The authors note that Tesla’s two major claims to greatness — its fully electric vehicles and the autopilot feature — are at odds with the traditional self-conceptions of male drivers, who prize the powerful combustion engines driven by fossil fuel and their own sense of autonomy behind the wheel. Quitting gasoline for the sake of environmentalism threatens their consumer status because such a decision is culturally stereotyped as feminine. Autopilot, meanwhile, threatens a “demasculinization” of male drivers as they’re converted into passengers. He’s ceding control of direction to a machine and losing something of his automotive identity in the process.
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