Axios - Tesla EV sales plunged 13% in Elon Musk backlash

Nathan Bomey
1 min ago



Tesla's vehicle deliveries plunged 13% in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier, as the company faces a backlash over CEO Elon Musk's political actions.

Why it matters: The datapoint marks one of the first significant indicators that Tesla's brand reputation is suffering from Musk's chainsaw-wielding leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration.

Driving the news: The company delivered 336,681 vehicles in the first quarter, down from 386,810 in the same period a year earlier.

• Deliveries are considered a close proxy for sales.
• "This delivery number was a disaster for the bulls with continuous negativity around the TSLA brand," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote today in a research note. "We are not going to look at these numbers with rose colored glasses...they were a disaster on every metric."

Zoom in: The sales drop came despite a ramp up in incentives, such as 0% financing deals.

• The company is facing a significant sales decline in key markets, such as Europe, California and China.
• "The time has come for Musk....it's a fork in the road moment. The more political he gets with DOGE the more the brand suffers, there is no debate," Ives wrote. "This quarter was an example of the damage Musk is causing Tesla."

/snip