At this point, I think it goes way beyond artificially depressing the SP to buy shares on the cheap. Indeed, I don’t think it’s that at all. I won’t bore people with my conspiracy theory.
My father is really, really, really considering his first EV. It’ll be the last vehicle he buys in this lifetime. As a mechanic his whole life, he’s been having a real hard time undoing decades of ICE knowledge and expertise. I keep having to tell him, ‘Dad, it doesn’t work that way with a Tesla.’ (Absolutely I will not allow him to buy anything but a Tesla.)
As I eluded to recently, I had a several hour conversation (read spirited debate)with him the other day about many things Tesla related that he’d learned by listening/reading news/media and the like.
He’s not a gullible man. He’s not slow witted. He has a healthy amount of skepticism regarding the media, but even with all that I had to set him straight on a few matters.
Now the typical reaction to that is ‘Tesla, needs to do this or that to educate people, rebut the media, yadda, yadda, yadda.’
Meh. It wouldn’t make a significant difference overall. Linking people to Tesla produced information (like their blog, impact reports etc) doesn’t suddenly make people believe. Indeed, they can often think the company is lying because company’s do often lie, so for them ‘what makes Tesla different in that regard?’. In many cases an ‘independent’ source is more believable to them.
*This* has to run its course. The good, the bad, and the ugly of it all. People as a whole have to arrive at the right answer on their own, in their own way, or it means nothing will change, nothing can change for the better of mankind.
I feel despair for Elon, his companies, all the employees, all who are working so very hard to help us all and who are constantly being spit upon. It’s classic good vs evil. I believe the good win this time, though, not without a lot of casualties along the way.
One silver lining is any publicity is good publicity in terms of Tesla brand name recognition, it being constantly in the press means it's a global brand now with the likes of Apple, Coca-Cola etc. Both those companies have had their share of click bait stories over the years.