Elon Musk is running Tesla into the ground
His far-right politics aren’t the automaker’s only problem
In recent months, Elon Musk has seemed on top of the world. He made a risky alliance with Donald Trump, who went on to win the presidency, then took the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (without taking the official title) and has been sending his minions throughout the US government with a directive to gut those aspects of it that don’t align with their worldview.
In many ways, Musk appeared to have won and ensured any attempt by government or regulators to rein in his power would be sidelined. But he didn’t anticipate that the public — both in the United States and beyond — have other ways of exerting their power beyond the ballot box.
A souring reputation
In a recent interview on Fox Business, Larry Kudlow asked Musk how his other businesses are doing as he dedicates so much time to DOGE. Instead of championing the successes of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, the billionaire almost found himself in tears. He was running them “with great difficulty,” he responded.
One thing we know about Musk is that he craves praise and adulation, but much of the attention he’s getting these days is of a different variety altogether. Teslas are now smeared as “swasticars” and buyers are plastering apologetic stickers on their bumpers — if not changing the badges to make their Teslas seem to be Hondas or Audis. Tesla vehicles and Supercharger stations are even being vandalized.
As protests have grown at Tesla dealerships under the banner of Tesla Takedown, the growing hatred for the brand has clearly been getting to Musk. He’s begun tweeting thanks to random Twitter users who say they own a Tesla and support him, and has posted polls aimed at showing himself that his fans are still with him.
On March 11, Trump even did him a favor and praised some Tesla vehicles in front of the White House. Proving he knew nothing about the brand, Trump sat inside one only to declare, “wow, everything is computer!” A photographer also snapped a list of talking points and prices Trump had been handed before the sales pitch.
Trump said he was going to purchase a Tesla Model S after the demonstration, and when asked if he thought it would help Tesla’s share price, he responded, “I hope it does.” He also said anyone who attacks a Tesla dealership will be considered a domestic terrorist and “go through hell.” The following day, it was confirmed Musk would be be contributing another $100 million to Trump’s campaign and the midterm election effort. But the stunt might have the opposite effect than Musk was hoping.
Sales are falling globally
Tesla’s brand image is being tarnished precisely because Musk is so close to Trump, is actively involved in gutting the US government, and is endorsing far-right movements across the globe. Counter to what he seems to believe, these are not popular positions with a wide swath of the population, and particularly so in countries outside the United States that are increasingly being threatened by the Trump administration he’s aligned himself with.
As a result, Tesla sales are plummeting around the world. Germany is leading the retreat from the automaker, with sales declining 76% in February, even as overall EV sales grew. Musk notably endorsed the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party in February’s German federal election. Sales have also fallen precipitously in France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and even Norway’s mature EV market.
The carnage isn’t contained to Europe though. As Chinese EV makers like BYD gain greater market share globally, Chinese consumers have fewer reasons to buy Tesla either. Sales of Tesla’s China-made vehicles dropped 49.2% in February, hitting their lowest level since August 2022. Chinese buyers told the New York Times that Tesla’s tech and styling are falling behind local brands, but price is also a big factor. “You could buy two of our cars for the price of one Tesla,” said one buyer they interviewed.
Tesla sales in Australia were also down 72% in February — a market Western automakers are watching closely, as it has no tariffs on Chinese vehicles. The company is facing an investigation in Canada too after four dealerships claimed to sell 8,600 vehicles in a single weekend earlier this year to claim $43 million in federal EV rebates before the program ended.
In short, that’s all very bad news for Tesla and a public event with Donald Trump isn’t going to help matters. Democrats remain far more interested in buying electric vehicles than Republicans, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Despite Trump’s show of support for Musk’s company, his administration is still trying to stifle the electric mobility transition at a time when Tesla needs all the help it can get.
Going from bad to worse
Even before Musk allied himself with Trump, things weren’t looking good for his electric automaker. Tesla sales actually declined in 2024, even as the overall EV market increased, and a growing number of analysts predicts sales numbers will fall again in 2025. The company recently admitted in an unsigned letter that Trump’s tariff plans could make it vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs, and sales are declining so much it profits from the sale are carbon credits are also under threat.
But Musk’s reputation isn’t Tesla’s only problem; his management is driving the company down too. As Chinese consumers told the New York Times, the company’s vehicle lineup has become stale and its designs are looking dated. Its first new model in years, the Cybertruck, is a dud, and deliveries had to be paused again recently because trim pieces were flying off. There was talk of a more affordable vehicle, but it wasn’t going to come to fruition until at least 2027, if the company is luckily. Now, it’s talking about stripping down the Model Y to get something cheaper out sooner, but it’s unclear how that will play in this new environment.
The company’s long delay in getting out a mass-market, affordable model is in part because of Musk’s poor decisions and what seems to be a growing disinterest in Tesla’s core business. In Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography of Musk, he described how Tesla’s design team had a plan for a less expensive model, but Musk torpedoed it in favor of having them focus on a robotaxi, despite the company’s self-driving software not being sufficiently advanced.
The robotaxi demonstration on the Warner Bros. movie lot last year ended up being an underwhelming spectacle. Musk has shown himself to be far more interested in robotaxis, chatbots, and vaporware humanoid robots than the hard work of managing a successful car company. As Ludicrous author Ed Niedermeyer has long explained, Tesla has effectively survived this way for a long time: upping the stakes with fantastical promises to keep the money flowing in and making investors believe unimaginable returns were in their future.
That quality effectively made Tesla stock more of a bet on Musk’s continued relevance and growing influence rather than the actual fundamentals of the business, and now that he’s lighting his reputation on fire, some investors are waking up to the reality that Tesla is wildly overvalued.
The company’s share price has been declining for months, and that accelerated in recent weeks, wiping out the $700 billion added to its market capitalization when investors believed a Trump administration would be good for Tesla. Speaking to Axios, JP Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman said, “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.” Now financial analysts are cutting their targets for Tesla’s share price and even the retailer investors who once plowed into the stock to support Musk are having second thoughts.
Tesla is Musk’s vulnerability
For years, Musk got away with treating his workers poorly, opposing their efforts at unionization, failing to improve vehicle build quality, and not delivering on promises like fully realized self-driving software, solar roof tiles, or battery-swap stations. The narrative that he was build the future was just too strong and attractive for the media and political figures to give up on. But that seems to finally have changed — and Tesla is feeling the consequences first because it’s most exposed to consumer pressure.
In the past, boycotting Tesla could have been framed as an effort not to address climate change or electrify transportation. Musk himself used to say that criticism of Tesla was funded by the fossil fuel lobby. But these days Musk calls for oil production to increase and downplays the threat of climate change, and drivers who want nothing to do with him or his company have plenty of other electric vehicles to choose from if they want to make that decision.
Tesla is not just vulnerable to public pressure, it’s also a vulnerability for Musk’s ability to continue wielding his power and wealth as he sees fit. As Niedermeyer has explained, a lot of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla and he’s used Tesla stock as collateral for loans to fund his life and his ownership of Twitter/X. As Tesla falls, Musk’s position gets more and more vulnerable.
Let Tesla fall, and take Musk along with it.
More like into the graveyard..
Boycott Tesla. Boycott Starlink. Boycott X blueticks. Cancel your uber drives if they're Tesla. Peaceful non-cooperation movement against Trump-Musk regime.