Anyone thinking that demand is going to decline from here is falling into the trap of overweighting factors that are actually not very influential and discounting the factors that dominate.
This club, and presumably our social circles outside TMC, is a group of unusually well-informed, wealthy and principled people.
Most people are not this principled, or at least haven’t developed themselves enough as individuals to reach that point, and even if they would like to be so, they can’t afford it with their available time and financial resources.
Science is always our best bet rather than speculation and anecdotes which are rife with potential sources of data collection bias as well as cognitive bias in examining the data. Rigorous consumer psychology and microeconomics research shows that when making major purchasing decisions for a car, the following factors dominate:
- Affordability
- Sticker price/Monthly payments for poorly educated consumers
- Total cost of ownership for knowledgeable consumers
- Appearance/aesthetics
- Utility
- Range, storage space, seat count, headroom, comfort, cup holders, etc.
- Perceived social status ramifications of the purchase
- Perceived safety
- Reliability
- Performance and fun
Sorry if that seems overly cynical but this is the reality shown by the data. Self-interest tends to dominate actual purchase decisions and people will find a way to rationalize the purchase to avoid cognitive dissonance. Plenty of social justice warriors are still buying Subaru Foresters and Toyota Highlanders and 2500 sqft suburban houses with monoculture lawns because they “need it” when a bicycle and 1000 sqft would do just fine and probably make them feel less stressed about money and commuting. I do *sugar* like this too, by the way. We’re all guilty of it. Everybody gangsta until substantial personal sacrifice is required.
Also, the younger generation gets it, they’re rightly afraid of climate change affecting their future, and they’re pissed off at the status quo. Every year they’re getting older and more affluent. Every year more of them download Robinhood and WeBull and buy TSLA and AAPL. They want, more than anything else, Teslas. Not cars, not EVs—Teslas. You want to impress your 23-year-old friends or boost the status of your younger brother in high school? Buy a Tesla. Be seen driving it in real life and on social media. It’s that simple.
The best leading indicator of global youth culture for the last 30 years has been American hip hop. Social trends usually get started this way. For instance, hip hop in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was in no small part responsible for growing the international movement to boycott South Africa until Apartheid was abolished (
link).
Rappers used to boast about garages filled wall-to-wall with Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, Ferrari and Lamborghini. Now the stars are increasingly bragging about Teslas at the expense of all other brands. Representative example: Travis Scott, one of the hottest rappers in the game right now, made a
music video with the Cybertruck and Boring not-flamethrowers the day after the reveal. In case you didn’t click the link, it garnered 59M views and the top comment with 4.6k likes was “He actually flexed on us with a Cybertruck”.
Meanwhile, when I ventured away from deep blue Seattle a few months ago to Nevada, Texas, and Ohio, I spoke with several conservatives of all ages about Tesla. It’s hard for the subject not to come up in small talk when I’m a 27-year-old Teslanaire going on a retirement trip. One owns a Model X and said he wishes Elon would be President. (Sadly I had to inform him that’s unconstitutional because Elon’s an immigrant, but I think I convinced him and his buddy that the US oil & gas industry is going to collapse all by itself irrespective of who’s in office and solar is our path to energy independence). Another had his mind blown by me telling him about the Cybertruck and Giga Austin and the fact that Texas leads the nation in solar and wind. Another person I met is a die-hard patriot and gun rights activist who thinks (bless his heart) that the USA would be better off kicking California out of the Union, and he is a huge Elon supporter too. And so on.
It should also be noted that on average, conservatives in the USA drive more miles with less efficient vehicles than liberals, cumulatively consuming roughly double the amount of gas and diesel. If they as a demographic are finally are coming around to realizing that solar and EVs are not a globalist conspiracy to take down freedom and turn America into an apocalyptic socialist hellhole ruled by The Swamp, I’m actually pretty pleased with that outcome. It’s a lot better than hearing sarcastic comments about “shoveling all this global warming off my driveway” every time it snows.
I think Tesla is going to be just fine and the worry is a waste of time. Sure, Elon is kicking the beehive again, but at least he’s being reasonable about it and not being a jerk like he was in 2018 when he was super stressed and exhausted from Production Hell. We survived that and we will definitely survive this too.
What, doesn't every post now need to include something political? 
