The year is 2012. You’re sitting at your Dell Inspiron desktop, listening to the VEVO music video for “Somebody That I Used To Know,” when an interesting story comes across your Google Reader: Tesla Motors, that little company that made electric Lotus Elises, has started production on its electric luxury sedan. The pitch is a simple one: Save the planet without giving anything up in exchange. All the luxury, comfort, and class you’re used to, in a car that won’t spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. You’re intrigued, interested even. You put down a deposit.
The year is 2023. Elon Musk has once again taken to Twitter, a website he inexplicably now owns, to promote transphobic speech and boost anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last. After eleven years of watching Musk The CEO eclipse Tesla The Earth-Saving Brand, do you still own that Model S?
That’s the question we’re putting forth to you all today. Back in the early days of the Model S, it appealed to an environmentalist demographic. This was 2012 after all; electric cars weren’t yet mainstream, and charging was even less convenient than it is now. To get an electric car, you had to really want it — and find its Earth-saving potential to be worth its day-to-day inconvenience.
If you bought a Tesla for ideological, environmental, or similar reasons, we want to hear from you. When did you buy the car, and why? Do you still own it? If so, why do you keep it around; if not, what made you sell? Have the actions of the company’s CEO factored into your car-buying (or car-keeping, or car-selling) plans?
Send me an email, sdasilva@jalopnik.com. I’m genuinely very curious as to what effect Musk has had on the people who buy Tesla cars for their environmentalist cred — if any. Who knows? You might just make it into an article right here on the jello picnic website.