16h ago

Musk's embrace of right-wing politics risks turning off car buyers and sinking Tesla's stock

apnews.com Musk's embrace of right-wing politics risks turning off car buyers and sinking Tesla's stock

Elon Musk appears be to turning off potential Tesla buyers with his embrace of far-right politicians around the world, analysts say, and the hit couldn't come at a worse time.

Tesla sales plunged 45% in Europe in January, according to research firm Jato Dynamics, even as overall electric vehicle sales rose. That comes after a report of falling sales in California, its biggest U.S. market, and the first annual drop globally for the company last year.
“I don’t even want to drive it,” said Model 3 owner John Parnell, a Democrat from Ross, California, adding that he also is cancelling his order for the company’s Cybertruck, losing a $100 deposit. “He’s destroying the brand with his politics.”

The sales numbers were particularly bad in Germany and France in January, down roughly 60% each, more than the average decline for the more than two-dozen European countries surveyed. Sales in France fell another 26% in February.
More worrisome was the breakdown for Tesla’s individual models. Sales of Tesla’s Model 3 dropped 33% across all European countries even though that car is not being updated and there is no reason for buyers to wait

22 comments

"embrace of right-wing politics..." my dude he did a literal nazi salute multiple times, stating it this way is minimizing

Elon Musk is probably the single worst thing for Tesla. Sure the FSD that drives into trains and lakes and people is a problem, but you can potentially fix or mitigate that with OTA updates and recalls.
If the Tesla board was smart, they’d fire Elon as before he tarnishes the brand even further.
- The thing is that he also was the reason why the stock was so inflated in the first place. I think that's why they still keep him.
  If they remove him out likely will fall further, on the other hand if no one is buying their cars the company is nothing but a scam stock.
- You could fix the fsd by simply taking it out. Come to think of it, that could work for Melon Husk too.

Tesla now is definitely in panic mode! In my country they slashed the price of the model 3 by 4000 euro AND they're doing mystery shopping inspections like the traditional carmakers!
I make beer money with mystery shopping (Corporations pay me $2/hour to go to pretend to buy their product in their stores to report the customer experience). Traditional carmakers ask this to do all the time: KIA wants pictures of their ads in their dealers to see if the match the guidelines, Ford wants to know if i ask a oil change what price I will be quoted, Honda wants to know what people will be told if they ask to test drive a CBR650, and so on.
New this month... TESLA! They never had to resort to this kind of stuff, that means they're desperate.

"Risks turning off car buyers and sinking ... stock" Damage is already done, and continues. This isn't a risk, it's already happened.
- Yeah but even now the stock is absurdly overvalued.

Tesla stock has been wildly inflated on just a P/E basis for at least a decade at this point. Musk has gone from asset to ass ... I mean, "liability." Not great, but not his problem. Not like he's going to be panhandling if he loses $100 billion.
- Like every good billionaire, he's been playing the stock game by taking on loans and exchanging stock, based on valuation (aka: hype). If the valuation plummets, then depending on his exposure, he could default on those loans and end up penniless.
  We don't know his exposure level, he's been avoiding anything that would require disclosing all his assets and liabilities, so we'll have to wait and see.
  
  Surely, he's bought some bullion over the years.

Don't worry Tesla diamond hands: Trump will announce a "Strategic TSLA reserve buying scheme."

The fuck does he care? He is replacing a large chunk of consumer buyers that have shaky purchasing power with government contracts which will pay up front. 2025 defense budget has 400 million allocated for armored teslas. This is over 4x teslas annual revenue at its highest point (96 billion in 2023)
The stock will bounce to new heights once he can report a revenue of almost half a trillion dollars (of your taxes)
Edit: as @powderhorn pointed out my math is significantly off by a major factor. I leave my post intact because I fucked up.
- Those numbers don't work. $400M != 1/4 $96B.
  
  You’re correct, in my frustration I did shitty math
  I leave my post unedited to expose my shame
  Edit upon further reflection I did edit my post only to highlight my shame as it appears this got buried and I do not want to promote misinformation
- that budget was allocated by the biden admin. It means trump will 100% cancel it "just because".
  Also: trump cancelled a contract with chargepoint to keep online all the EV chargers in the federal facilities. If they buy those armored teslas then they won't have a place to charge them anymore
- Can I just, not pay my taxes? No taxation without representation. They are gutting the IRS anyways. Don’t think I could win that argument in court? Lol
  
  Just be aware that if you were to do something atrocious like tax fraud, now would be the time to do it. I got audited once before (I was and remain clean), but this makes me 10X more likely to be audited in the future.

Its already been happening

Dateline March 3, 2025
Goddamn mainstream media on top of things yet again.

I saw one of those ugly swastiktrucks the other day, way out here in nowhere.

22 comments