I'm not losing optimism because of this. Musk fits right into the current political & cultural trajectory and the Tesla brand is sleek & timeless. The media is framing Musk's flaws (Twitter insults, weed & booze) as a bad thing, but outside of the media, people do not care about such things nearly as much. It just requires a few years of optimization and the cars are going to be en par with established brands.
You're right that Musk does not need to score political points with the everyday person in order for Tesla to succeed. But by the same token, Musk's "fitting into the current political and cultural trajectory" (whatever that means) is also of no value to Tesla. The actual concerns people have are much more concrete. Tesla has already had "a few years of optimization". They have been making cars for ten years now. The…
I mean that he is a rare kind of public figure who is really down-to-earth, yet proponent of the free market & innovation. Like Trump he breaks with the norms, but he's a lot more sincere. He also does not seem to outsource overseas very much, which kind of fits into the MAGA narrative.