The role of Elon Musk as the cost reduction of the costs of President Trump and his immersion in right -wing policy seem to deviate his attention as Tesla in a dangerous moment for the electrical car company.
Tesla cars sales decreased by 1 % last year even if the global market for electric vehicles grew by 25 percent. Musk did not deal with this submarine and did not offer any concrete plan to revive sales. He also did not provide details on a cheaper model that Tesla says he will start producing this year. In the past, Mr. Musk spent months or years promoting vehicles before appearing in showrooms.
And he spent most of his time from the elections to Washington and in the House of Mr. Trump in Florida – completely from Austin, Texas, where Tesla has his company headquarters and a factory, or the Bay Area of San Francisco, where it has a factory and engineering offices.
Over the past ten years, Tesla has gone from a start-up in difficulty to overturn the global automotive industry. The company has sold millions of electric cars and generated enormous profits, forcing the self -certified car manufacturers to invest billions of dollars to recover. Tesla’s success was reflected in his impregnated actions price, which helped make Mr. Musk the richest person in the world.
But now, it seems to have lost interest in the business of the grounding of development, production and sale of cars, affirm investors and analysts say. This could have serious consequences for its company and the automotive industry, which employs millions of people all over the world.
Even before joining the Trump Administration as head of the government’s efficiency department, Musk manages several driving companies and corporate government experts to wonder if it was too thin. In addition to Tesla, Mr. Musk controls and manages Spacex, whose rockets bring astronauts and satellites for NASA and others; X, the Social Media website; and Xai, who is developing artificial intelligence. And he wants to colonize Mars.
“We do not have a CEO that is fully concentrated on ensuring that Tesla remains a leader in the EV space,” said Brad Luder, the New York City controller, which supervises the pension funds for employees who have Tesla actions worth $ 1 , 25 billion.
Mr. Lander said he wanted Mr. Musk to remain on the Board of Directors of Tesla and renounced his duties for delegated directors to someone who would have done full -time work. “It’s not too much to ask,” Lander said. “This is only the basic model of shareholders’ governance in America.”
Few, if necessary, the managers have ever had such a series of responsibilities, said Eric Talley, professor of Columbia Law School who focuses on the corporate government. And while some of Mr. Musk’s activities benefit from his ties with the president, it is practically impossible for Musk’s commercial and political interests not to clash in ways that could damage Tesla and its other companies, said Talley.
“The more you divided your loyalty,” Talley said, “the more difficult it will be to say that you have had an undivided loyalty towards any company”.
Musk and Tesla did not respond to the E -mails in search of comments.
In the past, he and the company’s board of directors defended the management of Tesla by Mr. Musk and rejected the idea of being too thin. They underlined the price of the company’s unrelated shares and robust profits as proof that Tesla did not suffer because of his other commitments.
The support of Mr. Musk for right -wing leaders in the house and Germany, Great Britain, France and other countries seem to have alienated a significant number of customers.
There are signs that the political activities of Mr. Musk and the reduced presence in Tesla are also arousing dissatisfaction within the company.
The discontent was evident during an unusual meeting last month in the company’s offices in Palo Alto, California, where numerous employees vented their frustrations.
A senior manager who spoke during the meeting told the employees that he too was discouraged by the “mercurial” behavior of Mr. Musk and the departure of some senior managers who had had a moderator influence. The polarization of the social media of the CEO and the work in the Trump Administration were removing the customers, pushing some employees to leave and making it more difficult to recruit new talents in Tesla, said the manager, according to an audio recording of the examined meeting from the new Times of York.
The executive urged the employees to focus on their work and developed the comments of Mr. Musk on X and other forums. “In a sense, I ignore it and I think about what we are working and is exciting for me and has an impact?” The manager said. “This is the best advice I can give for how to manage it.”
Registration was reported for the first time by the Washington Post.
There are signs that at least some investors also have doubts. The price of Tesla actions decreased by 25 percent since mid -December, although it has still increased by about 40 percent from the elections. The S&P 500 share index increased by about 6 percent from the elections.
Many investors still trust Mr. Musk. That’s why Wall Street treats Tesla like more than three times precious as Toyota, the largest car manufacturer in the world.
Optimistic investors believe that the company will develop cars that can drive themselves in most conditions. Ark Invest, an investment company that has long been bullish about Mr. Musk’s efforts, estimates that Tesla can control half of an estimated market of $ 10 trillion dollars for autonomous services.
“I far see a path for Tesla the most precious company in the world,” Musk said in January. Growth, he added, “would be overwhelmingly due to autonomous vehicles and autonomous humanoid robots”.
What Mr. Musk has seemed surprisingly indifferently indifferent today Tesla’s largest activity: selling cars.
During a teleconference last month to discuss the results of the fourth quarter of Tesla, a financial analyst asked him to develop his plans to sell more cars to take advantage of Tesla’s competitive advantage in the technology that allows cars to steer, accelerate and accelerate and slow down theirs. Musk said he did not understand the question and said that the company already had millions of cars on the road.
The company has lost the market share against byd in China; BMW and Volkswagen in Europe; and Hyundai and General Motors in the United States. Some drivers of Tesla as the musician Sheryl Crow are so upset by the political activities of Mr. Musk who are selling their cars or say they will not buy another.
In January Tesla sales decreased by 59 % in Germany, 63 % in France and 12 % in Great Britain after Musk approved right -wing politicians and made inflammatory statements on social media. Tesla sales decreased by 12 % last year in California, which represent almost a third of the electric cars sold in the United States.
“Hate is real,” wrote Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki and investment management, on a post X together with a photo of a cybertuck that someone had defaced with an obscenity.
But political bite is not the only problem of the company.
Tesla remains dependent on two vehicles, model 3 and model Y, 95 percent of its sales. Byd has more than a dozen electric models, some cost much less than $ 20,000. The 3 model starts from $ 42,000 in the United States before taking into account a federal tax credit of $ 7,500.
Car experts say that Tesla needs a cheaper car to revive sales. But last year, Mr. Musk indefinitely delayed the plans to build a low -cost car in Monterrey, Mexico, which would have cost $ 25,000.
The company has promised to start producing a new model in its existing factories by the end of June, but has not shown a prototype or provided details. Analysts expect that they are based on model 3 and cost much more than $ 25,000.
“You would think they would double and try to capitalize on the command they have on other players,” said Michael Lenox, a business professor at the University of Virginia. “The question arises,” he added, “was there a lack of attention?”
Some investors said that the lack of interest of Mr. Musk in the sale of car was evident as little he had said about Mr. Trump’s initiatives that they could damage Tesla’s sales.
Last week the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, said that some of the Trump plans to repeal the incentives of the biden era for electric cars could force the company to fire workers. But Mr. Musk did not say anything publicly about them.
The environmentalists in particular are very worried that Mr. Musk, who once spoke of electric vehicles as a solution for climate change, trained with the denialists of climate change.
“It is really worrying that Elon is more focused on the DC than on the advancement of the production of electric vehicles,” said Katherine Garcia, director of the Clean Transports for All at the Sierra Club campaign.
Musk claimed that electric cars do not need government incentives. “You can’t stop the advent of electric cars,” Musk said in January. “It will happen.”