Is alienating your core customer base a good idea? Views differ
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And the good news is that you’ll probably get a better and safer car too!
Vibhor Chhabra once identified as a Tesla fan.
A decade ago, the 44-year-old Bay Area product executive saw the brand as a signifier that a driver wanted to fight climate change, electrify transportation or back CEO Elon Musk’s vision for a sustainable future. “You could make a statement while having a great car,” said Chhabra, who has owned three different Tesla vehicles and for a time heldstock in the company.
But Chhabra is now shopping for a new vehicle — and looking elsewhere. Tesla’s brand “comes with a lot of baggage,” he said, and he no longer wants to be associated with Musk.
Chhabra is part of a movement that appears to be growing: Drivers who have bought or considered buying Tesla vehicles are now eyeing EVs from competitors, partially because of Musk’s polarizing persona or recentendorsement of former president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The backlash comes as Tesla is encountering more competition in the EV market as the biggest automakers electrify their lineups. The company has pioneered and dominated sales of electric vehicles in the United States and has an unrivaled charging network. But in the second quarter, Tesla saw its share of new EV salesdrop below 50 percent for the first time, according to Cox Automotive, a 10 percentage point decline from a year earlier. Market-research firms have said Tesla’s reputation among consumers has been slipping in recent years, and the company’s stock price has declined 19.5 percentthis year.
“There are a lot of credible studies out there that really do suggest that Elon Musk’s increasingly right-wing politics do alienate a significant number of shoppers,” said Ed Kim, president and chief analyst of AutoPacific, an automotive research and consulting firm.
I’ve seen people argue that Elon has gone full MAGA because he’s aching for an upper-class tax cut, but his far-right politics are almost certainly costing him more money than an expansion of the Trump tax cuts would make him back. The far more likely explanation is that Musk is just a huge racist and doesn’t care if it’s counterproductive to his material interests.