[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/02/us-carmakers-crush-it-o...
TFA mentions this but doesn’t get into much detail.
* Q1 tends to be a weak quarter for automotive sales in general
* EV sales in the US have been slowing
* AFAIK, basically every other EV vendor has shown better numbers for 2025Q1 in interim results.
In other words, while not all of the problems can be laid at Elon's feet, it's pretty clear that he is damaging Tesla's brand.
Predominantly because Tesla is slowing, and that's where most EV sales were - see: https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q4-2024-ev-sales/
> Most major auto manufacturers ended 2024 with record EV sales, with Tesla being a notable exception.
> General Motors increased its sales by 50% to become the second largest EV seller in the US, Ford's EV sales increased 35%,
> and Kia and Hyundai expanded by 74% and 77% respectively.
EV sales excluding Tesla in the US are expected to be up >20% across the board.
EV sales have continued to increase.
This is probably because of competition from BYD. The politics will hit starting from the next quarter.
This isn't really recoverable. If the board had a spine (they don't), they'd fire him and find a new CEO.
Other companies now have decent EV offerings.
Of course, if you're conspiratorially minded, you could posit that he's taking such polarizing positions especially against the demographic more likely to purchase EVs in order to give an excuse as to why Tesla sales are down.
But I'm willing to accept that it's a bit of both. Rivian and others now have comparable EVs and Elon's been a bit of a dick.
Of course that’s a humorous take, not a serious one but I do wonder how much of that is a part of his thinking.
I do think there is a chance he just runs Tesla into the ground and there definitely is an opportunity for another company to come in and position themselves as quality electric vehicles without the politics.
Nissan Renault Hyundai Kia MG BYD
Honestly, there is no "opportunity" for an incumbent alternative to step in here, there are literal dozens of alternatives available right now for every taste and preference, sans any of the fascist political connotations.
More generally: this is what happens when someone in power gets so arrogant they totally lose sight about what they can and can't do, and what the consequences of their actions will be.
I'm reminded of this (about Musk), which is probably the root cause of his arrogance: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...:
> He has people around him who are just enablers. All these Silicon Valley people do. All his minions. And they are minions — they’re all lesser than he is in some fashion, and they all look up to him. They’re typically younger. They laugh at his jokes. Sometimes when he apologizes for a joke, which is not very often, he’ll say that the people around him thought it was funny.
It's worse than that. A significant fraction of the half that doesn't consider his political actions antithetical to their values consider EVs antithetical to their values.
However, Tesla is not production constrained. There is essentially no delivery backlog for the new Model Y; essentially everybody that wanted one got one. Being able to make more cars in the quarter wouldn't have significantly affected deliveries.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/rivian-reports-fall-in-first...
> Rivian reported a 36% decline in first-quarter deliveries on Wednesday, as the electric-vehicle maker grapples with weak demand, sending its shares down more than 2% at the open.
> The company delivered 8,640 vehicles in the quarter ended March 31, down from 13,588 a year earlier. The deliveries, however, exceeded analysts’ average estimate of 8,200, according to Visible Alpha.
> General Motors' sales rose 17% in the first quarter of 2025
> Electric vehicle sales nearly doubled in the quarter, rising 94% to 31,887, making GM the second-largest seller of electric vehicles in the U.S. behind Tesla.
Of course GM still sells way fewer (EDIT: electric) cars than Tesla!
(But the gap is closing.)
> Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) today reported March 2025 U.S. sales of 231,335 vehicles, up 7.7 percent on a volume basis and up 11.8 percent on a daily selling rate (DSR) basis versus March 2024.
> Sales of electrified vehicles for the first quarter totaled 288,796, up 39.6 percent on a volume basis and up 43.3 percent on a DSR basis representing 50.6 percent of total sales volume.
(That includes hybrids, which they sell a lot of.)
GM sells more cars than Tesla, fewer EVs.
https://electrek.co/2025/02/04/lucid-lcid-ev-sales-climb-50-...
I guess it shows that not literally every electric car maker is suffering, but the applicability to the wider market is limited (Lucid delivered less than 1,000 units total, even after their increase).
On the other side it's weird that stock of tesla today are up ~5% even with this news.
Dang hasn't really commented anything supporting nor negating such a theory.
The stock up probably comes more from rumors (nothing explicitly stated except offhand by trump) that Elon is stepping down as head of DOGE. translation: they are making use of some contract terms for Musk to GTFO for both their sakes.
"As Tesla tanks, Musk’s hand-picked board chair is doing just fine" - https://www.reuters.com/investigations/tesla-tanks-musks-han...
"Elon Musk's Divorce Lawyer Is His General Counsel at Tesla" - https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/in-house/elon-musks-divor...
Mere removal from the company doesn't change their stated objections.
If you fail to see there's massive amount of propaganda then I'm sorry for you.
He never rebuked it and in fact doubled down with jokes. So I'll call a spade a spade unless something changes.
That's a 13% decline in sales. They delivered 3740 cars per day (assuming 90 days in quarter), instead of the 4300/day they delivered last year or the 4333/day they forecast.
