Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona.

The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.

Tesla’s U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the “Musk partisan effect,” according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Then why are they wanting to pay him 1 trillion dollars? Rich people are weird.

      Because Musk is asking for it, and the Tesla board who are all his hand picked friends, are the ones that vote on it.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      He put two LED light bars on the old Model Y and came up with a cheap Model Y that covers the existing glass roof in headliner fabric.

      How is that not innovation?

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            It had lidar rangefinders I believe. Nothing like the lidar scanners on actual delft driving cars, but still better than just cameras.

            • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Tesla has never used lidar. As the other person said, they did use radar and ultrasonic detectors until covid supply chain issues when they decided to go camera only.

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                4 months ago

                I guess not, but affordable small and very simple LiDAR range finders (ToF) have been around for a while. Not the fancy spinning scanners on Waymo and military robots. More like parking sensors and measuring tools.

                I remember when the Israeli company that was developing Tesla’s first automation systems dropped them because it didn’t like the reliance on cameras only that Musk was insisting on.

                Edit: removed useless link and provided Wikipedia page with better history of the hardware used. Mobileye dropped Tesla in 2016. Funny enough they were developing Lidar after dropping Tesla, but are more recently going to a camera only approach too. I’m still skeptical any firm will succeed with only mostly visible spectrum photons and have a safe product. But as secondary backup safety devices I’m ok with them. They shouldn’t be allowed to call any of it autodriving or autopilot though.

                • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  They removed plastic hooks from the frunk to save two cents. Same with rain detectors on windshield for auto wipers.

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      4 months ago

      I thought they were setting him up for a graceful exit when they could not agree on a ridiculous pay package

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    It should have cost him all the Tesla sales. The fact that it didn’t is creepy and scary

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      As a consequence, he’s the richest person in the world and Tesla is a 1.5 Trillion dollar company. It has TEN times the P/E of companies like apple, microsoft, and google. More than 5x Nvidia, even.

      Why do we live in a world that rewards the worst shit? I mean even Trump is a real billionaire now.

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    You’ve cost us billions in sales! Your views are killing the company!!

    Are you going to fire me?

    No! We’re going to pay you MORE!!

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Elon Musk’s politics Nazism cost his firm Tesla more than one million EV sales

    Fixed it.

  • dellish@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “Musk partisan effect”

    Fucking hell, these people can euphemism their way out of anything. It’s the Musk Is A Fucking Nazi effect. Just say it as it is. How is this guy still allowed to be a director of a company that he is actively hurting? Are there no laws regarding fiduciary duty? Shareholders ought to be rearing him to shreds, not voting to pay him more.

    • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The richest man in the world is the main shareholder. You can thank our government for giving him massive tax payer subsidies instead of investing in multiple American run businesses. I’ve noticed our government likes to give all of our tax dollars to South African apartheid Nazis who are now looting our government and stripping our freedoms because they think they haven’t gotten enough.

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    4 months ago

    Feels like if he could just STFU he’d be golden. I remember when he was widely seen in a positive light. He was practically messianic on Reddit back in the day. Then his innate pettiness came out when he called that diver a peado. It feels like his mask slipped then and everything after just reinforced the fact that he’s an unchecked and uncaring megalomaniac.

    • moakley@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The fact that he was still given a position in the White House after he explicitly outed himself as a Nazi is really telling.

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        4 months ago

        Technically, at least according to the court records and the admins defense, Elon Musk never had a real position.

        But yes, he spent way too fucking much time at the white house.

  • Gates9@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    He doesn’t care, there is nothing that can really ruin him financially, and the idea that he would ever be convicted for a crime is ridiculous as well.

    These people, the ones who have control over the major levers of power, they have completely insulated themselves from accountability, they are all psychopaths, and many are nearing the ends of their lives, so they are particularly nihilistic and dismissive of the consequences of their actions.

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    4 months ago

    I get it for those that were stuck in a loan, etc…totally understandable. But yeah, I have no idea why someone would buy his cars knowing what we all know now.

    Unless they support Nazis.

    I was pricing various solar setups and quite a few options involved the Tesla name. I just cannot imagine putting that on my house, which is likely to be something I hang onto even longer than a car…

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I mean, I have one. But I got it a long time ago when it was the only long range electric car on the market. Now Tesla is the absolute last brand I would choose.

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    4 months ago

    Sentiment toward Tesla improved somewhat as Musk pivoted the company towards robotaxis, self-driving technology and robots in human form.

    What are three things that don’t exist and don’t have a market?

    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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      Robotaxis exist and have a market. Tesla just isn’t the one doing it.

      Waymo taxis are pretty common around me.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        There are pilot programs from several vendors. Waymo May have the biggest but it’s unscalable. Tesla is growing and if they succeed will scale massively. There are several smaller ones

        But what they have in common is

        • all have shortcomings
        • None are generally available
        • each are individually approved for limited scope - there’s no legal framework to make them generally available
        • none are even on a path to a profitable business model
    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      Well, they exist, and there’s a theoretical market, but it’s just that Tesla isn’t particularly the leader in any except maybe personally owned self driving, but that’s mainly because Tesla’s willing to test in the streets while others are more traditionally conservative about the safety thing.

      Pre-unmasked Musk, Tesla might have done well as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Smart people wanted to work with a seemingly smart company, so it was a positive feedback loop.

      In the post-Twitter acquisition world, the shine has kind of come off around the concept of working for Musk, and more keenly so with the coverage of what sort of person he truly is.

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        4 months ago

        Tesla has a huge advantage in scalability. If they can succeed, they will quickly scale out to the biggest.

        A lot of people believe Waymo is closer to achieving self-driving, since their pilots are more established, but they are not scalable. They’re not ready to mass produce vehicles nor can they do so at a cost that could be profitable

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Tesla after losing one million ev sales after the actions of the CEO: here’s 56 billion and you know what? We’re going to give another trillion in pay package to the CEO