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Tesla stock dropped over 50 points today, primarily in response to a very public feud between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and convicted felon Donald Trump.

But, as we pointed out in November, this doesn’t have anything to do with company performance, and rather only reflects a change in the market’s expectation of potential benefit to Tesla from government corruption.

Tesla stock has had a wild few months, with big rises and falls that has had little to do with company performance (which is, perhaps, nothing new for the stock, which has always been a speculative vehicle).

Much of the movement of TSLA has been centered around CEO Elon Musk’s relationship with Donald Trump.

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Musk very publicly supported Mr. Trump’s run for president, giving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Mr. Trump’s campaign, despite the latter’s openly anti-EV positions (and despite that there exists a clear legal remedy stopping insurrectionists from holding office in the US).

Musk even went on to spew climate denying nonsense alongside Mr. Trump during the campaign, and later said nothing when Mr. Trump opposed the Paris Agreement, even though he previously opposed a similar move in 2017.

This led to Musk being invited into an advisory role, which was dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency despite it not being a real government department, and having a supposed mission redundant with the already-existing Government Accountability Office.

And in the immediate aftermath of the election, TSLA stock rose swiftly, purely because of expectations of corruption. But after that swift rise, it gradually fell as the reality of economy-destroying tariffs, anti-EV legislation, and Tesla’s brand perception problem due to Musk’s actions all became apparent. Despite Musk’s position as a top republican party donor, the party still seems more interested in catering to its traditional base in the fossil fuel industry.

Despite some recovery from that big post election rise-and-drop, TSLA took another big hit today, and it’s all due to the current rift forming between these two egomaniacs.

A rift over spending becomes something greater

During his tenure in his advisory position, Musk claims to have saved the government hundreds of billions of dollars, but independent accounting has shown that it is in fact likely to increase the deficit, not decrease it.

Nevertheless, it seems like Musk was fooled into believing his own propaganda, and into thinking that deficit reduction was ever a goal of Mr. Trump, despite that he previously oversaw the highest nominal deficit of any person in the history of the United States.

At least, he believed that until now. In the last few days, after leaving his advisory position, Musk has loudly opposed the new republican budget bill, which he now correctly points out will add trillions of dollars to the US deficit (as any lucid person might have predicted from the party of waste).

The criticism came to a head today, with Musk going through one of his patented tweetstorms, acting more like a jilted lover than a CEO in charge of a company that has many people’s retirement invested into it.

There’s been a lot of back and forth, but over the course of the day, Musk has posted many statements about how dangerous the budget bill will be for the US debt and deficit.

Mr. Trump responded, stating that Musk should have known these things before now, but that Musk is only acting this way because he cut the “EV mandate.”

To be clear, the bill in question does not cut any EV mandate, as there was never an EV mandate to begin with, but it does cut EV tax credits which Tesla has gained more benefit from than any other company, though Tesla lobbied in support of these cuts. The bill does not cut support for oil and gas companies, which are orders of magnitude higher than the support EV companies get.

In response to this, Musk claimed that he personally swung the election in favor of the republicans, and that Mr. Trump is showing “ingratitude” by not recognizing this fact.

Mr. Trump responded by suggesting that the government could save money by terminating all of the subsidies and contracts for services with Musk’s various companies. To this, Musk said that he would immediately decommission the Dragon capsule, which has been the main spacecraft used by NASA to service the International Space Station.

Then, Musk went on to state that a recession will happen in the second half of this year due to Mr. Trump’s position on tariffs, and also to accuse Mr. Trump of being on Jeffrey Epstein’s list (which is not the first time Musk has publicly accused someone of pedophilia, though it is the first time he’s said that about someone who he claimed to “love as much as any straight man can,” and knowingly worked alongside), and to agree with a call for his impeachment.

The market sees this as a negative sign

The public rift seems to have shaken the stock market out of its stupor, as Tesla went down more than 50 points since the start of today.

While nothing significant has changed for Tesla’s business today – it’s still suffering from falling sales in an otherwise rising market, and it still has a bad CEO – what has changed is the possibility of the company benefitting from corruption.

As I stated during TSLA’s meteoric post-election rise, the stock price was merely a reflection of the market’s expectation that Mr. Trump, a person with an enormous history of corruption, would thank Musk for his election participation by rewarding him and his companies. Nobody quite knew how that might happen, but everyone expected that it would.

I claimed, at the time, that this was unlikely to turn out the way the market thought it would, because the republicans would likely continue to favor fossil fuels, and that regulatory blockages were not the thing holding Tesla back from its automation goals.

Musk did attempt to use the government in corrupt ways, as detailed this week in a report by Senator Warren, and as we all remember from the White House Auto Mall infomercial (remember, folks, “everything’s computer!“).

But none of that was ever going to justify the addition of hundreds of billions of dollars to Tesla’s market cap.

The market seems to be realizing that more today, as over $100 billion has been shaved off of Tesla’s market cap since the start of the feud. That’s quite a lot of priced-in expected benefit that has been wiped away, all by a single tweetstorm.

Fight shows how vulnerable Tesla is to Musk’s whims

While it’s all well and good to see the worst two people you know fighting each other, and to finally see the inevitable fallout between two narcissists who frankly held out much longer than any reasonable person thought they would, this fight does show the significant vulnerability that Tesla has to the whims of a CEO who has shown poor ability to control his impulses in the past.

The last year or more has been highlighted by several poor business decisions by Musk, not the least of which is his support of one of the larger anti-EV entities on the planet right now.

But beyond the politics, his leadership has still been erratic for the company. Not only has he paid more attention to the many other companies he runs, when he has turned his attention to Tesla, it hasn’t been positive for the company.

After mostly ignoring Tesla for a few years, he went through a flurry of activity in the run-up to last year’s shareholder advisory vote on his compensation package. This flurry involved firing everyone including important leadership and successful teamscanceling an all-important affordable car project (and lying about it) and holding Tesla’s AI projects hostage while shifting both resources and staff from Tesla to his private AI company, even as he claims that AI is the future of Tesla.

Now, TSLA investors have another thing to worry about – whether Musk will continue to try to “poke the bear” and get more government opposition to his company, even as he continues to make himself distasteful globally (by, for example, showing support for German neo-Nazisagreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, or his many other white supremacist statements). These actions have driven protests against the companyembarrassed owners and pushed many customers away – and those protesters aren’t planning on stopping.

While some may cheer this new rift that has formed between Musk and one of the environment’s greatest enemies, Donald Trump, it seems unlikely that Musk’s erratic behavior will be beneficial for Tesla the company in the long run.


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Tesla’s ‘more affordable model’ shown in spy shots on Chinese social media

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Tesla's 'more affordable model' shown in spy shots on Chinese social media

The long-promised “more affordable” Tesla model has been spied on Chinese social media, and it’s disappointingly about what we expected: a slightly decontented version of the Model Y.

For many years, Tesla had planned to build a much more affordable vehicle, starting around $25k. This vehicle was nicknamed the “Model 2,” and would have offered the most affordable entry point into the EV market, at least in the West.

But that project was abruptly canceled by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as first reported by Reuters and immediately denied by Musk. Reuters was later shown to be correct in its report, as many who follow Tesla might have expected, given Musk’s constant overpromising (and often outright lies).

In its place, Tesla started offering vague promises about “more affordable models, starting in its Q1 report in April 2024. Tesla later specified that these would enter production in the first half of 2025.

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The language Tesla used suggested that the cheaper vehicles would be “new models,” which means more than one model, and not just based on a current Tesla model. But we reported that this was unlikely to be the case, and that the “new models” would just be a stripped-down Model Y.

That deadline came and went, but on Tesla’s Q2 call last week, it said that “first builds” were produced in June. On the same call, Musk said that the “new affordable model” is… the Model Y.

So, we’ve got confirmation that actual new models aren’t coming – but it does seem like something cheaper is coming down the pipe. And now, from Chinese social media pics of these “first builds,” we know just what kind of decontenting Tesla will do in order to get the cost savings.

Two videos were posted this weekend, on bilibili and weibo. The first was an exterior video by account “极客小猪” (machine translated as “Geek Piglet”). You’ll have to click through if you want to see the whole thing.

It shows the new Model Y as similar in size to the Juniper refreshed model it’s parked next to, though the front and rear are covered by camouflage and it’s hard to tell with perspective of the camera.

As best we can tell from the captions (which isn’t very well), the account seems to think this might be the upcoming larger Model Y L, and the camera perspective in the particular screeenshot above does make it look like the car in the forefront could be slightly longer than the one in the back. But other perspectives show them looking similar in length, and seeing the various missing parts later in the video, we think it’s likely the “more affordable” model.

There are a few holes in the camouflage that give som indication of what might be different, like that the rear light bar from the Juniper might be cut off rather than running across the whole rear of the car. The new one is also missing the “T E S L A” logo across the rear, as can be seen in a little window showing the rear camera.

The video gets a look at the interior of the vehicle, where the seats are covered up. I originally suspected the vehicle might have cloth seats, but the cover seems to have dropped down in the rear, and something leather-like is showing through, so Tesla may still be using its fake leather product to cover the seats.

It also shows that the center console is cut off between the armrest and the screen, using up less material and giving an open space there. This is somewhat similar to the original design of the Model S, which had a large space in front of the center console. We can’t tell from the video if the 2 phone charging mats are still present or not – it looks like the space they’d normally go is there, but the pattern looks different than the current NFC phone chargers.

For another look at the interior, we saw a couple more photos from another Chinese social media account, 42号车库, or “Garage No. 42” on Weibo. These show the steering wheel, front seats, rear and roof a little more clearly. It seems to be of the same car, given the status of the seat covers in the rear.

More changes become apparent here: there is no panoramic glass roof on the car, and the rear screen which was added in the Juniper refresh is once again eliminated. But the turn signal stalk, which was eliminated in the Model 3 Highland refresh and returned in a vestigial manner in the Juniper refresh, is (thankfully) still there.

The balance of these changes suggest that a lot of them are just rollbacks of the content which was added to the cars in the Juniper refresh. Interestingly, though, the Juniper refresh did not increase the price of the car significantly. So, rolling back those changes shouldn’t decrease the price of the car all that much either.

But these just show us some of the interior and exterior changes – the model might have other changes as well. From time to time, Tesla has offered cheaper versions of its vehicles either with rear-wheel drive only, to save on the cost of the front motor, or with a smaller or cheaper (e.g. LFP) battery. The new “affordable” Model Y might incorporate those changes too, and be able to get cost down more because of it, but we’ll have to wait for more information on that.

Further, there’s been no indication of a cheaper Model 3 or any actual “new models” yet. Model 3 is a smaller car than the Model Y, and thus could be cheaper – if Tesla is saving a significant amount of money by cutting a little plastic out of a center console, surely cutting hundreds of pounds of aluminum would save even more. We had expected the “more affordable models” to include both a stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y, but per Musk’s comments on the call, we might only be getting a Model Y.

Electrek’s Take

While it’s nice to see a potential lower base price, all of this is disappointing compared to the actual more affordable model that we could have had, the Model 2, which Musk unwisely canceled, instead putting his attention on becoming the largest funder of anti-EV, anti-environment and anti-American forces, and spending effort on spreading climate change disinformation and white supremacist nonsense rather than focusing on the mission of his company.

Maybe it would be nice to have someone in charge who takes the mission of sustainable transport seriously. Which Musk does not, and has in fact acted against with his recent actions.


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Meet the Honda N-ONE e: A small EV with a big personality

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Meet the Honda N-ONE e: A small EV with a big personality

It may be small in size, but Honda promises the new N-ONE e is fit for a “daily partner” with a flexible interior, ample range to navigate the city, and it can even power up your home..

Honda reveals the new N-ONE e electric car

The N-ONE e is Honda’s second light EV, or “kei car” as they are called in Japan. It’s Honda’s second electric kei car, following the N-VAN e, launched in October 2024.

Although the N-VAN e was mainly for business use, the new N-ONE e is specifically designed as an everyday driver.

Honda said the new EV was “developed in pursuit of the ideal EV” with a unique design, spacious interior layout, and enough driving range for daily travels. The N-ONE e is the electric version of Honda’s retro kei car, the N-ONE, which has been on sale in Japan since 2012.

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It looks about the same as the gas-powered model, but the new EV has a new face with a smoothed-out black grille and two additional charge ports up front.

Honda-N-ONE-e
Honda N-ONE e electric car (Source: Honda)

Honda boasted that the electric city car has “added the cleanliness that only an EV can offer” with smoothed edges and a new rounded bumper design.

The interior, on the other hand, has been completely revamped from the gas model to maximize space. It includes a decent-sized infotainment screen and a push-button gear selector.

Honda-N-ONE-e
Honda N-ONE e electric car (Source: Honda)

There’s also plenty of physical buttons for climate control functions and more. To maximize interior space, Honda kept it simple with smart storage options and flexible seating.

Although Honda has yet to reveal specifics, it did say the N-ONE e has achieved a WLTP cruising range of over 270 km (167 miles).

It will likely share parts with the N-VAN e, hinting at a single electric powertrain with up to 63 hp, the limit for kei cars in Japan.

With Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) capabilities, Honda’s new EV can be used as a mobile power source during a natural disaster or power outage. You can also use it to power electronics, a campsite, a worksite, and more on the go.

Honda is opening advanced reservations for the new electric car on Friday, August 31. It’s scheduled to launch in September, around the same time Honda’s “Super EV” for Europe is set to debut.

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LNG stocks jump after European Union agrees to massive U.S. energy purchases

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LNG stocks jump after European Union agrees to massive U.S. energy purchases

A view of Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG facility located in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, as seen from Port Arthur, Texas, on June 23, 2025.

Joel Angel Juarez | Reuters

Shares of liquified natural gas, or LNG, companies jumped Monday after the European Union agreed to purchase $750 billion of energy from the U.S.

LNG exporters Cheniere and Venture Global were up about 3% and more than 4%, respectively. NextDecade and New Fortress Energy, which build LNG infrastructure, jumped more than 2% and about 3%, respectively.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen said the purchases would help reduce the bloc’s dependence on Russia for natural gas.

“Purchases of US energy products will diversify our sources of supply and contribute to Europe’s energy security,” Von der Leyen said in a statement over the weekend. “We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of US LNG, oil and nuclear fuels.”

The energy purchases are part of a broader trade deal struck between the EU and the U.S. over the weekend. The deal imposes 15% tariffs on EU exports to the U.S. In addition to the energy purchases, Brussels has agreed to invest $600 billion in the U.S. above current levels.

President Donald Trump said “energy is a very important component” of the deal during a meeting with von der Leyen on Sunday.

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