Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

EV Buyers Still Love Tesla, Whatever Elon Musk Does

In the latest Heatmap Climate Poll, 35% of future EV buyers said the billionaire had actually made them more likely to purchase a Tesla.

Elon Musk.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In the weeks leading up to Elon Musk’s latest round of controversies, 27% percent of Americans who reported wanting to buy an EV in the future said that the billionaire’s behavior made them less likely to pick a Tesla, down from 36% who said the same in February. On the other hand, 35% of prospective EV buyers said that Musk had made them more likely to purchase a Tesla — a reversal of the results from the last time Heatmap took Americans’ temperature on the controversial CEO, when more people were put off by Musk’s behavior than swayed by him.

Heatmap’s new poll — which was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group between Nov. 6 and Nov. 13, 2023 — notably did not account for Musk’s latest scandal: reinstating Infowars founder and Newtown massacre denialist Alex Jones to the website formerly known as Twitter. The poll was also conducted days before Musk endorsed an anti-semitic post on X, leading to an advertiser exodus from the platform.

Still, since the last Heatmap poll in February, Americans have had plenty of time to see other negative headlines about Musk, including around his volatile ownership of X, his “outsize role in geopolitics, thanks to SpaceX,” his mockery of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and his public attacks on a disabled ex-employee, George Soros, and the Anti-Defamation League.

Even so, Tesla outsold its next 19 rival EV automakers combined, and by a wide margin, in the first six months of 2023, Reuters reports. And despite declining earnings, its shares have risen 94% so far this year, far outpacing the S&P 500. When trying to account for this resilience in the face of Musk’s parade of recent scandals, Platformer’s Casey Newton mused last week on The New York TimesHard Fork podcast that there might still be “a contingent of folks who want to believe that the Elon Musk of 2023 is the Elon Musk of 2013, and that he said a couple of kooky things here and there, but at his core, he’s billionaire genius, Tony Stark, savior of humanity.” But at the same time, he went on, this might be a “moment in the sun for Tesla” and “maybe a few years from now, we look back and we think, oh yeah, that’s when the wheels started to come off the wagon.”

Overall, Heatmap found that some 39% of Democrats and left-leaning Independents said Musk has made them less likely to look at a Tesla, a small drop from 44% who said the same in February. Only 17% of Republicans and right-leaning Independents said the same. Of all respondents surveyed, though, a plurality (46%) said Musk ultimately has “no impact” on their decision to buy or lease a Tesla, proving there apparently are some people lucky enough to not have to think about this guy.

Additionally, 35% of men but only 15% of women said that Musk has made them more likely to buy a Tesla. Make of that what you will!

The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group via online panels from Nov. 6 to 13, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. You can read about our results here.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

The EPA’s Backdoor Move to Hobble the Carbon Capture Industry

Why killing a government climate database could essentially gut a tax credit

Lee Zeldin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s bid to end an Environmental Protection Agency program may essentially block any company — even an oil firm — from accessing federal subsidies for capturing carbon or producing hydrogen fuel.

On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed that it would stop collecting and publishing greenhouse gas emissions data from thousands of refineries, power plants, and factories across the country.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow