[RahulNagaraj]

Five years ago, Bloomberg conducted a survey of thousands of Tesla Model 3 owners. Now, they have gotten back to the original responders to see if and how their opinions have changed over the years.

After taking into account the response from the thousands of original responders, the data collected shows that Tesla owners don't like Elon Musk as much as they did 5-years back. The report even goes on to state that Musk's antics are "actively driving away owners from the brand."



The new report showed that the most significant change of opinion among owners was the drop in Elon Musk's approval rating. The survey stated that owners felt a sense of betrayal by Musk because he picked political fights online, downplayed climate change consequences and backed controversial figures & ideas. Elon Musk's approval ratings among owners were lower than even Tesla's customer service line.

As per the survey, 21.5% of customers walked away from Tesla because of their disapproval of Elon Musk. 18.7% of customers had concerns about quality or service, while 17.8% were unhappy with Tesla's brand perception.

Tesla owners also stated that they liked the cars but preferred Musk not to be so tied up to the image of Tesla. One of the owners said, "I don’t want my car to be an Elon Musk conversation starter.”

Source: Bloomberg

Link to Team-BHP news

[SmartCat]

Consumer facing business leaders tend to be non-controversial for a reason - if you ardently & publicly support a political party or its values, you roughly alienate 50% of your customer base. That's why their online personas are always diplomatic or politically correct, to the extent of being boring & dull.

Typical tweet from Tim Cook (Apple's CEO):



Sample tweet from Jeff Bezos (of Amazon):



Meanwhile, Elon Musk be like:

[Rocketscience]

I appreciate Musk to take a stand on the ever prevailing wokeness (read extreme left bias) in modern America and glad someone in his power is taking a stand against that which for a change is very different from firm but irritatingly preachy extreme left biased stand of everyone else.

Having said that, I don't adhere to any singular political ideology and would ideally pick and choose the best ideas from both left and right, but don't really appreciate extremism of both sides, Musk is mostly calling out the very normalisation of extreme left being forced down our throats from media to movies to mainstream companies and mostly in my books is the right stand to take.

[GTO]

Polarizing personalities should never be the face of the brand. It's too risky. Polarizing CEOs can draw people away from the brand (Elon Musk right now, Travis Kalanick at one point), while a small handful are strong enough to have attracted customers to their brand (Steve Jobs, Vijay Mallya before he absconded).

Musk's handling of Tesla was remarkable; however, his management of Twitter is a case study on what NOT to do.

This is why many PR companies & communications specialists intentionally limit the limelight on the CEO. Bet 90% of BHPians don't even know the name of Maruti's current CEO. Or Hyundai India's.

[aim120]

Yet, Tesla sales in US is growing after he took over twitter. Just because some in hard left don't like him doesn't mean everyone else hates him. His twitter followers and traffic increased to all time high.

Elon historically had a target on his back from Oil companies and traditional auto makers. After taking over twitter he is a target of Extreme left, Neo cons aka war mongers.

Remember every time a Tesla crashes it makes news. But a Mustang Mach E or Rivian crash won't.

He also has target on his back from defense and aerospace companies. Before Space X, US had to spend on expensive Delta and Atlas rockets and these rockets are made by big defense corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin. Now Pentagon is thinking about using Starlink for defense applications this means defense satellites makers like Raytheon will loose billions in contracts.

Before Elon took over twitter, Tesla cars owners used to get coal rolled by diesel burning pick up truck owners and even have charging areas blocked by them. Now it has substantially reduced.

MSM will change tunes based on who the owner of it is and where they get revenues. Tesla doesn't spend on tv Ads. While traditional auto makers spend millions on Ads.

Biggest sporting event in US is the Super Bowl. Just look at the Ads, its auto companies, Pharma and defense companies. No Tesla or SpaceX Ads.

Twitter now also has the highest watched news anchor in US televison history making shows on twitter, (thanks to Fox News firing him) which means MSM has more reasons to hate Elon due to competition and a anchor who routinely calls out pharma, defense companies and wars.

[VVN]

Elon is a pathological narcissist who loves the idea of having control over public discourse, and loathes the idea that some "inferior" person can moderate his Tweets. By owning Twitter, he can say whatever he wants with no consequences, while tens of millions of fanboys fall over themselves to agree with him. That must be intoxicating for someone like Musk, and probably worth what amounts to a fraction of his fortune.

Coming to Tesla, he needs to step away and let someone sensible take over. Tesla makes some of the best EVs out there and it would be a loss for us if Elon stifles Teslas progress because of his narcissism.

[SKC-auto]

Now I am more confused, hating Elon Musk makes me woke or leftist, do grifters stopped hating Elon Musk?

If someone buys a Tesla is he a woke or grifter? Those who criticize him are woke now?

[naikameya]

If twisted enough one can get almost any interpretation from data. Let me throw in one from my side - How many of these people were fired from Twitter/ Tesla or were related to someone fired?

Also, correlation does not confirm causation.

Having said that, if someone gets on my nerve very likely I may not buy products from them. We make emotional decisions. I would like to see research that just focuses on this aspect as Steves Jobs did better or is it that we respect them now and it was/ would have been different back then with a similar level of social media penetration?

Does anyone know of similar research?

[avira_tk]

This stuff is from Bloomberg, the network that worked hard to cover up the boss's criminal antics and it's part of the regime narrative.

The model 3 owners are now itching to upgrade, it's five years now and SUVs are all the rage. The simple fact is that those who want an electric car, want a tesla, they can sell all they can make and they've got plans to destroy the dealer cartel.

I love what twitter had become after Elon got rid of the censorous overlords. His tweets are authentic, nothing like the corporate cringe that you get from Tim Cook and Bezos.

[OrangeCar]

Elon Musk's image is one important part of what got Tesla going. Saying outrageous things and doing many of them (I mean, who would have thought he'd be able to send a rocket to space and get it back too!). Tesla supercharger network, when all other manufacturers were napping - one more example of Elon's management and foresight.

Originally Posted by GTO

Musk's handling of Tesla was remarkable; however, his management of Twitter is a case study on what NOT to do.

Aren't we a tad too early to judge? My experience, twitter's algorithms have become aggressive in pushing content that the user might like or get engaged with. That is what Twitter wants. More users. And existing users spend more time on it. Lets see where Twitter would go from here.

Overall, yes Elon is taking sides that many might not like. In a recent interview (link below) he said, he values freedom of speech even if it means losing money. That is his choice to make I believe. But it is interesting that his freedom of speech is very conditional, very vocal and brave in the free west, not so much in or about China. If I were to guess, Elon probably knows what he's doing. And he'll continue to do whatever he wants. And this is exactly what he wants, to talk about him (like we are doing over here!).

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[tsk1979]

For a company to grow, a CEO has to be very non polarizing. Authentic etc., looks very good and makes certain people feel good, but from a shareholder POV a CEO has no business being controversial.

Musk's track record on Tesla and SpaceX is stellar. However on Twitter, its a dumpster fire. And it does not matter if he is a breath of fresh air or divine re-incarnation on Earth. What matters is revenue, profit and growth.

IF he can grow twitter in revenue and profit, well then he was successful, but the numbers do not support that case.

And even before he became a target for the hard left, he was known to fire his mouth off. I wonder if people have forgotten "Funding secured" and the Dogecoin pump and dump.

As for Tesla its not going anywhere soon. Sure, market share will decline a bit as others make electric cars, but its not like people will stop buying Tesla. However his antics can cause a significant impact to profits if they do not bring in enough buyers from other side to compensate for lost sales from traditional electric car enthusiasts.

His shift to the right has not resulted in significant benefits. Eg he still cannot sell Tesla in Texas.

So from a purely shareholder POV what matters is whether what he does makes the brand stronger pushing sales and profit, or makes it weaker. It does not matter that he does not engage in corporate double speak or not. If he wants to be Twitter edgelord, he can start doing that instead of being the face of a company where he is answerable to shareholders.

As a shareholder myself, I do not see anything wrong in the way he runs Tesla. However I do not believe his actions on Twitter are helping the brand.

As for the free speech absolutionist etc., anybody can make tall claims. Twitter still has censorship. Just because now twitter censors some other stuff as opposed to what it used to censor before musk does not mean its a free speech paradise.

[itisK]

Until numbers back this up, I wouldn't waste even a single sheet of paper for printing such reports.

Bezos owns Washington Post. Take out time to read what kind of garbage reporting they do. Does that make people reconsider their decision to shop on Amazon? I never heard of that.

How many of us wouldn't buy a product just because we don't like the CEO? Until Tesla sales reflect this, such surveys don't have any merit.

[outdoorlover]

Bringing in a slightly different angle here amidst the Elon bashing, if I may. Recent price cuts of Teslas while pulling down its immediate profitability and share prices, is having cascaded impacts on the competition. This could.be Elon Musks's attempt to snuff out the competition. Ford, for instance, which was already losing money on its EV line has to follow suit to stay in the competition, and these losses, ironically, have to be made up by its ICE vehicles. Ford's CEO in a recent interview has already been seen to be reluctantly admire Tesla's business model of having everything in house and dealing with one overlay software that permeates down to its components, while for others who source out all components thereby while making the system far more complex and expensive to have disparate components with their independent proprietary softwares and then having to overlay another layer that talks to each one through interfaces. Add to that Tesla's far lower SKUs (because of primary sales coming from two models) that leads to economies of scale and cost to advantage.

Ofcourse, the chagrin of a customer who just bought a Tesla last month and realising now that (s)he would have saved some cash by delaying the purchase decision is perfectly understandable.

[carthick1000]

I have a model 3 for almost 4 years now. I have driven so many cars (both EVs and ICE cars), there is none with such a good dose of technology and ease of use for day-to-day living with the price point what Tesla offers.

As an engineer using Tesla model 3, I really don't care what Elon musk does. As long as the product is well engineered like how Tesla did it, I will gladly buy. My next one is most likely a Tesla, if no other OEM comes up with a better product (eg. BMW neue klass 3 series ETA 2025).

I like Tesla for their first principles engineering and without leaders like Elon Musk, the company would not have gotten this far. Now every respectable legacy OEM from Japan to Germany is scrambling to beat Tesla, but that might take few years.