Twitter has been a disaster since Elon Musk bought the company last fall: Advertising dollars disappearedthe The site breaks all the timeand has now become an outright home for The worst people on earth.
And there’s no reason to think any of this will change as long as Musk has the thing. because musk = twitter. a point.
fine. What about Tesla, the EV company that made Musk rich enough to buy Twitter in the first place? This company has also been closely linked to Musk’s personality, and it seems to be doing just fine: Tesla says the last three months of 2022 were Best quarter ever. We should get another update from the company in April.
So this is an open question: Will Musk’s behavior on Twitter, and as the owner of Twitter, have an impact on Tesla?
If you’ve followed Musk’s Twitter saga carefully, you’re well aware of Musk’s tendency to say and do things that you might find repelling. This month, for example, it is He publicly mocked an employee fired because of his disability. The only real surprise about that incident was that Musk ended up apologizing for it, calling it a “misunderstanding. A few days later, Musk began tweeting his support for Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon shaman” who was involved in the January 6 riots and imprisoned after his arrival in Claim deal with federal prosecutors.
But people on Twitter spend a lot of time thinking and talking about Twitter. Most people don’t use Twitter. Do they know or care about what Musk is doing there — and if so, will it change their minds about owning a Tesla?
Some data suggests that it might actually happen.
For starters, Tesla is no longer the only game in town when it comes to electric vehicles. A lot of automakers are now competing in the market, and they seem to be making headway. A year ago, for example, 17 percent of potential EV buyers told YouGov surveyors that their first choice was Tesla — more than any other brand. Now that number is down to 9 percent, beating both Toyota and BMW.
It seems that sentiment is starting to show in physical sales, too. Tesla’s market share in the United States dropped to 58 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, down from 78 percent a year earlier.
There are several reasons why you might want to buy an electric car that isn’t a Tesla. YouGov says potential buyers say price is most important to them, and Teslas have never been cheap. Safety is also a huge consideration for buyers, and frequent reports of Tesla issues – such as Steering wheels fall off And Multi-car backlogs – It may not help.
Although YouGov didn’t ask potential EV buyers if their opinion of Musk influences their opinion of Teslas, it did ask the general public what they think of Tesla — and it’s been down since last spring, when Musk first announced he was about to buy Twitter, then He spent months trying not to buy the company. In November, shortly after Musk bought Twitter, Tesla’s “net preference” score turned negative, meaning more people hated the company than liked it.
However, there is a potential upside to musk: while more people hate musk than ever before, more people also love musk than ever before. Whether Musk’s new fans are, or ever will be, Tesla buyers is a question we can’t answer at this time.
Once again: It’s possible that an expanding electric vehicle market, and the lead Tesla has earned itself by creating that market in one form or another, will be enough for Tesla to enjoy record sales for years to come, regardless of Musk’s actions on Twitter.
But it’s been too long since car buyers associated their car purchase with the man who runs the car company—if the words were to be believed.Lee Iacocca“mean anything to you, you’re probably not a guy. We’ve never had a car company run by a guy who was so addicted to Twitter that he bought the whole company. Now we’re doing a real-world experiment to see if that’s a good idea.”
