Cai Rong Li

Profesor Rice-Evans

ENGL 110

For this rhetorical analysis assignment, I choose to write about the automotive company, Tesla. Tesla is an automotive company that only sells electric vehicles and related products such as solar panels & solar roofs. Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, often post on Twitter to communicate with the public. One of his posts about Tesla stated “Tesla does not advertise or pay for endorsements. Instead, we use that money to make the product great”. This may just be a short Twitter post but Elon Musk is able to use ethos, logos, and kairos present Tesla as a great company. Elon Musk used ethos by stating facts about his company. We don’t see Tesla commercials on videos or advisements on the street because Tesla spends nothing on their advisement. However, we still heard of Tesla at some point due to its huge influence in the current automotive market. In addition, Elon Musk used logos to further persuade Tesla’s potential customers to purchase Tesla vehicles. Since Tesla doesn’t spend any money on advertisements, people will begin to wonder how Tesla become so famous and sold out most quantity of electric vehicles every year. Musk’s use of logos will directly lead the audience, potential customers, to think that Tesla vehicles are top quality and it is worth it to purchase one of their models. Furthermore, the use of kairos helps Elon Musk reach his message to the audience. For example, he made Tesla follow a direct-to-consumer model, which sells their vehicles at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). Ever since the pandemic, car dealerships sell vehicles way above the MSRP so they can gain more profit from the customers. Therefore, the rhetorical strategy, kairos, that Elon Musk used matches the messages that he is trying to audiences. After people see that Tesla is a trustworthy company, they will eventually make their decision to purchase Tesla vehicles which eventually leads to Tesla being the automotive company that sold out the most electric vehicles every year.