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 claim that Tesla’s sales are at ‘all-time highs’.
During an X Space yesterday, Tesla’s CEO was asked what he thinks about the claims that his support for Trump is negatively affecting Tesla.
Musk replied:
Tesla’s sales are actually going well. We hit 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 a given company will have political views. At the end of the day, what matters is whether Tesla makes a good product and people like to buy great products.
There are a few interesting things here.
First, “sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are many ways to interpret this, but only one can do Musk justice: Tesla had its best Q3 for vehicle deliveries last quarter:
With 463,000 vehicle deliveries last quarter, Tesla technically broke its last record in the third quarter, but the reason has more to do with the third quarter of 2023 than 2024.
Tesla claimed that “a sequential decline in volumes was caused by planned downtime for factory upgrades.” Without it, Tesla would likely have been flat on Q3 2024 deliveries compared to last year.
This delayed some shipments into Q4 2023 – resulting in Tesla’s record delivery time.
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 of 2023 (1,324,074).
That’s despite Tesla adding the Cybertruck to the lineup, which started contributing 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 also closely follows the growth in deliveries and then the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla began cutting prices, which negatively impacted its gross margins and earnings, and it offset the growth in deliveries in terms of inventory performance.
As for the impact of Musk’s very active and public support for Trump on Tesla’s sales, it’s actually more nuanced.
There have been many polls on the issue showing that car buyers are less interested in buying Tesla vehicles because of Elon Musk, but it is hard to say 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 sales due to Musk’s support for Trump. For example, Rossmann, one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe and a longtime Tesla customer, said it would stop converting its fleet to Tesla vehicles 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 is ignorant of Tesla’s current situation. I feel it’s a little 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 first time since 2020.
It’s almost like he’s 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 it’s all about macroeconomics and interest rates, which undoubtedly has an impact, but Tesla has also cut its prices sharply over the last year and offered subsidized interest rates.
At this point, it’s kind of ridiculous to act like Tesla doesn’t have a broader problem. As for the impact of Elon’s support, it’s admittedly impossible to quantify, but I feel it’s safe to say it’s at least having some impact.
Finally, it is also unfair for Elon to say that “every CEO has political views” as if he shares his like everyone else. Not all CEOs call the other party the “party of hate,” giving millions of dollars to elect a candidate with a long track record that goes against Tesla’s mission to accelerate the rise of sustainable energy.
Nor do CEOs all hit the campaign trail and be 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 turn on Elon within a year.
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