Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona.

The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.

Tesla’s U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the “Musk partisan effect,” according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
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    21 hours ago

    political views

    The guy’s a dipshit self serving wannabe fascist. Calling it politics is disingenuous.

    Yes, yes, i know technically correct, but i refuse to softly legitimise something that should have died out generation ago

  • Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca
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    23 hours ago

    A large portion of the people that bought or wanted to purchase EVs are going to be people intelligent enough to believe in climate change and at least wanted to make personal choices that would make less of an impact on the environment. People intelligent enough to understand climate change are probably also going to understand that Hitler, Nazis, and the holocaust were bad. The party that Elon supported denies and downplays climate change, along with a myriad of other scientific and socioeconomic reports. Logically, the average MAGAt was never going to be a Tesla customer, so firing off that Heil Hitler was never going to win the company new customers. That one Heil Hitler alienated him from much of his customer base at a time when Tesla no longer had a monopoly of the EV market. Plenty of people that were considering a Tesla probably pivoted to other manufacturers because of the Nazism. I’m sincerely enjoying watching him find out about the financial consequences of fucking around. I feel bad for the people that bought Teslas before he went full Nazi, because now they are stuck with a swasticar for the foreseeable future.

  • bluesocks@lemmings.world
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    1 day ago

    Of course it’s ‘politics’ and not how EVs in America are artificially expensive due to tariffs with China.

    The average person is a fucking moron and gets fleeced for it daily.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Sentiment toward Tesla improved somewhat as Musk pivoted the company towards robotaxis, self-driving technology and robots in human form.

    What are three things that don’t exist and don’t have a market?

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Well, they exist, and there’s a theoretical market, but it’s just that Tesla isn’t particularly the leader in any except maybe personally owned self driving, but that’s mainly because Tesla’s willing to test in the streets while others are more traditionally conservative about the safety thing.

      Pre-unmasked Musk, Tesla might have done well as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Smart people wanted to work with a seemingly smart company, so it was a positive feedback loop.

      In the post-Twitter acquisition world, the shine has kind of come off around the concept of working for Musk, and more keenly so with the coverage of what sort of person he truly is.

    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Robotaxis exist and have a market. Tesla just isn’t the one doing it.

      Waymo taxis are pretty common around me.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The cybertruck is also a piece of shit from an engineering standpoint, tbh.

    A big plastic body with steel plates glued on? Collects water in the carwash? What could go wrong?

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      A big plastic body with steel plates glued on?

      Not just any glue, thermal adhesive. Hot glue. Everyone knows hot glue arts and crafts last forever.

    • betanumerus@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Tesla Giga presses are for the largest aluminum castings in the world. That part is pretty clever.

  • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    And yet the stock broke a new record this week.

    Waiting for the other shoe to drop. I shorted it since i believed dropped sale would actually bring them back to earth. But clearly it has turned into some meme-stock.

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      The stock price and vehicle sales are not directly linked. Tesla is a meme stock. It’s a house of cards thy keep lying about

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      Perhaps it helps that their cars are still better than the competition.

      • teslasaur@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Mechanically, they’re shockingly bad. I’ve spoken to mechanics that tell of some serious cost cutting when it comes to suspension and their attachments.

        New cars (3 years) can essentially fall apart at the wheels.

        • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          The three people I know with Teslurs had to have the car replaced under the 48 month lease. That’s why these cars are practically free used after warranty. They now shit parts and entire frames out using a Gigapress.

          Tesla was a tech company making cars. It’s like buying a car from MicroSoft.

        • vga@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          Yeah, the weight + acceleration + mechanics quality combo isn’t great especially if you accelerate like a race driver. Which most new owners will for awhile certainly.

          I got some of those parts replaced in warranty just recently. Interesting to see if the same problems will come back.

          It’s possible that my opinion on this changes when warranty expires and we’ll see how the car really does long term. But so far it’s so much better than any competitor car we’ve tried that it’s not even close.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Tesla after losing one million ev sales after the actions of the CEO: here’s 56 billion and you know what? We’re going to give another trillion in pay package to the CEO

    • moakley@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The fact that he was still given a position in the White House after he explicitly outed himself as a Nazi is really telling.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Technically, at least according to the court records and the admins defense, Elon Musk never had a real position.

        But yes, he spent way too fucking much time at the white house.

        • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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          1 day ago

          No, there are no “court records” that say that. If you want to believe this administration about it, that liquid falling in your face is only rain, don’t worry about it.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Idk why you’re getting so mad about semantics, I’m just saying that piece of shit Elon Musk never had a position and never will.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Elon Musk’s politics Nazism cost his firm Tesla more than one million EV sales

    Fixed it.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    It should have cost him all the Tesla sales. The fact that it didn’t is creepy and scary

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      It could be a happy thought, that most people aren’t part of the terminally online meme culture. That they have real concerns instead of bullshit imagined ones.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      As a consequence, he’s the richest person in the world and Tesla is a 1.5 Trillion dollar company. It has TEN times the P/E of companies like apple, microsoft, and google. More than 5x Nvidia, even.

      Why do we live in a world that rewards the worst shit? I mean even Trump is a real billionaire now.