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Research co-authored by CU Boulder environmental psychologist Amanda Carrico finds CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics results in liberals being less willing to buy the EVs

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s embrace of rightwing activism has not done him any favors with liberal-leaning Americans—the U.S. demographic group most inclined to purchase electric vehicles—while not resulting in any notable corresponding increase in purchase intentions among the country’s conservatives.

That’s according to a recent research paper published in�� which was co-authored by��Amanda Carrico, an environmental psychologist whose research focus is on understanding people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions related to the environment. She is also an associate professor with the ����������Department of Environmental Studies.

Carrico and her co-authors conducted five surveys of Americans between August 2023 and March of this year about their willingness to embrace 30 actions that would reduce greenhouse emissions. Purchasing electric vehicles (EVs) was the most polarizing item among those actions, with positive intentions recorded for liberals and negative intentions among conservatives.

CU Boulder scholar Amanda Carrico is an environmental psychologist whose research focus is on understanding people’s behaviors, attitudes and perceptions related to the environment.

However, in the past three surveys (May 2024, July 2024 and March), liberals have pumped the brakes regarding their intentions to buy Teslas—and that decline is associated with Musk’s relatively recent embrace of rightwing politics, Carrico says.

“We definitely find that overall intentions to purchase Tesla seems to decrease over time, so there seems to be an intensification of rejection of Teslas among liberals as Musk’s conservative persona emerged,” she says. That’s particularly significant given that liberals are the demographic group most inclined to purchase electric vehicles, she adds.

“At the same time, conservatives have been pretty predictable across the entirety of the surveys: They just aren’t interested in EVs,” Carrico says. “As Elon Musk was shifting to the right, our initial theory was: Maybe we’ll see conservatives become more interested in EVs, because you’ve got this now conservative figure in the industry who is excited about EVs because of their benefit to the environment. We thought we might be on the precipice of EVs becoming a less polarized issue. However, that has not turned out to be true.”

To support their research on Musk’s impact on the Tesla brand, Carrico and her co-authors also point to a series of Morning Consult polls showing a steady decline in self-reported willingness to buy a Tesla among Democrats since 2023. Separately, a Data for Progress poll found two-thirds of Democrats and half of Independents reported that Musk had made them less likely to buy a Tesla.

Recently, Carrico spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine regarding the findings and implications of the research paper. Her responses have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity and condensed for space.

Question: Your team conducted five surveys between November 2023 and March of this year. Was it always the plan to ask specifically about Musk and Teslas, or did that come later?

Carrico: The idea came later, so it was opportunistic. It was interesting to us to see from the beginning that EVs were among the most polarizing action items, so we asked ourselves in 2024 if we should modify the question from EVs generally to Teslas.

There were two motivations for that. One was: How are people’s opinions shifting in response to this emergent political shift (by Musk)? The second was: We felt like we needed more information about people’s opinions about EVs generally versus Teslas, so some respondents were asked about EVs and some were asked about Tesla specifically, and that’s where you could see some delineation between those two categories.

Question: If Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics cost him the support of liberals without picking up notable support from conservatives, did he basically drive Tesla sales into a proverbial ditch?

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"We thought we might be on the precipice of EVs becoming a less polarized issue. However, that has not turned out to be true,” says CU Boulder researcher Amanda Carrico. (Photo: Dylan Calluy/Unsplash)

Carrico: I would not want to speculate on the underlying economics of Musk’s portfolio. A lot of his businesses are interconnected, and a lot of the technologies are interconnected.

But just purely looking at the impact of his political persona in relation to consumer interests in purchasing Teslas, and also the market data about purchasing Teslas, it does seem very clear that there is a decline in consumer interest in Teslas. Of course, business leaders and public figures make value judgments all the time, just like we all do. We don’t know if this decision (by Musk) was driven by economics or other factors. …

I personally would stop short of making a judgment about whether that was a smart decision or an unwise one, but you can certainly see that relationship (Musk’s embrace of a conservative persona and a declining interest among liberals to buy Teslas) play out in our data and the market data that we were able to acquire during the project.

Question: Do you have thoughts as to whether Tesla could regain support, particularly support from liberals, if Musk either stepped away from his company or perhaps walked back some of his rightwing views?

Carrico: I think there are some insights we could look to, to make an educated hypothesis on what might happen there. I will say, I think once something becomes politically polarized, like becoming aligned with a political identity, it’s very hard to undo that. Politics are very sticky, so it becomes hard to shed that.

With consumer behavior, we have seen a lot of companies recover from these kinds of things. For example, Budweiser being boycotted several years ago in response to their alliance with a transgender influencer. That was different, though, because Budweiser wasn’t entering into the political arena.

This is a very different thing, with Musk being the figurehead of a company. Tesla is unique in how tied Musk is to Tesla. For comparison, I don’t know how many people in America could tell you who is the leader of Nissan or Suncor or other companies, but Musk is uniquely visible in his role with Tesla.

Question: Do you have any thoughts as to how other EV manufacturers should respond to the survey findings when it comes to branding or messaging?

Carrico: Clearly, liberals want to explore EVs. I think it’s clear that it’s aligned with their identity. One interesting thing in this study that was very surprising to us is that the disinterest in EVs that started to grow over the course of the study wasn’t just isolated to Teslas. We started to see it bleed over into interest in purchasing EVs in general.

I wondered if that wasn’t so much a rejection of EVs as a disinterest in one of the leading vehicles in the EV market. Teslas were considered state-of-the-art in many respects. The charging infrastructure for Teslas feels quite superior to other alternatives, so it does feel like there’s a consumer demand that’s not being met by other alternatives.

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"Teslas were considered state-of-the-art in many respects. The charging infrastructure for Teslas feels quite superior to other alternatives, so it does feel like there’s a consumer demand that’s not being met by other alternatives," says Amanda Carrico, CU Boulder associate professor and department chair of environmental studies.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, but insofar as there are opportunities for other producers to fill this space—to offer purchasing opportunities that are not Tesla but that fulfill the same goals and amenities as Tesla offered—I think that’s a real opportunity, and I’m sure they are scrambling to take advantage of that.

Question: A number of media outlets have reported on the study’s findings. What kind of reaction has the paper been generating?

Carrico: It’s been very interesting because the reaction has depended heavily upon the political orientation of the news outlet, which is perhaps not surprising. If it was covered by a more liberal outlet—Mother Jones, for example—the main takeaway was, ‘Look at Elon Musk. What a fool he was, shooting himself in the foot.’

Then if you look on the right—it’s been covered by Breitbart, for example—the narrative has been, ‘Look at these liberals rejecting these products that solve the problem they care so much about,’ meaning climate change.

There’s been accurate depictions of the findings in the paper, but also it’s been interesting because anyone can take what they want out of the paper and spin it, or link it, to their political identity.

Question: Do you think this is a topic you and your co-authors will revisit, perhaps to see how opinions on EVs in general, and Teslas in particular, evolve over time?

Carrico: To be honest, we have not talked about it yet, but I would not be surprised if that happens. Writing papers like this, there’s a lot of work to get one completed, and the review process can be long and tedious. But the team (of co-authors) is still meeting, and so I anticipate that within the next few months we’ll be revisiting things, deciding what we want to focus on next and trying to understand how polarization impacts a range of behaviors.

There is an aspect of this project that is trying to understand things people do agree on. Specifically, where is there less polarization? Because those areas are appealing targets for public policy, with the idea (that) we can make progress on the areas we agree on and wait for things we don’t agree on to see if there’s opportunities in the future.

I hope that this moment fades, so that we can move away from this rancor around EVs. I’m really hopeful about the potential of decarbonization and how that is linked with a changing of the vehicle fleet (from combustion engine to EV), so I still think there’s a lot of potential there, and I’m hopeful we will still see some renewed interest in this technology. I think we will.��

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