That's what happens when a CEO associates themselves tightly with their brand and then publicly takes extremely polarizing political action that half the voter base considers antithetical to their values.
Note that Rivian deliveries (numbers came out today also) fell much more, percentagewise. Also worth pondering the scale.<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/rivian-reports-fall-in-first-quarter-deliveries.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/rivian-reports-fall-in-first...</a><p>> Rivian reported a 36% decline in first-quarter deliveries on Wednesday, as the electric-vehicle maker grapples with weak demand, sending its shares down more than 2% at the open.<p>> The company delivered 8,640 vehicles in the quarter ended March 31, down from 13,588 a year earlier. The deliveries, however, exceeded analysts’ average estimate of 8,200, according to Visible Alpha.
This is largely due to the Model Y refresh. March numbers are pretty strong, even in Europe. Not that I support his behavior, especially his position on Ukraine, but facts are facts.
At a normal company, as CEO, Elon's behavior and performance would get him removed the the board. I suspect it will eventually. He's on a real Howard Hughes trajectory for loss of sanity. It's kind of sad really.
>The US group, led by Elon Musk, delivered 336,681 cars in the first quarter, far fewer than the 390,000 forecast by analysts and the 387,000 it delivered in the same period last year.<p>That's a 13% decline in sales. They delivered 3740 cars per day (assuming 90 days in quarter), instead of the 4300/day they delivered last year or the 4333/day they forecast.
In the 1920s or '30s Henry Ford stopped or at least slowed with the antisemitic bile that he was spewing in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent, which put Hitler's Mein Kampf to shame and earned him the only favourable American mention in Hitler's book, because it was impacting sales of his cars. The question is whether the same might be the case for Musk, but his wealth seems decoupled from his cars, so it's not going to happen.