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 assist of Trump is affecting Tesla negatively.
Musk responded:
Tesla’s gross sales are literally doing nice. We’re hitting all-time highs. I feel individuals actually care in regards to 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 terrific product, and other people like shopping for nice merchandise.
There are a number of attention-grabbing issues right here.
First off, “gross sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are a lot of methods to interpret this, however just one could make Musk proper: Tesla had its greatest Q3 for automobile deliveries final quarter:
With 463,000 automobile deliveries final quarter, Tesla technically beat its final Q3 document, however the motive 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 whole 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 a corporation that’s all about progress. The chart above exhibits that the expansion between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, however it stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s inventory efficiency can also be carefully 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 influence of Musk’s very lively and public assist of Trump on Tesla’s gross sales, that’s certainly extra nuanced.
There have been many polls in regards to the difficulty exhibiting that automotive patrons are much less fascinated by shopping for Tesla automobiles as a result of Elon Musk, however it’s onerous to inform how the polls translate into the fact of automotive purchases, that are necessary choices for many households.
Nevertheless, there have been direct examples of Tesla dropping out on gross sales due to Musk’s assist of Trump. For instance, Rossmann, one of many largest pharmacy chains in Europe and a long-time Tesla consumer, mentioned that it could cease changing its fleet to Tesla automobiles due to Musk’s assist 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 scenario. 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 monitor 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 largest followers on X tweet him on a regular basis. He lives in a special 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 tremendously decreased its costs during the last 12 months and provided backed rates of interest.
At this level, it’s a bit ridiculous to behave as if Tesla doesn’t have a broader difficulty. As for the influence of Elon’s assist, it’s admittedly unattainable to quantify, however I really feel prefer it’s secure to say that it has, on the very least, some influence.
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 social gathering, “the social gathering of hate”, and provides thousands and thousands of {dollars} to elect a candidate with an extended monitor document that goes towards 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 determination 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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