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Each time a person chooses not to buy a new Tesla because of Elon, it lands a triple blow to the company.
That's because Tesla isn't a company that just profits from selling cars.
A big part of its business is also generating emission certificates by selling EVs to legacy automakers (like GM, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc).
Those carbon credits "offset" the fossil fuel pollution created by the petrol cars those legacy automakers sell:
"GM purchased about 44 million credits in 2023, the EPA report said, while Tesla sold about 34 million, the largest of all transactions."
"Tesla generated a substantial $1.79 billion from carbon credit sales last year … bringing its total earnings from such credits since 2009 to nearly $9 billion."
https://carboncredits.com/tesla-hits-record-high-sales-from-carbon-credits-at-1-79b/
So let's suppose you decide to buy a Volkswagen EV instead of a Tesla.
Tesla doesn't just miss out on the profit from that EV.
It also misses the profit from selling the carbon credits for that car to VW.
Meanwhile, VW gains the carbon certificates for that EV, meaning it needs to buy fewer offsets from Tesla for its petrol cars.
And that's likely to be extra bad news for Elon, if he's borrowed against his Tesla shares to fund other parts of his empire: https://social.vivaldi.net/@ajsadauskas/114204194057224800
@ajsadauskas "In some US states", and possibly some other countries, though I think this is a uniquely US approach to increasing EV development.
@btuftin @ajsadauskas uniquely US because it's so highly exploitable. Other countries see that as a bad thing, but not us!