> I don't see any way for Tesla to survive as a company unless they can completely disconnect from Musk. In urban/leftist/yuppie circles- the only people that actually buy high end EVs new- it is socially taboo now to buy a Tesla, and the people already owning them are embarrassed, and hoping to get rid of them soon. The cybertruck is especially taboo and called names like the "incElCamino."
If you come to the richer southern cities the picture is very different than what you describe. I'm living in Nashville TN right now and there are Teslas everywhere. Many Republicans proudly have big lifted pickup trucks and Teslas (and a LOT of cybertrucks).
So while becoming an outspoken culture warrior may have cost Musk's brand some support in blue states, it has dramatically increased its appeal in "real America" where people love showing off their masculinity through their vehicles.
I suspect the Cybertruck will dominate the legacy auto makers in the EV pickup segment.
You're wildly exaggerating. There are only ~33k EV registrations in the entire state of TN [1], or just over 1% of all registrations in the state [2].
I don't doubt that most of them are Teslas, but they're hardly everywhere. Also as of October, they'd only delivered about 27k Cybertrucks globally, so even if you assume 5% went to TN (which seems ridiculously unlikely), that's ~1500 vehicles out of the literally hundreds of thousands of non-EV trucks in the state.
I certainly wouldn't say that - I would say that here in "real America" they (meaning rich or "middle class" people with disposable income who engage in the culture war stuff) want to buy vehicles that are good at owning the libs.
It used to be that owning the libs was pretty simple, use more gasoline in a big lifted pickup truck. But now there are other ways to own the libs... you can also buy your electric cars from a rich guy who owns the libs.
I'm being reductive, but there's a strong cultural element to vehicle ownership. To be less glib about it, vehicle ownership is very much tied to identity in sprawly rural America.
In the south today, the big lifted trucks are both status symbols and cultural signifiers. They immediately and visibly identify people as part of the southern / "rural" group (in quotes because many people in this group engage in performative rurality, while in reality they live in sprawly suburbs).
Members of this tribe are also naturally are more inclined to identify as Republican.
So things like the Cybertruck appeal in multiple ways; as Musk is such a vocal Republican, his cool factor goes up with the subset of this group that is extremely into politics. This is one pathway to adoption.
Outside of that, the Cybertruck is a massive pickup truck, and it is very expensive. Vehicle size and expense are both ways to signal status to people in this culture. This is another pathway to adoption.
Hence, I believe that it will become very popular in these areas.
I think the Tesla cars initially succeeded because they proved to suburbanites looking to display their status via a vehicle that electric cars could be "cool" and not "lame." Now, "culturally rural" people have their own equivalent.
If you come to the richer southern cities the picture is very different than what you describe. I'm living in Nashville TN right now and there are Teslas everywhere. Many Republicans proudly have big lifted pickup trucks and Teslas (and a LOT of cybertrucks).
So while becoming an outspoken culture warrior may have cost Musk's brand some support in blue states, it has dramatically increased its appeal in "real America" where people love showing off their masculinity through their vehicles.
I suspect the Cybertruck will dominate the legacy auto makers in the EV pickup segment.