Elon Musk has repeatedly denied that the truth that he went “all-in on Donald Trump,” the controversial former president, is negatively affecting his companies. Now, he went so far as claiming that Tesla’s gross sales are at ‘all-time highs.’
Throughout an X House yesterday, the Tesla CEO was requested what he thinks of the claims that his help of Trump is affecting Tesla negatively.
Musk responded:
Tesla’s gross sales are literally doing nice. We’re hitting all-time highs. I believe folks actually care concerning the high quality of the product versus whether or not they agree or disagree with the CEO’s views. The CEO of any given firm goes to have political opinions. On the finish of the day what issues is that if Tesla makes a fantastic product, and other people like shopping for nice merchandise.
There are a couple of attention-grabbing issues right here.
First off, “gross sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are lots of methods to interpret this, however just one could make Musk proper: Tesla had its finest Q3 for automobile deliveries final quarter:
With 463,000 automobile deliveries final quarter, Tesla technically beat its final Q3 file, however the cause has extra to do with Q3 2023 than 2024.
Tesla claimed that “a sequential decline in volumes was attributable to deliberate downtimes for manufacturing unit upgrades.” With out that, Tesla would have possible been flat on deliveries in Q3 2024 versus final 12 months.
This delayed some shipments into This fall 2023 – leading to Tesla’s all-time supply excessive.
However Musk can’t deny that Tesla’s efficiency in 2024 has been lower than stellar.
Tesla’s complete deliveries in 2024 (1,293,656) are nonetheless down greater than 30,000 models in comparison with the primary three quarters in 2023 (1,324,074).
That’s regardless of Tesla including the Cybertruck to the lineup, which began to contribute meaningfully final quarter. It’s onerous to swallow for an organization that’s all about progress. The chart above reveals that the expansion between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, however it stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s inventory efficiency can also be intently monitoring its progress in deliveries after which the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla began chopping costs, which negatively affected its gross margins and income, and it countered the expansion in deliveries by way of inventory efficiency.
As for the affect of Musk’s very energetic and public help of Trump on Tesla’s gross sales, that’s certainly extra nuanced.
There have been many polls concerning the challenge displaying that automobile patrons are much less fascinated about shopping for Tesla autos on account of Elon Musk, however it’s onerous to inform how the polls translate into the truth of automobile purchases, that are vital choices for many households.
Nonetheless, there have been direct examples of Tesla shedding out on gross sales due to Musk’s help of Trump. For instance, Rossmann, one of many largest pharmacy chains in Europe and a long-time Tesla consumer, stated that it might cease changing its fleet to Tesla autos due to Musk’s help of Trump and the previous president’s anti-environmentalist insurance policies.
Electrek’s Take
It’s probably not encouraging that Elon is oblivious to Tesla’s present state of affairs. I really feel prefer it’s a bit deceptive to say that Tesla’s gross sales are “hitting all-time highs” when Tesla is on observe to have its first down 12 months in deliveries in its existence regardless of including a automobile to its lineup for the primary time since 2020.
It’s virtually like he’s simply repeating what his greatest followers on X tweet him on a regular basis. He lives in a distinct actuality due to the echo chamber he constructed for himself and his followers on X.
I do know Tesla followers like to say that it’s about macroeconomics and rates of interest, which undoubtedly have an effect, however Tesla additionally drastically decreased its costs over the past 12 months and supplied sponsored rates of interest.
At this level, it’s a bit ridiculous to behave as if Tesla doesn’t have a broader challenge. As for the affect of Elon’s help, it’s admittedly unattainable to quantify, however I really feel prefer it’s protected to say that it has, on the very least, some affect.
Lastly, it’s additionally unfair for Elon to say that “each CEO has political opinions” as if he’s sharing his like everybody else. Not each CEO calls the opposite get together, “the get together of hate”, and offers hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to elect a candidate with an extended observe file that goes in opposition to Tesla’s mission to speed up the appearance of sustainable vitality.
CEOs additionally don’t all go on the marketing campaign path and get photographed leaping up and down like highschool cheerleaders behind Trump.
No matter occurs subsequent month, I doubt Elon’s resolution will age effectively. Even when Trump wins, I might be shocked if he doesn’t activate Elon inside a 12 months.
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