Is Elon Musk hurting Tesla? (Mod Note Post #1)

The robotaxis have started operating in Texas and they're proving to not be particularly safe. Guess cutting corners isn't working. There's only 20 operating ATM.

https://mashable.com/article/tesla-robotaxi-incidents-list

Looks like Tesla has another problem in their most profitable market.

In the first 18 hours after the YU7 went on sale, Xiaomi received some 240,000 orders that it considers locked in, with buyers having paid either a hefty deposit for ready-to-deliver cars or a smaller deposit for cars still to be made.

The smartphone and appliance maker made a huge splash in China's electric vehicle market with the launch of its first vehicle, the SU7 sedan, in March last year. The car has outsold Tesla's Model 3 in China on a monthly basis since December and has even earned a rave review from Ford CEO Jim Farley.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/shares-chinas-xiaomi-surge-after-launch-electric-vehicle-yu7-2025-06-27/

I honestly don't think it'll shift the needle in terms of people purchasing Teslas. Trump's mistake of befriending Musk has basically resulted in increased awareness of both Musk's views and background. Most people simply didn't know before.

Meanwhile things like the actual Tesla design are coming under increased scrutiny in terms of safety. Eg handles not extending when emergency services workers need to access the car.

Oh I know it was intentional on both sides, just Musk lacked the self awareness of the other billionaires. It was always gonna collapse as a relationship and Musk seemed to be oblivious to that.

Trump himself is doing more damage to the mid-term vote than Musk could ever manage.

That's the thing that never made any sense about Musk's foray into politics—there doesn't seem to be any upside for him. No way he was ever going to change the Trump or Republican stance on EVs, no way he was going to make any significant political impact for his libertarian causes, and it only really helped Trump a small amount for a very brief window.

Maybe, like Trump himself, it was simply about being able to avoid some legal issues.

musk is toxic to the maga crowd now. He was only ever useful for his money. Even when the GOP were ok with him in the Oval Office, his money wasn’t able to change those crucial battleground senate seats that he heavily backed the GOP candidate.

Imagine what happens when he’s hated by both sides? My guess is his money would equalise on both sides and change nothing.

I think it's a combination of what someone said before — a billionaire thinking they can do anything — with an assumption on Musk's part that he could ingratiate himself with Trump and get more out of the bargain than he ended up getting.

The problem is you can smell the desperation to be liked and lack of confidence off of Musk (no pun intended) and I think Trump is the kind of sociopath who hates that. It's almost worst that it's coming from the richest person in the world.

But I don't think Musk is smart enough to have had any strong specific agenda in this sense.

I’m not sure the Twitter algorithm has the influence you might think. Twitter usage is very suspect at best, and obviously you need to then exclude all international and bot traffic, along with all US traffic that isn’t a swing voter.
there aren’t many people left on Twitter who haven’t made up their mind 😃

It influenced elections already so Im not sure where you are getting that from.

Also, why do you think both of them are such heavy users of their respective social media platforms. Its not just for giggles. They know the influence social media has on their target audience and Musk can bring his cohort with him which means away from Trump.

Musk doesnt have to change opinions, just drag enough of his base away from Trump. He may fail, but he looks like he is setting up to try.

I didn’t say Twitter hasn’t influenced elections, but musk is a massively toxic individual, and getting people to vote for his version of democracy will be impossible, considering himself, Thiel and others have openly said they don’t believe in democracy like it is now. The demographic that Twitter could possibly target is tiny, assuming they even use Twitter.
they believe in a king/CEO/monarchy/fiefdom type role, with massively concentrated power, and they backed Trump because they thought he might make changes to make that more likely - Trump rules like a king already

I was behind a 252 Y yesterday coming into our village, a wide unmarked street (wide enough for parked cars on both sides and still comfortably 2 lanes), and the Y slowed and stopped behind this one parked car (it wasn’t stopped squarely behind the parked car, the Y was probably 3m back from it and 2m from the kerb).

I was stopped behind the Y now, so I indicated and moved around it. when I looked in the mirror the Y was coming behind me again. I got the impression he was driving it on the autopilot and it mistakenly thought the parked car was traffic maybe.

I’m just telling you what I saw.

The middle-aged tech bro market is always going to be strong for Tesla as there’s no shortage of people amongst that cohort who think that Elon is a saint and will elect for a new model Y over spending money on other priorities for such people, like scalp micropigmentation or UFC tickets.

And to be fair to the lady in the 251 reg, she probably had it on order before Donald Trump was quite literally hawking Teslas on the White House lawn alongside Musk (“everything is computer”), before Musk was sig heiling on stage, before Musk was calling for Tommy Robinson to be released from jail, or before Musk was appearing at the AFD’s conference encouraging the Germans to move beyond their “past guilt”.