Elon Musk has repeatedly denied that the fact that he went “all in on Donald Trump,” the controversial former president, is negatively affecting his businesses. Now, he went so far as to say that Tesla's sales are 'at a high level.'
During X Space yesterday, Tesla's CEO was asked what he thought about claims that his support for Trump was hurting Tesla.
The answer comes from Musk:
Tesla's sales are actually doing well. We hit the top. I think people really care about the quality of the product instead of whether they agree or disagree with the CEO's opinions. The CEO of any given company will have political views. At the end of the day what matters is that Tesla makes a good product, and people like to buy good products.
There are a few interesting things here.
First, “sales are reaching highs.” There are many ways to interpret this, but only one would make Musk right: Tesla had its best Q3 car deliveries in the last quarter:
With the delivery of 463,000 vehicles last quarter, Tesla hit its last Q3 record, but the reason has more to do with Q3 2023 than 2024.
Tesla said the “sequential decline in volumes was due to scheduled factory upgrade periods.” Besides, Tesla would probably deliver in Q3 2024 compared to last year.
This delayed some shipments to Q4 2023 – resulting in Tesla's full delivery time.
But Musk can't deny that Tesla's performance in 2024 was less than stellar.
Tesla's total deliveries in 2024 (1,293,656) are still down more than 30,000 units compared to the first three quarters in 2023 (1,324,074).
That's without Tesla adding the Cybertruck to the lineup, which started making full contributions last quarter. It's hard to swallow a company that's all about growth. The chart above shows that growth between 2020 and 2023 was impressive, but stopped in 2024.
Tesla's stock performance also closely tracks its growth in deliveries and stops:
In 2023, Tesla began to cut prices, which negatively affected its gross margin and profit, and opposed the growth of deliveries according to the performance of the stock.
As for the impact of Musk's active and public support of Trump on Tesla's sales, that is quite different.
There have been many polls on this issue showing that car buyers are less interested in buying Tesla cars because of Elon Musk, but it is difficult to say how the polls translate into the reality of car purchases, which are important decisions in many households.
However, there have been specific examples of Tesla losing sales due to Musk's support for Trump. For example, Rossmann, one of Europe's largest pharmacy chains and a long-time Tesla customer, said it would stop converting its fleet to Tesla cars because of Musk's support for Trump and the former president's anti-environmental policies.
Electrek's Take
It's not really encouraging that Elon doesn't care about Tesla's current situation. I feel that it is misleading to say that Tesla's sales are “very high” when Tesla is on the verge of having its first year down in deliveries despite adding a car to its lineup for the first time since 2020.
It's almost like he's repeating what his biggest fans on X write to him all the time. He lives in an alternate reality because of the echo chamber he and his followers have created in X.
I know Tesla fans like to say it's about the macro economy and interest rates, which no doubt have an impact, but Tesla also cut their prices significantly last year and offered subsidized interest rates.
At this point, it's ridiculous to pretend Tesla doesn't have a broader problem. As for the impact of Elon's support, it's admittedly impossible to measure, but I feel it's safe to say it has some impact, at least.
Finally, it is also wrong of Elon to say that “every CEO has a political opinion” as if he shares his like everyone else. Not all CEOs call the other group, the “hate group”, and give millions of dollars to elect a candidate who has a long history of opposing Tesla's mission to accelerate the arrival of sustainable energy.
CEOs also don't all go on the campaign trail and get photographed jumping up and down like high school cheerleaders behind Trump.
Whatever happens next month, I doubt Elon's decision will age well. Even if Trump wins, I'd be shocked if he doesn't open Elon within a year.
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