If you have been watching Elon Musk over the years, you may say you've seen some notable changes in the guy. Meanwhile, others just continue to praise him for his successes, which certainly aren't waining.
When Tesla and Elon Musk came onto the scene, it arguably wasn't too hard to get a target audience. Of course, there were many environmental groups and green activists who loved the idea of Tesla, all while there were many folks on the other side of the aisle that saw the US EV maker as a threat that they must take down.
At any rate, while Musk says he has "centrist" political views, he's coming off on social media and in interviews as much more right-leaning, and some would say very far right. Whether or not that's true doesn't really matter. What does matter to Musk, at least according to a recent analysis, is that people on both sides of the aisle are willing to respect him and support him, and hopefully they'll buy a Tesla, or Tesla solar, or home battery storage, etc.
Musk recently spoke on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show right before Tucker and Fox parted ways, Musk touted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and let him host his presidential announcement on Twitter, and the list goes on and on. It all really started when Musk essentially got mad at Democrat-heavy California and moved shop to Red-state Texas. Executive analyst at iSeeCars Karl Brauer shares:
"No matter how altruistic Elon seems at any moment, he is first and foremost a businessman, and he will do things that will benefit him financially first and foremost."
"He's convinced all the Tesla fans to buy Teslas, and he's not going to get any more. There's a huge percentage of people that still don't know about or buy Teslas."
This may be true. Perhaps, there's really not a lot of reason left for Musk or Tesla to try to convert the already converted, and most aren't going back to gas cars even if they suddenly dislike Tesla's CEO.
Brauer goes on to say he's not sure of Musk's genuine feelings, but he feels like the CEO plays with the calculated risk of trying to appeal to one side without doing too much to offend the other. However, at this point, he seems more ok with offending the left than the right, since he's already spent years appealing to the left.
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To put the current situation into perspective, Tesla delivered nearly 57,000 EVs in California during the first quarter of 2023. Over that same time period, only about 13,000 Texas buyers moved to the EV brand.
It's not hard to see that if Musk were to make good buddies with a bunch of people on the other side of the aisle, he could probably sell many more EVs. And, let's not forget, he's decided to start advertising now, too, which is yet another way to appeal to a "new" audience.
What do you think? Leave us your words of wisdom in the comment section below.
Source: Automotive News