We’ve all seen the dramatic change in perceptions of Elon Musk. Ever since he started openly criticizing Democrats, he went from being a hero to many on the left to being persona non grata. That shift has only accelerated since he endorsed Donald Trump and put money behind his reelection. But it is really DOGE that has taken him from public enemy #2 to public enemy #1. Musk is now the focus of the entire Democratic party and is receiving scores of comments on social media suggesting the country would be better of it he was given the “Luigi” treatment.
It’s probably not coincidental then that sales of Tesla vehicles have gone into a slump in the past year, a slump that seems to be accelerating as he has aligned himself with Trump. For instance in France.
Tesla has suffered a sales slump in France amid a growing backlash against Elon Musk from the country’s drivers.
The electric carmaker registered only 1,141 cars sold in France last month, down by almost two thirds from 3,118 last year…
François Bayrou, the French prime minister, last week accused the Tesla founder of threatening democracy, adding: “Money should not give the right to rule consciences.”
The same thing is happening in Germany even as Musk has aligned himself with the AfD.
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla saw car sales drop by 59% year-on-year in Germany last month, according to the country’s Federal Motor Transport Authority.
Tesla, the world’s largest EV maker which has its only European factory in Germany, registered 1,277 new cars in the country in January.
That’s the lowest monthly figure seen since July 2021.
And something similar is happening in California which has long been the place where Tesla’s were selling the fastest in America.
…the California New Car Dealers Association’s (CADA) latest data indicates that EV sales leveled off in the Golden State last year, holding steady at 25.3% of new-car sales and just slightly up from 2023’s result of 25%. Granted, while it’s quite impressive for one in four new cars sold in California to be entirely electric, a slowdown in once-rapid EV growth has coincided with a big decline in Tesla sales.
Their report doesn’t mince words. “All of the decrease in the state market last year was attributable to Tesla, which had an 11.6% decline,” it said. “Registrations for all other brands increased 1.4%.” And that’s for all new passenger vehicle registrations in California, not just EVs.
There’s some polling data which finds that the downturn in sales coincides with a downturn in approval of the company. In other words, this probably isn’t just the result of unrelated market forces impacting EVs generally.
Tesla had a net favorability rating of around 30% from 2018 through 2021. The favorability rating started to trend lower around the same time Musk jumpstarted his efforts to acquire X (formerly Twitter) and now stands at just 3%.
“With the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) making headlines regarding its efforts to streamline government agencies, opinions on Elon Musk have taken a turn for the worse along political affiliations,” [research analyst Stephen] Gengaro said.
The dynamic here isn’t that hard to understand if you just think about it for a moment. Many of the early adopters who bought Tesla’s 5-10 years ago were liberals concerned about the environment. But those people are now turning against Musk in a visceral way. They hate him nearly as much as they do Trump. Meanwhile, conservatives who might find themselves agreeing with Musk politically, at least much of the time, aren’t taking up the slack because Tesla is still seen as the Bud Light of vehicles by many on the right, tainted by its association with the left’s concerns and with spending by President Biden.
A recent report from the nonpartisan EV Politics Project indicates that Tesla and Musk are losing support among EV intenders and Democratic-leaning buyers faster than they’re gaining support from people on the other side of the political spectrum, who tend to be less interested in EVs. In other words, Musk is losing Tesla sales ground with the traditional EV base, and not making it up with any of his new supporters.
“Republicans are creeping toward greater EV acceptance and willing or not, Elon’s journey to MAGA may have helped that,” the group said in its latest report. “Meanwhile, the Elon-driven Tesla headwinds problem among non-Republican consumers is clearly growing.”
Regular readers know I’m a Tesla owner. I love the cars because they are better and cheaper to operate than any of the gas powered cars I’ve owned in the past 40 years. However, the right is correct about the wasteful government spending. The plan to build zillions of chargers around the country has clearly been a failure. The plan was to spend $5 billion to create 500,000 new chargers by 2030. But several years into this plan the total number built is 58.
…more than three years after President Joe Biden signed that law, a mere 58 new charging stations are in operation. President Donald Trump regularly cites that paltry figure as evidence of the incompetence of the federal bureaucracy. His administration, no fan of electric cars, is already trying to claw back the money. So what should have been a triumph of progressive policymaking has instead devolved into humiliation.
The EV charger story has become fodder for a myth woven deeply into the American psyche: that legions of pencil-pushing bureaucrats waste taxpayer dollars with abandon while failing to accomplish much of anything. Even Democrats have to wonder: When electricians are installing EV chargers in people’s garages in less than a day, what accounts for such a miserable federal performance?
There are reasons why so little has been accomplished. The money was granted to states, some of whom didn’t want to do anything with the money. Other states did get started but the public process is one designed to take years and allow for all sorts of public comment.
All this proves in my view is that government never should have gotten involved in the first place. If anything, it has fueled a backlash against the vehicles it was trying to promote. Tesla, as the market leader, would have been better off without Democrats’ help.
That said, I do think what we’re seeing now, in terms of Tesla sales, is an inevitable result of Elon Musk making himself the enemy of progressives everywhere. They want nothing more than to cancel and punish their enemies. If the left can take down Tesla the same way they have tried to take down X since Musk bought it, they will do that.
