Elon Musk’s controversial conduct lately is “very doubtless” to be a contributing think about Tesla’s declining gross sales, in line with company repute monitoring agency Caliber.
Survey knowledge reported by Reuters discovered that Tesla’s “consideration rating” — a metric utilized by Caliber to trace shopper curiosity in manufacturers, based mostly on how they reply to the immediate “I might purchase, or proceed shopping for, services from Tesla, if given the prospect” — has fallen to 31 p.c from its 70 p.c excessive in November 2021, tumbling by 8 p.c alone this January. Caliber’s consideration scores for rival EV-producing producers Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, in the meantime, elevated barely throughout the identical interval, reaching between 44–47 p.c.
Caliber claims 83 p.c of People it surveyed related Tesla with Musk, with Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz telling Reuters that it’s “very doubtless that Musk himself is contributing to the reputational downfall.” Extra knowledge provided to Reuters by model valuation consultancy Model Finance present an analogous decline in Tesla’s repute amongst shoppers within the Netherlands, US, UK, France, and Australia between 2023 and 2024.
If Musk’s polarizing conduct is impacting Tesla gross sales, it’ll be certainly one of a number of components at play — the corporate warned again in January that its progress in 2024 “could also be notably decrease” than final yr because it prepares its car lineup for 2025. Tesla additionally faces growing competitors from rival EV suppliers like Rivian and China’s BYD and attributed declining gross sales to manufacturing delays and transport disruptions in its Q1 manufacturing report.
Bloomberg made related connections between Musk’s dwindling repute and Tesla’s risky inventory worth over a yr in the past. He hasn’t precisely made his persona any extra palatable since then.