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First, Elon Musk lost Democratic car shoppers, who stopped buying Teslas and slapped apologetic bumper stickers on ones they already owned. Now, he’s losing Republicans.
New data from Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report, shared exclusively with Semafor, shows Tesla’s popularity tanking with self-identified Republicans, who are 11 percentage points less likely to buy one than they were in April, before Musk’s messy split from President Donald Trump. “What he’s done by wrapping Tesla into his political adventures and, now, misadventures is very dangerous for the brand,” said Evan Roth Smith of Slingshot Strategies, which conducted the poll of 8,000 consumers.
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Musk has continued his criticism of Republicans’ tax and spending bill, vowing yesterday that he would back primary challengers to members of Congress who support it “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” Trump hit back, threatening to end federal subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX and hinting that he could look into Musk’s status as a naturalized US citizen.
EV industry executives had hoped that Musk, whose MAGA conversion traces at least partly to being excluded from a Biden White House summit in 2021, might bring conservative shoppers into the market. “That would truly be a dark cloud with a slim silver lining,” Lucid’s then-CEO, Peter Rawlinson, told Semafor last year. That seems not to be happening: Popularity of nearly every EV company has slid in the past three months, Slingshot’s survey found.
The data also revealed a deep distrust among consumers for robotaxis, on which Tesla has staked its future. Two-thirds of respondents supported banning full self-driving cars until they are proven safe.
Notable
- Investors didn’t appear confident that Tesla would return to growth this year, Reuters reported, as backlash against Musk bites his business.