This is not new. Not the average income nor the mining thing. Well, child labor may be new, but the whole “Prius is dirtier than a Hummer” meme has been around for at least a decade.
My Volt was attacked since it was first sold in 2010. The same argument that only rich people buy Teslas does have a ring of truthiness to it based on the high price of the car, but the exact same number was pushed on the Volt.
The key to the $150,000 number is that it is an average. When a small group of millionaires buys a product that average income people buy in large numbers the average income rises. Jay Leno bought a Volt and a Tesla, his annual income googles as 15 million. Tesla does appear to be pretty popular among millionaires, as well as with regular folks making much less than $150K. But the number of obscenely rich that buy them skews the average. The only surprise is that’s it’s only $150K.
Next they will be saying that each car costs a million to make or something. Been there, heard that.