Business

Can Trump and Musk Convince More Conservatives to Buy Teslas?

Published

8 months ago

March 16, 2025

Can Trump and Musk Convince More Conservatives to Buy Teslas?

After climbing into a Tesla Model S last week, President Trump pledged to buy one. The next day, the Fox News host Sean Hannity said he had bought a Model S Plaid to support the embattled company, saying a Tesla “has more American parts in it than any other car made in our country.”

In a backlash to the backlash against the tactics of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, prominent conservatives are rallying to the side of the electric car company led by Mr. Musk. They are hoping to swing enough like-minded consumers to offset a boycott of the electric automaker by liberals and Democrats or anyone offended by Mr. Musk’s actions.

But how effective can such a rescue mission be? Analysts say it can help but only to an extent.

So many Democratic buyers appear to be fleeing Tesla that even Mr. Trump’s best sales pitch is unlikely to woo enough new customers to fill the vacuum, auto experts said. Analysts at JPMorgan predict Tesla will deliver its fewest cars in the first quarter than it had in three years.

“When you make your product unattractive to half the market, I promise you, you won’t increase your sales,” said Alexander Edwards, president of Strategic Vision, an automotive research and consulting firm.

Mr. Edwards has been surveying car buyers for decades. Since 2016, the surveys have found that electric-car owners were up to four times as likely to identify as Democrats or liberals as to identify as Republican or conservative. Among Tesla owners, the spread was consistently two to one.

The gap narrowed sharply through 2024. This year, as sales have fallen, slightly more Tesla buyers identify as Republicans than Democrats, at 30 percent versus 29 percent.

“Democrats are fleeing the brand and saying they won’t consider it in the future, so there is naturally a greater proportion of Republican and independent buyers,” Mr. Edwards said.

He said Democrats first started losing interest in Tesla when Mr. Musk bought Twitter, now X, in 2022. Then, last July, when Mr. Musk publicly backed Mr. Trump, the share of Democrats who said they would “definitely consider” a Tesla fell by half.

Overall, about 8 percent of car owners would now definitely consider a Tesla, according to Mr. Edwards’s surveys. That compares with 22 percent five years ago, when Tesla often topped rankings of luxury brands that buyers would consider.

Tesla’s slipping sales, he said, “are mostly, if not completely, attributed to the statements and behavior of Elon Musk.”

The automaker did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla remains America’s best-selling electric vehicle brand by far with about 44 percent of the market, despite a 5.6 percent drop in U.S. sales, to about 634,000 cars in 2024, according to Kelley Blue Book. Many drivers are determined to stick with the electric vehicle pioneer, whose cars can travel several hundred miles on a charge and can be easily refueled at the company’s extensive charging network.

Josh Anders, 44, traded a gasoline-powered sport utility vehicle for a Tesla Model 3 in 2019. A resident of Fort Wayne, Ind., he was blown away by the car’s energy efficiency, technology and limited maintenance needs. He soon traded for another, and is about to take delivery of the latest Model Y S.U.V.

“Owning a Tesla was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I’m sticking by it,” Mr. Anders said. “I would love a Rivian R1S, but I can’t afford it. I’m a tech guy, and I love all the features and innovations.”

Mr. Anders, a father of four and creative director of a Christian nonprofit music and arts organization, said he leans conservative, and is uncomfortable with boycotts.

“Elon’s not perfect, and Tesla’s not perfect, but it’s a community of dreamers and doers. I appreciate a brand that’s constantly pushing the boundaries,” he said. “I don’t need every company to share my beliefs. I just need them to share a commitment to progress.”

Still, cars have a long history of becoming part of the political fray.

The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid introduced in 2011 after General Motors received federal government assistance, was derided by some conservatives as the “Obamacar.” The fuel-sipping Toyota Prius and the gas-guzzling Hummer from G.M. were often lauded and attacked by people on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Isaac Seliger, a business owner and grant writer in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he’d had little interest in electric vehicles even though his son, who died recently, was a devoted fan of Tesla.

Now, said Mr. Seliger, who described himself as politically independent, he is determined to buy a Tesla, because he wants to defy groupthink and polarization. A friend told him that she would stop speaking to him if he did.

“As a former lefty and antiwar guy, this all makes me want to buy a Tesla more,” Mr. Seliger, 73, said. “I’ll absolutely be making a political statement. But if I bought a Porsche Macan, that’s a statement, too, where people pigeonhole you as an obnoxious older Porsche driver.”

Mr. Seliger added that he found criticisms of Mr. Musk overblown.

“So Elon was a hero of the left, and now he’s a Nazi? That’s just crazy,” he said. “He strikes me as a smart guy who makes great stuff.”

To many people who have faith in Tesla and Mr. Musk, the company’s sales and stock price, which is down about 48 percent from a December high, will eventually recover. The stock was up 12 percent over the last four days of trading.

But some automotive experts say Tesla may struggle because the company has not regularly updated its cars or introduced new models. In addition, the company’s chargers, which once could be used only by Teslas, are opening access to nearly every major competitor, said Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, an electric vehicle charging data firm. And other automakers are offering new electric models, often with notably affordable monthly payments.

“He’s rapidly losing the advantages in range, tech, value and convenience that drove people to Tesla,” Mr. McDonald said. “For a lot of people, it’s time to move on and try something new.”

Of course, most buyers don’t choose cars based on politics. But a brand’s image matters. Tesla sales slipped even as overall U.S. electric vehicle sales grew 7.3 percent in 2024, to 1.3 million. Mr. Edwards said Mr. Musk was making it too easy for people to shop elsewhere.

“People can love their Hyundai, G.M., Rivian or BMW just as much,” he said.

Republicans certainly buy electric cars, but fewer of them have made the plunge to fully electric models. Rural states, where Republicans outnumber Democrats, have fewer chargers than more urban states. Strategic Vision data shows Republicans are more likely to work outside the home, and are less willing to put up with inconveniences like long charging stops. And a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that more Republicans than Democrats say electric vehicles cost too much and are less reliable than gasoline cars.

In the New York metropolitan area, the nation’s largest car market, new Tesla registrations fell 13 percent, to 47,000 cars, in 2024, according to S&P Global Mobility. That same year, more than 101,000 people registered a Tesla in Los Angeles, the second-largest market, a drop of 8 percent. Still, nearly one in eight new cars in Los Angeles was a Tesla. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where Tesla was founded, nearly one in five new cars was a Tesla. But sales tumbled 17 percent to 54,000 cars.

Consumers in the Houston area bought 12,000 Teslas. But Bay Area residents bought 4.5 times as many Teslas, in a smaller market for new cars overall. Some areas saw big increases, including Miami-Fort Lauderdale where sales jumped 32 percent, to nearly 23,000 cars, in 2024. Tesla sales also rose sharply in Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and St. Louis. But the company’s gains in these places could not offset steeper declines in larger, more liberal metro areas.

Experts say wealthy conservatives such as Mr. Hannity and Mr. Trump have the disposable income to make a personal automotive statement by opting for a Tesla. But they may not be able to persuade Americans of more modest means.

Mr. McDonald also noted that Mr. Trump and other conservatives had spent years vilifying electric cars, mocking climate change and criticizing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s climate and auto policies.

“The messaging is inconsistent,” Mr. McDonald said. “Is the guy in Arkansas who drives a Ram pickup going to buy a Tesla now? How far can you go against your own beliefs to support Elon Musk?”

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Business

Sora app’s hyperreal AI videos ignite online trust crisis as downloads surge

Published

17 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Press Room

Sora app’s hyperreal AI videos ignite online trust crisis as downloads surge

Scrolling through the Sora app can feel a bit like entering a real-life multiverse.

Michael Jackson performs standup; the alien from the “Predator” movies flips burgers at McDonald’s; a home security camera captures a moose crashing through the glass door; Queen Elizabeth dives from the top of a table at a pub.

Such improbable realities, fantastical futures, and absurdist videos are the mainstay of the Sora app, a new short video app released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The continuous stream of hyperreal, short-form videos made by artificial intelligence is mind-bending and mesmerizing at first. But it quickly triggers a new need to second-guess every piece of content as real or fake.

“The biggest risk with Sora is that it makes plausible deniability impossible to overcome, and that it erodes confidence in our ability to discern authentic from synthetic,” said Sam Gregory, an expert on deepfakes and executive director at WITNESS, a human rights organization. “Individual fakes matter, but the real damage is a fog of doubt settling over everything we see,”

All videos on the Sora app are entirely AI-generated, and there is no option to share real footage. But from the first week of its launch, users were sharing their Sora videos across all types of social media.

Less than a week after its launch Sept. 30, the Sora app crossed a million downloads, outpacing the initial growth of ChatGPT. Sora also reached the top of the App Store in the U.S. For now, the Sora app is available only to iOS users in the United States, and people cannot access it unless they have an invitation code.

To use the app, people have to scan their faces and read out three numbers displayed on screen for the system to capture a voice signature. Once that’s done, users can type a custom text prompt and create hyperreal 10-second videos complete with background sound and dialogue.

Through a feature called “Cameos,” users can superimpose their face or a friend’s face into any existing video. Though all outputs carry a visible watermark, numerous websites now offer watermark removal for Sora videos.

At launch, OpenAI took a lax approach to enforcing copyright restrictions and allowed the re-creation of copyrighted material by default, unless the owners opted out.

Users began generating AI video featuring characters from such titles as “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “South Park,” and “Breaking Bad,” and videos styled after the game show “The Price Is Right,” and the ‘90s sitcom “Friends.”

Then came the re-creation of dead celebrities, including Tupac Shakur roaming the streets in Cuba, Hitler facing off with Michael Jackson, and remixes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech — but calling for freeing the disgraced rapper Diddy.

“Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad,” Zelda Williams, daughter of late comedian Robin Williams, posted on Instagram. “You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hot dogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else’s throat, hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.”

Other dead celebrity re-creations, including Kobe Bryant, Stephen Hawking and President Kennedy, created on Sora have been cross-posted on social media websites, garnering millions of views.

Christina Gorski, director of communications at Fred Rogers Productions, said that Rogers’ family was “frustrated by the AI videos misrepresenting Mister Rogers being circulated online.”

Videos of Mr. Rogers holding a gun, greeting rapper Tupac, and other satirical fake situations have been shared widely on Sora.

“The videos are in direct contradiction to the careful intentionality and adherence to core child development principles that Fred Rogers brought to every episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. We have contacted OpenAI to request that the voice and likeness of Mister Rogers be blocked for use on the Sora platform, and we would expect them and other AI platforms to respect personal identities in the future,” Gorski said in a statement to The Times.

Hollywood talent agencies and unions, including SAG-AFTRA, have started to accuse OpenAI of improper use of likenesses. The central tension boils down to control over the use of the likenesses of actors and licensed characters — and fair compensation for use in AI videos.

In the aftermath of Hollywood’s concerns over copyright, Sam Altman shared a blog post, promising greater control for rights-holders to specify how their characters can be used in AI videos — and is exploring ways to share revenue with rights-holders.

He also said that studios could now “opt-in” for their characters to be used in AI re-creations, a reversal from OpenAI’s original stance of an opt-out regime.

The future, according to Altman, is heading toward creating personalized content for an audience of a few — or an audience of one.

“Creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion, and along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase,” Altman wrote, calling this genre of engagement “interactive fan fiction.”

The estates of dead actors, however, are racing to protect their likeness in the age of AI.

CMG Worldwide, which represents the estates of deceased celebrities, struck a partnership with deepfake detection company Loti AI to protect CMG’s rosters of actors and estates from unauthorized digital use.

Loti AI will constantly monitor for AI impersonations of 20 personalities represented by CMG, including Burt Reynolds, Christopher Reeve, Mark Twain and Rosa Parks.

“Since the launch of Sora 2, for example, our signups have increased roughly 30x as people search for ways to regain control over their digital likeness,” said Luke Arrigoni, co-founder and CEO of Loti AI.

Since January, Loti AI said it has removed thousands of instances of unauthorized content as new AI tools made it easier than ever to create and spread deepfakes.

After numerous “disrespectful depictions” of Martin Luther King Jr., OpenAI said it was pausing the generation of videos in the civil rights icon’s image on Sora, at the request of King’s estate. While there are strong free-speech interests in depicting historical figures, public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used, OpenAI said in a post.

Now, authorized representatives or estate owners can request that their likenesses not be used in Sora cameos.

As legal pressure mounts, Sora has become more strict about when it will allow the re-creation of copyrighted characters. It increasingly puts up content policy violations notices.

Now, creating Disney characters or other images triggers a content policy violation warning. Users who aren’t fans of the restrictions have started creating video memes about the content policy violation warnings.

There’s a growing virality to what has been dubbed “AI slop.”

Last week featured ring camera footage of a grandmother chasing a crocodile at the door, and a series of “fat olympics” videos where obese people participate in athletic events such as pole vault, swimming and track events.

Dedicated slop factories have turned the engagement into a money spinner, generating a constant stream of videos that are hard to look away from. One pithy tech commentator dubbed it “Cocomelon for adults.”

Even with increasing protections for celebrity likenesses, critics warn that the casual “likeness appropriation” of any common person or situation could lead to public confusion, enhance misinformation and erode public trust.

Meanwhile, even as the technology is being used by bad actors and even some governments for propaganda and promotion of certain political views, people in power can hide behind the flood of fake news by claiming that even real proof was generated by AI, said Gregory of WITNESS.

“I’m concerned about the ability to fabricate protest footage, stage false atrocities, or insert real people with words placed in their mouths into compromising scenarios,” he said.

Business

After ‘Megalopolis’ flops, Francis Ford Coppola puts his pricey watch collection up for auction

Published

3 days ago

October 24, 2025

Press Room

After ‘Megalopolis’ flops, Francis Ford Coppola puts his pricey watch collection up for auction

Francis Ford Coppola wants an offer he can’t refuse — on his timepieces.

The Academy Award-winning director is selling seven watches from his personal collection, including his custom F.P. Journe FFC Prototype, estimated to sell for more than $1 million, according to a statement from Phillips, the New York City-based auction house. Phillips will hold the auction on Dec. 6 and 7.

The sale could help stanch losses from last year’s box-office flop “Megalopolis,” which cost over $120 million to make and was largely financed by the 86-year-old director. The movie grossed only $14.3 million worldwide.

The film, Coppola’s first since his 2011 horror movie “Twixt,” premiered at Cannes last year to largely negative reviews. The Times’ Joshua Rothkopf called it a “wildly ambitious, overstuffed city epic.”

At a news conference at Cannes, Coppola discussed the tremendous amount of his own money that he had sunk into the film, saying that he “never cared about money” and that his children “don’t need a fortune.”

Among the Coppola timepieces also going under the hammer are examples from Patek Philippe, Blancpain and IWC.

But the headlining piece is the F.P. Journe FFC Prototype that features a black titanium, human-like hand that resembles a steampunk gauntlet that articulates the hours when the fingers extend or retract.

Francis Ford Coppola’s custom F.P. Journe FFC timepiece uses a single hand to indicate all 12 hours.

(Phillips)

The watch was a collaboration between Coppola and master watchmaker François-Paul Journe that began following a conversation the pair had during a visit he made to the filmmaker’s Inglenook winery in Napa Valley in 2012.

Coppola asked Journe if a human hand had ever been used to mark time. That question sparked a years-long conversation during which the watchmaker grappled with how to indicate the 12 hours of the dial using just five fingers.

Journe found his inspiration in Ambroise Paré, a 16th century French barber surgeon and an innovator of prosthetic limbs in particular, including Le Petit Lorrain, a prosthetic hand made of iron and leather that featured hidden gears and springs enabling the fingers to move, not dissimilar to a watch mechanism.

“Speaking with Francis in 2012 and hearing his idea on the use of a human hand to indicate time inspired me to create a watch I never could have imagined myself. The challenge was formidable — exactly the type of watchmaking project I adore,” said Journe in a statement.

Journe eventually created six prototypes and delivered Coppola’s watch to him in 2021.

“I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking,” he said.

Coppola first became interested in the watchmaker when he gifted his wife Eleanor an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance in platinum with a white gold dial for Christmas in 2009, prompting the director to extend an invitation to Journe to visit him at his Napa winery.

Eleanor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and writer, died in 2024 after 61 years of marriage. Her F.P. Journe timepiece is also part of the auction and is estimated to fetch between $120,000 to $240,000.

Business

Disney warns that ESPN, ABC and other channels could go dark on YouTube TV

Published

3 days ago

October 24, 2025

Press Room

Disney warns that ESPN, ABC and other channels could go dark on YouTube TV

Walt Disney Co. is alerting viewers that its channels may go dark on YouTube TV amid tense contract negotiations between the two television giants.

The companies are struggling to hammer out a new distribution deal on YouTube TV for Disney’s channels, including ABC, ESPN, FX, National Geographic and Disney Channel. YouTube TV has become one of the most popular U.S. pay-TV services, boasting about 10 million subscribers for its packages of traditional television channels.

Those customers risk losing Disney’s channels, including KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles and other ABC affiliates nationwide if the two companies fail to forge a new carriage agreement by Oct. 30, when their pact expires.

“Without an agreement, we’ll have to remove Disney’s content from YouTube TV,” the Google Inc.-owned television service said Thursday in a statement.

Disney began sounding the alarm by running messages on its TV channels to warn viewers about the blackout threat.

The Burbank entertainment company becomes the latest TV programmer to allege that the tech behemoth is throwing its weight around in contract negotiations.

In recent months, both Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp. and Comcast’s NBCUniversal publicly complained that Google’s YouTube TV was attempting to unfairly squeeze them in their separate talks. In the end, both Fox and NBCUniversal struck new carriage contracts without their channels going dark.

Univision wasn’t as fortunate. The smaller, Spanish-language media company’s networks went dark last month on YouTube TV when the two companies failed to reach a deal.

“For the fourth time in three months, Google’s YouTube TV is putting their subscribers at risk of losing the most valuable networks they signed up for,” a Disney spokesperson said Thursday in a statement. “This is the latest example of Google exploiting its position at the expense of their own customers.”

YouTube TV, for its part, alleged that Disney was the one making unreasonable demands.

“We’ve been working in good faith to negotiate a deal with Disney that pays them fairly for their content on YouTube TV,” a YouTube TV spokesperson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Disney is proposing costly economic terms that would raise prices on YouTube TV customers and give our customers fewer choices, while benefiting Disney’s own live TV products – like Hulu + Live TV and, soon, Fubo.”

Disney’s Hulu + Live TV competes directly with YouTube TV by offering the same channels. Fubo is a sports streaming service that Disney is in the process of acquiring.

YouTube said if Disney channels remain “unavailable for an extended period of time,” it would offer its customers a $20 credit.

The contract tussle heightens tensions from earlier this year, when Disney’s former distribution chief, Justin Connolly, left in May to take a similar position at YouTube TV. Connolly had spent two decades at Disney and ESPN and Disney sued to block the move, but a judge allowed Connolly to take his new position.

YouTube TV launched in April 2017 for $35 a month. The package of channels now costs $82.99.

To attract more sports fans, YouTube TV took over the NFL Sunday Ticket premium sports package from DirecTV, which had been losing more than $100 million a year to maintain the NFL service. YouTube TV offers Sunday Ticket as a base plan add-on or as an individual channel on YouTube.

Last year, YouTube generated $54.2 billion in revenue, second only to Disney among television companies, according to research firm MoffettNathanson.

The dispute comes as NFL and college football is in full swing, with games on ABC and ESPN. The NBA season also tipped off this week and ESPN prominently features those games. ABC’s fall season began last month with fresh episodes of such favorite programs as “Dancing with the Stars” and “Abbott Elementary.”

ABC stations also air popular newscasts including “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight with David Muir.” Many ABC stations, including in Los Angeles, run Sony’s “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!”

“We invest significantly in our content and expect our partners to pay fair rates that recognize that value,” Disney said. “If we don’t reach a fair deal soon, YouTube TV customers will lose access to ESPN and ABC, and all our marquee programming – including the NFL, college football, NBA and NHL seasons – and so much more.”