the technology had just reached the point where they were viable for use in a vehicle. Electric motor technology had also just reached the price to performance to size necessary to make a sporty vehicle. The original Tesla was unique for it’s time, but not because of some genius design. They were just lucky enough to be doing it at a time when others tech was reaching the punt that made it possible.

      • watson387@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        18 days ago

        The Palm Treo I had when the iPhone came out could do all of the stuff the iPhone could do, but you had to work at it. I miss that phone…

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        1·
        18 days ago

        No that’s not funny, that was on purpose, because all the elements already existed, but nobody had put it together to work nearly as well.
        When iPhone came out, it completely obliterated Blackberry Microsoft and Nokia in the smartphone market. It was so far ahead in design probably about 10 years. So you can’t claim they did nothing new. Please note that I don’t personally use Apple products, because I find their control freak ecosphere policy disgusting, I made that decision already in the early 90’s, and Apple has only gotten worse since, so I haven’t changed my decision not to use their products. But when I saw the presentation of the iPhone and the iPad because I’m a tech nerd, I immediately saw it was a superior product to anything on the market at the time.
        With Tesla it’s very similar, other car makers messed around with embarrassing underwhelming lackluster designs with maybe 40 km range and ugly 2 seater city car format, that could generally only do 60-80 km/h. GM had had a research project with a pretty cool looking car, but it was run at a massive deficit, and was still expensive to buy, and it was still underwhelming.
        The Prius was probably the height of electric even though it was only a hybrid, at the time, and could only do 7km on battery! SAo not much of a hybrid. And Toyota allegedly sold that at a deficit too! Many claimed that what Tesla aimed to do was impossible.
        So no matter how much I despise both Apple and Musk, it must be acknowledged that they were ahead of their time with groundbreaking products.

        Being ahead by about 10 years is not just luck. That takes ingenuity and a lot of clever engineering. Musk was not responsible for either, he just stepped in and bought Tesla at the right time.

        • A7thStone@lemmy.world
          1·
          18 days ago

          I appreciate that people love to gargle tech Bros, but the truth of the matter is what they were most lucky with was having access to the capital necessary to bring those ideas to market. Do you think Steve Jobs or Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were the only ones to have the idea to put those technologies together? They were just the ones lucky enough to have the means to do it.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
            11·
            18 days ago

            having access to the capital necessary

            I already mentioned that.

            They were just the ones lucky enough to have the means to do it.

            That’s speculation, as I already mentioned, lots of companies were already researching in the field before Tesla and Apple, even companies that had more money and bigger research budgets in both cases. Somehow you feel a need to make the effort and result negligible, despite it obviously was not. Of course we would probably have arrived at similar solutions eventually, but it may have taken a decade.
            A person having an idea is inconsequential, ideas are cheap. Putting in the effort and resources and actually making it work is what counts.