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It hasn’t been a great year so far for electric vehicles manufacturer Tesla, or for chief executive Elon Musk, at least in monetary terms.
A seemingly fixed part of the US political scene now, anger and criticism of Mr Musk has shot up more than a notch after allegedly emulating a fascist salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration.
More recently he reposted on social media a message which read: “Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Public sector employees did.”
While Mr Musk owns or is boss of multiple organisations, such as Space X, social media platform X and The Boring Company – plus now his post in DOGE alongside the US government – it is towards Tesla that people appear to be venting their feelings.
With Tesla being a publicly traded company, a declining share price actively impacts Mr Musk’s own vast fortune, given he has just shy of 13 per cent of shares in the company. And with Tesla’s share price down 41 per cent year to date – and now more than halved from its December high of $479 following Mr Trump’s election – that is an enormous collapse in value.
And the bad news keeps on coming, with one rival pushing technological barriers to offer a battery which charges faster, while short sellers have profited from Tesla’s decline to the tune of a massive $16bn (£12.3bn) across the past three months.
Mr Musk has previously stated his disdain for short sellers, calling the approach on the stock market a “scam”.
Short selling is when investors look to profit from a drop in share price, rather than it climbing. Investors can “short” a stock by effectively selling shares they don’t own: they borrow them from someone who has them (such as a broker) and sells to the market, then looks to later buy back those same shares and return them, banking the difference as profit.
With Tesla, hedge funds have benefitted from the share price dropping to $238 by the close of play on Monday, report the Financial Times – and ahead of Tuesday trading, it is poised to drop again by a further three per cent, as of noon GMT.
Tesla’s share price remains up 45 per cent over the past year, but there are concerns its brand has been significantly damaged by Mr Musk.
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The FT further report that his intervening in politics across Europe has contributed to a decline in sales across the region, while protests against his role in cutting jobs Stateside has seen demonstrations against Tesla on that side of the Atlantic too.
Anti-Elon Musk activity hasn’t been limited to USA dealerships either; London has seen an increase in demonstrations and even billboard advertising campaigns reminding people they are buying a “swasticar” if they purchase a Tesla, apparently run by a group named “Everybody hates Elon”.
“Tesla had a very strong brand value and Elon has managed to totally destroy it,” Per Lekander, managing partner of hedge fund Clean Energy Transition, told the FT.
JPMorgan analysts, meanwhile, last week explained their thinking behind a downgrade in price target for Tesla stock: “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.”
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ABC News have reported that four executives or board members at Tesla have sold “over $100m in shares since early February”, including $27m (£20.8m) sold by Mr Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk, who sits on the company’s board.
Away from stock markets but elsewhere in the electric vehicles sphere, Chinese competitor BYD have announced a breakthrough commercial battery which will allow a full charge in the same timeframe as filling an ICE vehicle up with fuel – four times quicker than Tesla’s Superchargers can manage.
BYD last year overtook Tesla as the world’s largest EV manufacturer, despite no real presence in the US.
Despite the dramatic fall in fortunes, the X owner remains the richest person on the planet and has a net worth of well over $300bn (£231bn), despite an estimated fall of $121bn (£93.3bn) in total during just the first three months of 2025.
