On tribalism and mindsets.
The very first winter we spent outside Alaska is the year I purchased my first Tesla.
One of my closest friends also epitomizes many persons’ view of an anti-progressive redneck: he works for the coal and oil industries; the only Republican politicians he doesn’t like are those who aren’t right-wing enough; his sons tune their pickups to roll coal.... (there are
lots of topics that are off-limits to our conversations)....And everything is Ford, right down to his dog’s name.
So he had some days between meetings in the lesser-48 and agreed to fly in to spend time with us. I pick him up at the airport, saying nothing about what I’m driving. This is 2013 and Teslas are rare, poorly-known and certainly not topical in Alaska. And he’s never seen me in anything but a pickup for the prior 20 years.
As we cruise around the airport’s roads he’s so nonplussed by the interior that he fails to hear its silence; rather, he’s quizzing me as to what it is (“BMW? Audi?” and so forth). I keep at a sedate pace until I hit the freeway on-ramp and I’ll let you choose his verbal reaction
. When his words finally had more than four letters to them he asked how many cylinders it had. I made him guess. 12?16? Whaaa? 8? I tell him 0 and then the conversation really began.
So that was his introduction to Tesla and we now have one more topic in common. He has ever since been a devoted follower of the company; he is at least as active as I am in promoting Supercharging in Alaska (after all, unlike us, he lives in a populated part of the state); he has a Cybertruck on order....and, per my suggestions, he and his relatives have bought TSLA.
Now, n=1 and all that. Regardless, I think that some people are, indeed, implacably set in their ways but others, perhaps most,
can be influenced, if the circumstances are correct and it is through a person whom he respects.