Elon Musk Is Finally Cracking Tesla’s Invincibility Shield

For years, Tesla has seemed to be immune to Elon Musk’s behavior and statements. A 2021 study found that the thing Tesla owners liked least about the brand was Musk himself. And yet there they were, still driving Teslas. I’ve been in California for the past month—where the Tesla Model Y is now the bestselling new car in the state—and the experience is overflowing with cognitive dissonance. It’s not uncommon to see Teslas parked in driveways that contain rainbow flags or to talk to someone who despises Musk but adores their Tesla.

There are dozens of different bumper stickers that exist explicitly to help drivers navigate this confusing terrain without having to let go of their Teslas. Many are variations on the same theme: “Bought this Tesla before Elon Musk became a huge asshole. Sorry,” reads one. “Anti-Elon Tesla Club,” reads another.

As of this month, it appears that Musk has finally offended some customers enough for it to make a dent in his sales. A Bloomberg poll found that 21.5 percent of early Tesla adopters who ditched the brand did so because they disapproved of Musk. This was the primary reason that any of the 5,000 drivers surveyed replaced a Tesla with a different kind of vehicle. Many told Bloomberg they were particularly irked by Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, which he has since renamed X, and to the tweets that followed. It wasn’t only the outrageous one-liners he spewed and fights he picked that bothered them. Some were also put off by the way the billionaire seemed to be downplaying the consequences of climate change. Where Musk was once plausibly eclectic in his politics and beliefs, the Twitter-era CEO was now behaving like a far-right activist sipping from a poisoned information well.

Notably, according to the Bloomberg survey, customers’ frustrations with Musk were even more of a reason to give up on Tesla than their frustrations with the brand’s notoriously terrible customer service were. Just how bad is it? As Reuters reported last week, the company rigged the dashboard readouts in some of its cars to provide overly optimistic projections of how far the car could drive before needing to recharge. After concerned customers scheduled appointments with service centers, thinking there was something wrong with their battery, Tesla instructed service centers to cancel the appointments and imply that everything was fine. The article paints a scene of company employees striking a metal xylophone and applauding as they jubilantly gaslight their customers. (Not a metaphor! There was an actual metallophone.)

Tesla’s competitors should be happy, but not that happy. Perhaps some electric vehicle customers—who are already on the cusp of resenting Musk too much to buy a Tesla—would be put off by the billionaire’s recent decision to place a flashing, pulsing X atop its San Francisco headquarters. (Following many a complaint, the X has been removed.)

But ultimately, according to the survey, most Tesla owners plan to buy a Tesla again. The leading choice among Model 3 owners who might buy another vehicle in the next two years? More than 50 percent were interested in the widely mocked Cybertruck, which is expected to become available to a few people at the end of the summer, with wider availability next year.

Car and Driver magazine said it “looks like it was dropped off by an alien race.” A Wired writer called it “the most middle-aged, male-kidult car I have ever seen.” Other popular descriptors include “a joke.” But alongside the mockery, there’s a lot of excitement about not only performance, but the “really ugly” design. If sales go as well as hoped, many will take it as an indicator that Musk’s outrageousness is the reason why his brand continues to succeed. And that will be partly true. It will take another brand offering his frustrated customers another comparably exciting alternative to reinforce that just because you want design risks doesn’t mean you want Twitter vitriol.