Yahoo Finance

Can you put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to Tesla's branding problem?

I I think you can. You know, it's one of the things we we talked about in in in a recent report was we we kind of looked back at things like, you know, the Bud Light, you know, uh I what call a scandal, but the Bud Light issues that they faced, the issues with Nike and Colin Kaepernick, the issues with Target for a short period of time when they had the whole transgender bathroom discussion. And you know, kind of these things have are sort of these these corporate positions which can impact the companies, they can impact sales for a short period of time. And I think that's why the news last night that that, you know, sort of somewhat expected, but the fact that that Elon has talked about taking a lot more time at Tesla and a lot less time, maybe in the public eye as as part of the government, I think was so well received. Now, the duration of sort of the impact of his involvement, uh, you know, clearly is is hard to gauge and how that kind of plays out from a sales perspective. Uh, you know, in the world of, you know, X and social media, we kind of, you know, we hear the barbells on on most issues and and a lot of what we hear, you know, clearly on Tesla has been been negative from the far left and cars getting keyed and vandalized, etc. But the reality is that they still they still sold a lot of cars in the quarter. They they they mentioned on the call, the order flow on on the on the Y and the new Model Y has been been very good. So I think this sort of does dissipate over time, but it it remains, you know, it's a short-term headwind for sales.

You know, it's interesting because you typically had and and, you know, just acknowledging that we don't we still don't have the the firm reporting on exactly who was behind a lot of the vandalism and uh everything that you were mentioning a moment ago. So just want to be clear on that. But all that taking place does have a longer term type of mind share kind of it sucks up a lot of the attention in the room away from what the company is trying to do at the end of the day. And so, how long does it take for Tesla to regain that or or put that at the top of the list for potential car buyers? Oh yeah, at a time where buying a lot of vehicles right now is perhaps very expensive uh for many people out there who are just trying to evaluate, you know, if they're going to be able to use it a tax incentive and they're not going to be able to to it sounds like in the near future.

Yeah, but it's interesting. You you obviously you have the macro, right? Which is sort of the economy, the environment, the consumer inflation, etc. interest rates. And then you have the the the maybe the micro on on the company side. You know, the the reality is they are they have been affected, right? And and we see it in the data. And one of the really intriguing things that that we saw in some of the data that we have is that the the willingness of of Democrats versus Republicans to buy EVs is is pretty significantly different. Part of it's geographic, right? Because the charging charging infrastructure is more on the coast and range anxiety and charging is kind of a big part of buying an EV. Uh but the other part of it it is a bit political. And what we've seen actually, pretty interesting over the last six months, maybe maybe four to six months, is the Republicans willingness to buy Tesla and the favorable ratings has risen sharply and the Democrats has dropped significantly, right? So, are there enough Republicans buying Teslas that's going to offset that? Probably not, but I do think that, you know, the the impact of of of of Elon's political involvement and the hatred we've seen on online, etc. it will dissipate. Is it going to take a month? No. Is it going to take two years? That's probably not. So I think you'll you'll start to see those those buyers come back to the market. I I I read something I think yesterday just about, you know, Tesla sales in California were still extremely strong. You know, in in the month of March when the new Y came out, right? So I think it's overblown. It has an impact, but I think it's a bit overblown in the media. Right.