Tesla’s Stumbling Start to 2025

The Tesla electric car company has not started well this 2025. The sales of the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk fell more than 45% in January in the European Union and the United Kingdom, while in China, one of its most important markets, they were reduced by 11%. Tesla’s performance in Europe contrasts with electric car sales figures in the old continent, which increased more than a third last month. To all this, we must add the strong drop in the price of the Automotive shares, which has been reduced by 30% alone in February, and more than 40% since they reached their historical maximum in mid-December.

The fall of Tesla’s titles only this week has made the company’s market value fall below $1 billion for the first time since November last year. According to analysts, the situation that Tesla is going through can be explained in part because of the hard competition it has faced in Europe in the last years from China’s manufacturers and other countries, which offer cheaper electric vehicles and with similar benefits.

Russ Mould, Investment Director of AJ Bell, believes that this competition is the main factor in the fall of Tesla sales in January.

However, according to Mould, some buyers may be deciding not to acquire Tesla cars for the increasingly political profile of Elon Musk.

An Increasingly Political Profile

Elon Musk has become one of the closest allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump, financing his campaign for the 2024 presidentials with hundreds of millions of dollars and now assuming the leadership of the Government Efficiency Department (Doge, for its acronym in English), with which he is promoting strong cuts of federal spending and massive dismissals of public officials.

In addition, the richest man in the world recently supported the AFD extreme right-wing party, congratulating its leader after the political formation achieved the best results in its history in the elections held last Sunday in the European nation.

Musk has also made statements against the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and was accused of promoting the violent anti-immigration manifestations that shook the United Kingdom last year. Following these controversies, and after the controversial gesture that Musk made with his arm raised after Trump’s possession on January 20—many interpreted as a fascist greeting—images of cars and concessionaires of Tesla vandalized with paint and messages against the richest man in the world have been circulating on social networks.

Numerous testimonies of Tesla owners who have decided to get rid of their vehicles for the growing political profile of Musk have also appeared in the European and American press. A few days ago, a British group called “Everyone Hates Elon” deployed a poster at a London bus stop with Musk’s photo with the raised arm and the slogan “Tesla The Swasticar.” The image was accompanied by the phrase: “It goes from 0 to 1939 in three seconds,” in an allusion to the year in which World War II began.

Teslas have also been seen with stickers that say things like “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”

Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at the automotive industry of the website edmunds.com, told the newspaper The Washington Post That currently the Teslas owners are divided into two sides: those who say that they will never buy one again and those that differentiate between Musk and their cars.

Jessica Caldwell elaborated, “The latter say: ‘I really like my Tesla. I do not necessarily agree with Musk, but I see them as two separate entities. It’s not as if Elon Musk were in my car.'”

Silvana Gómez, a young resident in Miami, Florida, echoed this sentiment. “They are two things that have no relationship,” Gómez told BBC Mundo while recharging his electric car. “Having a Tesla does not mean that you are in favor (from Musk), it’s just a car.”

“We Sold Our Tesla”

Jake Nickell, a 44-year-old American businessman who lives in Illinois, disagrees. Over the years, he bought three Tesla cars with his wife. When they acquired the first, “we were both fans of the new technologies, we were very happy to see a brand of viable electric cars and we wanted to support them,” he says in dialogue with BBC Mundo.

However, in August 2021, they sold their last Tesla. “At that time I don’t think Musk had completely entered the right-wing policy as he has done now, but we found their messages in the networks extremely offensive,” Nickell says. “We didn’t want them to associate us with the brand due to Musk’s behavior.”

In the Netherlands, a recent survey conducted by the media EenVandaag found that almost a third of Tesla owners in the European nation are considering selling their cars due to Musk’s behavior. “Musk abuses his power. If he had known how it is now, he would never have bought a Tesla,” said one of the respondents to EenVandaag.

Nick Howe, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Florida, offered a different perspective. “Elon has always inspired strong emotions both in the left and on the right, and I perfectly understand that a noisy minority has reacted to recent events,” Howe told BBC Mundo. “I am a firm supporter of Tesla’s mission. I love to drive my Teslas and I will never have a gasoline car again,” he said.

Matt Holmes, president of the Austin Tesla Owners Club, argued that most people have the ability to separate the political ideas of an executive director from their product. “I have had nine Teslas and I don’t plan to change depending on the political inclinations of the executive director,” he told BBC Mundo. “I think that the majority of the car owners did not buy them based on the fact that their political ideas coincided with that of the manufacturer’s executive director,” he said.

Patrik Schneider, a Tesla owner in Germany, told the media Capital.de that for him the turning point came when a stranger interrupted him in a gas station, said his car, and accused him of being a supporter of Trump. “Of course, as a Tesla driver, you were always the fool: the voter of the Green Party, El Salvador del Mundo, the type of CO2,” Schneider explained. “But now you are in a category that is no longer fun.”

Echoing an American initiative, Schneider created a line of “anti-Elon stickers” for Tesla cars with messages like “I bought this before Elon went crazy” or “Elon Apesta,” which began selling successfully online.

Reasons for Optimism

Peter Bardenfleth-Hansen, former director of the Division of Europe, Middle East, and Asia of Tesla, told the BBC that Musk’s behavior was “definitely one of the reasons for the fall” of the shares and sales of the company, but added that there was a “series of things that are creating a domino effect.”

“There is no doubt that Musk’s flirting with the right in politics or that appears on television with a chainsaw, is not helping exactly his image,” said Bardenfleth-Hansen.

“It may be getting a larger followers base within a specific type of clientele, but it is not they who are buying the Teslas. They are not the ones who are putting money in their company. So it has a problem,” he said.

Despite the damage that Musk may be doing to the image of Tesla, and the effect that this may have on the performance of the automaker, Russ Mould, of the AJ Bell investments platform, insists that the causes of the situation through which the company is going through are diverse. To the strong competition of Chinese automotive, Mould adds the generalized nervousness in the markets on the course of interest rates in the US, and concerns about Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on their business partners.

In spite of everything, according to some analysts, there are reasons for optimism in Tesla, since the automaker has started the launch of an updated version of its model, and the best-selling, and it is expected that a cheaper electric vehicle is expected to present in the first half of the year, which could contribute to their sales.

Until now, Musk has ignored criticism. When asked during a telephone conference in January if his actions were negatively affecting Tesla, he told the 127 million followers he has in X, his social media platform, “It may not be popular among some people, but for the vast majority, my number of followers speaks for itself.”