Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona.
The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.
Tesla’s U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the “Musk partisan effect,” according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.
For a while, I saw them all over the fucking place, probably 50 on my commute.
These days I see 2-3 and very rarely see the trucks. I wonder where they all are now. I seeing 10 of the trucks per day. Now, maybe one.
You’re kinda lucky. I see them everywhere with their goofy vanity plates, and way too many swastitruks with crazy wraps.
I don’t think they’re all muahaha nazis, but they do have an air of aimless consumer zombies who ignorantly bought something ridiculous to show everybody how cool they are. (Kinda like musk himself.)
And they sure do drive like their “autopilot” could do a better job. Geeze.
As far as most dangerous, aggressive, petty idiots on the road go, my low expectations are tied between “tesla products” and “white pickup trucks with obnoxious stickers and a toolbox.” Followed very closely by “My brand new enormous Mercedes SUV says I can do whatever I want.”
Most of the the jackwagons in my area must have sold them to jackwagons in your area :)
Same. Almost 1 in 3 cars that I saw, at one point, was a Tesla (in certain areas).
They’re still around, but definitely not nearly as many.
scrapyards. impossible to fix, written off by insurance for minor crashes. GREEN.