Tesla once again tells its own CEO Elon Musk to knock it off with the politics
Tesla just dropped its Q1 2025 earnings and the news isn’t great, as sales and profits have fallen significantly and missed already-low expectations. And in the earnings report, the company has issued what seems to be an admission that its own CEO’s actions are to blame.
It’s been a rough time for Tesla employees lately. The company’s mission is an admirable one: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transportation. Many employees joined the company with that mission in mind, wanting to do something positive for the world.
But in recent times, the highest-profile employee of the company, its CEO and largest individual shareholder Elon Musk, has moved away from that mission. He spent huge sums from his personal wealth to campaign for an anti-EV political candidate, and is now actively participating in politics as an ally to those anti-EV forces and spreading climate misinformation along the way.
He’s also famously vindictive and Tesla’s board refuses to rein him in as he works to destroy the company.
So what is a Tesla employee to do, in this case? On the one hand, they want to do what’s right for the company. On the other hand, they don’t want to attract the ire of their boss who wants to do what’s wrong for the company. When your livelihood is at stake, sometimes you’ll choose to just keep your head down, keep working the best you can, and hope in vain that at some point the CEO might change his mind and stop acting like an idiot, or the board might finally step in for the good of the company. (Or, alternately, if you have other options, you might quit to make a statement, like many executives have)
However, we’ve seen some instances of some Tesla employees trying to do something, anything, to cry out to the world that all of this isn’t normal. And one example of that comes from Tesla’s earnings report today.
Tesla says tariffs will harm it
It’s right there in the third paragraph of the summary at the beginning of the document:
Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers.
This sort of statement is not a surprise to see in a quarterly report in the environment we’re currently in. The US stock market and economy as a whole are showing increasingly worrying signs, almost entirely due to the flailing actions of the ignoramuses who somehow find themselves in the Oval Office (despite that there exists a clear legal remedy stopping insurrectionists from holding office in the US).
These actions have included the announcement of several tariffs (even though that is the purview of Congress), seemingly determined randomly through a dumb formula that didn’t even use the right numbers, and which seem to change every day (as one would expect when the person implementing them is senile and was profoundly stupid even before he went senile).
This idiotic flailing has produced the expected response: retaliatory tariffs, distrust from the international community, less availability of goods domestically, chaos among the business community, and pushing nations we consider as our rivals closer to the rest of the world.
Businesses, on the whole, have tried to stick to factual statements in their earnings reports and business forecasts. But despite that these statements are generally dry, the message remains clear: tariffs will increase costs for everyone and make business more difficult.
And Tesla’s statement is similarly dry, pointing to the uncertainty of ever-changing tariff decisions and how they will affect supply chains and cost. This is especially true for Tesla Energy, which will be affected much more than its car business, as Tesla also acknowledged today, stating “the current tariff landscape will have a relatively larger impact on our Energy business compared to automotive.”
But for Tesla, this is still exceptional given that the company’s moonlighting CEO, who spends little time working on Tesla business and is otherwise occupied with his twitter addiction, stealing Tesla resources for his private AI company, and trying to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency. Along with all this, Musk is also an advisor in the very administration that is making Tesla’s business difficult.
Musk has stated his opposition to tariffs, but he himself has to walk a thin line and occasionally downplay his language, given his self-professed “love” for Mr. Trump. And, despite this supposed opposition, he still remains one of the largest financial backers of the tariff advocate in question.
But Musk’s politics are also harming the company
But tariffs aren’t the only thing that will make Tesla’s business difficult, as Tesla acknowledged today in its letter. It continued to say:
This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.
Again, a rather dry statement elucidating a very significant problem with the company at the moment.
It’s not so much that political sentiment about EVs is changing, as EV sales continue to grow globally, despite headlines falsely suggesting otherwise. It’s sentiment against Tesla that is changing, largely due to Musk’s involvement in politics.
The main driver of Tesla’s recent sales decline has been Musk’s high-profile political advocacy, which has included support for German neo-Nazis and agreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, among many other white supremacist statements. This has driven protests against the company, embarrassed owners and pushed many customers away.
It shouldn’t have to be said that allying a company’s brand with neo-Nazis is a bad political decision, especially so if you, as an individual, are so tied to the brand.
In fact, this is something that Tesla acknowledged very early in its existence, as the company used to make a very intentional effort not to make EVs political, hoping to be able to sell to as broad of an audience as possible. Musk seems to have forgotten that directive sometime during his ongoing twitter addiction (an addiction so bad that he has now overpaid for the company not once, but twice).
This isn’t the first time Tesla has had to do this
But this isn’t the first time Tesla has had to call out its own CEO’s actions. As the Musk problem has continued to get worse, Tesla has said similar things multiple times in recent months.
In March, Tesla’s policy team sent a letter to the US Trade Representative urging the USTR to “consider the downstream impacts” of proposed actions. One of those downstream impacts includes retaliatory tariffs, and given the high profile nature of the attachment between Tesla’s CEO and another social media addicted clown who’s implementing said tariffs, there was a lot of talk about Tesla becoming target of those tariffs.
And sure enough, Tesla has seen other governments retaliate against it. Canada has removed Tesla from some incentive programs and is investigating Tesla’s sudden incentive cash grab. The UK, one of the few territories where Tesla sales are not down, has also considered removing the company from incentive programs.
Tesla has also had to walk a thin line on EV incentives, stating that it supports killing EV incentives in the US because Musk said so (even though that would harm the company), while still lobbying for EV incentives overseas where the Musk/Trump stink isn’t overpowering the conversation.
So, in the end, it seems like a really tough time to be a Tesla employee. The company knows that its CEO is harming it, but the board won’t do anything about it, and speaking up too forcefully can get you fired. Pour one out for the employees, we hope you’re holding it down well enough.
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GM has scrapped plans to build $55 million hydrogen fuel cell factory in Detroit, triggering a tsunami of headlines about the General’s future plans for hydrogen. The reality? GM isn’t scaling back its hydrogen efforts. It’s thinking bigger.
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
MARK TWAIN (sort of)
Like the great Sam Clemens, there seems to be plenty of confidence in the greater automotive press that GM’s decision to cancel a $55 millions fuel cell plant on the former Michigan State Fairgrounds site in Detroit. That plant, a JV with Southeast Michigan’s Piston Automotive, would have created ~140 jobs and built compact hydrogen fuel cells for light- and medium-duty vehicles under the Hydrotec brand.
That plan, frankly, was never going to work. It was always a cynical incentive grab and the first fruits of GM’s Hydrotec efforts were so laughably far behind the state of the electric art that the facts themselves blurred the line between satire and reality. Which, of course, didn’t matter – as long as the incentive money (Biden’s Department of Energy awarded GM $30 million in grants for the State Fairgrounds plant) kept flowing.
The new Trump Administration put an end to that flow last week, however, terminating 321 financial awards for clean energy worth $7.56 billion.
“Certainly the decisions of the DOE are an element of that overall climate but not the only driver,” explained GM spokesperson, Stuart Fowle, in a statement. “We want to prioritize the engineering talent and resources and everything we have to continuing to advance EVs given hydrogen is in a different spot.”
That spot is heavy-duty, off-highway, maritime, and data centers.
Bigger trucks, bigger fuel cells
Instead of dying, GM is continuing on the hydrogen fuel cell it’s been on for literal decades – with no plans (publicly, at least) to shutter its Fuel Cell System Manufacturing joint-venture with Honda in Brownstown Township, MI.
That company is not just developing HFCs, they’re out there selling fuel cells today, to extreme-duty, disaster response, and off-highway equipment customers operating far enough off the grid that access to electricity is questionable and to data center developers for whom access to a continuous flow of energy is mission-critical.
Electrek’s Take
Fuel cells like the ones from GM and Honda will continue to seem like a good idea … for about as long as it takes the heavy equipment guys to watch a ZQUIP video.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Detroit News, FreightWaves, Yahoo!Finance.
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EVs are great, and can unlock more transportation convenience with the ease of charging at home. But for apartment-dwellers, this can be a complicated conversation. So a nonprofit called Forth is here to help, through its Charge at Home program.
One of the main benefits of an electric vehicle is in the convenience of owning and charging the car in the place it spends most of its time. Instead of having to go out of your way to fuel it, you just park it at home, in the same place it spends at least 8 hours a day, and you leave the house every day with a full charge.
But this benefit only applies to those with a consistent parking space which they can easily install charging at. When talking about owners who live in apartment buildings, it can sometimes get more complicated.
While certain states have passed “right to charge” laws to give apartment-dwellers a solution for home charging, apartment charging is nevertheless a bit of a patchwork solution so far.
And as a result of this, EV ownership among apartment renters lags behind that of single-family homeowners. It’s clear that apartments are holding back people from buying EVs, and that’s bad – lots of people live in apartments, and the gas those cars use pollutes the air just as much as any other.
Certain areas where EVs have hit a point of critical mass (namely, the large California cities) have pretty good EV ownership among renters, but it could still be better. And residents are clamoring more and more for easy EV charging in apartment communities.
So, Forth, a nonprofit advocating for equitable access to clean transportation, set up a program called Charge at Home, which is meant to connect renters, apartment building owners or other decisionmakers with resources to help install chargers at multifamily properties.
The site lets you select your situation – a resident or a decisionmaker for a new or existing multifamily development – and then gives you access to tools for your specific situation, whether you be a resident and developer.
The site houses links to help design a multifamily project, find electricians, inform you about right to charge laws or available incentives, and provide case studies, among others.
Charge at Home also hosts roundtable webinars periodically, and includes a library of past webinars with the information you need.
There are a lot of considerations for each of these projects, so it can be helpful to have someone with experience to help you go over it all. Personally, when talking to friends about getting an EV, charging considerations are usually the thing that takes up the bulk of the conversation.
So if the toolkits are still too daunting for you, Charge at Home is offering free charging consultations for multifamily developers, owners, property managers and HOAs.
The charging consultations will last through at least April 2026 – but it wouldn’t hurt to get your requests in soon. Forth may still offer consultations afterwards, but it all depends on funding availability (the program was previously funded by the Department of Energy, which has taken a turn). Regardless, the website will remain up for people to submit questions and find information, whether or not free consultations stick around.
But at the very least, as Forth points out, whether a multifamily development is interested in having EV charging at this moment or not, any developer should think about having the infrastructure, conduit and capacity ready to go for future install of EV chargers, and should consider the needs of current residents who are likely already considering EVs today.
It’s going to be necessary to install this capacity at some point, and doing so earlier can help save money down the line, make your development more attractive to renters today, and allow more renters to make the switch to cleaner transportation which helps air quality and to reduce climate change, both of which harm everyone on the planet.
Head on over to Forth’s Charge at Home site to get access to all the above resources – and to sign up for a consultation before the end of April if you’re a multifamily developer, owner, property manager or HOA.
Update: This article has been updated to account for an extension in program availability.
Electrek’s Take
I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is the problem of access to consistent charging for people who don’t have their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.
There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best thing is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.
We’ve highlighted some projects before which showed how reasonable it can be to install charging for developments. Every project is going to have its complexities, but when you see projects like this condo complex that managed to install chargers for just $405 per parking spot, all of a sudden it becomes a no-brainer not to have EV charging.
But the fact is, there just aren’t enough apartment complexes out there which have EV charging. So if Forth’s Charge At Home program can help residents or landlords with that, it can go a long way towards solving the only real problem with EVs. Click here to check it out.
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Baltimore County, Maryland, just brought its first large-scale ground-mounted solar farm online, and it sits on what used to be the Parkton Landfill. The 213-acre site, once a symbol of waste, is now generating clean power that will cut costs, slash emissions, and turn an underused piece of land into a long-term energy asset.
Located north of Baltimore City, Baltimore County is one of Maryland’s largest and most populous counties, and its push toward renewables has major implications for the state’s climate and energy goals.
County Executive Kathy Klausmeier called the project a clear example of innovation meeting sustainability: “We are cutting costs for taxpayers and making investments that benefit our communities for decades.”
The new solar farm will provide around 11% of the Maryland county government’s annual electricity, producing roughly 8.2 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) in its first year. That’s the equivalent of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from burning over 620,000 gallons of gasoline, powering more than 1,150 homes for a year, or driving 14 million fewer miles in gas cars, according to the EPA.
The 7 MW system includes four large solar arrays of 15,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels. It’s part of a growing trend in the US to repurpose capped landfills for renewable energy, turning dormant properties into productive clean energy sites.
Through a power purchase agreement with TotalEnergies, which owns and operates the system, Baltimore County will lock in reduced electricity rates for 25 years, with options to extend the contract for up to 33 years. That long-term deal protects taxpayers from future electricity price hikes while advancing local climate goals.
“Adding another large source of solar electricity to power our County’s facilities reflects our community’s values of making smart investments that take care of the health of our community and environment,” said Greg Strella, the county’s chief sustainability officer.
TotalEnergies Managing Director Eric Potts called the project a “powerful example of transforming underutilized assets into productive resources,” pointing to the dual benefits of cutting emissions and saving money.
Baltimore County’s next landfill solar project, at Hernwood, is expected to come online by 2028. Once that system is up and running, renewables will supply about 55% of the county government’s electricity use.
Read more: The Trump administration just killed the US’s largest solar project
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
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