> If the monthly payment is affordable to someone, isn't that by definition affordable?

Going by the technicality of numbers, it's "affording" in the most immediate sense. It doesn't take into account the risk of a person losing their job and not affording the payments or what they are sacrificing in the long term by being a debter. If someone uses all their life savings to buy a mansion, but by doing so they have pennies left over and no hope of retiring, normally people don't say that person can afford the mansion. Likewise, many people obtain things like cars via debt and put themselves in a precarious financial situation, and it would be a stretch to call such people wealthy.

> This is an odd critique, I'd say that the bigger issue is that a lot of traditional auto manufacturers have done a poor job rolling out their electric vehicles.

That is likely true as well, although it's difficult to distinguish whether other car companies are waiting for Tesla to "run out of bullets" before "launching missiles" at them. I can't read the minds of the people who run other companies that make EVs, thus I can't know whether they're thinking that way, but I find it rather plausible. Since most other manufacturers also produce internal combustion vehicles, they can take their sweet ass time.

Going by my own experiences, the decisions Tesla has been making, and the declining public perception of its CEO, my instinct tells me that Tesla (and perhaps the EV market in general) is going to have to see a decline before it gets a lot better. By no means am I suggesting that Tesla hasn't helped make some good things possible for EVs as a whole, but that it's gradually damaging the market it initially helped to create. Geeks (no offense) love to bring up Tesla's contributions to charging infrastructure and software, but the current state of things (and the state they will be in the near future) doesn't actually cut the mustard if EVs are ever going to go prime time. People of modest means need to see EVs as not luxury items to bolster the ego but as an obvious choice that is within reach of an affordable purchase. I'm not owning an EV any time soon because it makes zero financial sense to take out a loan for a Tesla when a used ICV fulfills all of my transportation needs. This is true for most Americans outside of the tech elite bubble. EVs are hardly there yet, and the question of whether there is actually enough infrastructure to support even half of cars on the road being EVs is still up for debate.

Like I mentioned, every discussion I've had with people in-person about Tesla vehicles, both with owners and non-owners, has been hardly flattering. Yes, this is subjective, and it's one man's experience. I'm just telling it like I've seen it. Next to no one I've met is impressed with these vehicles anymore, and often they find them to be disappointing. I haven't met a single owner who trusts the ability of their Tesla to park itself or do anything autonomously, and I've heard multiple stories of said features nearly getting people killed. Let me repeat that these are not anecdotes from randos online, but stories from people I actually know who own these vehicles. I live in LA, so I've plenty of experience being in these vehicles and knowing the people who own them. Yes, it's entirely possible that others have had the polar opposite experience. I nonetheless have to trust what I've seen and heard firsthand, at least to an extent. Moreover, the growing distrust of Musk is real, and he can't (yet?) be disentangled from the Tesla's image.

I want anyone reading this to absorb that I'm not against electric vehicles. What I am against is delusional mindsets that actually set back the long term progress of EVs.