I was in Italy over the summer and they seemed to universally detest musk, and trump there. So much, in fact, that it is embarrassing to be a US citizen in Europe with these fools “representing” the US.
did you meet people who base buying a car off of who the car company owner supported in a foreign (to them) election?
or would you say these were ordinary people or more the kind of people paying attention to international events? (genuine question).
I get that to an american it's contentious, but imagine not buying a toyota car or samsung phone because the powerful head of that company gave huge amounts to a conservative politician in their country. That's how I look at elon/trump in the us, and given I never hear normal people (not reddit/hackernews/guardian) talking about ANY of this stuff, I'd guess I'm not alone.
I'm in Portugal and I have definitely met people outside of tech who talk about Musk in ways that I'm pretty sure mean they would not consider buying Teslas.
Same applies to some friends in France.
I assume the topic comes up more with me because I lived in the US for a long time before moving back to Europe, but I'm guessing their opinions are there even if the topic doesn't come up as often in conversations with other locals, for example.
I’m not going to generalize, but I already told you, I met people who had a profound dislike of elon/trump and I don’t think I saw a single Tesla during that trip. Maybe Italy is a different case since they have a passion for high quality cars, so makes more sense that there would be other reasons for them avoiding Tesla.
You're forgetting that Musk is trying to influence national politics the world over. He's injecting money into far right movements in multiple European nations and keeps commenting on legal and judicial decisions in many countries, often complaining if things don't go the way the far right wants - all while using his influence over his companies to spread his views, like when he desperately wanted people to believe in the "white genocide".
I don't think the Toyota CEO is trying to have anywhere close to this much influence over most European countries, and I'm honestly not aware of anyone else doing so. For years, Musk has been behaving like a literal Bond villain.
Considering he is a fascist, makes nazi sign, spent hundreds of millions of the money he made to elect a mad man, yes, that’s enough to influence me not to buy their cars.
Do I know who the CEOs of all car companies vote for? No.
But also none of them spent so much capital electing Trump and threatened to destroy Canada’s sovereignty so I guess I make my consumer choices with the info I have.
