That’s a rather tortured logical contortion.

Isn’t it simpler to assume that he honestly holds the views he says he holds?

They didn't have to box themselves into "pitching electric cars to right-wing climate change deniers."

I've heard there are rumours there are least three or four countries outside the US. In several of them, EVs are selling like like hotcakes, or at least not with the current American militant hostility to the very concept.

I suspect they spent too long riding the horse they got here on though. Making an EV appealing to American premium buyers was a marketing coup. Selling it as a software-style "we'll continue iterating with OTA updates" was an interesting alternative to the model-year redesign when you're targeting an early-adopter audience used to regular software refreshes.

But now these things are a liability. Your product matrix is full of America-centric designs with iffy product-market fits in other markets (will a Model S or Cybertruck literally fit in some side streets of Europe or Asia?) You've failed to make a recognizable, exciting redesign of an existing model, so what you do have looks dated. You never really developed a reputation for quality or reliability. These are product problems that have nothing to do with politics. You could have addressed them and been a viable player elsewhere, even as the US continues to eat itself alive. (Of course, that might have involved not intentionally rubbing your brand all over a highly polarizing and toxic political scenario)

I was excited about Tesla back when they were a novelty. I can recall going to the mall with the Microsoft Store (remember those? They sold "bloatfree" PCs because it used to be the OEM who loaded them full of crapware instead of MS itself) to buy a Windows 8 tablet, and then looking across the aisle to see a Model S on display at the Tesla "not really a dealership" stall.

I bought like $2000 in shares back then, figuring one day, jokingly, they'd be worth enough to exchange for a new Tesla. It looks like I could probably get one now. But these days, I just want a BYD; they seem to be actually building a coherent product line and long-term vision.

Why would you try to put a charitable spin on it? Musk is not a 5d chess playing super genius, quite the opposite.

I mean, there's no need to go all 4D chess here, really. Sometimes a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning is just a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning.

> Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.

Part of the trouble here is that was always the case. The best selling "car" in the US is the Ford F-series truck. Followed by the Chevy truck, two Japanese SUVs, the Stellantis truck, the GMC rebadge of the Chevy truck, a Chevy SUV and then the Tesla Model Y.

To get anywhere they were always going to have to appeal to the people who buy trucks.

And when everything is polarized and your product is tribe-coded, how do you do that?

I suspect the error here was buying Twitter and then aligning with the party expected to take power instead of buying Twitter and then using it to shift things in the direction of depolarization.

It also doesn't help that the Cybertruck looks weird and costs too much. I mean you can blame attitudes as you like but then there's the fact that the F-150 starts at ~$40k and the Cybertruck starts at ~$80k. They need the battery prices to come down more before people are going to buy something that needs as much battery as a truck.

As far as I know the hypothesis is that Elon knew before the election that he will be in trouble and tried to cozy up with Trump to cover his ass but it backfired hard.

> but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.

Tesla is an ugly car. And they didn't had a new model since at least 10 years.