Gotta give Musk credit for his tenacity. Still trying to polish a turd. Too much winning. More winning than anyone knows what to do with!

 

Source: https://www.economist.com/business/2025/04/23/even-republicans-are-falling-out-of-love-with-tesla 

 

Apr 23rd 2025

 

Elon Musk is right to shift his focus back to carmaking

 

“The future of Tesla is brighter than ever.” So declared Elon Musk during an earnings call on April 22nd. According to the carmaker’s boss, Tesla remains on course to become the world’s most valuable firm, worth as much as the next five companies combined, as it churns out fleets of autonomous taxis and armies of humanoid robots.

 

As Mr Musk gazes into the future, however, investors remain transfixed by the car crash that is currently occurring at Tesla. Revenue from car sales in the first quarter was down by a fifth, year on year. Operating profit plummeted by two-thirds. Far from racing ahead, Tesla’s market value has fallen by roughly half since its peak of roughly $1.5trn in December.

 

Earlier this month the company reported that it delivered just 337,000 vehicles in the quarter, 13% fewer than a year before and well below analysts’ expectations (see chart 1). In Europe, which accounts for around a fifth of sales, registrations of new Teslas slid by 40%. In America, the carmaker’s biggest market, sales fell by almost 9%, even as those of all electric vehicles rose by 11%. Can Tesla recover?

 

Slumping sales partly reflect a backlash against the politics of Mr Musk, who has lately refashioned himself into a right-wing activist and nemesis of America’s “deep state”. Tesla’s showrooms have faced protests and arson attacks since Mr Musk took his chainsaw to the federal government as head of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

 

Some analysts had hoped that, at least in America, a boom in Tesla sales to right-wing consumers would balance out declining sales to left-wing ones. TD Cowen, an investment bank, recently estimated that although Mr Musk’s political activities could cut sales by more than 100,000 vehicles a year in America’s Democrat-leaning counties, they could boost them by twice that in Republican-leaning ones.

 

That type of partisan rebalancing was on display last year as Mr Musk completed his maga conversion. Our analysis, drawing on figures from S&P Global, a data provider, suggests that Tesla’s sales shrank in left-leaning cities in 2024 while growing in right-leaning ones. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, which favoured Kamala Harris in the presidential election by nearly three-to-one, sales fell by more than 16% last year; in Tampa, which favoured Mr Trump by a wide margin, they rose by around 18%.

 

Unfortunately for Mr Musk, even Republicans now appear to be spurning his evs. Trends in the used-car market suggest that a growing number of Tesla drivers in both blue and red states are putting their cars up for sale. Figures from MarketCheck, which tracks the inventories of more than 75,000 dealerships across America, show that listings of used Teslas have risen by two-thirds since the start of the year, twice as much as for other evs. Listings for the Model 3 have increased by 63%; those for the Model Y have rocketed by 80%. The pattern can be seen in both left-leaning states, such as Massachusetts and New York, and right-leaning ones, such as Indiana and South Carolina.

 

That hints at a deeper problem for Tesla: stiffening competition. By contrast with its early years, when it was essentially unchallenged, the carmaker now faces serious threats from rivals such as General Motors (in America) and BYD (in China and elsewhere). It cannot afford a distracted boss. To investors’ relief, Mr Musk announced during the earnings call that he would now be spending “far more” of his time away from Washington and at the company. They will be hoping he can speedily reverse Tesla out of its mess. 

The reality is that regardless of what side of the aisle you're on the quality of a Tesla is not very admirable especially the Interiors which year by year seem to be getting cheaper and more chintzy looking. All the interior value seems to be in that ridiculously large monitor. And then there is that utterly ridiculous and juvenile looking cybertruck. 

 

And then you come to the man himself. Even Republicans are having a hard time defending him at this point, as there's been no transparency whatsoever when it comes to the supposed DOGE savings, there's been huge job losses amongst Republican supporters, and he's become such a liability and such a fool, that even Trump's having to let him go, and that says a lot. 

16 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

The reality is that regardless of what side of the aisle you're on the quality of a Tesla is not very admirable especially the Interiors which year by year seem to be getting cheaper and more chintzy looking. All the interior value seems to be in that ridiculously large monitor. And then there is that utterly ridiculous and juvenile looking cybertruck. 

 

And then you come to the man himself. Even Republicans are having a hard time defending him at this point, as there's been no transparency whatsoever when it comes to the supposed DOGE savings, there's been huge job losses amongst Republican supporters, and he's become such a liability and such a fool, that even Trump's having to let him go, and that says a lot. 

I’m sure he will use Elon as a scapegoat soon for his own political survival any future problems will be blamed on Elon/ doge…..

21 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

The reality is that regardless of what side of the aisle you're on the quality of a Tesla is not very admirable

 

Obama tends to agree with you....

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9xkokcGTK4k&pp=ygUWRW5kIG9mIHRoZSB3b3JsZCB0ZXNsYQ%3D%3D

Look, I don’t really know this Elon guy. I mean, I’ve met him once or twice. Nice enough guy, I guess, even though his pesky kid planted boogers all over my desk, but people tell me a lot of things. A lot of people. Some of the best people, actually, very smart people, they’re saying he’s not doing so great. I don’t know. Look, don't quote me on that. That’s just what I’m hearing. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. I don’t get involved in that.

 

He used to be this big tech guy, everybody was talking about him, very rich. Not as rich as they say, by the way. People say, oh, Elon’s the richest man in the world. Maybe. But when I look at the numbers, folks, I see a lot of debt. A lot of debt. Tremendous debt. That’s just me. And that's only what I've seen. I’ve built real things, real buildings. Beautiful buildings. Not spaceships that explode. Not weird cars that don’t work unless you download ten apps. And what about those man-boy trucks he's making now that fall apart? I don’t do that. I build success.

 

And now he’s running Twitter or X or whatever he’s calling it. I don’t even know what that is. It’s a mess. Everyone says so. Even liberals, even people who hate me say, “Wow, this is a disaster.” That says a lot. I had a great Twitter, by the way. Tremendous Twitter. The biggest Twitter, the likes of which the world has never seen before. Almost as big as my first inauguration crowd. Then they took me off, total censorship, but now it’s just bots and scams and weird memes. Too much Russia, Russia, Russia. Needs more posts about Hunter's laptop. Very sad.

 

But I wish Elon well. I do. I always wish people well. But let’s just say I wouldn’t have done it the way he did. A lot of people are very disappointed. Very disappointed. You’ll see. Just watch. People are going to be talking about it more and more. I’m not saying he’s finished, but let’s just say, when people start calling me up, saying “Sir, sir, you were right again”, and they will, soon, and then it will be happening bigly and all the time, then you’ll know.

 

Anyway, I’ve got bigger things to focus on. Like saving America. Maybe you've heard by now, we’re going to Make America Great Again, again, folks. We’re going to do it without the rockets and the flamethrowers, or the chainsaws, and the strange tweets. Real leadership. Real results. Lowest Fox poll numbers of any president during his first 100 days in the last 1,000 years. Always winning!