Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, has been working so hard for Twitter over the past few weeks that it has led his investors backing the electric car maker to vocalize their concerns about any possible harm to the reputation of the brand.
The massive $44 billion takeover from the billionaire entrepreneur of the massive social media titan has sparked a noticeable level of ire from the left due to his major talking points have been centered around ensuring freedom of expression and nixing efforts to censor the words of and reach of various conservative accounts. Musk has also made public through a number of third-party journalists the copies of numerous emails which have unveiled the efforts of former Twitter executives to suppress all non-left-leaning speech and to fully remove former President Donald Trump.
As issues at the social media company continue to be made public, Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black — who is the owner of over $50 million worth of stock in Tesla — expressed that markets show that the Tesla brand “has been negatively impacted by the Twitter drama.” Although many electric car owners were previously “proud to drive their Teslas to their friends or show off Teslas in their driveways,” the recent hostile takeover of Twitter is “hurting Tesla’s brand equity.”
“As Warren Buffett famously said: ‘In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine,’” he stated, expressing hope that any damage caused to the Tesla brand is only temporary and make the suggestion that the company needs to be forced to put in place a brand new interim chief executive. Another longtime backer of the automaker and the current head of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, Ross Gerber, questioned just who is running Tesla day to day throughout what he called a “critical time” for the company.
A number of extremely well-known left-wing users across social media have highlighted a number of screenshots of their canceled preorders for the Tesla Cybertruck, telling the company that Musk buying Twitter is what caused their actions.
The overall favorability of Tesla for Demoncrats has dropped by roughly 20.3% from October to November, the same period of time as Musk’s purchase of Twitter, as explained in a Morning Consult survey. On the other hand, the overall favorability among Republicans spiked 5.5% over the same period. In regard to SpaceX, the venture focusing on reusable rockets that has a goal to set up a permanent human settlement on Mars, in the same way dropped 4.5% overall in favorability among Democrats and spiked 1% among Republicans.
“For Tesla and SpaceX, the partisan spillover effects could have profound implications,” stated Morning Consult. “If the Tesla brand becomes increasingly right-leaning, that could put it out of alignment with core electric vehicle purchasing profiles, which lean more liberal.”
Musk responded to the claims by stating that he still oversees both SpaceX and Tesla, but his teams there “are so good that often little is needed” from him.
