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 as far as claiming that Tesla’s sales are at ‘all-time highs.’
During an X Space yesterday, the Tesla CEO was asked what he thinks of the claims that his support of Trump is affecting Tesla negatively.
Musk responded:
Tesla’s sales are actually doing great. We’re hitting all-time highs. I think people really care about the quality of the product as opposed to whether they agree or disagree with the CEO’s views. The CEO of any given company is going to have political views. At the end of the day what matters is if Tesla makes a great product, and people like buying great products.
There are a few interesting things here.
First off, “sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are many ways to interpret this, but only one can make Musk right: Tesla had its best Q3 for vehicle deliveries last quarter:
With 463,000 vehicle deliveries last quarter, Tesla technically beat its last Q3 record, but the reason has more to do with Q3 2023 than 2024.
Tesla claimed that “a sequential decline in volumes was caused by planned downtimes for factory upgrades.” Without that, Tesla would have likely been flat on deliveries in Q3 2024 versus last year.
This delayed some shipments into Q4 2023 – resulting in Tesla’s all-time delivery high.
But Musk can’t deny that Tesla’s performance in 2024 has been 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 despite Tesla adding the Cybertruck to the lineup, which started to contribute meaningfully last quarter. It’s hard to swallow for a company that is all about growth. The chart above shows that the growth between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, but it stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s stock performance is also closely tracking its growth in deliveries and then the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla started cutting prices, which negatively affected its gross margins and profits, and it countered the growth in deliveries in terms of stock performance.
As for the impact of Musk’s very active and public support of Trump on Tesla’s sales, that’s indeed more nuanced.
There have been many polls about the issue showing that car buyers are less interested in buying Tesla vehicles due to Elon Musk, but it’s hard to tell how the polls translate into the reality of car purchases, which are important decisions for most households.
However, there have been direct examples of Tesla losing out on sales because of Musk’s support of Trump. For example, Rossmann, one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe and a long-time Tesla client, said that it would stop converting its fleet to Tesla vehicles because of Musk’s support of Trump and the former president’s anti-environmentalist policies.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not really encouraging that Elon is oblivious to Tesla’s current situation. I feel like it’s a bit misleading to say that Tesla’s sales are “hitting all-time highs” when Tesla is on track to have its first down year in deliveries in its existence despite adding a vehicle to its lineup for the first time since 2020.
It’s almost like he is just repeating what his biggest fans on X tweet him all the time. He lives in a different reality because of the echo chamber he built for himself and his fans on X.
I know Tesla fans love to say that it’s about macroeconomics and interest rates, which undoubtedly have an impact, but Tesla also greatly reduced its prices over the last year and offered subsidized interest rates.
At this point, it’s a bit ridiculous to act as if Tesla doesn’t have a broader issue. As for the impact of Elon’s support, it’s admittedly impossible to quantify, but I feel like it’s safe to say that it has, at the very least, some impact.
Finally, it’s also unfair for Elon to say that “every CEO has political views” as if he is sharing his like everyone else. Not every CEO calls the other party, “the party of hate”, and gives millions of dollars to elect a candidate with a long track record that goes against Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent 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 would be shocked if he doesn’t turn on Elon within a year.
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