Protesters Reject Musk, Project 2025, And Trump Actions

Elon Musk’s public behavior is getting out of hand, and his most successful business appears to be suffering as a result.

Tesla’s sales are plummeting in Europe: last month they fell 76% in Germany, 55% in Italy and 45% in France, according to Reuters news agency. This is despite growing demand for electric vehicles, which Musk’s Tesla helped to popularize.

Musk is now an informal aide to US President Donald Trump and head of a new cost-cutting effort, yet his online behavior – which had been bizarre for a while – remains extraordinary. He’s meddled in European countries’ elections and insulted senior ministers.

“Be quiet, small man” is how this presidential advisor chose to publicly address Poland’s foreign minister on Sunday. Musk also intervened in Germany’s recent national election, throwing his weight behind the far-right Alternative for Germany, which finished second.

He wasn’t always like this, especially not while building companies like Tesla and SpaceX. Working out what happened isn’t entirely straightforward.

His chronic addiction to the distorted world of social media clearly has a lot to do with it. Musk has also said he’s using ketamine, which has side effects when used heavily that include a sense of self-importance as well as urinary incontinence.

‘Tesla sales are falling steeply’

In any case, his behavior is not doing Tesla any good, in America or in Europe.

Other car companies have taken a hit – Volkswagen’s car sales have been struggling to keep up with its currywurst business, for example. But electric car sales have been recovering – just not Tesla’s, independent car industry analyst Jürgen Pieper said.

“We see a pretty strong recovery of demand for e-cars right now in Europe especially, but Tesla’s sales are falling steeply,” Pieper told Euractiv in an interview.

Musk and Trump are clearly aware of the problem: on Tuesday they held a bizarre photo op at the White House, where Trump used his country’s highest office to try and boost Tesla’s sales.

Part of the reason for Tesla’s decline – maybe a third of it, Pieper said – is that the car-makers line-up is looking a bit stale. “There’s nothing really new for some time,” he said.

“But it’s more than that. It’s really Elon Musk,” Pieper said. “The typical owner of a Tesla is absolutely against what Musk is doing right now.”

“The typical owner is pretty progressive, a kind of pioneer in technical things,” he said. “The typical driver is also a pretty liberal person who’s open for new things, for new technologies.”

Political conversion

But those are precisely the sort of people who’re likely to be turned off by who Musk has become, Pieper said.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Musk’s succumbing to the most extreme and aggressive strain of American politics is recent. It’s been less than a year since he publicly aligned himself with Trump’s campaign, which was also around the time he began insulting and libeling the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer.

According to Musk, he’d never even voted Republican prior to 2022, when he backed Maya Flores for a vacant congressional seat in Texas. In the 2019 presidential election, he voted for Andrew Yang, a mild-mannered Democrat campaigning for Americans to have a universal basic income.

If Musk were simply a conservative or a Republican voter, that wouldn’t bother many Tesla owners in Europe, Pieper said. “But he is so extreme in his in his thoughts and his actions, at least from a European perspective, that this is just too much for many,” he said.

“I know a couple of Tesla owners who think about selling their car,” Pieper told Euractiv. “You can definitely say that the interest has cooled off for for buying a new Tesla, just because of Elon Musk’s behavior.”

Falling share price

Tesla’s share price has also slumped: after rallying late last year when it became clear Musk was heading to a role in the White House, all of those gains have now been wiped out

“I would say that what happened to the Tesla share price, in the end, is the view on the new US government,” Pieiper said.

Initially, “I think that many investors had the understanding that as Musk is supporting the new government in the US, and vice versa, this which would help him in his business, just in a very general way,” the car industry analyst said.

But the Trump administration has turned out to be bad for business, argued Pieper. “It’s not just extreme, but in many ways, it seems to be anti-growth, anti-prosperity,” he said.

Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the US, and has threatened further measures against Europe’s car industry. He repeated that threat yesterday in a White House press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.

The EU announced countermeasures yesterday morning, comprising tariffs €26 billion worth of American goods.

EURactive