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 help 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 concerning 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 terrific product, and other people like shopping for nice merchandise.
There are just a few fascinating issues right here.
First off, “gross sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are various 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 motive 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 doubtless been flat on deliveries in Q3 2024 versus final 12 months.
This delayed some shipments into This autumn 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 items 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 laborious to swallow for an organization that’s all about progress. The chart above reveals that the expansion between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, but it surely stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s inventory efficiency can be intently monitoring its progress in deliveries after which the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla began reducing costs, which negatively affected its gross margins and income, and it countered the expansion in deliveries by way of inventory efficiency.
As for the affect of Musk’s very energetic and public help of Trump on Tesla’s gross sales, that’s certainly extra nuanced.
There have been many polls concerning the problem exhibiting that automobile consumers are much less occupied with shopping for Tesla autos on account of Elon Musk, but it surely’s laborious to inform how the polls translate into the fact of automobile purchases, that are necessary choices for many households.
Nonetheless, there have been direct examples of Tesla dropping out on gross sales due to Musk’s help 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 autos due to Musk’s help 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 state of affairs. 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 car 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 over the past 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 problem. As for the affect of Elon’s help, it’s admittedly inconceivable to quantify, however I really feel prefer it’s secure to say that it has, on the very least, some affect.
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 social gathering, “the social gathering of hate”, and provides hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to elect a candidate with an extended monitor report that goes towards 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 choice will age nicely. Even when Trump wins, I might be shocked if he doesn’t activate Elon inside a 12 months.
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