New Delhi, March 12 -- Tesla shares were at a five-month low, Tesla showrooms in the US are being vandalized, Tesla cybertrucks were set on fire in Seattle, and the electric vehicle maker's sales are down in the US and Europe. That US President Donald Trump has bought a Tesla car might seem like good news, signalling support at the highest level. But that might only serve to worsen Tesla's fortunes.

The key problem underlying Tesla's woes is the conflict between the social intelligence underpinning the sale of electric vehicles and the society-agnostic vision of tech-driven progress that the company's chief executive Elon Musk stands for. Social imagination is definitely getting the better of technological aspirations.

In the US, the pe...