Musk’s culture war is hurting Tesla’s brand

Elon Musk’s culture wars are increasingly exasperating Tesla shareholders. Down over 60 per cent this year, Tesla is suffering its largest drawdown in history.

Musk recently blamed share-price woes on “difficult” macro conditions and “crazy Fed rates in USA”. Conveniently, this ignores the fact that Tesla shares have lost over a third of their value since October, even though the broader market has rallied over the same period. In reality, investors are concerned that Musk’s antics are seriously hurting Tesla’s brand.

Tesla investor Gary Black last week said Musk should “tone down his political views” and stop “attacking his woke left customer base”.

Black’s message is only half-true. Posting a poisonous conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, tweeting about prosecuting Anthony Fauci – you don’t have to be “woke left” to find Musk’s carry-on both obnoxious and dangerous. This is borne out by a Der Spiegel survey of car enthusiasts. Almost half said Musk’s behaviour had a “clearly negative” influence on their opinion of Tesla. Another 16 per cent said their reaction was “rather negative”.

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Importantly, the German paper reported that the “broad rejection of Musk’s persona is apparent across all age, professional and educational groups” and is independent of gender, religion and political affiliation, with one exception – supporters of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Even here, there were more negative reactions than positive.

In the UK, too, perception of Tesla has become a net negative for the first time since YouGov began tracking the company. Musk is Tesla’s brand, complained long-time Tesla bull Gene Munster of Loup Ventures last week. “He needs to pull it together”.