Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse for Elon Musk, Neil Young comes along and records a new song, Let’s Roll Again, which includes the line: “If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla.”
Tesla sales, profits and share price despite a few bounce backs are dropping overall; protests continue to take place at Tesla showrooms around the globe; burnt-out or graffiti-covered Teslas get media coverage; Musk’s Cybertruck has been a big flop in the USA, and he has a long running strike and boycott with the Swedish metalworkers’ union.
Things aren’t going well for Musk
Tesla’s reported 71% drop in net income in Q1 of 2025 was overshadowed by Musk’s announcement that he would be “stepping back” from his job sacking thousands of federal workers via Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE). And the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla had been contacting headhunters to find a replacement for Musk – which Tesla has denied.
Tesla’s ‘bottom line’ is vanishing as the market for electric vehicles (EV) is expanding. It was only able to post a $409mn profit in the quarter thanks to the sale of $595mn worth of regulatory carbon credits to other automakers including Toyota, Stellantis, Mazda, and Subaru which all pooled their emissions with EV makers Polestar and Tesla earlier this year as a way to comply with European Union carbon emissions rules.
Competition from other EV manufacturers especially in China is ramping up with Chinese EV companies promoting their vehicles heavily in Europe, at cheaper prices and with more new features than Tesla.
Professor David Bailey of Birmingham University, a leading expert on the global automotive sector, sees Chinese Tesla competitor BYD becoming the world’s largest seller of EVs – a position it held for a fleeting moment recently:
“BYD is expanding its presence in Europe, with plans to build a factory in Hungary and to offer a growing number of models for sale in the Europe. Plus, it controls the production of its own chips and batteries. It can produce at lower cost than Tesla and is at the forefront of battery and charging innovation. Tesla is being overtaken.”
Musk’s political impact on Tesla
It is undeniable that Tesla has been by hurt by Musk’s controversial role in the US government, and his promotion of right-wing parties such as Reform UK Ltd and AfD in Germany. Some on Wall Street now believe Tesla’s brand is badly damaged – and may not recover.
But in a call to investors last week, Musk tried to shore things up, saying the company was not in serious trouble. He assured them: “We’ve gone through many a crisis over the years and actually been … on the ragged edge of death – at least, maybe a dozen times.”
What he avoided telling them was that Trump wants to get rid of federal carbon emission rules that favour EVs. Trump also wants to end the right of states like California to demand tougher emissions regulations that would ban the sale of combustion-powered vehicles by 2035. Without those tough emissions rules, at both federal and state level, regulatory carbon credit sales would not be possible. And it’s these carbon credit sales that have been lucrative for Tesla.
Driverless vehicles
Another of Musk’s big ideas which is floundering, is ‘robotaxis’ – driverless taxis due to be road tested in Austin, Texas.
The news is not good for Musk, who’s been promising driverless vehicles for six years; promising they will be operational within a year. In December, GM dropped its robotaxi after concluding “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” didn’t support a business case.
Ford also pulled back from its own autonomous vehicle development efforts after concluding it wouldn’t be profitable anytime soon. “Profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off,” said Ford CEO Jim Farley.
For Musk, the future is not looking bright. How long before Trump drops him like a stone?
