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 folks 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 beliefs. On the finish of the day what issues is that if Tesla makes a fantastic product, and folks like shopping for nice merchandise.
There are a couple of fascinating 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 car deliveries final quarter:
With 463,000 car deliveries final quarter, Tesla technically beat its final Q3 report, however the purpose has extra to do with Q3 2023 than 2024.
Tesla claimed that “a sequential decline in volumes was brought on by deliberate downtimes for manufacturing facility upgrades.” With out that, Tesla would have possible been flat on deliveries in Q3 2024 versus final yr.
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 exhibits that the expansion between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, however it stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s inventory efficiency can be intently monitoring its progress in deliveries after which the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla began slicing costs, which negatively affected its gross margins and income, and it countered the expansion in deliveries when it comes to inventory efficiency.
As for the influence of Musk’s very energetic 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 displaying that automobile consumers are much less thinking about shopping for Tesla automobiles attributable to Elon Musk, however it’s onerous to inform how the polls translate into the truth of automobile purchases, that are necessary choices for many households.
Nevertheless, there have been direct examples of Tesla shedding 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, stated that it might 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 not likely 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 yr in deliveries in its existence regardless of including a car to its lineup for the primary time since 2020.
It’s nearly like he’s simply repeating what his greatest 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 drastically decreased its costs over the past yr and supplied sponsored 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 protected 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 beliefs” as if he’s sharing his like everybody else. Not each CEO calls the opposite occasion, “the occasion of hate”, and provides tens of millions of {dollars} to elect a candidate with an extended monitor report that goes in opposition to Tesla’s mission to speed up the arrival of sustainable power.
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 nicely. Even when Trump wins, I might be shocked if he doesn’t activate Elon inside a yr.
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