Elon Musk was once the darling of the electric vehicle community. A rich, brash CEO, with an ability to harness social media, those same factors that made him a popular figure may now be hurting the company he helped grow.

Studies are showing increasingly that, although Tesla owners are happy with their vehicles, they wish the company’s CEO was less controversial.

“We hear from Tesla owners who will say, ‘Look, I love my vehicle, but I really wish I didn’t have to respond to my friends and family about his latest tweet,’” Mike Dovorany, who surveyed EV owners and potential buyers while working with Escalent, told Al Jezeera.

Read Also: Twitter Sues Elon Musk, Wants Him To Buy The Social Media Giant

Elon Musk has long been a lightning rod for news coverage, and his activity on Twitter has long contributed to Tesla’s growing fortunes. In the company’s early days, his attitude benefited the company and earned him an army of fanboys.

That encouraged his name and the Tesla brand to become almost synonymous, but what was once a feature may be now a flaw. Since becoming the world’s richest person, wading into political conflicts, and attempting to buy Twitter, as well as being the center of several personal controversies, his fame may be turning into infamy.

“Elon has just soiled that brand for me so much that I don’t even think I would take one if I won one,” Jerry James Stone, a 48-year-old resident of Sacramento, California, who is looking into buying an EV, told Al Jazeera. “You have this guy who’s the richest dude in the world, who has this huge megaphone, and he uses it to call somebody a pedophile who’s not, or to fat-shame people, all these things that are just kind of gross.”

As legacy automakers commit more and more to electric vehicles, the stranglehold that Tesla has on the EV market is being loosened. That’s allowing consumers who might once have ignored Musk’s controversies to look elsewhere.

“We’ve seen among the early adopters more of a willingness to take risks or to put up with things that are out of the ordinary,” said Dovorany. “We’re not seeing that as much with incoming buyers.”

Even fans who once described themselves as fanboys are looking elsewhere. Dennis Levitt, a 73-year-old who has owned at least four Teslas since 2016, told Al Jazeera that his next EV may be from Audi, Mercedes, or BMW instead of Tesla.

“If you take Mr. Musk and his antics out of the equation, I’m about 98% certain that my next car would be a Tesla,” Levitt says. “His antics put me in play.”