Is Elon Musk hurting Tesla? (Mod Note Post #1)

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281442#Comment_123281442

Musk is merely an employee of an elected president, it’s a dirty job clearing house and I don’t think he would have accepted the role if his utmost desire was to be liked, the man sends rockets into space, creates electric vehicles, is a global provider of broadband, its fairly obvious his desire to to make an impact in the world, and what greater way than making the country run more efficiently.

jlang

If the issue affecting sales is indeed largely the toxic atmosphere around his politics and political activity, it's not clear that Musk going back full time to Tesla would be at all positive for sales or the brand. Even if he was inclined to do so.

A return to Elon being more involved and intermittently firing whole divisons and spouting ridiculous timelines about AI, robots and robot cars is unlikely to push current skeptics to buy Tesla cars.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281642#Comment_123281642

that’s a view of musk that might have held water about 5 years ago, maybe more.

He’s paid for Trump to be elected and $125m gets you a lot of power at the cabinet table, unelected.

I think musk thinks everyone thinks like him, and that DOGE would be a huge immediate success. In reality he’s hated for it and doesn’t appear to realise why that is.

One thing I will bet my house on - it won’t be Trump who takes the heat when things go wrong, people won’t blame him because he’s elected democratically and has 4 years to run. Musk will be the lightening rod for all blame.

Indeed, has the rampant initial progress of DOGE already hit the skids?

How long until the US government announces that all federal vehicles are going to be replaced with Teslas?

sk8board

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/howard-lutnick-tesla-trump-musk

Imagine an Irish cabinet minister telling the public they’d be mad to not buy shares in an Irish listed business owned by a very controversial CEO…

”Donald Trump’s commerce secretary told Americans to buy stock in Elon Musk’s electric car company, only for shares in Teslato keep falling.

“I think, if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Howard Lutnick told Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”

He added: “I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding me.”

edit: if you’re wondering, shares are down today, on v low volumes, so it seems it fell on deaf ears

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281949#Comment_123281949

Probably the best way of massaging sales figures

Will Tesla be asked to build the next "Beast?"

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281949#Comment_123281949

Been there, done that

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-department-elon-musk-trump

Billy Mays

Where's this idea come from that somebody has to be making your life personally worse in order for you to think they're a c*nt or want to boycott their product?

McGregor has in no way made my life personally worse but there's not a chance I'd buy his stout or whiskey or step foot in his bar

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281922#Comment_123281922

But that doesn’t make sense, hating someone for donating to a political party which will benefit them, everybody does it, billionaires and millionaires on both sides. There was far right activists keying Tesla’s many years ago and now there far left activists keying Tesla’s, it doesn’t matter to him, whatever side he is on he will receive a volume of hate. I don’t think people realise that the man could just retire into lavish peaceful obscurity if he wanted, but instead decides to be the lightening rod, why, it’s not for the money so that only leaves for the honour of the task.

DrPsychia

I'll be surprised if shareholders vote to remove the board and Elon at the next shareholder meeting. Any prominent company, or collective who instigates that action will have an immediate target on their(Execs) back and that of their family. I have little hope of Elon facing prosecution due to the current Authoritarian administration.

IF there is another presidential election, and if a Democrat is elected president with a liberal majority in the Senate and House, only then is Elon Goebbels likely to see prison.

How is Tesla share price holding at current levels? Tesla continues to receive bad publicity. Elon is absent from governance, more economic uncertainty, Canadian counter tariffs, more innovation and competition from China with their FSD tech and electric cars.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123281642#Comment_123281642

he is far from an employee, he bought the position , continues to make cuts while earning billions from the same government that he is making the cuts for.
if money is tight a space program should be the first thing to be cut.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282051#Comment_123282051

I suggest you look up narcissistic

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282051#Comment_123282051

Vladimir Putin could easily retire into lavish peaceful obscurity but instead he chooses to be the lightning rod. If not for the money, that only leaves the honour of the task. Also you guys seem to be incredibly annoyed that consumers are choosing to boycott a brand. All the Musk fans are still free to buy Teslas.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282051#Comment_123282051

the honour of the task, or the ego of the control?

I think your view is massively oversimplified- it’s bordering on “why can’t everyone stop being so mean and leave the poor guy alone”.

The sail off into the lavish sunset notion doesn’t apply to billionaires - that’s why they’re billionaires - they’re relentless in their pursuit of ‘more’.
he couldn’t spend the wealth he has if he tried his best every day for the rest of his life - money is just a way to keep score now.

So they move to exerting control and power instead - and there’s no more power imaginable than backing a US presidential campaign and making sure it’s quid pro quo.

Look at bezos, Zuckerberg and others realise that musk has got a huge headstart in the power stakes and rush to catch up.

Again - I stress - this is about democracy under threat, and not about the honour of the task. Musk is not looking to punch a 9-to-5 in his federal spending review Dept 😀

nachouser

Tesla is basically Bud Light now, which is very, very funny.

Apiarist

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282128#Comment_123282128

No, we wouldn't. Because the decision to give each euro has been made by the government. It is the government that should be deciding whether to change their decision, based on democratic principles. Not some non-elected DOGE quango. Musk presides over an inefficient DOGE organisation. Why I can tell it is inefficient? Because nobody can decide in a short time which government investments are good and which are wasteful. What you can do is slash and burn, then react to mitigate the fallout. That is not the efficiency, it is more waste. If you fire federal forestry workers, you can save some money right now, and then you will have to spend 10 times more fighting forest fires — is that efficient? No. To make the government more efficient takes years of analysis and careful management.

The fact that Musk hopes to get DOGE working by putting incompetents in charge reflects badly on him as the head of Tesla too.

yagan

I'm really stunned by this latest Cybertruck recall. Glued on panels!

Woodie40

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282356#Comment_123282356

No quality control at that budget brand factory. Landfill.

Mr Q

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282356#Comment_123282356

Not surprising, according to Musk you can also use it as a boat. Another lie.

MJohnston

Did this not get posted?
https://mashable.com/article/tesla-missing-billion-dollars

Let's forget about Musk's politics for a second — it's his sheer incompetence in the last couple of years in terms of running a company that is doing the real damage to Tesla. I would personally not really care that much about his Nazism if I wanted to buy a Tesla, but it's the fact that I'm likely buying a lemon that'll likely soon lose any first-party servicing opportunities when the company collapses that would fully put me off

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123283939#Comment_123283939

Before the German Tesla factory opened it seemed to take ages to get replacement panels as they came from China, so if the EU factory gets shuttered due to falling demand you'd be back to long waits while the likes of byd are setting up parts networks in Europe.

sk8board

Q4 2024 delivery estimates were originally 512,000 - then the momentum shifted against them as we know, and they delivered 495,000.

The Q1 2025 delivery estimates are now in the 355-360,000 range as of this week, a pretty huge drop from the growth estimate of 512k 6 months ago.

With Q2 potentially being the first full quarter of all that’s going against the Tesla brand, it’s not hard to see deliveries back at 300/325k levels from a few years ago

magicbastarder

Interesting that for the last four days or so, the share price has been on an upward trend even though there's been little good news for Tesla.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123286615#Comment_123286615

Well the stock p/e makes no sense so there's probably stock being bought for musks political influence.

I think Tesla has a quarterly sales review on the 22nd April, which will shed more light, or not.

magicbastarder

https://electrek.co/2025/03/21/elon-tells-tesla-employees-not-to-sell-tsla-stocks-board-execs-are-dumping/

"Not a single Tesla insider who requires SEC reporting to buy or sell Tesla stocks has purchased it in the last few years.

None."

NiceFella

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282229#Comment_123282229

Cut defense spending then

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123286863#Comment_123286863

Sorry if I didn’t make the distinction clear, yes I believe he is contributing toward the country running more efficiently, same as where he made twitter run more efficiently, however unlike twitter he doesn’t have the power to make the country run more efficiently, he can only contribute.

erlichbachman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123286869#Comment_123286869

Agree, it also requires those funding the war to participate in seeking a peaceful solution.

liamog

Mod: Ot posts removed, posters need to read the post #1 before posting. This is not the place to debate the actions of doge.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123287177#Comment_123287177

I've seen the claim made elsewhere, and I don't know if it's true - someone here might be able to verify it - but supposedly the share price is approaching the price a lot of shareholders bought in at. which if true, could prompt them to sell before it drops below that price. That could make things interesting. If true.