Tesla global sales fall amid Musk backlash and pressure on EV market
On Wednesday, the electric vehicle (EV) maker reported 384,122 deliveries in the second quarter, representing a 13.5 percent decline from this time a year ago. Its earnings report will be released after the market close. Sales were roughly in line with analyst expectations.
The global sales figures reflect the more contested nature of the EV market, which Tesla once dominated, but which now also features BYD and other low-cost Chinese companies, as well as legacy Western carmakers like General Motors, Toyota and Volkswagen.
However, demand for EVs has slumped amid tariff fears and the looming end of the EV tax credit in the United States.
On Wednesday, Volvo also announced that fully electric sales fell by 26 percent in June. Rivian sales also tumbled. The electric carmaker said there was a 22.7 percent drop in sales compared with to this time last year.
Musk weighing on sales and the stock
Musk's political activism on behalf of right-wing figures has also made the company a target of boycotts and demonstrations, weighing on sales. Musk donated more than $270m to US President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, barnstorming key battleground states for the Republican.
But in the last few weeks, he has had a falling out with Trump, driven by the president's wide-ranging tax and spending bill. Musk's objections to the 'Big Beautiful Bill' has escalated tensions between the two. In a social media post, Musk accused bill supporters of backing 'debt slavery'.
In response, the president called for the Department of Government Efficiency to look at subsidies for Musk's companies, sending the stock tumbling and it closed down 5.3 percent on Tuesday.
A brighter future?
But analysts believe that increased production of the Model Y and 3 could show a positive road ahead for the EV-maker, which produced 396,835 cars of the two models in the second quarter — up from 345,454 in the first quarter.
'We believe Tesla is on a path to an accelerated growth path over the coming years with deliveries expected to ramp in the back-half of 2025 following the Model Y refresh cycle,' Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note to Al Jazeera.
Musk has acknowledged that his work as head of the Department of Government Efficiency and his embrace of European far-right candidates have hurt the company. But he attributed much of the sales plunge to customers holding off while they waited for new versions of Tesla's best-selling Model Y, and recently predicted a major turnaround in sales.
The company is focusing more on robots, self-driving technology and robotaxis ferrying passengers around without anyone behind the wheel its test run of robotaxis in Austin, Texas, seems to have gone smoothly for the most part. But it also has drawn the scrutiny of federal car safety regulators because of a few mishaps, including one case in which a Tesla cab was shown on a widely shared video heading down an opposing lane.
On Wednesday, Tesla stock was trending upwards at 11am in New York (15:00 GMT) and was up 4.73 percent for the day, however, it is down 3.02 percent over the last five days.
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