Tesla’s Failure to Survive in the Preseason: Implications for Wall Street and the Trump-Morton-Shannon era
The company says that the global deliveries of its flagship electric car models fell in the first quarter. The drop comes as increasing competition erodes Tesla’s market share and CEO Elon Musk’s role as President Trump’s cost-cutting tsar sparks a backlash among consumers.
The results, released before the opening bell on Wall Street, sent Tesla’s already battered shares — which have lost 35% of their value since the start of the year — down even further in early trading. The share price gained ground before noon.
“I’m not sure if it’s a disaster or not.” says Daniel Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities. He says that Wall Street was anticipating weak markets, but this was one of the worst delivery quarters relative to original expectations.
It’s a sentiment shared by other analysts. The reason for lowered expectations forTesla has been Musk’s increased political visibility, said Gene Munster on X in February.
Musk has a specious position with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGe, a specious effort to cut costs and eliminate humanitarian aid in the government that appears to be mostly meant to eliminate federal workers. He made a fascist salute during the inauguration and amplified racist theories on social media.
Most recently, Musk poured some $20 million into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race in an unsuccessful effort to tip the court in Republicans’ favor. Speaking at a rally in the state ahead of Tuesday’s poll, Musk acknowledged that working for the White House was “a very expensive job” and that “my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone roughly in half.” Susan Crawford won the race, which will keep the court in the Democrats’ direction.
“I continue to believe he’s really the CEO of Tesla and … likely [will be] for another 5 to 10 years,” Ives says. “[But] he’s going to have to take a step back from DOGE and start to actually become more involved [at Tesla].”
is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in newspapers around the country.
Tesla Takedown: State of the Art and Implications for Autonomy, Self-Driving, and AI in the 21st Century
Other automakers are reporting brisk sales of their own electric vehicles, whileTesla faces new hurdles. General Motors, for example, reported nearly 32,000 EVs sold in the first quarter, roughly doubling its figure year over year.
Musk’s antics have spawned a nationwide protest movement called Tesla Takedown, aimed at boycotting the company and driving down its stock price. And it appears to be successful in persuading many progressive Tesla owners to sell their vehicles, despite steep drops in used car values.
There have also been an unrelated spate of violent attacks on Tesla stores and vehicles around the world, including arson and vandalism. A fire at a showroom in Rome resulted in 17 cars being destroyed. The President has said that the people who deface the vehicles will be charged with domestic terrorism.
Musk is pinning his hopes on AI, robotics, and self-driving cars, which he argues will propel Tesla to new financial heights. He claims the company will launch an “unsupervised” robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, in June. His previous promises about driving without supervision have proved to be false. Many fatal crashes have been associated with the partially automated features of the company’s cars.