If it weren't for Elon Musk, I really couldn't think of any motivation for DOGE to continue strong growth in the future as the market already has many more attractive memecoins with extremely large communities like PEPE and BONK. Memecoins trends could become the next driving force for DOGE price increases but it would be difficult to reach a new ATH if DOGE cannot continue to lead this trend.
The crypto market has changed a lot in the past few years, if DOGE cannot find media support and widespread adoption, DOGE could be completely forgotten even in the memecoins trend. DRC-20 tokens in Inscription were once expected to change this situation but unfortunately, it was just a failed experiment.
I agree that Elon Musk looks like the only factor that can trigger much of Dogecoin price. If there is no longer this factor, it seems hard for Dogecoin achieving again its ATH. We have already some trending meme coins. PEPE, WIF, BONK, and FLOKI are the most popular meme coins this year. Well, we don't see a new trend in Dogecoin so far. If there is no hype in Dogecoin, it is very possible that investors will leave Dogecoin. They may prefer to move to PEPE, WIF, BONK, or FLOKI.
Everyone may hope from what you said that Elon will pay attention to Doge. Actually it is very bad for the development of Doge itself, because through its fairly large community until now, Doge is still able to survive at the best level in the ranking on CMC.
The proof is, when bitcoin reached ATH, almost all meme coins could move up, including Doge, without any interference from Elon, so there is always power that Doge has to be able to increase.
I think doge holders will not think about moving their funds to other meme coins because it is too risky compared to holding them in doge, which will definitely be able to rise.