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Comment by froggertoaster | Hacker News Reader

Is this primarily because Elon has become an extremely divisive figure? Asking authentically. What other problems in the market might be causing this?

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It's likely a number of factors as well -- stagnant products, manufacturing issues, competitive pressure -- but it's hard to deny how omnipresent his figure has been, and that the primary audience for EVs doesn't like his efforts to dismantle the federal government and fire everyone.

Don't forget the spectre of economic uncertainty since nobody knows what anything will cost next week. People hold off on big purchases when they're scared.

That's the main explanation I can see, all other EV car sellers in the US are growing their sales [0] it appears it appears to be specific to Tesla and the main thing that's changed there is Musk and his plunge towards the far right of US politics.

[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/02/us-carmakers-crush-it-o...

Tesla promises have not materialized. Beyond big promises there hasnt been much as far as new improvements to speak of. Other good, cheaper options hit the market.

Everything else aside, even if Tesla had the best & cheapest EVs, and the people behind it weren't politically abhorrent, I still wouldn't buy one because everything I've heard about their service has been terrible. People are waiting for months to get a part delivered and their car serviced.

More competition in the US market perhaps? A number of my coworkers and friends have purchased new EVs over the past year and all but one of them went with a car other than Tesla. Mostly Polestars, one Lucid.

Chinese EV makers are very popular in Europe and Asia.

I understand a significant portion of Tesla’s sales are in China and there is fierce competition from homegrown firms like BYD.

TFA mentions this but doesn’t get into much detail.

China is actually one of the markets Tesla is performing best at.

As someone who has done biz with China (specifically with Tsinghua University) - the key phrase is "for now". China's strength in economics is to take what works elsewhere, bring it to China to understand what about that product or service works domestically, and then China-fy / reverse engineer what's great about the product, and then get Party backing to scale it in order to beat the foreign competitor. This is their default strategy and no matter how many factories Tesla might have in China now, it's not a certainty that those factories or technologies will be in Tesla's hands in 3-5 years from now.

Specific to the automobile industry, remember what VW's mistake in China was. Long story short: they taught the Chinese how to really build and scale auto production. The Chinese learned, and then shut VW out of the domestic Chinese market once they had a strong Chinese competitor - they were able to scale and produce cars for significantly cheaper.

Bloomberg Business TV said this morning it's structural and has been going on much longer than Elons involvement in politics. They spent at least 10 minutes discussing all the various market pressures, china, europe etc etc. I came away thinking this was going to happen regardless. (but imo he's silly for taking an eye off his business interests).

Nothing is ever as simple as a single cause, but we can be sure thst negative PR is going to impact sales, as it's basically a form of reverse advertising, and unlike most car brands, Tesla relies almost entirely on word-of-mouth rather than traditional ad campaigns. Thus, I would expect an outsized impact from the backlash.

I don't have specific stats in front of me, but:

* Q1 tends to be a weak quarter for automotive sales in general

* EV sales in the US have been slowing

* AFAIK, basically every other EV vendor has shown better numbers for 2025Q1 in interim results.

In other words, while not all of the problems can be laid at Elon's feet, it's pretty clear that he is damaging Tesla's brand.

> EV sales in the US have been slowing

Predominantly because Tesla is slowing, and that's where most EV sales were - see: https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q4-2024-ev-sales/

> Most major auto manufacturers ended 2024 with record EV sales, with Tesla being a notable exception.

> General Motors increased its sales by 50% to become the second largest EV seller in the US, Ford's EV sales increased 35%,

> and Kia and Hyundai expanded by 74% and 77% respectively.

EV sales excluding Tesla in the US are expected to be up >20% across the board.

Q1 might be weaker but Tesla's numbers are weak compared to their previous Q1 numbers so the general yearly cycle is factored into to these being bad numbers already.

EV sales growth has been slowing.

EV sales have continued to increase.

They also have had no new recent models for years except for the Cybertruck, which is reportedly not selling

I don't think the impact of Elon's politics is seen yet. The infamous salute was in the middle of this quarter.

This is probably because of competition from BYD. The politics will hit starting from the next quarter.

I think there is some undercurrents in economy which means that people are less willing to make reasonably sizable investments like getting new cars. Outlook for many is somewhat bleak.

That's surely a big part of it, but increasing competition in the market for electric vehicles won't help either.

Elon alienated the majority of the side of the political spectrum that actually can afford his vehicles. He then went on throughout Europe backing majority disliked right wing parties and utterly tanks his sales in Europe as well.

This isn't really recoverable. If the board had a spine (they don't), they'd fire him and find a new CEO.

They can't fire him though. Tesla has been a meme stock for years already precisely because of him, and if Elon was out of the picture, it'd drop massively in value.

The board won't do that because Tesla is also overvalued because of Musk to begin with.

Is there evidence that left wingers tend to be more as affluent than right wingers? Genuinely asking.

Yes. Highly educated people tend to the left, and education is highly correlated to income.

But both correlations reverse after some level of wealth.

Even absent the income differences the main market has been the left in the US and the US right has been explicitly anti-EV for years.

> Is there evidence that left wingers tend to be more as affluent than right wingers? Genuinely asking.

Yes, just read the articles about the Democrats losing the working class. There's lot of evidence and analysis in them on your very question.

IIRC, the Democrats have been tuning more and more into educated, affluent people, and those people have been tuning into liberal positions on culture war issues. These are the people who inhabit the influential positions of the party, and they set the agenda to resonate with themselves (e.g. student loan forgiveness). That caused them to lose sight of the traditional working class, and thus shed working class support.

Not really anything dramatically lopsided, but potentially the opposite of their assertion: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship...

I can't find a source right now but I think there's some lines to draw between jobs we consider "prestigious" and party affiliation but it's not the same line to draw with wealth, i.e. a professor is considered a more prestigious role than a plumber even though the plumber likely makes more.

Six of one and half a dozen of the other?

Other companies now have decent EV offerings.

Of course, if you're conspiratorially minded, you could posit that he's taking such polarizing positions especially against the demographic more likely to purchase EVs in order to give an excuse as to why Tesla sales are down.

But I'm willing to accept that it's a bit of both. Rivian and others now have comparable EVs and Elon's been a bit of a dick.

That's a big part of it, but there's also been a general pullback from EVs. Many factors have influenced that, including the phasing out of early adopter tax credits (generally happening even before Trump but accelerating now), difficulties obtaining service, fears about range and battery pack longevity, and generally higher price than gas or hybrid alternatives.

There is no general pullback from EVs in the EU, where fleet emmission rules heavily favor EVs. Tesla sales fell heavily.

Consumers wanting a Tesla but not buying one because of the real chance it gets vandalized or destroyed by angsty juvenile Redditors who think destroying peoples property is fine because the owner has insurance.

When powerful people start to out themselves as nazis, create concentration camps, extinguish due process, and eliminate free speech, dismissing protests as "juvenile" starts to sound quite bad.

Vandalizing random peoples vehicles in parking lots because you dislike the CEO of the manufacturer is not a protest, it’s juvenile behaviour.

You'd have a point if it was some mid issue with several valid points of view. But several people have good reason to fight for their lives against the US government right now, and this is one of their weapons.

If you want people to act calmly, don't make them desperate.

Keying the car of some schoolteacher in a grocery store parking lot because you’re mad at Elon isn’t fighting for your life, it’s being a childish asshole. The fact that you can’t see that suggests you are as well.

Dude, you are lucky that this seems to be somewhat effective. The hope is that this turns out to be extremely effective, because nobody will like it if people are forced to fight the normal way.

Yeah, god help us if the iron-deficient terminally online Redditors in their 20s with anxiety disorders and a fear of guns decide to rise up.

you're very stuck with this idea that anyone who disagrees with your must be a terminally online redditor. But at the same time you mock those people for their inability to get outside. Which is needed for vandalism. Which is it?

I'll just say not to cast stones in a glass house.

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