Hopefully avoiding explicit politics is challenging when huge incentives are at stake.
Mr.Manchin, specifically, is as reluctant to vote for anything environmentally positive as most because his entire net worth is tied up in the dirtiest coal, called "Gob" because it is a coarse mixture of lignite and slag, and is the waste produced by coal mines.
It becomes worse:
How Manchin used politics to protect his family coal company
Selling scrap coal has earned Sen. Joe Manchin millions of dollars over three decades, and he has used his political positions to protect the fuel from laws and regulations that threaten his family's business.
www.politico.com
One of the major challenges for Tesla is the enormous reticence of politicians to vote for anything that does not advance their personal self interest. That is a global issue that is becoming more acute now that Tesla is taking market share in core coal and gas countries, including Germany. These same issues also inhibit direct sales in the US since so many State and Federal politicians have car dealer backgrounds. Notably that includes President Joe Biden whose father was a one-time car salesman and did give the President his famous Corvette.
Recently Elon Musk has been actively courting politicians, and this will become an increasingly active practice with Tesla as growth continues. There is no way to avoid that.
It is crucial for us to realize that this process will be largely independent of political orientation.
As we consider appropriate Tesla Marketing practices we might recognize that politicians now are a crucially important constituency.
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