You lose goodwill when you can be labeled as a luxury goods maker whose main understood purpose is to demonstrate divisions in class.
People see things with different resolutions.
If the Build Back Better Bill passes as is there will be tax credits that work on PHEV and EV offerings (treated as comparable). Telsa can paint themselves as a money grubbing company that makes cars for rich people, and takes money off the table every chance they get. Just like solar companies that raise their prices to make sure all incentives accrue to them.
People see through this.
People remember this.
It destroys goodwill and causes demand lulls in the future, and people will buy something else the first chance they get, because they do not see Tesla as on their side.
People often forget that Tesla only works with persistent demand. If Tesla is viewed in ways that I will let others put names to, the whole thing falls apart and traditionally trained business people wonder why.
Hmmm, I don’t buy this. Sure, people resent things, lots of things, and they have all sorts of media and tweets and yada yada yada to remind them to resent things because their memory is so short.
Yet, that doesn’t stop people from striving to buy goods that they see as imparting status. Expensive goods, such as men’s watches, often have very little actual difference between them, yet people pay extra in order to conspicuously consume at all levels of the economic spectrum (so much the better that Tesla’s cars are objectively superior products).
Even though many people
already think of Tesla cars as luxury goods and, yes, some eschew them as vehicles for show offs, people are lining up to buy them.
Tesla is doing the right things by selling higher margin vehicles and raising prices to prevent lead times from becoming totally unreasonable.
They are also helping other BEV manufacturers that can satisfy some of the demand Tesla is creating, especially for those who can satisfy at lower price points. This, too, helps accelerate the transition to BEV’s.
When conditions allow and are such that it makes sense to make less expensive models, Tesla will do so.
Recall that prior to the introduction of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Daimler was doing fine despite the resentment of some. The introduction of the C-Class was a controversial decision and not a "no brainer." It turned out that the car has been a success—again despite, or maybe because, of the resentment of the Mercedes-have-nots.
Tesla, too, will have great success with the next model down from the 3/Y when they get around to introducing it.
tl;dr: Often a human’s resentment seems to disappear when they can buy the goods that caused them to resent. Naked apes usually don’t work as we might expect or hope they do.