It’s not just that people on the left tend to be more interested in EVs, it’s that people on the far right have made hating them a fundamental tenet of their insane belief system. We’re talking about people who go out of their way to sabotage charging stations, who modify their trucks to intentionally produce more pollution. Even if you were a MAGA type and thought “Hey, that new Model S sounds pretty sweet” there is no way you’d put up with the abject hatred it would draw from your community.
And what’s more, because of this outright hostility to their vehicles in conservative areas, Tesla has almost no infrastructure in those places. No dealerships, no charging stations. And Tesla operate their own dealerships, so they can’t just sell through existing dealers. They literally don’t have the ability to sell cars to MAGA, even if MAGA suddenly develops the inclination to buy them after all of Trump’s shilling.
You can see this in the numbers. The most MAGA friendly Tesla vehicle, the Cybertruck, is piling up on lots. No one is buying it. Despite Tesla originally struggling to hit their production targets, they’ve actually ended up shutting down lines and retasking workers because the trickle of vehicles they produced is well in excess of demand.
It’s a deeper belief than just EVs. At the beginning of the Obama administration, when there was the “cash for clunkers” program to buy back inefficient old vehicles, these people made a show of going out and buying massive Hummers and other horribly inefficient cars they’d drive around town in. When new efficiency rules went into place for halogen lightbulbs, they flocked to the stores to stock up on as many inefficient bulbs as possible.
They can be pushed to be good little consumers when needed, but it’s almost always to promote inefficiency and oppose environmentalism.
It’s not just that people on the left tend to be more interested in EVs, it’s that people on the far right have made hating them a fundamental tenet of their insane belief system. We’re talking about people who go out of their way to sabotage charging stations, who modify their trucks to intentionally produce more pollution. Even if you were a MAGA type and thought “Hey, that new Model S sounds pretty sweet” there is no way you’d put up with the abject hatred it would draw from your community.
And what’s more, because of this outright hostility to their vehicles in conservative areas, Tesla has almost no infrastructure in those places. No dealerships, no charging stations. And Tesla operate their own dealerships, so they can’t just sell through existing dealers. They literally don’t have the ability to sell cars to MAGA, even if MAGA suddenly develops the inclination to buy them after all of Trump’s shilling.
You can see this in the numbers. The most MAGA friendly Tesla vehicle, the Cybertruck, is piling up on lots. No one is buying it. Despite Tesla originally struggling to hit their production targets, they’ve actually ended up shutting down lines and retasking workers because the trickle of vehicles they produced is well in excess of demand.
It’s a deeper belief than just EVs. At the beginning of the Obama administration, when there was the “cash for clunkers” program to buy back inefficient old vehicles, these people made a show of going out and buying massive Hummers and other horribly inefficient cars they’d drive around town in. When new efficiency rules went into place for halogen lightbulbs, they flocked to the stores to stock up on as many inefficient bulbs as possible.
They can be pushed to be good little consumers when needed, but it’s almost always to promote inefficiency and oppose environmentalism.