Outsider perspective:

- EVERYONE wants to keep chinese EVs out of their marketplaces, EU included. It's gov on gov subsidies fighting and you either accept your own markets being crushed by loss-leaders or you don't. The fact that people see this as a red v blue stuff is mind boggling.

- you play politics with your companies, you pay the price. This current admin had an EV summit and didn't invite the top dog? I mean, politics is supposed to be that thing where you swallow your pride and meet with people you don't like. They couldn't do that. What do they expect now?

In general the retconning and my team vs their team you do in the US right now is really on a different level. You have traditional eco camps shitting on ev companies, traditional anti-reds military hawks wanting to stay out of literally rendering the traditional enemies useless, you have that middle east stuff where camps are literally 180 of what they were 10 years ago. This world is going whack, and I can't believe people on the Internet don't see it, and still try to find ways to argue for "their team".

Luckily the people I meet IRL aren't as hyper radicalised as the online folks are. In both red and blue states, the people are ok. Reading stuff online you'd think there's a literal war going on. Hopefully this will pass in a few years...

Generally what the article discusses, and yeah my comment meandered a fair amount, is that should Tesla be specifically excluded from subsidies?

The EU has plausible progress from its mainline car makers in EV scaling. It can shield an entire industry with tariffs or targeted subsidies. The US is basically Tesla, some early stage startups, and the US companies only doing it because their activist shareholders would fire the US leadership of GM or Ford if they weren't being active.

The US is one company, and per my argument that company is no longer helping the overall health of the EV market. Honestly I think Chinese EVs would be a welcome kickstart to adoption in the US. At a minimum it would probably drive a vast amount of domestic manufacturing for onshore/nearshore chinese car factories, a sort of reverse-transfer of manufacturing technology/practice back to the US from China (from companies that are probably desperate to diversify their global footprint with the dire demographic and authoritarian future of China that is apparent).

If Musk wants to temper tantrum over that little meeting, then he is again not being a CEO. Again, HALF OF THEIR CUSTOMERS ARE DEMOCRATS. So not the middle third/half of Americans, not the quarter-right. You cannot alienate half of your customer base, and Tesla is going to find out what happens if a CEO plays politics.

Tesla is a company of passionate progressive thinking people that were willing to jump on board a radically new car company. Politics will be important to these buyers, because it is part and parcel of the brand identity.

This is marketing 101. Brands == Emotions == Identity == Investment. Musk has shattered the emotional and identity link of a huge amount of current and probably most future customers. For many, it won't just be weakened with some dose of comparmentalization/cognitive dissonance. For a large number, and probably some of the most passionate defenders (like me), it is poisoned.

So the CEO should have swallowed politics and played to his customer base. That is what CEOs and business is about. But that's not what happened.

Almost all Tesla owners I know were proponents and advocates for a decade. Since the election, they are now, at best, rationalizers. Many others regret the purchase and now will just ride out the current car/lease and "Never Tesla" again.