FWIW I cancelled Tesla order because of Musk. Wouldn't be caught dead driving one after the unhinge that keeps unfolding (and that is also very easy to pick up in the mainstream news).
Anecdata: I know multiple people who are intending to buy an EV for their next car, and all of them have removed Tesla from their list of possible purchases because of the CEO's behavior over the last couple of years.
And sure, maybe I live in a "woke bubble", but that's a bunch of revenue that would almost certainly have ended up with Tesla that's now going elsewhere.
And I know multiple rural people (who disagree with you on everything) who either have bought or are planning to buy Tesla vehicles because they're now affordable and really really good.
Also, people who already own Teslas aren't going anywhere. Immense brand loyalty for good reason.
I don't dispute that Teslas are a good car. I can definitely see why people would like to buy one, and indeed the people I know who intended to buy one did so because it was a good car. There are some issues, sure, but on balance I'm sure there are many happy customers.
I don't see them becoming more affordable though: it looks to me like both Model 3 and Model Y prices are high, and in fact they're only staying still because Tesla is removing features from the low-end configurations.
If it was about ethics then the signal wouldn’t come from prominence in the media (do you scrutinize ceos of your everyday products, tesla is an org far beyond Elon, etc).
You tell me what the EV landscape would look like today had Tesla not succeeded, and whether that delta is really of equal worth to someone's purportedly painful experiences using a microblogger.
That's a terrible argument. Putting aside that no one can possibly know that, you seem to be under the impression that Tesla Motors invented something revolutionary. All they did was put lithium batteries in an electric car and slapped an iPad in it. Pretty cool, but there's nothing they've done that any other car company couldn't have done from day one. Everything else they've done has been a gimmick, but their promise is that these vehicles can drive themselves and make everyone money by working as taxis, and if that never happens (which looks inevitable now), then all they are is a car company, and plenty of other car companies make EVs now.
And sure, maybe I live in a "woke bubble", but that's a bunch of revenue that would almost certainly have ended up with Tesla that's now going elsewhere.